Snap: The company paid 2.5% to the creators of the TikTok clone product this year

Snap announced today (December 14 local time) that it paid more than $250 million to more than 12,000 creators this year on its TikTok clone Spotlight. Unlike the brief messaging between Snapchat's friends, Spotlight allows users to reach a wide audience. Snap said creators have posted three times as often since Spotlight was launched last year.

The race for dominance of short videos is underway, and it's an open secret. As TikTok became one of the fastest apps to reach 1 billion monthly active users, competitors such as Snapchat Spotlight, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts have also launched creator funds to incentivize people to produce content specifically for their platform. Instagram Reels won't promote uploads with TikTok watermarks, and Snapchat has reduced its original $1 million a day in pay, the company's CEO Evan Spiegel said in September because it paid for too much "copycat content." Even platforms like LinkedIn, Spotify, Netflix, Reddit, and Twitter are experimenting with TikTok-like content.

Now, Snap says, 65 percent of Spotlight submissions use Snapchat's creative tools, such as augmented reality (AR) shots — especially cartoon-style 3D shots that went viral this summer, generating 2.8 billion related content in the first week of adoption.

Snap also caters to creators through its Story Studio, an indie app released at the Snap Partner Summit in May. Some creators edit videos on desktops with tools like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere and send it to their phones — but Snap tries to give users more flexibility. Story Studio lets creators make more intensive editing on their phones, while the web-based Spotlight app lets users upload their content without leaving their computer.

In addition, creators can monetize Spotlight through in-app gifts and Snap's Creator Marketplace, which allows brands to more easily collaborate with AR developers and influencers. Creators can earn a certain amount of income from gifts, but they can keep 100% of the income they get through the Creator Marketplace.