YouTube‘s ascension on TV screens has been one of the most significant consumer tech storylines of the mid 2020s. During most months of 2024 and 2025, as measured by Nielsen‘s The Gauge report, YouTube got a larger share of TV traffic than any other content provider.
That upward trend has had far-reaching effects. YouTube’s presence on TVs has helped it reach senior citizens in greater numbers, and the platform has established itself as a “realistic destination” for consumers interested in TV shows and movies. By the time July 2025 rolled around, YouTube had pushed its share of TV traffic above 13%.
Since then, a funny thing has happened. For the first time in years, YouTube’s performance in The Gauge has seen a noticeable downturn. The platform’s percentage went from a peak of 13.4% in July to 13.1% in August. In September, that figure fell all the way to 12.6%.
YouTube’s TV market share is now sitting around where it was in May. The timing of the current plateau suggests that back-to-school season has a significant effect on YouTube’s performance in The Gauge. It makes perfect sense: Kids and teens watch more YouTube when they’re not busy with classes, homework, and after-school activities. Even adults pack in more watch time during summer months.
As convenient as that explanation is, it’s not without holes. During the summer of 2024, YouTube’s results in The Gauge were relatively flat. If there is a summertime peak on YouTube’s TV app, it’s a new finding for 2025.
Here’s another idea: YouTube has achieved such a high level of saturation in the United States that it may be running out of new customers who can expand its market share in The Gauge. There’s a precedent for that phenomenon: Years ago, Netflix’s customer count got so big that the streamer started accounting for subscriber losses in its quarterly earnings reports.
Having so many viewers that you don’t have more room to grow is a good problem to have, but even if YouTube continues to outpace competitors like Netflix and Disney, the narrative surrounding its success on TVs could be changing. Is the platform still an ascendant force hellbent on disrupting the traditional TV ecosystem? Or has it maxed out the gains it can make in that area? Future editions of The Gauge will tell the story, so keep an eye on Nielsen’s monthly reports if you want to see which way the winds of YouTube will blow.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Is YouTube’s TV viewership plateauing, or is it just back-to-school season?
Creator Camp, the self-dubbed “internet-born film studio” that wants to challenge traditional Hollywood by taking digital video creators to the big screen, is releasing its first film into theaters.
Two Sleepy People comes from writer/TikTok filmmaker Baron Ryan and writer/actress Caroline Grossman, who co-star as “a couple that’s married every night, but by morning–they’re strangers.” It was made in 100 days on a budget of $100,000, and is the first public-release project to come out of Creator Camp.
We’ve covered Creator Camp before as part of our ongoing eye on the complicated relationship between Hollywood and content creators, but for those unfamiliar, Creator Camp was founded in 2021 by creators Max Reisinger, Simon Kim, and Chris Duncan. The plan was to hold multi-day retreats for both aspiring and established content creators, with the ultimate goal of “[shaping] a better internet by fostering deeper connections and providing more space for meaningful stories online.”
To do that, it started partnering with entities like Switzerland Tourism to bring creators on-site to beautiful locations, giving them inspiration and backdrop to make complete short films in a matter of days. (The 2024 partnership with Switzerland Tourism resulted in a social media campaign Creator Camp says generated 92M+ impressions, 1,500+ posts, and $9M+ in ad value.)
Then, earlier this year, Creator Camp decided to tackle something bigger. It partnered with Patreon, gave 10 digital content creators liquid cash to make their own high-production films, and held a film festival showing off the results at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas. It also tapped industry names like Quentin Tarantino to host workshops for attending creators.
The festival–where Two Sleepy People first screened–ended up welcoming over 1,000 attendees and generated $150,000 in ticket sales.
Not long after, the “tiny group of 20-year-olds” (their words, not ours) who make up the Creator Camp team decided to empty their bank accounts and rent a massive, permanent studio space where they can continue offering production resources to content creators.
“Everyone knows Hollywood is broken. But nobody’s doing anything about it,” Cristina Colina, Creator Camp’s Chief Creative Officer, said at the time. “While the internet now fully owns audience attention, traditional entertainment still hasn’t caught up.”
Now, the studio says it’s working with 300 “curated creators” who together have generated 3 billion views in the last year.
“Across the internet, a new generation of filmmakers is telling bold, cinematic stories,” Reisinger, Creator Camp’s CEO, said in a statement. “Two Sleepy People proves that cinema isn’t fading–it’s evolving. Storytellers who grew up online understand what this generation wants to see on the big screen. Gen Z is the loneliest generation, craving connection. We’re bringing people together in person around stories that are meaningful, communal, and created by voices they already trust.”
As we’ve previously seen with creators like Sam & Colby, Inoxtag, and Wendigoon, creators are becoming more and more adept at (and theaters are becoming more and more receptive to) putting their films out for screen runs. That’s what Creator Camp plans to do, too.
It’s holding a four-theater premiere run of Two Sleepy People, starting in Seattle at the Majestic Bay Theatres, then popping to San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, then to Los Angeles’s Wilshire Ebell Theatre, and finally wrapping up at El Museo de Barrio in New York City.
The Seattle and New York stops are already sold out, but tickets for the San Francisco and Los Angeles screenings (on Oct. 28 and 29, respectively) are still available for $25/person.
Filed under: Creator Camp, Homepage Feature by James Hale Comments Off on “Internet-born film studio” Creator Camp just got its first movie into theaters
Contemporary social media algorithms are designed to keep users scrolling for as long as possible. If that system leaves you feeling overstimulated and worn out, YouTube has a new solution for you. A timer puts a hard stop on YouTube Shorts activity after a fixed period of time.
YouTube published a blog post to announce its new time management tool. Interested users can put a cap on their scrolling by venturing into the Settings tab in the YouTube Shorts app. When the chosen limit arrives, a pop-up notification will interrupt the chosen video — though that prompt can be dismissed if a user wants to keep watching.
Android Authority first noticed the Shorts timer earlier this year, when the feature was still in development. “Shorts are a core part of the YouTube experience,” reads the post. “Setting a scrolling time limit on the Shorts feed allows for this exploration while helping users be more deliberate about their viewing habits and manage their time effectively.”
The Shorts timer joins several other YouTube products that pull users out of doomscrolling rabbit holes. In 2018, the platform invited its denizens to “take a break” after reaching a certain amount of watch time. A sleep timer arrived years later to assist viewers who want to wind down with some relaxing videos (but might not want to stay up for hours doing so).
Other platforms, like Instagram, have rolled out their own controls to curb marathon scrolling sessions. That trend has always had an ironic edge to it, since the platforms themselves are the ones who make their feeds so hard to quit.
Pressure from parents has helped convince Big Tech firms that they have a reponsibility to make their layouts less sticky. In its coverage of the Shorts timer, eMarketer cited data from Pew that revealed widely-held concerns about social media platforms and their effects on young users. 55% of the parents who responded to the Pew survey said they were “extremely or very concerned about teen mental health.”
With YouTube persisting as the most familiar platform among teens, the Google-owned hub is in a position to set sensible controls on the activity of underage users. The Shorts timer is one part of that effort, but for it to be effective, users have to agree when they’re told it’s time for a breather.
Spotter is shutting down its generative AI suite Studio as an external tool and laying off “a small number” of staffers.
Studio, which launched around this time last year, was built because Spotter is always looking for the next big thing in the creator space. When Machinima and StyleHaul co-founder Aaron DeBevoise launched the company in 2019, he did so because he saw the need creators had for liquid production capital, and thought he could provide that capital by accurately predicting YouTubers’ anticipated views and income, then loaning them money against those projected earnings.
This model saw Spotter (which, full disclosure, is a current Tubefilter partner) deploy hundreds of millions of dollars to major creators and bring investments from entities like SoftBank and Amazon. But the content industry’s rapid shift from long-form to short-form in 2020 and beyond impacted Spotter’s calculations and plans. After missing financial goals in 2024, it laid off 40% of its staff.
While facing difficulties with short-form, Spotter was already chasing something new: generative AI tools for creators. It began hiring executives from Adobe, Amazon, Google, Headspace, Linktree, and Spotify to build AI tools, and rolled out its first one, Title Exploder, in late 2023.
But Studio was its biggest AI play. Pitched as “a brainstorm partner, project planner, and research copilot,” Studio would digest a creator’s entire channel and use that data to do things like cold-suggest new video topics and draft thumbnails (like the one you see above). MrBeast, Dude Perfect, Kinigra Deon, Rebecca Zamolo, Jordan Matter, Jay Alto, Hayden Hillier-Smith, and Colin & Samir all participated in the tool’s beta period; it became available to creators at large in September 2024.
Now, DeBevoise says Spotter is bringing Studio internal. That means Studio isn’t going away completely, but it’ll no longer be available as a public tool for creators.
“[T]he AI landscape has rapidly evolved. Major technology platforms are now racing to integrate ideation directly into their ecosystems, recognizing how essential it is to a creator’s workflow,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post. “That progress validates what we set out to do with Studio and the billions of views it helped creators generate. But we need to focus on delivering the most differentiated value, where demand from partners is strongest.”
Spotter’s differentiated value, he added, lies in “deepening the connections between creators and brands.”
A Spotter spokesperson tells Tubefilter the company is putting its efforts into “helping creators unlock more brand opportunities and helping brands engage highly attentive audiences through authentic, long-form storytelling.”
However, they say, Studio going internal doesn’t indicate Spotter is giving up on gen AI. (That being said, if it were, it wouldn’t be the only company re-evaluating a bullish investment into the trend: Meta today laid off 600 employees from its AI division.)
“We’re not moving away from AI, we’re integrating it more deeply into how we operate,” they explain. “By transitioning Studio from an external offering to an internal platform, we can embed its capabilities directly into our growing advertising and licensing businesses. This allows us to use AI where it matters most: powering smarter matches between creators and brands, improving outcomes, and scaling creative impact.”
“I am incredibly proud of what our Studio team accomplished and grateful for the innovation they brought to the industry,” DeBevoise said in his post. “As we make this change, we will do everything possible to support our Studio teammates impacted by this decision and the creators who have relied on their work.”
Like we mentioned above, Spotter’s change is coming with layoffs. The spokesperson says that “a small number of Studio roles are being impacted over the next few weeks as we align our teams to support this strategic shift.”
No other divisions within Spotter are affected.
Filed under: Homepage Feature, Spotter by James Hale Comments Off on Spotter shuts off public access to its gen AI suite Studio, says it’s focusing on long-form brand deals for creators
The database that powers our creator economy insights is going wide. Gospel Stats, an intelligence platform from the team behind Tubefilter and the Streamy Awards, has issued its inaugural YouTube Sponsorship Landscape Report.
Readers of our Tubefilter columns, including our Weekly Brand Reports and our Top 50 rankings, may recognize Gospel as the source of the data that underpins those updates. Now, we’re sharing those findings with the rest of the creator economy. Through the YouTube Sponsorship Landscape Report, Gospel found that 65,759 sponsored videos were uploaded to YouTube during the first half of 2025. That sum represents a year-over-year uptick of nearly 54%.
Viewership across those videos is on the rise, too. That number rose about 28% year-over-year to reach 19.1 billion. YouTube’s middle class, in which creators average between 100,000 and 500,000 views per video, is fueling much of that growth.
By tracking sponsorships across tens of millions of YouTube channels, Gospel Stats uncovers useful details that don’t show up in other sources. Gospel Founder Joshua Cohen (who is also a Tubefilter and Streamy Awards Co-Founder) noted in a statement that YouTube sponsorship traffic “isn’t even counted in Google’s official ad revenue.”
Cohen demonstrated Gospel’s utility in 2023, when he used the platform to uncover a rash of YouTube sponsorships launched by the law firm Morgan & Morgan. That data formed the basis of a presentation Cohen delivered at that year’s VidCon event in Anaheim.
“We thought when we first started out that creators are going to be the future of entertainment. We didn’t realize it would also be the future of marketing, media, advertising and more,” Cohen told Axios. “We’ve been around for 17 years now, kind of waiting for this moment in time when creator culture was becoming just culture.”
Within that ecosystem, Gospel has the potential to be a godsend. The findings in the first YouTube Sponsorship Landscape Report offer a good example of what Gospel is capable of — and you can read the results of that research by clicking right here.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, Statistics by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Sponsorships are up 54% year-over-year on YouTube. We’re officially launching a tool to track them all.
In February 2025, YouTube turned 20. The video site has gone through a lot over the past two decades, including an acquisition, an earnings glow-up, and multiple generations of star creators. In our 20 Years of YouTube series, we’ll examine the uploads, trends, and influencers that have defined the world’s favorite video site — one year at a time. Click here for a full archive of the series.
YouTube’s first wave of stars rose up because they had something original to say. Lonelygirl15 spoke to a young, anxious generation in a novel way. iJustine ushered in a new era of tech reviews. Antoine Dodson had a very important safety announcement he wanted to share with all of us.
Nearly two decades later, the man who hosted the most consequential YouTube video of last year relied on his listening skills as much as his own thoughts. Theo Von interviewed Donald Trump on his This Past Weekend podcast during the 2024 election cycle. The results of that collab have been crystal clear: 17 million views and one Trump reelection later, Von’s presidential chat has come to epitomize the shifting winds of YouTube — and the rising influence of the creator economy within mainstream culture.
Here’s another way Theo Von is different from YouTube’s pioneers: He plied his trade elsewhere before launching his channel. In the era of early YouTubers who harbored Hollywood dreams, Von’s backward journey may have seemed counterproductive. He cut his teeth on MTV, landed a few acting gigs, and settled in as a stand-up comedian and podcast host. Only then did he establish his YouTube presence.
Von’s ingratiation into the creator world came through podcast appearances. As he grew This Past Weekend, he popped up on shows hosted by Logan Paul and the Nelk boys. Those ambitious young men had pulled themselves up by stretching their personal brands as far as possible, making moves across fields like podcasting, consumer products, and live events.
With This Past Weekend, Von possessed a piece of content that could fuel his own multiplatform rise. His push on hubs like YouTube coincided with a so-called “influencer election,” which sent politicians scrambling to book spots on creator-led podcasts. Von’s timing (and his rise up the podcast charts) could not have been better.
By 2024, podcasting had become so mainstream that top audio production companies like Alex Cooper’s Trending were able to land nine-figure distribution deals. Von’s career path offers a partial explanation for that boom. In an era when creators fashion themselves as platform-agnostic brands, a multimedia show can come to represent its host’s personality and preferences.
When it comes to the growth of video podcasts specifically, YouTube’s own priorities can’t be ignored. In recent years, the platform has pushed its creators toward a multiformat approach that encompasses live streaming, long-form video, and Shorts. Within that ecosystem, a video podcast is the ideal piece of content. Creators can premiere their latest conversations as live streams before making them available as long-form VODs. From there, cutting memorable clips for distribution on Shorts is a logical next step.
If technological innovations set the stage for Theo Von’s cross-platform ascension, his political leanings ensured that he would take advantage of the opportunity. He is part of a pronounced rightward shift that has reshaped creator culture.
Trump’s activity on the platform then known as Twitter portended the changes he would bring to internet discourse, and in 2024, that wave crashed down with full force. It became clear that members of YouTube’s ruling class — including the Nelk boys and the Paul brothers — shared many of Trump’s conservative viewpoints.
That political drift even made its way to YouTube’s San Bruno, California headquarters. The platform that had come down hard on Trump and his lies during the 2020 election cycle soon changed course. The 2023 reversal of YouTube’s election misinformation policy suggested that its stance toward the right wing was softening.
Two years later, as YouTube capitulates to Trump’s demands, its left-wing history feels like a distant memory. The platform’s hardline anti-Trump approach may be a relic of the Susan Wojcicki era, when YouTube was led by an avowed liberal. With Wojcicki’s sudden 2023 retirement and her equally sudden passing a year later, her former employer’s corporate politics became murkier.
The fifth presidential election in YouTube history didn’t just update the platform’s political discourse. When you compare it to the first YouTube election, from 2008, the contrast is striking. Gone are the days when creators could hit the homepage with cheeky parodies and goofy viral clips that commented on current events. By 2024, viewers were looking for substantive takes from YouTube politicos. If you want to know why the silly side of the internet’s electoral culture fell away, you can probably pin the blame on Hillary Clinton and her decision to tell people to “Pokemon Go to the polls.”
Von’s casual-yet-informative interview style was a natural fit for the contemporary political landscape. When you add in his mastery of the podcast and his generally conservative ideology, This Past Weekend‘s rise up the YouTube charts almost feels like a fait accompli — and 17 million views is only the beginning.
One day in the not-too-distant future, a creator will be elected to a federal office in the U.S. (We’ve already seen that happen in Cyprus.) When the influencers add roles like “Senator” and “President” to their multihyphenate descriptions, the rest of us will have to come to terms with the reality we live in — as if it wasn’t strange enough already.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, YouTube by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on 20 years of YouTube: 2024 brought us the “influencer election” — and a vision of the future
Meta didn’t get the kindest reception when it unveiled its AI-powered Vibes feed last month. One reporter even called the feed an “infinite slop machine,” but recent findings suggest that the initial assessment of Meta’s Vibes may have been a bit unfair. Citing data from SimilarWeb, TechCrunch reported that download numbers for the Meta AI app have shot upward since the late-September launch of the Vibes feed.
On a fundamental level, the Vibes feed is Meta’s answer to YouTube’s Dream Screen. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp initially positioned its AI video repository as a creative aid that lets users “bring your ideas to life with new AI visual creation tools or remix an existing video by adding music or changing the style to make it your own.”
These days, there’s a lot of cultural consternation related to generative AI, so initial resistance to the Vibes feed was to be expected. What happened next was more surprising: In just four weeks, the number of daily active users across the iOS and Android versions of the Meta AI app went from 775,000 to 2.7 million (as of October 17). Daily app installs rose to 300,000 after sitting below 200,000 in previous weeks.
Meta isn’t the only tech giant finding success at the intersection of generative AI and creative prompts. Sora soared to the top of the app charts after OpenAI equipped its video generator with a TikTok-style feed. Meanwhile, on YouTube Shorts, AI slop channels are dominating the charts; that trend may be influencing users on Meta platforms as they seek out AI-powered inspiration.
Even with those examples in mind, the perceived popularity of the Vibes feed is still somewhat unexpected. As Meta AI app downloads spike, Meta is cutting 600 jobs in its artificial intelligence division, citing a need for a more efficient workforce. Amid cutbacks, users are signalling their continued interest in AI development by flocking to the Vibes feed.
Meta is attempting to clean up the slop from its feeds, and the rise of the Vibes feed may make that process more difficult. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg’s team can’t ignore the returns of its investment in AI. A year ago, the Meta AI app was hovering around 4,000 daily downloads. Now, that number is much, much higher — and the app has become a whole-ass vibe.
Investor capital continues to flow into the social shopping space, and ShopMy is the latest beneficiary. The New York-based creator commerce firm has announced a $70 million funding round that comes with a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Avenir led the round, which included participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Menlo Ventures. Previous funding for the five-year-old firm has included an $8 million Series A from 2022 and a $77.5 million Series B announced last year.
ShopMy’s steady growth has been fueled by its prominent position within the creator economy. It is one of several companies that plays matchmaker between creators and brands, facilitating the completion of wide-reaching influencer marketing campaigns that result in earnings for all involved (including ShopMy, which takes a cut of the sales revenue it generates).
According to the latest figures shared by ShopMy, the company works with more than 1,200 brand partners, which it connects to a stable of 185,000 creators. The product recommendations shared by ShopMy’s influential affiliates result in $1 billion in annual platform sales.
“Word of mouth has always been the most powerful force in commerce, and we’re building the infrastructure to make it scalable,” said ShopMy President Tiffany Lopinsky in a statement. “We have deep conviction that curators are the future of brand distribution for the next generation of enduring companies. This investment lets us transform personal enthusiasm into measurable results at scale.”
The future of ShopMy will depend on the continued adoption of systems like affiliate marketing and creator ownership, which turn standouts on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube into tastemakers. The latest numbers suggest that ecommerce is still a safe bet. An IAB report from earlier this year found that the “digital economy” now accounts for 18% of the U.S. GDP.
More recently, YouTube reported that 61% of 14-to-24-year-olds use its platform to discover new brands and products. To do that, they must turn to their favorite creators, so ShopMy is making sure that those influential individuals are properly connected to the branded products they recommend.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Funding, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on Ecommerce boom pushes ShopMy to $1.5 billion valuation as firm lands fresh funding
ZCON, the Gen Z-exclusive event hosted by UTA‘s Next Gen division, is back in Los Angeles this week with two days of biz dev programming aimed at giving young content creators a platform to hear about (and discuss) “the attention economy, trends, culture, digital futures, social commerce, the future of entertainment, social good, the future of work, the creator-economy.”
This is ZCON’s third year; its inaugural event was held in August 2023, and since then organizers have offered programming in New York City and Cannes, too. The conference was the first to have a lineup of only Gen Z speakers and performers, all of whom are experts in various industries.
So who’s popping in for the 2025 event? We have…
Auli’i Cravalho, actor (and the voice of Moana)
Olandria, actor
Ezra Frech, 2x Paralympic Gold Medalist
Ella Emhoff, fashion designer & model
Josie Totah, actor
Nia Sioux, actor & content creator
Cami Téllez, entrepreneur
Micky Gordon, content creator
Chandler Kinney, actor
Michael Cimino, actor
Anthony Po, YouTuber
Adam Faze, founder of Gymnasium
Zaya Perysian, content creator & activist
Paravi, singer
Illumitati, DJ
Joshua Colley, actor & singer
Anna DeGuzman, magician & content creator
Ramisha Sattar, creative director
Cheyenne Hunt, lawyer & activist
Umar Issa, Yahoo’s Head of Inclusive & Cultural Partnerships
Austin Maguire, content creator
Claire Almond, content creator
Hannah Broadhurst, Amazon’s Head of Entertainment & Content Marketing
and Andrew Chang, MD, physician & founder of Nunchi Health
They’ll join hundreds of attendees for programming that includes the ZSTAR Awards (a next-gen movers-and-shakers recognition show from UTA in partnership with Cosmopolitan) along with panels, workshops, and breakout sessions.
Panels include topics critical for today’s content creators, like how digital content is “the new Hollywood,” how Gen Z is “rewriting the rules of branded entertainment,” and how the internet in its current state impacts our mental health.
ZCON’s sponsor roster for this year counts big names like Amazon, Spotify, Yahoo, Coach, Invisalign, e.l.f. Cosmetics, and Axe.
While attendance slots are full up, it’s worth keeping an eye on the ZSTAR Awards for a look at the who’s who and the rising stars of Gen Z. It’s also worth knowing ZCON’s programming, since it reflects the issues Gen Z creators–an ever more powerful force in our industry–are tackling as we speak.
Check out ZCON’s site for the full programming slate, and its Instagram for by-the-moment updates as the event unfolds.
Filed under: Homepage Feature, ZCON by Tubefilter Staff Comments Off on UTA’s ZCON brings hundreds of Gen Z creators to LA for an exclusive meeting of the minds
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.
This week’s Gospel Stats report leads with three videos that are emblematic of modern YouTube. They have attention-grabbing premises, eye-catching thumbnails, and–for the first time in a while–are all long-form. Shorts does still have a foothold in this week’s list, but we definitely saw a return to long-form domination led by creators who’ve spent years perfecting the art of keeping viewers glued for hours.
Yet again, MrBeast comes in first–but this time, Feastables isn’t his only sponsor.
Well, sort of. He’s sponsored by the duo of Feastables and Costco, which just partnered with Feastables to launch a Halloween-timed minis variety bag. We’re not at all surprised to see this team-up timed for this holiday. As we’ve written before, Feastables has spent the past few months banging out new product after new product, and while minis aren’t new, getting high-profile placement in Costco is no doubt going to help pad the tens of millions of dollars Feastables already pulls in.
As for the video, it’s typical MrBeast fare, with the main plot pitting a large crowd of kiddos against one very jacked gentleman. Other stunts are interspersed, drawing the video out to a solid 27 minutes. So far it’s racked up ~97 million views, which is under the viewcount of other MrBeast videos we’ve seen take spot #1–but still far ahead of any competitors.
We don’t often get personal in these posts–we are journalists, after all–but I will divulge here that Gold Country history is one of my lifelong passions, and that I live smack in the middle of the territory where people once thought they’d find their fortunes. While the Sierra Nevada Mountains and their foothills are full of history most people are at least passingly familiar with, it’s rare to see them get a YouTube spotlight–but that’s just what Mark Rober does this week.
He heads to Folsom Lake, which was once the site of Mormon Island, a town populated by people seeking ‘the color.’ Mormons made up a large contingent of the early Gold Rush seekers, and those who lived on Mormon Island came from Sutter’s Fort, which is in modern-day Sacramento (and is not to be confused with Sutter’s Mill, which is in Coloma and was the first place where gold was found in California). After its founding in 1848, Mormon Island grew to a full-fledged town with multiple hotels, general stores, and a postal office, with 2,500+ residents at its peak.
Then, in 1856, the town was destroyed by a fire, and was subsequently abandoned by most. A few people remained until the mid 20th century, when the Folsom Dam Project flooded Mormon Island and surrounding areas to create the lake we now see today (though you can sometimes still glimpse Mormon Island when the droughts are bad).
In this video, Rober–sponsored by his STEM subscription kit company CrunchLabs–heads to that very lake with sophisticated equipment that shows us Mormon Island isn’t entirely gone. It’s still down there, preserved in time.
Oh, you thought Ryan Trahan was done traveling after he and wife Haley Pham spent nearly two months filming themselves Airbnbing across the entire United States? Well, think again. While he and Haley did take a short break after their lengthy series, they got right back out there, booking an extremely expensive cruise on Royal Caribbean’s freshly debuted top-level ship, Star of the Seas. But Trahan has a mission besides checking out the new beauty: Pham got her first book deal, and has been denying him the privilege of reading her manuscript, since he never finishes books. His plan? Steal the book, read it during the cruise, and present her with his review at the end.
No spoilers–but we will note this video is sponsored by longtime Trahan partner Shopify, which clocked in with over 30 paid-for videos this week.
pattyplates‘ message with this one is pretty clear: Move over, Dubai chocolate. There’s a new Turkish treat in town. This Canadian cheftuber was born to Chinese parents (“my father was a Guangzhou city boy, and my mom a village girl from Toisan,” he says) and has brought in ~140,000 subscribers by making food from all sorts of cultures.
For our first and only Short of the week, pattyplates is sponsored by Turkish confection brand Ülker, which sent him its Istanbul chocolate. Like Dubai chocolate, this bar is filled with kadayif, aka shredded phyllo dough, but it has hazelnut instead of pistachio.
While pattyplates’ video is an effective ad for Ülker’s sweet–just look at those cross-sections…-it’s not the only one. Ülker is clearly going wide with its Dubai chocolate challenge, because it sponsored two other videos this week: #22, from Junpei Zaki, and #24, from Chloe Dillon. All three videos share a common storyline, where the sponsored creators have just somehow managed to find the brand responsible for a mysterious new viral chocolate.
Look, I know I just said last week that we like to end our Weekly Brand Reports with lightheartedness…but as a longtime resident of YouTube’s robust culinary neighborhood, I couldn’t let this video go. Uncle Roger‘s takedowns of Jamie Oliver have been the stuff of legend, and unlike Gordon Ramsay, Oliver has apparently learned nothing. His newest recipe is “Korean fried rice,” made with American barbecue sauce and basmati rice. Unwashed, boxed Uncle Ben basmati rice.
Our good uncle (who’s sponsored by prolific YouTuber partner ExpressVPN) is understandably horrified. We’ll save the big jabs for him, but will simply say: If you love yourself, buy a nice rice cooker, make three cups of rice, let it cool in the fridge for a day, then oil up a pan. Ginger, garlic, a little gochujang, a little soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, egg, green onions, and of course a few pinches of the flavor king, MSG. You’re welcome.
…and there’s a lot more data where that came from. If you’re interested in learning more about Gospel – and which brands are sponsoring what creators on YouTube – click here.
With its broadcast of an influencer boxing event, an upstart streaming platform delivered a Kick to its competition. The Stream Fighters 4 event, held on October 18 in Colombia, reached a peak concurrent audience of 4.6 million viewers. That’s the most traffic ever registered on a Kick stream.
The Stream Fighters series, organized by Colombian creator Luis ‘Westcol’ Villa, resembles other major influencer boxing events. It offers a mix of live music and in-arena entertainment to go along with pugilistic showdowns between Latin American creators.
Stream Fighters 3 set a new high-water mark for the series by gathering 1.7 million viewers, but the fourth installment outdid that sum more than two times over. Four million of the concurrent viewers were attributed to Westcol himself, with a few other broadcasters making smaller contributions to the record-setting tally.
“This next generation of creators produces content at a scale that reflects the shift in how digital audiences consume and engage. High-production events driven by creators like Westcol redefine what entertainment can be,” said Kick Head of Operations Ryan Webb in a statement. “Stream Fighters 4 showed us the community is responding at levels we’ve never seen, and Kick will continue to drive high-impact productions as this potential and energy grow.”
As big as the Stream Fighters 4 audience was, the event is not the biggest Hispanic influencer boxing event in streaming history. That honor goes to Spanish streamer Ibai and his Velada del Año series, which got twice as many concurrent viewers as Stream Fighters 4 during its most recent return to Twitch.
In terms of peak numbers, Kick still trails its competition, but its current outlook is rosy. It has uplifted streamers big and small and has turned those investments into unprecedented platform-wide viewership. During Stream Fighters 4, Kick briefly had more active viewers than Twitch and YouTube, and that moment led to a victory lap on social media.
Kick still has to address viewbotting allegations and safety concerns if it hopes to build on the momentum it gathered through Westcol’s influencer boxing event. Streaming is not an easy business, but with industry leader Twitch mired in controversy, there’s a window for further growth in the world of Kick.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on An influencer boxing event established a new Kick record with 4.6 million concurrent viewers
The news is now on TikTok, and the sources delivering that news are reimagining their services to suit the new era. One of the biggest changes is happening at The New York Times, which is now offering a bottomless, scrollable feed filled with short-form videos and other updates from the Times newsroom.
The Times previously experimented with standalone apps filled with multimedia content, though it has consolidated most of those apps within its main mobile hub. The new feed will live on a Watch tab on the main NYT app, where viewers will be able to catch the latest dish from the Gray Lady’s reporters.
According to Axios, the Watch tab will go live on October 22. It will feature content from across the New York Times network, ranging from the popular NYT Cooking hub to sports destination The Athletic to consumer review platform Wirecutter. In a notable turn for the publication that once prided itself on splashy, long-form digital content, the Times will keep the uploads in its feed short, with most of them running for three minutes or less.
“Our news app is a multimedia hub that can do everything,” New York Times Deputy Managing Editor Sam Dolnick told Axios. “It’s easier for the consumer to have one place to go where you can read, watch, listen.”
While there might be some cultural fatigue when it comes to TikTok copycats, the New York Times is choosing a good time to launch its scrollable feed. Newspapers have carved out territory for themselves on TikTok, with The Washington Post building the most notable stable of short-form reporters. As some of the faces of the Post‘s social accounts go solo, there’s an opportunity for the Times to reach a bigger share of the 20% of Americans who reportedly get their news from TikTok.
New York’s flagship news publication is not the only media company chasing that audience. CNN has made its own play for the TikTok generation by launching CNN Creators. The multiplatform show will introduce a new group of journalists — including Vice, BBC, and Al-Jazeera alumni — who will operate within short-form milieux.
Can these legacy organizations connect with the next generation of news viewers? TikTokers might still prefer to get their updates from independent voices like V Spehar, but that won’t stop the Times and CNN from trying.
Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle Comments Off on All the news that’s fit to scroll: New York Times launches TikTok-style feed in main app
