Mariia Loboda

Livestreams have a reputation as YouTube’s worst-paying format, and creators skip them because “streams pay pennies.” Our data from 404 channels tells a more complicated story: in half the niches we measured, livestream RPM beats long-form RPM, and channels that stream 8+ times a month earn a median 50% of their ad revenue from live content. The catch shows up elsewhere, in what happens to your regular videos and your time. This study covers livestream RPM by niche, subscriber growth per hour streamed, the effect of streams on regular video views, and the streaming frequency where the numbers work best.

For years, Twitch was a dead end for advertisers. The audience was there, of course, but that audience had seen every variation of forced integration and learned to tune it out in real time. Gamers trust streamers. They don’t trust banners, sponsor reads, or anything that interrupts the game.

Many creators have wondered whether the grass is greener in another niche. We ran the numbers to find out. Education & Science is the highest-paying YouTube niche in 2026, with a median RPM of $10.22 – more than four times the all-niche median of about $2.30 and roughly thirty times what Kids content earns. The figures come from the real YouTube Analytics of 300 channels AIR Media-Tech works with, every monetized month from May 2025 to May 2026, ranked across all 13 niches by what they pay per view.