Each week, we handpick a selection of stories to give you a snapshot of trends, updates, business moves, and more from around the creator industry.

This week, the most popular overalls-clad entertainer in the world became a cover story, a TikTok-turned-politician raised the stakes, and an incoming law draws the ire of Big Tech companies.

Creator commotion

Ms. Rachel graces the cover of Glamour‘s “Woman of the Year” issue. The magazine included Ms. Rachel on its list of 2025’s most impactful women. If you rank the featured females in terms of their respective YouTube view counts, none of the other ladies can hold a candle to Ms. Rachel and her devoted audience of little ones.

Maya Higa raises $1 million to support wildlife conservation efforts. Through a creative and beneficial fundraiser called the Pixel Project, Higa collected a seven-digit sum for a new project within her wildlife refuge, the Alveus Sanctuary. The Alveus Research & Recovery Institute will focus on the rehabilitation of threatened animal populations.

Politics as usual

Kat Abughazaleh drew a federal indictment for her protests at an ICE facility. Abughazaleh is a TikToker who is running for Congress in a Chicagoland district. Her frequent attacks on Trump’s immigration policy made her the target of a federal indictment that accuses her of misconduct related to her anti-ICE protests.

Zohran Mamdani hosted a briefing for influencers. Speaking of political hopefuls with sizable TikTok followings, that description also applies to Mamdani, the progressive who is the current frontrunner in New York City’s mayoral race. Mamdani knows just how powerful social media can be in a grassroots campaign, which is why he’s making sure to keep creators in the loop during the final days of the race.

Platform headlines

Meta, Snap, and TikTok expressed their displeasure with Australia’s incoming social media law. Down Under youths will soon be restricted on major social apps, but the companies targeted by that stipulation don’t feel it’s just. “We don’t agree, but we accept and we will abide by the law,” said Snap SVP of Global Policy and Platform Operations Jennifer Stout. Oh, snap!

Tubi is now profitable. The FAST streaming service was one of the stars of parent company Fox’s Q3 2025 earnings report. As Tubi looks to continue pushing its numbers in a positive direction, will its work with creators turn out to be the right move? We’ll see if future growth is Tubi, or…sorry, nevermind.

Patreon poaches some of Substack’s top newsletter writers. Personalities like Anne Helen Petersen and Lyz Lenz are porting their operations over to Patreon, where they will be greeted with some new tools. Substack has features of its own, so top newsletter writers have a bounty of riches at their disposal.

The biz

Karat offers $10,000 boost with new banking program. The creator fintech company has a proposal for its clients: Connect your platform payouts to our business banking service, and we’ll pay 10% of your earnings (up to $100K) as a reward. The firm that helps creators manage their money wants to help them actively make money, too.

Here’s some tea: How Ridiculous is shilling for tea. The Australian creator group is helping local brand Tea Industries hit the big time. In typically extreme fashion, the How Ridiculous crew showed off Tea Industries’ products before the Queensland-founded company expands into the United States.

Rayasianboy got himself a shoe deal (and retired from streaming?) Adidas made a bold move by partnering with Ray, the Taiwanese creator known for his collabs with Kai Cenat. Around the same time, he announced his retirement from streaming. Is it a coincidence, or has Ray’s sneaker deal convinced him that he’s ready for bigger things?

MrBallen makes podcast deal with SiriusXM. The man behind Ballen Studios has turned his true crime stories into a podcast network that fits perfectly into today’s media landscape. His SiriusXM agreement gives him a distribution partner with deep pockets and strong infrastructure in the podcast space.

Hirings and firings

Disney and YouTube settled their Justin Connolly beef. The Mouse House sued YouTube in an attempt to stop the platform from hiring a prized ESPN executive. According to the latest court filings, the two entertainment giants have found a way to bury the hatchet. Yay for friendship!

A BuzzFeed vet will head Underscore Talent’s production and distribution business. Underscore launched Shorthand Studios to meet demands for influencer-led content. Zack Evans has now joined as the arm’s VP of Strategy, and Underscore has also promoted Nadi Filsoof to Partner.

The internet is a strange place

CaseOh’s parents encouraged him to quit his day job. Some parents are wary of the streaming profession, and others understand that it can be a profitable career. CaseOh’s mom and dad are the rare pair who fall into that second group. “We called the boss, and it was done,” CaseOh said during a podcast appearance.

The Taco Bell ultramarathon is not for me, thanks. A video from Sam Reid brought attention to a 50-kilometer race that involves too much Tex-Mex fast food for my tummy. If that somehow sounds like an appealing activity to you, I can inform you that another Taco Bell ultra will take place soon.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
Comments Off on Have you heard? Ms. Rachel is a woman of the year, Kat Abughazaleh faces feds, and platforms protest Australian ban.

Whatnot is having quite the year.

In January, the social bidding site announced a $265 million funding round that came with a valuation of nearly $5 billion. Ten months later, Whatnot is showing us that its Series E was just an appetizer: Its Series F is a $225 million round that more than doubles the company’s previous valuation.

DST Global and Alphabet’s CapitalG growth fund co-led the Series F round, which values Whatnot at a whopping $11.5 billion. In an announcement post on LinkedIn, the virtual auction house cheered “the incredible work of our team, the trust of our community, and the energy that sellers bring to Whatnot every day.”

Since Whatnot’s 2019 founding, its valuation has been tied to the overall success of the creator economy. The remarkable number attached to the Series F round is a product of an ecommerce boom that has continued throughout 2025. Social shopping is projected to be a $19 billion business in the U.S. TikTok’s global Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) was pegged at $33.2 billion in 2024.

Whatnot has placed itself at the center of that world through live-streamed bidding wars hosted by charismatic creators. Through an exciting platform culture and clever marketing campaigns, Whatnot keeps users watching for 80 minutes per day.

In a statement, Whatnot CEO and Co-Founder Grant LaFontaine celebrated his company’s ability to build small businesses around shoppable streams. “We believe there’s a better way to shop online,” LaFontaine said. “It starts with creating a platform where sellers can grow thriving businesses around the things they care about most.”

Whatnot has plans to expand across the United States and Europe, and it now has a longer runway to support its expansion. So long as ecommerce continues to heat up, Whatnot can continue capitalizing on its outsized valuation. And if it can ever bring collections of trading cards, vinyl records, and collectible curios into the Southeast Asian market, it could be looking at an ever bigger score.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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Reaction content is a genre as old as video itself. TV shows in the 80s and 90s developed formats where judges and/or audience members watched clips and reacted to them–and, if you think about it, the omnipresent sitcom laugh track is reaction content-adjacent. Even if you can’t see the audience members, you can hear them, and their laughter is the cue that you should be enjoying yourself, too.

But, like many genres, reaction content entered a whole new level of proliferation thanks to digital platforms. Almost as soon as Vine debuted, Vine compilations began popping up on YouTube. Meanwhile, independent video creators were seeing their stuff scraped from their sites and uploaded to Google’s growing monolith.

This was the problem the McFadden siblings faced. Brothers James, Tyler, and Will were making video content on their own website, but people kept stealing it and reuploading it to YouTube. They knew they were missing out on both views and ad revenue, so they established their own presence on YouTube, attempting to curb the thieves by redirecting audience attention to channels they actually operated.

They also knew their solution was only a small dent in the overall problem facing all creators, not just them. So, in 2012, they founded Collab, which is both a digital content studio and video creator development company, and a digital rights management (DRM) firm.

These days, Collab has hundreds of creator partners and a team of around 20 DRM staffers who work to protect their content. The staffers–in tandem with Collab’s automated system CollabScan–constantly trawl the internet, looking for any incidents of piracy. They file around 40,000 copyright claims per month on creators’ behalf, recouping revenue from unauthorized reuploads.

Here’s the thing, though: the McFaddens launched Collab because creators needed help protecting content from bad actors. But as they grew Collab and got further into the DRM space, they found that lots of people who wanted to make content using other creators’ clips weren’t bad actors–they simply didn’t have easy, quick, or affordable paths to acquire clips legally.

Collab Clips is meant to be that path–a sort of “Getty Images of viral video,” as Collab puts it. It’s the company’s trove of over 235,000 clips, all of which are available to be licensed for use in content. Clips are sorted by what they contain (cats, people running, funny sports mishaps, etc), listed with a short description, and can be star-rated for quality by users.

“Reactors obviously want to be able to react to viral content, but it’s often very difficult for them to license everything they want to use,” Tyler tells Tubefilter. “We wanted to open up a library of viral videos that are available to be used as licensed content, so creators don’t have to worry about copyright strikes.”

And, when a video is licensed through the Collab Clips platform, its original creator gets properly credited and paid.

“This was about creating a system that compensates both parties,” he says.

Collab adds thousands of fresh clips to the platform every month, mostly via partnerships with community pages on Instagram that collect and post crowdsourced content.

“We partner with a lot of the largest community pages on Instagram–pages that have millions of followers,” James says. “We developed a licensing system where people can submit their clips to be featured on on those pages, and clips come into our library to be licensed.”

There are other companies who do clip licensing, but the McFaddens say a key part of Collab’s offering is affordability. Collab Clips does offer the standard subscription model, where creators and other media clients pay a monthly fee that ranges anywhere from $500 to $20,000+ to license clips in bulk–but it recently introduced a new model where creators don’t have to pay a set fee, or pay anything upfront at all.

“For the original subscription, it’s a flat tier kind of pricing where the average subscription is often thousands of dollars per month,” James explains. “That’s tailored toward larger YouTubers or B2B/enterprise customers. Now we’re rolling out Collab Split, which gives smaller creators the opportunity to use clips under a revenue-sharing model.”

“We wanted to give creators flexibility,” Tyler adds. “Revenue share allows them to not take on any extra risk of overpaying for a library subscription.”

With this new model, creators can use a clip in their content without paying anything. They only have to pay once their video starts bringing in revenue–and even then, they aren’t splitting 100% of the video’s revenue, just a portion of the revenue for the section where the licensed clip is used.

“Our position is, that if someone uses a sample to make a song, they have to pay to the original rightsholder,” James says. “We think any video that’s used, the creator should get credit and compensation for the use of that content. But it doesn’t need to be 100% of the revenue associated with that video. That’s where Content ID has its flaws: it takes 100% of the revenue to give to a [rightsholder] that may only be in a small portion of that video.”

The Collab Split system, he adds, “is much more fair for every party involved.”

You can check out Collab Split here.

Filed under: Collab, Homepage Feature by Tubefilter Staff
Comments Off on Reaction creators need to license lots of fresh content. Collab lets them do it with zero upfront payment.

Danny and Michael Philippou are turning their breakout feature into a full-fledged franchise. The fraternal Australian duo behind the RackaRacka YouTube channel is teaming up with Meta to bring a Talk To Me spinoff series to Meta Quest VR headsets.

Talk To Me, a surprise horror hit from 2023, centers around a cursed, embalmed hand that allows living users to communicate with the dead. The untitled series, born out of a partnership between Meta, Talk To Me producer Causeway Films, and immersive studio XRTV, will take place on a European island. Across six half-hour episodes, a group of partygoers will discover the cursed hand, use it for the ultimate high, and suffer the consequences. As a press release puts it, it’s “Euphoria with possession.”

The series, shot entirely in 3D, looks to add an innovative original program to Meta’s VR library. The tech giant’s Reality Labs division, which houses its Quest headset line and other related projects, has fallen on hard times. As part of its Q3 2025 earnings report, Meta reported a $4.4 billion loss related to Reality Labs.

Meta has attempted to use brick-and-mortar retail to sell more wearable tech. Now, it’s applying a familiar strategy to its VR wing: Through partnerships with creators, can Meta make Quest cool?

On one hand, premium pieces of exclusive content have long been must-haves for streaming services. That trend, however, has abated in recent years. Even so, Meta seems to think that big-name projects are the key to Reality Labs’ recovery. That’s why it joined forces with James Cameron last year and why it’s going into business with the Philippous now.

The Philippous don’t just offer name recognition — they’ve also shown an aptitude for innovative horror cinema. When Talk To Me was first announced, the project seemed like a long shot. Could brothers known for edgy pranks and backyard action films really helm a Hollywood movie? By blending simple, elemental horror concepts with a witty, updated screenplay that drew on the creators’ shared career, the Philippous delivered a refreshing flick that ended up as one of the top horror movies of its class.

As Danny and Michael prepare to expand the Talk To Me universe, they’re getting some help from some other individuals with accomplished pedigrees in the world of digital horror. XRTV is led by Darren Brandl and Jack Davis, the Co-Founders of Crypt TV. After selling their spooky media company, Brandl and Davis are breaking into the realm of VR production. To do so, they’re teaming up with their old friends at Meta; some of Crypt TV’s most successful originals premiered on Facebook.

With so many titans of internet terror involved in its production, the Talk To Me spinoff will give Meta high hopes for its Quest headset line. The company needs a win for its VR division, and two groundbreaking Australians are providing the necessary material. That sounds like a better deal than shaking hands with the dead, but I wasn’t cast in Talk To Me, so don’t quote me on that.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, Meta, News by Sam Gutelle
Comments Off on After becoming Hollywood’s creator darlings, Racka Racka is coming to a VR headset near you

Welcome to our rundown of the most-watched branded YouTube videos of the week.

We’re publishing this snippet of a larger Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report in order to analyze sponsorship trends in the creator economy. Any video launched in tandem with an official brand partner is eligible for the ranking.

And – as the name up above would imply – all the data comes from Gospel Stats. If you’re interested in learning more about Gospel – and which brands are sponsoring what creators on YouTube – click here.

With Halloween right around the corner, creators like MrBeast and Salish Matter picked this week to serve up a trick-or-treat grab bag of videos. We have milk, a good old-fashioned game of tag, some bros chilling five feet apart, and a creator with just 29,000 subscribers coming in handily at spot #4.

Check ’em all out right here:

#1 Spicy Milk Roulette
Channel: MrBeast 2
Brand: Feastables
Views: 76,041,583

Trick? Treat? The ol’ put-stuff-in-a-box-and-make-your-friends-stick-their-hands-and/or-mouths-in is a YouTube classic, and one MrBeast is using to advertise Feastables (yet again) on his secondary channel MrBeast 2. The recipe is simple: take nine bottles of Feastables’ new chocolate milk plus one bottle of spicy suffering, and get everyone to pick a straw.

Like most sponsored Shorts, this one’s entire 1:20 runtime is about the product being pitched. But it’s not the only video showing off Feastables this week: It’s also behind the Halloween scream-flavored video in spot #5 (which, like #1, went out on MrBeast 2). Anyone else wondering what Feastables is cooking up for Christmas?

#2 We Ran Away From My Dad For 24 Hours
Channel: Jordan Matter
Brand: Sephora
Views: 14,646,943

We’ve written several times this year about how creators are looking to go steady with big brands. They’ve realized it might not be worth all the effort of establishing a partnership with a major brand if said brand is only going to pay for one video. Instead the ideal is to establish a lengthy, multivertical deal–one where a brand pays for multiple videos and even chips in for things like IRL activations and merch.

This sort of partnership is exactly the one Salish Matter and her father Jordan have secured with cosmetics bazaar Sephora. It’s the official partner for Salish’s new makeup line Sincerely Yours, contributed to a (somewhat chaotic) launch event at American Dream mall, and now has sponsored several videos on Jordan’s channel, where Salish co-stars. All these videos have crisp placements for Sincerely Yours and Sephora itself–and based on their viewcounts, the Salish x Sephora placement among our top 5 is likely to continue.

#3 Victor Wembanyama Gets a Bigger Tub Than Kevin Hart | Cold As Balls
Channel: LOL! Network
Brand: Old Spice
Views: 7,515,896

French NBA star Victor Wembanyama is a staggering seven feet four inches tall, so it’s no surprise when Cold as Balls wanted him as a guest, they had to book a bigger tub. Host Kevin Hart and Wemby take the stage in their respective ice baths before a live New York City audience, discussing what they say is “the ultimate debate: baguette vs. lightsaber.” And, of course, the 14-minute episode is sponsored by Cold as Balls‘ longtime partner, the ever pop culture savvy Old Spice.

#4 I ran straight to my fav @Walmart 🤭 check the description box for more #walmartpartner #walmart
Channel: Chelsea Arnott
Brand: Walmart
Views: 7,999,018

Most creators who make our top 5 have several hundreds of thousands of subscribers, if not several millions of subs. But occasionally a smaller creator makes a video that generates just as much buzz. This is the case with Chelsea Arnott, who has just over 29,000 subscribers and made spot #4 with a 28-second Walmart-sponsored Short that racked up 8 million views.

There is something unusual about this video, though. It’s a perfectly nice haul clip, where Arnott shows off a sweet care package she made for a friend who just gave birth. But there’s nothing extraordinarily eye-catching about it–and viewers seem to agree, considering there’s only five comments on the video. The ratio is off here if we’re considering long-form, but the views-to-comments discrepancy tends to be higher with Shorts. And hey, views don’t lie.

BONUS #1,908 The Best FRANKENSTEIN Adaptation | Junji Ito’s Frankenstein EXPLAINED
Channel: Grief
Brand: Raycon
Views: 60,844

Every English major and/or monster lover in your life is hyped right now for Guillermo del Toro‘s long-awaited adaptation of Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein, but another adaptation’s also in the spotlight as Halloween arrives. Horror comic king Junji Ito penned his own adaptation in 2018, chock-full of his signature body horror and gore.

Too faint of heart (or stomach) to read it yourself? Horror/sci-fi/mystery enthusiast Grief is about to give you the rundown–sponsored by tech company Raycon. Raycon is an increasingly frequent sponsor of YouTubers, and paid for nearly 40 videos this week alone.

…and there’s a lot more data where that came from. If you like our Weekly Top 5, you’ll love everything else Gospel has to offer. Start with our newly released YouTube 2025 Sponsorship Landscape Report, which you can download right here.

Filed under: Articles, Brands, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by James Hale
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Meta‘s earnings report for the third quarter of 2025 caused its stock price to decline, but the tech giant did have some good news to report related to Reels. The vertical, short-form format, which brings the TikTok experience to apps like Facebook and Instagram, has achieved an “annual run rate of over $50 billion,” according to Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

The annual run rate for a business refers to a yearly revenue total that is extrapolated from a shorter time period. So while it wouldn’t be quite accurate to say that Reels ads are now hauling in $50 billion per year, that figure could become valid as long as the format maintains its current trajectory. To put that number into perspective, YouTube’s annual run rate based on its recently reported Q3 ad revenue would total $41.04 billion.

Reels ads hit the mainstream in 2022, and Meta has spent the past three years honing that revenue stream. As with many facets of Meta’s business, generative AI has been put to work on Reels, where it is assisting the development of contextual ad products.

Those innovations helped Reels surpass 200 billion daily views in 2023. By Q4 2024, the format was one of the stars of Meta’s quarterly reports, a status that still seems to be active as of Q3 2025. Reels has become so valuable that Meta has considered moving the short-form videos to their own app. For now, however, Reels will stick around as a dependable revenue stream for creators on both Facebook and Instagram.

As far as the rest of the Meta-verse is concerned, the Q3 2025 earnings report was a mixed bag. Topline quarterly revenue reached $51.24 billion, which was nearly $2 billion higher than analyst estimates. Sales are up 26% year-over-year. According to CNBC, that’s Meta’s highest revenue growth since Q1 2024.

The bad news concerned Meta’s considerable investment in AI — and its hefty tax bill. After falling short of projections related to earnings per share, Meta execs cited several factors that impeded topline growth, including massive spending on AI projects and a $16 billion tax charge related to the Trump administration’s Big Beautiful Bill. The news triggered a stock market rout, with Wall Street operatives displaying their skepticism related to Meta’s future.

Are investors doubting Meta’s ability to get desirable results from its AI spending spree? The impact of AI on Reels shows that technological advancements can catalyze gains across the tech giant’s businesses, and the success of the “Vibes” feed shows that users are still curious about the potential of generative AI models. At the same time, AI is negatively affecting the user experience on Meta platforms by making them sloppier than ever. AI truly is a double-edged sword, and during the third quarter, Meta felt the bite from both sides of that blade.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, Meta, News by Sam Gutelle
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YouTube is updating its Community Guidelines around gambling and video game violence to “adapt to the evolving digital world,” spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle tells Tubefilter.

Let’s get into the gambling half of this first. Back in March, YouTube rolled out a sizable patch for its gambling policies that did two things: one, made it against the rules to even verbally mention the name of a gambling site that isn’t “certified by Google,” aka confirmed to be operating legally; and two, age-restricted all content that contains “depictions or promotions of online casino sites or apps,” so no one under 18 could watch content about virtual gambling.

These changes were an effort to protect its community, YouTube said, “especially younger viewers.”

Now, further updates to that same policy are expanding it to include not just things like your typical online poker, slots, or sports betting, but also digital goods like NFTs and video game skins as well as “social casino” websites and apps.

For those who don’t know, “skin gambling” is popular with players of games like Counter-Strike, where you can roll loot boxes and pull different weapon and character skins at random. Valve, which publishes CS and also runs game market/launcher Steam, allows players to sell these skins to one another for real-world cash, resulting in a thriving market. (That is, until this past week, when said market experienced a major crash.) Some skins are extremely rare and desirable, and can pull hundreds of thousands or even millions of actual dollars at auction. So, just like with sports and Pokémon cards, people are willing to drop big cash on digital loot boxes, hoping to hit it big with a skin that’ll sell for real-world dollars.

That chase is what people tend to chronicle in their YouTube videos–and what YouTube says that, starting Nov. 17, will be age-restricted.

As we mentioned above, the policy also now applies broadly to NFTs. YouTube officially classifying the entire concept of an NFT as gambling is pretty funny, though it is kinda too little too late considering how long ago the NFT bubble burst. (YouTube couldn’t put this out when CryptoZoo was a thing?) We do imagine it might upset some of the crypto bros still clinging to that particular wheezing life raft, though.

Also as we mentioned, “social casino” content is being age-restricted, too. According to YouTube, social casinos are “websites or applications that simulate traditional casino games but no real money is wagered.” The lack of IRL cash and risk doesn’t matter–YouTube considers these sites to be age-inappropriate for kids.

“These updates reflect the way value is exchanged online continues to evolve, including with online gambling,” YouTube says. “We’re strengthening enforcement of our existing policies to ensure that content is age-appropriate and that YouTube remains a responsible platform.”

OK, on to the video game violence portion of the update. YouTube has a tough history with this particular topic. Up until the introduction of its ad-safety self-certification system in 2019, it painted real-world violence and video game violence with the same brush, leaving creators with unbalanced, inconsistent enforcement (why was Apex Legends gameplay being treated the same as a real shooting?) and an overall lack of clarity about which rules applied when to their content.

In 2019, based on feedback from creators, YouTube finally separated out real violence and video game violence, giving laxer rules on the latter so people could show themselves, you know, playing video games. Video game violence was given general approval for all ages and all ads, with a few exceptions.

Now it’s adding to those exceptions: Starting Nov. 17, it will age-restrict videos that show “violent gaming content featuring realistic human characters that focuses on scenes of certain kinds of extreme violence against non-combatants.”

YouTube says it’ll consider several factors when judging whether a video should be restricted, including the duration of the violent scene, the prominence of the scene (“whether the violent imagery is zoomed-in or the main focus”), and the presence of “realistic human characters,” meaning the violence is happening “to a character that looks like a real human.”

It would be helpful if YouTube gave specific examples here, but it doesn’t. We’re guessing the note about “non-combatants” refers to people mowing down NPCs in games, but it could also impact parts of games like Dead by Daylight, where characters can perform special animated executions on one another.

But this is all dependent on what YouTube considers “realistic human characters. Obviously the company is eyeballs deep in supporting generative AI and the resulting flood of deepfakes, and though video games are steadily becoming more and more photorealistic, they’re usually not aiming for Midjourney’s uncanny valley realism. Video game people still look animated. How many pixels qualify as “realistic”? Do we need to see pores?

Creators will likely have similar questions, and will want them answered before they start getting Community Guidelines violations for a line they didn’t know to avoid crossing.

Hopefully they can get those questions answered before Nov. 17.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, YouTube by James Hale
Comments Off on Sorry kids, no more mowing down NPCs: YouTube’s new Community Guidelines age-restrict some video game violence (and also NFTs)

With just a few days to go until a hotly contested slate of U.S. elections, Netflix is getting out the vote — but not in the way you might think. A new feature coming to the streaming platform will allow it to collect live votes from viewers during reality competition shows and other programs that feature elements of audience participation.

Elizabeth Stone, Netflix’s Chief Technology Officer, announced the new feature during the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. Stone said that her team is increasing its investment in interactive and immersive experiences, beginning with the addition of real-time voting.

As Netflix’s flagship franchises have veered into the world of reality TV — with Love Is Blind serving as a notable example — the streamer is thinking about ways it can incorporate viewer commentary into its programming. An earlier experiment with public polls centered around Love Is Blind and fellow dating show Too Hot To Handle. That was around the time when Netflix was starting to get serious about its interactive offerings, including its library of mobile games.

Four years later, with more than 120 games available for its subscribers, Netflix is thinking of more ways to turn its platform into a two-way conversation. The concept of real-time voting harkens to the days when reality TV fans used their phones to send in millions of votes for their favorite American Idol contestants.

Netflix, perhaps encouraged by its subscribers’ enjoyment of older shows, has started bringing back some of those 2000s reality competitions. An upcoming reboot of Star Search, set to premiere in 2026, will make use of real-time voting.

“If you’re sitting at home watching Star Search on your TV, you’ll be able to either on the TV or your mobile phone actually put in a vote that advances or doesn’t advance some of the contestants on the show,” Stone said. “So it’s just a very early starting example of the ways that we think content can be more interactive over time, across devices, between TV and mobile, where a member who subscribes to Netflix can actually feel like they’re part of the story, influence the storyline, and feel immersed in that.”

Stone’s talk of cross-screen synergy is interesting, but the implementation of real-time voting feels like a nod to the concept of “lean back viewing,” which is associated primarily with the living room. Netflix has some ground to make up on YouTube in that area, and features like voting will help the streamer position itself as an all-in-one entertainment destination.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
Comments Off on How hyped are you for Netflix’s new feature? Vote now on your phones.

YouTube is shifting the focus of its product teams while providing an out for anyone who doesn’t want to go along with the transition. A planned reorganization will split the platform’s product wing into three distinct divisions, all of which will continue to incorporate more generative AI innovations.

As first reported by Sources, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced the forthcoming changes through a memo he issued to his employees. He justified the reorg by claiming that the smaller, separate product teams will be able to take advantage of “faster decision making and execution.”

YouTube’s current Chief Product Officer, Johanna Voolich, will head the team working on “Viewer Products.” Christian Oestlien will be elevated to lead the development of “Subscriptions Products,” and an as-of-yet unhired exec will take charge of the unit assigned to “Creator and Community Products.”

Mohan explained that the changes will allow YouTube to continue developing AI-powered upgrades across its platform. The promising early results from those tools were a main focus of Alphabet’s earnings report for the third quarter of 2025.

“Looking to the future, the next frontier for YouTube is AI, which has the potential to transform every part of the platform,” Mohan wrote in his memo. “We need to set ourselves up to make the most of this opportunity.”

Mohan acknowledged that some YouTube employees might respond to the reorg by deciding they “may be ready for a new challenge.” To serve those people, YouTube is setting up a Voluntary Exit Program that will offer severance packages to workers who choose to give up their positions.

Previous YouTube reorgs have been relatively rare, but some of the ones that have happened — such as the 2024 reshuffling of YouTube’s creator management teams — have come with layoffs attached. In this instance, however, Mohan said that no roles will be eliminated on the path to the new product division. The only expected departures are the employees who choose to participate in the Voluntary Exit Program.

All three of the new product teams will report directly to Mohan. We’ll see if the YouTube CEO can deliver more efficient operations when the reorg goes into effect on November 5.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, YouTube by Sam Gutelle
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In an after-hours earnings call, Google reported record revenue of $102.35 billion for Q3 2025, with YouTube accounting for $10.26 billion of that thanks to advertising earnings.

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai called the quarter “terrific,” with “double-digit growth across every major part of our business.” He attributed much of the growth–a 16% year-over-year jump for overall earnings, 15% YOY for YouTube’s ad revenue, and 33% YOY for net income of $34.98 billion–to Google’s dogged pursuit of braiding some sort of generative AI into absolutely everything it offers, whether creators like it or not.

“We are seeing AI now driving real business results across the company,” he said.

As for YouTube specifically, though, Pichai pointed to Shorts. He says the vertical-upload format, originally introduced to compete with TikTok, now generates more revenue per watch hour than long-form content.

This reveal isn’t entirely a surprise: YouTube has increased its short-form ad offerings, and over on our weekly brand reports, where we track every sponsored video on YouTube, we’ve seen more and more sponsored Shorts, indicating brands are embracing Shorts for all sorts of marketing.

But we do wonder what this means for creators who are primarily making long-form content. Have their ad earnings already begun to take a dip? Will that trend continue? When YouTube first introduced Shorts, its own revenue dropped as viewer attention shifted away from long-form to the shiny new toy, which was unmonetized at the time. We also saw a broader impact with creator companies like Spotter, which laid off 40% of its staff after missing financial goals due to the rise of short-form pulling views from YouTube’s long-form bread-and-butter. Now that Shorts are here to stay, are long-form creators going to have to cope with continued financial challenges?

Based on Pichai’s comments, Google isn’t worried about that. It’s happy to be getting the bag for itself.

Pichai also highlighted YouTube’s introduction of AI tools for creators and its exclusive broadcast of the Sept. 5 Chiefs/Chargers NFL game, which saw 19 million viewers and set a record for most concurrent users on a YouTube livestream.

While Alphabet may have hit record revenue, its costs continue to mount, too. With this earnings call, it upped its capital expenditures estimate for this year from $85 billion to $91-93 billion. A lot of that money will, unsurprisingly, be put into AI, funding things like data center construction and running generative models. (There’s also the $24.5 million it’s paying to Donald Trump to settle a lawsuit over YouTube suspending his channel following the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol.)

Some of the cash will go into growth. Related to that topic, YouTube is getting something of an organizational rework that will see it shuffle executives and bring in at least one fresh exec. Longtime executive Christian Oestlien has been tapped to lead a newly created Subscriptions Products group; YouTube Premium, YouTube TV, and YouTube Music will all fall under that umbrella. Meanwhile former Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich will lead a new Viewer Products team, and YouTube is on the hunt for an exec to run another team specialized to deliver on “Creator & Community Products.”

2026 operations will be even more expensive, CFO Anat Ashkenazi said.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, YouTube by James Hale
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The deal to create a U.S.-exclusive version of TikTok is expected to close this week, and TikTok is ringing in the occasion by announcing some new perks for its American users. At its annual U.S. Creator Summit, the video app revealed some AI-powered tools as well as a new payout structure for its revenue stream it calls Subscriptions.

As on platforms like Twitch and YouTube, TikTok’s Subscriptions are typically purchased by fans, with creators and the platform splitting the resulting earnings. The specifics of that split can be contentious. Twitch, for example, got pushback from streamers after monkeying with its 70/30 payout division (i.e. creators keep 70% of subscription profits).

For TikTok Subscriptions, 70/30 is the baseline split “after fees.” Going forward, creators can chase incentives to push their cut even higher. By reaching milestones like 10,000 followers and 100,000 monthly views, TikTokers can earn bonuses that can push the split as high as 90/10. “Subscription allows TikTok creators to build stronger, more engaged communities while monetizing through a monthly subscription fee for access to exclusive perks like special badges, subscriber-only posts, chat features, and more,” reads a TikTok blog post.

The other announcements made at the U.S. Creator Summit touch on a familiar topic: Generative AI. Other platforms have become infamous for their willingness to copy-paste TikTok’s most successful features; now, the ByteDance-owned app is turning the tables by adopting some features that have become common on other parts of the social web.

An AI-powered tool called Smart Split, for example, will automate the process of creating clips from long-form uploads. Clipping has become big business for creators, with brands like OpusClip and MrBeast’s Vyro innovating in that space. TikTok’s entry to the crowded field will reframe long-form videos while captioning and transcribing the resulting short-form clips. Podcasters, eat your hearts out.

The other feature announced at the U.S. Creator Summit, AI Outline, has a lot in common with the creativity aids available through YouTube, Meta, and Adobe. On TikTok, users can enter their ideas into an AI-powered engine, which spits out a full outline that can form the basis of the resulting video.

Some of these features may seem derivative, but the new tools also support TikTok’s priorities up to this point. At the 2024 U.S. Creator Summit, for example, TikTok announced updates to the Creator Rewards program that supports long-form creators. A year later, it has become easier for those creators to add some short-form clips to their respective repertoires.

Subscriptions have been a point of emphasis for TikTok as well, and the app is supporting that push by trying to make its subs the best in the biz. TikTok LIVE is a crowded field, but the promise of a 90/10 split should convince some streamers to increase their activity on that format.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, TikTok by Sam Gutelle
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Tubi is doubling down on its plan to platform projects helmed by digital-native notables. Fresh off the launch of a program called Tubi for Creators, the FOX-owned provider of AVOD programming has revealed a four-film slate in partnership with Kevin Hart‘s Hartbeat studio.

The slate spotlights several creators who previously broke out on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Chief among them is Kinigra Deon, whose resourceful short films have attracted more than 2.1 billion lifetime views on her primary YouTube channel. Deon was already active on Tubi thanks to a deal that brought her series Vampire Siblings to the platform. Now, her presence in the AVOD world will level up through a supernatural thriller titled Sundown.

Though many of Deon’s videos are apt choices for spooky season (what with the Vampire Siblings and all), Sundown won’t bow on Tubi until next year. The platform is being patient with its Hartbeat slate, which also includes a project led by the hosts of the 85 South Show. Those creators — Wild N’ Out alumni DC Young Fly, Chico Bean, and Karlous Miller — are behind Dead End, a satirical horror-comedy that will expand the 85 South universe.

The other two films in the slate will be announced at a later date. “A big part of what we talked about doing is creating a bridge for creators to Hollywood, while allowing them to maintain their authenticity and creative freedom,” Tubi GM of Creator Programs and EVP of Business Development Rich Bloom told The Hollywood Reporter. “Hartbeat really shared a similar vision as they were starting to think about working with creators.”

Bloom came to Tubi after making a name for himself at Vimeo. Since his arrival, Tubi has positioned itself as one of FOX’s most useful vehicles for influencer partnerships. An initiative that kicked into high gear with a Khaby Lame partnership is now bringing more creators into the fold. For the likes of Deon, who have looked to sell their programming as premium content, an opportunity to hop into the FAST lane is most welcome.

Filed under: Uncategorized by Sam Gutelle
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