YouTube’s latest plan to support news publishers reportedly includes a new tool that would allow publishers to sell subscriptions from their YouTube videos, according to Digiday.

Per Digiday, the details of the tools — including the cut that YouTube would take, and how the subscription offerings would be presented to viewers — haven’t been finalized, but YouTube has reportedly been in talks with publishers about such a tool since last year and it’s part of the video platform’s work with the Google News Initiative. YouTube’s existing channel membership tool allows content creators to offer exclusive perks and features to paying members (something that Vox, for instance, has experimented with).

Publishers have been told that YouTube and Google have been working to tie the video platforms’ subscription sales tool to Subscribe With Google, a tool that Google rolled out in April 2018 for people to subscribe to publishers’ sites using their Google accounts. YouTube is also working on a way for publishers’ existing subscribers to connect their subscriptions to the publishers’ YouTube channels so that a publisher could distribute videos on the channel that are only available to its paying subscribers, regardless of whether a person subscribed directly from the publisher or through YouTube.

Publishers expect that YouTube will share subscriber information, such as subscribers’ names and email addresses, with the publishers. Google provides that information to publishers using Subscribe With Google. Receiving subscribers’ email addresses would enable publishers to establish direct relationships with the subscribers they receive from the platform.

https://t.co/BO8L0hY4XC#Newspapers are struggling for #subscribers because of #subscription fatigue not lack of exposure. The addressable market is not big enough to serve the industry – readers want flexibility!@Gannett @JPIMediaLtd @Archant @trinitymirrorr

— @fourzerotwotech (@FourZeroTwoTech) May 5, 2020

"YouTube is developing a tool for news publishers to sell subscriptions to their owned-and-operated digital properties through their YouTube channels… it plans to begin testing the subscription sales tool by the end of this year" https://t.co/0mGVM79g8Z

— Kerry Flynn 🐶 (@kerrymflynn) May 5, 2020

Is the subscription tool an annoying pop-up that you're constantly forced to dismiss?

Because that's worked out really well for YouTube Red. https://t.co/OXewoB6prk

— Sahil Patel (@sizpatel) May 5, 2020