Video platforms worth investing in for creators and sellers in 2026

If you make content or sell through video, the question is no longer whether to be online but where to put your effort first. YouTube, TikTok and Facebook all push videos to people who don't follow you yet, so a new account has a chance on each of them. The real difference is where the money comes from, and whether you can actually collect it from Vietnam.

AppDuo's conclusion: to earn from your content over the long run, make YouTube your main channel, because it is the only one of the three whose ad revenue-sharing programme is open to Vietnamese creators with published requirements. To sell products, start on TikTok, because videos and livestreams send buyers straight into TikTok Shop, which is now close behind Shopee in sales. Facebook is spending heavily to win creators over, but in Vietnam its content payouts are still limited to people it invites. Start on Facebook now as a second channel, but don't treat it as your main income yet.

This piece draws on earnings reports, official help pages and press coverage up to 14 November 2026. The forecast for Facebook over the next 12–18 months is AppDuo's own assessment, along with the signs that would show it to be wrong.

Reach: who has the biggest audience

The three platforms don't report users the same way, so a direct comparison is hard. Meta only gives a combined figure: an average of 3.64 billion daily users across all its apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and others) in September 2026, with no Facebook-only number. YouTube only says it has “billions” of monthly logged-in users, and that Shorts averages over 200 billion daily views. TikTok does not publish monthly users; per DataReportal (April 2026), TikTok's ad tools report a monthly reach of more than 2 billion people aged 18+, and Sensor Tower estimates TikTok's monthly users passed 2 billion in Q1 2026.

GWI survey data quoted by DataReportal gives an easier picture: among internet users aged 16+ worldwide, 56.3% use Facebook each month, 55.3% use YouTube and 36% use TikTok. On Similarweb's data (based on app opens on smartphones), the YouTube app ranks first, Facebook's app audience is only about three-quarters of YouTube's, and YouTube is close to 1.5 times TikTok.

In Vietnam, DataReportal's Digital 2026: Vietnam report (October 2025 data) puts Facebook's ad reach at 79.0 million people, up 7.2% year on year; TikTok at 76.1 million people aged 18+, up 9.9% on end-2024 but down 5.2% between July and October 2025 alone; and YouTube at 62.1 million, essentially flat (down 0.3%). These are audiences advertisers can reach, not actual users: Meta says its figure is not a proxy for monthly users, TikTok counts only adults, Facebook's figure may not be comparable with earlier reports because Meta revised its method, and DataReportal advises caution with declines. What can safely be said is that in Vietnam, Facebook's and TikTok's ad audiences are roughly level and larger than YouTube's; which one is growing faster, the data can't settle.

Algorithms: how a new account's videos travel

All three now put content in front of people who don't follow you, but to different degrees and in different ways.

TikTok built its For You feed this way from the start. In its 2020 explainer, TikTok said the system relies on viewer behaviour (likes, shares, whether someone finishes a longer video) and video information (captions, sounds, hashtags), with language, country and device type weighted lower. Follower count and past hit videos are not direct factors, and the system deliberately mixes in different kinds of content to probe new interests, so a new account's video can still reach strangers.

Facebook has gone a long way down the same road. Meta's Widely Viewed Content Report for Q1 2026 shows that in the US, 39.0% of organic (non-ad) Feed views were recommended posts from accounts the viewer isn't connected to, while friends' posts made up only 19.2%. At its 2025 antitrust trial with the FTC, Meta itself presented data showing the share of time Facebook users spent on friends' content fell from 22% in 2023 to 17% in 2025. In Q3 2026 Meta finished a global rollout of a new recommendation architecture for Facebook Feed and Reels that surfaces relevant new posts before they have built up much engagement; it now covers roughly a quarter of unconnected Feed views and half of Reels views. For new creators this is the most notable signal: fresh posts don't have to earn engagement before they get pushed. Meta's explainer page (updated 24 June 2026) lists photos, videos, links, Reels, events and live video among recommendations but does not mention text-only posts, so the claim that text posts are now pushed as widely as video has no official confirmation.

YouTube has two routes. The home page and Up Next rely on watch history, likes, dislikes, subscriptions and viewer satisfaction surveys, while search results are ranked by relevance, engagement and quality. In AppDuo's assessment, search is YouTube's unique advantage: a tutorial or review keeps getting found months after it is posted, something a swipe feed like Reels or TikTok doesn't promise. Shorts can now run up to 3 minutes (for videos uploaded after 15 October 2024).

Getting paid for content: who pays, and who in Vietnam qualifies

This is where the three platforms differ most for Vietnamese creators.

YouTube shares ad revenue on both long videos and Shorts; on Shorts, creators keep 45% of the revenue allocated to them. In his early-2026 letter, CEO Neal Mohan said YouTube had paid more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies over the previous four years; in August 2026 YouTube said it expects to pay creators more in 2027 than in 2026.

TikTok's Creator Rewards Program pays for videos of at least 1 minute. Per third-party guides, the requirements are being 18 or older, 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in 30 days, and the programme runs only in certain countries. TikTok's official help page would not display its content when AppDuo checked; two guides updated in 2026 (ShortSync, TTCalculator) give different country lists, and neither includes Vietnam.

Facebook's Content Monetization programme, which Báo Hà Tĩnh describes as merging three earlier ways to earn, pays, according to Meta, for short and long Reels, Stories, photos and text posts. Of the 2025 payouts, 60% went to Reels and the rest to Stories, photos and text; the number of creators earning over $10,000 a year on Facebook grew by more than 30%. Pay is based on “qualified views”, and creators can see estimated earnings per 1,000 of them, so not every view earns money. The catch is that the programme is invite-only; anyone not invited can only submit an expression of interest in the Professional Dashboard. On the viewer side, the Vietnamese App Store sells Stars bundles (a virtual currency for tipping creators) from 9,000 ₫ to 599,000 ₫; the sources AppDuo read do not explain what Vietnamese creators need to receive and withdraw Stars.

In short, the claim that “Facebook now pays for both videos and posts” is true of the programme globally, but in Vietnam it holds only for the few who have been invited.

For sellers: ads and checkout inside the platform

Sellers should separate two jobs: where customers see the product and where they pay.

TikTok does both. Per Metric, in 2025 Shopee took 56.04% and TikTok Shop 41.31% of sales across Vietnam's four big marketplaces, with Lazada and Tiki together at about 3%; in the first nine months of 2026 the four sold about 442,000 billion VND, up 44.47% year on year. Anyone advertising on TikTok Shop should know that since July 2025, GMV Max has been the default and only campaign type for TikTok Shop ads, and product shopping ads are open to all TikTok Shop sellers in Vietnam. In other words, you rely heavily on TikTok's automated system, with little room for manual tuning.

Facebook is strong at advertising and bringing customers in. In Q3 2026 Meta said nearly 10 million advertisers used at least one of its generative AI ad creative tools (offered mainly through the Advantage+ suite); Partnership Ads, which let advertisers run ads with creators or other businesses, grew more than 97% year on year to over $15 billion in annual revenue run-rate; and Creator Marketing Hub, where brands find creators to work with, is now open to all advertisers with more than 10 million creators. These figures cover all of Meta's apps, not just Facebook. The sources AppDuo read do not show in-app checkout on Facebook for sellers in Vietnam, so for small sellers Facebook works better as an ad and repeat-customer channel than as a marketplace.

YouTube sits in between. YouTube Shopping Affiliate launched in Vietnam on 2 November 2024 with Shopee, letting creators tag Shopee products in videos for commission; per Viet Nam News, Vietnam was then one of six countries with YouTube Shopping. For ads, Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns run across YouTube (including Shorts), Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Google Display Network, and can be set to serve on Shorts only. YouTube suits products that need explaining, comparing or a how-to, where a long review persuades better than a clip of a few dozen seconds.

AppDuo does not quote CPMs (cost per 1,000 impressions) or cost per order because it found no credible, dated source for the Vietnamese market.

Facebook's shift: how far the evidence goes

The idea that Facebook is making a strong comeback with creators has plenty of support from Meta itself, but mostly in global or US figures.

First, people are watching more. On the Q3 2026 earnings call Mark Zuckerberg said both Facebook and Instagram hit all-time engagement highs driven by strong growth in video; Meta said Facebook Reels time spent set records both globally and in the US, each up by double digits year on year.

Second, Meta keeps upgrading its recommendation systems: besides the new architecture described above, Facebook's Reels ranking model now considers twice as much viewing history.

Third, creator payouts rose 35% in 2025. In March 2026 Facebook also launched Creator Fast Track: creators with at least 100,000 followers on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube get a guaranteed $1,000 a month for three months ($3,000 above one million followers) for sharing eligible Reels, plus immediate access to monetization. TechCrunch described it as a bid to attract creators from TikTok and YouTube.

Fourth, Facebook is clearing space for people who make their own work. Since March 2026, reposting content you didn't create, or making token edits such as borders, captions or speed changes, gets reduced distribution, and accounts that keep posting mostly such content may be made non-recommendable and demonetized. Meta says views and watch time of original Reels roughly doubled in the second half of 2025 compared with a year earlier. Since mid-2025 Facebook has also been gradually turning all videos into Reels, with no length or format limit.

What is not proven. None of the sources AppDuo read show that “lots of creators are moving to Facebook”: Meta has not said how many joined Creator Fast Track, and as AppDuo reads it, the need to guarantee pay suggests Facebook is still the one doing the courting. The watch-time gains Meta attributes to each algorithm change are also small, around 1%. And Meta publishes no Vietnam-specific figures on Reels or creators.

AppDuo's forecast for the next 12–18 months, and what would prove it wrong

This section is AppDuo's assessment based on the evidence above, not an announcement or commitment from Meta.

AppDuo expects that over the next 12–18 months, Facebook will be the one of the three where new accounts gain the most new chances to be recommended to strangers. Three grounds: Meta is building its recommendation systems to push new posts before they gain engagement; Meta is putting money into creators and into ads that run with creators; and the crackdown on reposted content clears space for people who make their own. For Vietnamese creators, that makes original Reels on Facebook a sensible bet starting now. The cost is low, because you can reuse the videos you already make for TikTok or Shorts; and if monetization widens in Vietnam, AppDuo expects accounts with a steady posting history to have an edge over those just starting.

AppDuo does not forecast Facebook overtaking YouTube as an income source for Vietnamese creators within this window, because content payouts in Vietnam remain invite-only and small.

This forecast would be wrong if: (1) by mid-2028 Meta still has not opened Content Monetization to Vietnamese creators beyond those invited; (2) Meta reports that total creator payouts for 2026 did not exceed 2025, or stops reporting growth in Facebook Reels watch time in its quarterly results; (3) Meta's Widely Viewed Content Reports show the share of recommended posts in Feed falling clearly; (4) Meta shifts its focus to the Muse AI agent and smart glasses (most of Mark Zuckerberg's Q3 2026 remarks were about Muse) and scales back creator programmes; (5) the next DataReportal report shows Facebook's ad audience in Vietnam shrinking while TikTok keeps growing.

Platform-specific risks

YouTube: the main risk is a rising entry bar, and from 2027 Shorts revenue only goes to channels that keep up large, steady view counts (see the FAQ below). YouTube has also said it is cracking down harder on low-quality, repetitive AI content; channels that mass-produce videos with AI should factor that in.

TikTok: the risk is dependence. In Vietnam, income is tied closely to TikTok Shop and a single recommendation feed, and Shop ads now come in only one campaign type. AppDuo's research records a 1.3/5 Trustpilot score for TikTok from 4,566 reviews, mostly about reaching a human, account bans and TikTok Shop orders (the profile is unclaimed, so the sample may be skewed). For a seller, one account ban can cut off both the shop and the ads at once.

Facebook: the risks are volatile reach and fast-changing rules; pages that live on reposts are directly hit by the March 2026 crackdown. Impersonation is real too: Meta says it removed more than 20 million accounts impersonating large creators in 2025. Facebook scores 1.2/5 on Trustpilot from about 18,730 reviews, mostly about locked accounts, verification loops and no human support (also an unclaimed profile). If a Facebook page is your main income, losing the account means losing nearly everything.

A practical plan: where to start, by goal

If your goal is long-term income from content: make YouTube your main channel with long videos, because that is where ad revenue is open to Vietnam and where viewers find you through search. Cut a few short clips from each long video for Shorts, Reels and TikTok to pull new viewers back to the main channel. If your channel is close to the threshold, push to get into YPP before 1 February 2027.

If your goal is selling: start on TikTok by opening a TikTok Shop or doing affiliate, focusing on short videos and livestreams with a cart. Use Facebook for ads that reach a wider audience and for looking after existing customers. If the product needs real explanation (tech, specialist skincare, courses), add review videos on YouTube with Shopee products tagged.

If you run a local shop or service: start with Facebook, which has the largest reachable audience in Vietnam plus Groups, Pages and Marketplace.

If you want to ride Facebook's push: turn on professional mode for your profile, post Reels you film yourself on a regular schedule, and submit an expression of interest in the Monetization section. Per Báo Hà Tĩnh, profiles in professional mode posting original content are the main group Meta has invited to try the programme in Vietnam.

Whatever the goal: keep a clean master copy of every video without another platform's watermark so you can post it everywhere; measure qualified views, orders and subscribers rather than raw views; and don't let all your income depend on one account on one platform.