By Judith Lee

This month, Amazon debuted a new video upload service called Amazon Video Direct that allows users to post videos to its website and earn money from advertising, royalties and other sources, putting the company in direct competition with Google’s YouTube.

Amazon’s only requirements are that “the videos be high definition and have closed-captioning for the hearing impaired.”

The swelling online video ad market and the growing number of online viewers are spurring everyone from social media giants like Facebook to newer upstarts like Vessel to go after video creators and woo them with ever more advantageous deals.

Interestingly, Amazon’s new proposition isn’t that much more financially appealing than YouTube’s: content creators will receive either 55% of revenues from rentals or sales of videos, or $0.15 per hour streamed.

But the fact that it is giving creators a great deal of flexibility and empowerment to determine how and where their stuff is streamed.

YouTubers have long complained about the power that the Google-owned company wields over them. So even if Amazon isn’t offering to print money for creators, selling AVD as a “self-service” platform is a way for it to amplify the message that it’s putting creators first.

Early adopters say uploading videos to Amazon is more cumbersome and time-intensive than on other video sites: Uploaders must include their credit card and social security number, and videos must be captioned (Amazon offers a fee-based service that will build caption files for each video).

And videos don’t appear immediately as they do on YouTube, Facebook, or Vimeo: The company says it will take 3-5 days before your video appears online.

So what is Amazon thinking? Something like, “If we can have customers engage with our video content, they will spend more time shopping.”

The platform can also deepen Amazon’s relationships with its sellers. Small businesses, say, can create marketing videos or clips that tell their story (or even just creative content) and then drive viewers back to their retail page.

It’s not likely Amazon is not going to ruin YouTube, which has a decade of experience on its competitors, out of business. But if the real end goal is to capture a few spare minutes of its customers’ attention, and encourage a new subscription to Amazon Prime or a retail purchase, then it’s on its way to winning.