Meta is uniting the revenue streams it has used to pay more than four million creators

Facebook creators have multiple monetization options to choose from, and Meta is now uniting its revenue streams within a single, centralized program. The Facebook Content Monetization Beta, currently open on an invite-only basis, allows creators to profit from in-stream spots, Reels ads, and performance-based payouts without needing to qualify separately for each revenue stream.

Since 2017, Facebook has offered payouts to creators who monetize through various revenue-sharing programs. The in-stream ads that appear in the Facebook feed arrived before the short-form content boom. Once Reels took off, Facebook turned on the monetization faucet for short-form creators by equipping them with ads on Reels and performance-based payouts that scale with viewership.

As those revenue streams blew up, the plethora of Facebook monetization options began to get a bit confusing, so the platform is now looking to simplify. Once Facebook users are eligible for the Creator Monetization Beta, they can earn revenue across all of the moneymaking formats Meta has made available.

At first glance, the new program sounds like YouTube’s Partner Program, which is also a centralized revenue-sharing framework that includes multiple forms

of monetization. But there are key differences between the two programs. YouTube Partner membership is contingent on viewership, subscriber, and watch time benchmarks that change depending on any particular creator’s primary upload format (long-form videos, Shorts, live broadcasts, etc.)

Facebook, on the other hand, will have one standard for entry into the Creator Monetization beta. For now, an invitation is required, and Facebook plans to onboard one million creators to start. Additional invitations will be sent in the “coming months,” and creators who want a piece of the pie can let Facebook know by request access to the new monetization program.

Open enrollment for the Creator Monetization Beta won’t begin until 2025, but when it does, Facebook will have an opportunity to add more members to a monetization ecosystem that already serves millions. More than four million creators have earned from Facebook since 2017, and that massive number is just a starting point.