Snap to pay US$1 million a day to creators for Spotlight videos as it looks to ramp up competition with TikTok

Snap Inc. is rolling out a new tool for its Snapchat app to feature popular videos, called Spotlight, and said it will pay out US$1 million a day to creators of the top-performing posts.

To earn the money, video submitters to Spotlight do not have to have large followers – or even have public profiles. Instead, an algorithm will determine what to show Snapchat users based on how often others view the post. If others view the same video repeatedly, for instance, that would be a signal it is catching on and will spur the algorithm to distribute it more widely.

The new feature will help Snapchat in a competitive market for posting entertaining videos online, dominated by Facebook’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube, with China-based ByteDance’s TikTok rising fast among younger audiences. Snap Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel has eschewed public metrics, such as likes and follows, that drive the market for influencers, the most-followed users on photo-sharing apps.

On Snapchat, which hit 249 million daily active users in the third quarter, likes are private, there is no re-sharing of videos and displaying follower numbers is optional. Without those metrics, though, it is harder for users to get popular, noticed by brands and hired to create sponsored content – the main way young social media stars make a living.

Spiegel wants Spotlight to reward popular videos without their creators having to worry about consistency or the number of followers.

Social media platforms are striving to attract the makers of quality content. TikTok plans to spend more than US$1 billion in the US in the next three years on video-makers. Instagram has been paying some of TikTok’s top stars to test out its TikTok copycat feature, Reels. Instagram also recently started sharing revenue for the first time on video ads with creators, like YouTube does.