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, a legendary creator makes an unexpected return to YouTube, a current star discusses his tricky finances, and the future comes into focus thanks to MrBeast.

Creator commotion

Welcome back to VSauce, Michael Stevens! Once upon a time, Stevens was YouTube’s most popular source for scientific content and other academic videos, but his 24 million VSauce subscribers haven’t gotten a new video in years — until now. Stevens’ first long-form upload since 2022 is a philosophical video that asks big questions about life and death. I hope that doesn’t mean Stevens is feeling fatalistic about his legendary YouTube operation.

RIP to Connie Francis, a TikTok late-bloomer. The leading songstress of the 50s and 60s, who died earlier this week at age 87, got one last run on the pop charts shortly before her passing. Her song “Pretty Little Baby” cracked the Spotify charts after it enjoyed an initial resurgence on TikTok.

Come on, PGA. Let Grant Horvat cook! Horvat, a golfing star on YouTube who has collaborated with big names like Tiger Woods, was supposed to play in his first official PGA event. That changed after organizers barred him from filming his round. If the PGA is so intent on getting young people to ignore the sport of golf, Horvat will have no choice but to indulge it.

The biz

KSI is operating at a loss on YouTube. So said the Sidemen member during a recent guest appearance on Kick. “I’m not making profit,” he admitted. Luckily for him, he has some other means of lining his pockets, but this anecdote is a reminder that literal content is not as big of a slice of the content creator revenue pie as it used to be.

Sam and Colby add a board game to their long list of products. The haunted house-exploring duo teamed up with the Hunt A Killer brand to release The Haunting of Wicker Ridge, which comes with “realistic props” that help players “banish the demon.” The game is tied into the real-life escape room Sam and Colby recent launched in Los Angeles.

Jesser generates buzz for BEEUP. The creator known for his hoops videos is working alongside one of the biggest stars in a different sport. He took to Instagram to endorse BEEUP, a snack brand launched by former England winger David Beckham. I hope the next phase of this collab involves a Beckham edition of Guess The Secret Pro Athlete.

Pop culture minute

Thanks to generative AI, Matt can be anywhere now. Once upon a time, a man’s attempt to dance his way across the world was one of the biggest things on YouTube. “Where The Hell Is Matt?” saw its 15 minutes expire years ago, but a clever creator revived the trend to imagine Matt dancing through remote landscapes that are difficult to access in the real world.

An AI influencer’s trip to Wimbledon looked awfully real. With her stylish look, complete with a matching top and tennis skirt, Mia Zelu didn’t look out of place at the All England Club. While the rest of the internet debates whether Zelu’s stunt is good or bad news, I’ll be over here wondering if there are any other AI-generated personalities in the tennis world.

The first Netflix original to use generative AI has arrived. During the streamer’s Q2 2025 earnings call, Co-CEO Ted Sarandos discussed the use of AI in an Argentine series called El Eternauta. Sarandos said that genAI can make Netflix slows “better, not just cheaper,” but the Hollywood unions might have different ideas.

Events and happenings

YouTube is bringing the creator economy to MIPCOM. As the Cannes-set TV showcase prepares for its 20th anniversary, its organizers are teaming up with YouTube to establish a programming track that will feature digital creators and platform representatives. YouTube will activate and host a keynote at the event, which will return to the south of France in mid-October.

Summer Games Done Quick raises $2.4 million for Doctors Without Borders. The latest edition of the mid-year offshoot of Awesome Games Done Quick served as the latest reminder of the incredible generosity of the speedrunning community. Leave it to speedrunners to make the world a better place as quickly as humanly possible.

Next up from AMP: Slap fights in Texas. When we last checked in on the creator crew’s summer plans, they were living it up at the Nando’s location inside of Tony Parker’s San Antonio-area mansion. Now, at the same venue, they’re hosting the next chapter in the Slapfight Championship. Boys just wanna have fun (and smack one another in the face).

The internet is a strange place

MrBeast is the biggest creator on YouTube…and he’s a time traveler? One of Jimmy Donaldson’s old videos resurfaced after viewers noticed that some of his predictions for the future of YouTube have since come true. He pinpointed FaZe Clan’s pivot to general entertainment content, forecasted the launch of YouTube TV, and nearly predicted PewDiePie’s exact subscriber count. (He was only off by about seven million subscribers.)

Everyone on Twitch is a horse girl now. The ridiculous game Uma Musume: Pretty Derby is going viral, inspiring streamers big and small to participate in virtual horse races. Uma Musume is a gacha game, so if you want to check it out, be prepared to spend more than you want on upgrades.

Medieval health advice had a lot in common with TikTok hacks. So claim researchers at Binghampton University, who studied records from the Dark Ages to learn about the techniques healers used to devise their cures. I don’t think Ye Olde Ozempique had been invented yet, but if it had, they probably would have loved it.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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A recent notification sent to Instagram users has sparked widespread discussions among search engine marketers. The notification informed recipients that search engines will automatically index public Instagram posts beginning on July 10.

From that date, “search engines will automatically be allowed to show all photos and videos on results pages,” reads the notification. That means “more people could discover content from your professional account outside of Instagram,” the app claimed.

In the wake of that announcement, there has been much debate about what it actually entails. Leslie Ann Hall, the CEO and Founder of ecommerce agency Iced Media, told Glossier that the update is “the biggest disruption in discovery and search behavior, since the introduction of Google, that brands have ever seen.” She claimed that Google and Instagram are “not the most common partners,” but are teaming up to counter the increasing adoption of search engine features on platforms like TikTok and ChatGPT.

On the other side of the coin, Social Media Today writer Andrew Hutchinson argued that the big update “isn’t actually a major shift,” because Google already indexes Instagram content. He cited an Instagram Help Center post that claims “we allow search engines to index photos and videos from public reels and posts that were uploaded or posted from January 1, 2020 onwards from accounts that meet [certain] criteria.” All that’s changing, per Hutchinson, is the rate at which this indexing is rolling out to new regions.

No matter how impactful the update ends up being, it clearly represents another step in Instagram’s plan to compete in the world of search. After developing only a handful of search features across its first 12 years, Instagram recently revealed that an improved “content search” is on its way to the app. “We’re…starting to invest more in search on Instagram because there’s so much amazing content,” Instagram Head Adam Mosseri said at the time. “And quite frankly, what we call content search — as opposed to searching for an account, actually searching for some type of content — it’s not very good on Instagram.”

Google is already updating its results pages to include more dynamic results, and Instagram posts (especially Reels) are ripe for inclusion in interactive carousels. It’s not clear how big consumer appetite is when it comes to social media-powered search results, but if users want to use Google as a more contextual, ChatGPT-style resource, Instagram wants to be part of the answer.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, Instagram, News by Sam Gutelle
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TikTok‘s ability to vault pop hits to a new tier of popularity is well known, but what about the people who craft those chart-topping songs? Songwriters play a crucial role in the flow of pop music on the For You Page, but TikTok’s track listings didn’t adequately credit those hitmakers — until now.

In a Newsroom post, TikTok announced an array of “Songwriter Features” that will help creators in the titular profession better identify themselves (and their work) on the app. A new label will allow songwriters to identify themselves at the top of their accounts, and a “Songwriter Music Tab” gives tunesmiths the space they need to showcase their latest and greatest compositions.

To promote the new features, TikTok has onboarded multiple notable songwriters, including Lauren Christy, Toby Gad, and Justin Tranter. Some of those artists — like Christy, a hitmaker for the likes of Rihanna and Dua Lipa — have previously been featured in TikTok’s #BehindTheSong series.

“Just as young Songwriters were losing hope on finding a pathway to success in music, TikTok comes along to help save the day! I’m so thrilled to collaborate with TikTok on the beta rollout of their Songwriter features, helping songwriters share their music and stories,” Christy said in a statement. “Remember 48% of all streaming revenue is created by independent artists, and that would have been impossible without the help of TikTok.”

As indie artists and major labels seek distribution on TikTok, the app has looked to capitalize on its status by putting on concerts and other cultural events. Songwriters have been able to ride that wave as well, with Unofficial Bridgerton Musical scribes Abigal Barlow and Emily Bear serving as two notable examples.

But the shuttering of the nascent TikTok Music hub and the legal issues faced by Barlow and Bear show that TikTok can do more to support the musical artists who are driving the app to the pinnacle of pop culture. The new Songwriter Features were developed with help from a survey that queried 871 songwriters about their TikTok habits.

For that group, as well as any other artistic cohort, getting due credit is serious business. That’s why it’s nice to see TikTok following Instagram’s lead by highlighting the progenitors of the most prominent FYP fads. Songwriters may not perform their own hits, but those songs wouldn’t exist without them — and the new features are a way for them to show their work.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, TikTok by Sam Gutelle
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Twitch is going after TikTok‘s vertical domination with more than Stories.

As you probably know, when TikTok broke into the digital video scene in a big way back in 2020, it started sapping viewer attention from established giants like YouTube and Facebook. They attempted to solve this problem by introducing their own short-form components, Shorts and Reels, and putting stock into a future hinged on bite-sized content. (What’s ironic is that after thoroughly disrupting these competitors and pushing them into short videos, TikTok has been going the other way, steadily introducing longer and longer uploads.)

But VOD-based platforms haven’t been the only ones impacted by TikTok. Longtime video game livestreaming king Twitch, already contending with challengers like Kick, has a rival in TikTok Live. This past April, TikTok Live surpassed Twitch in viewership to become the second most-watched live content platform on the ‘net, beaten only by YouTube.

On top of that, TikTok early last year stepped into the gaming arena, too, commissioning a report from the National Research Group that showed it’s the #1 platform where gamers between the ages of 18 and 24 find new mobile games to play. The report also showed mobile game players are 84% more likely than your average person to be watching at least 20 hours of streaming content per week.

Those findings were big for TikTok because (1) mobile gaming is a $100+ billion global industry, with an emphasis on gacha and whales who spend big, and (2) if all these hungry gamers are finding new titles on TikTok, it’s easy for the platform to punt them straight from short-form videos about the games to livestreams.

That second thing means it could potentially cutting into Twitch’s viewership. Now, Twitch and TikTok Live tend to have pretty different talent and audiences, but there’s another big mechanical difference between them. TikTok streams are vertical. Twitch’s are horizonal.

Or, rather, they were horizontal, because Twitch is now testing vertical streams with a select group of broadcasters, according to AppSensa.

The market researcher found vertical video tests and details about vertical streams’ features in a recent build of the Twitch app. The details included things like a vertical theater mode, and an option to switch between vertical and horizontal, if a viewer doesn’t dig the new look. Streams can only be watched in vertical on mobile devices for now. (That doesn’t mean desktop viewers will be blocked from seeing a vertical stream; for them, that stream will just load in the usual horizontal format, even though the streamer is )

As you can see in the screenshot below, vertical streams will show creators stacked with the content they’re broadcasting. This gives gaming streamers a larger billing than usual, because they traditionally have the game take up the full screen and place their little square face cam in the corner of the broadcast. That keeps the focus on the content they’re streaming rather than their charming good looks. Maybe Twitch wants to push their personalities more with this layout—or maybe it’s just the best/most feasible look for vertical streams.

Twitch wouldn’t comment about the tests, but did point TechCrunch toward its May keynote at TwitchCon Rotterdam, where it unveiled plans to get into vertical. (Also worth noting: Twitch has already rolled out vertical short-form VODs in the form of Stories, and introduced a Discovery Feed to deliver those Stories to viewers.)

“The new vertical layout makes it easier for viewers to participate in events like Hype Trains and support you by subbing, gifting, and cheering while watching your stream in full screen,” it said during the keynote. “They’ll also be able to customize chat to have more control over how much chat they see on screen.”

It added, “We really care about getting this right, so we’ll be testing […] the new vertical theater with a small number of channels this summer before slowly expanding to more users later this year.”

We don’t know yet which streamers are involved in the test, but if you’re a Twitch viewer interested in vertical, keep your eyes peeled–and your smartphone at the ready.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, Twitch by James Hale
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Aprilynne Alter set herself a deadline. One year. She was going to give herself one year to figure out her future.

As a kid, she’d wanted to be a writer, but when it came time to pick her college profession, she went with hospitality operations. During college, she started working with VC-backed startups, and after graduation ended up in finance on Wall Street.

Her job was the start of a solid career, but she could feel it: Something wasn’t right. She needed to do something different. Something more.

So, in 2021, she quit. One year–and if things didn’t work out, she’d go back to hustling at startups.

During that one year, she tried launching her own startup, and while listening to podcasts about productivity and biz dev, she came across an episode that featured doctor-turned-YouTuber Ali Abdaal, who has 6.4 million subscribers and makes his living with life coaching videos and paid courses.

“That blew my mind,” she tells Tubefilter. “Because prior to that, I just thought about YouTube in terms of like, ‘Oh, you’re a MrBeast. You’re an Emma Chamberlain.’ Or you look up a video about how to change a tire. That was all I thought about YouTube. But then I heard Ali say, ‘Wait, you can teach on YouTube. You can educate on YouTube.’ I’d never thought of myself as an entertainer, but I’ve always thought of myself as an educator.”

Alter decided that instead of just focusing on a startup, she’d put her eggs into “many many baskets,” and one of those baskets would be YouTube. She started her first channel, and for content, began by making some of her long-form Twitter content (about her experiences with startups, business, etc) into YouTube videos, and then expanding into other niches. The channel reached around 23,000 subscribers, and by then, she already knew two things:

(1) She wanted to launch a second channel, and

(2) That channel would be about how to succeed on YouTube.

Alter arrived at that niche inspired by Abdaal and other productivity experts, and because she knew that she wanted her second channel’s topic to be something “I could talk about for a decade and never get tired of,” she says. “The biggest thing I learned from my first channel is if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no.”

She introduced the second channel in 2023, and was “very, very diligent about only taking on opportunities or putting myself into positions where I genuinely wanted to do the thing,” she says. “I mention that because there are a lot of different ways to monetize on YouTube, and a lot of people in the beginning were asking if I could offer consulting for them, one-on-one. I tried for a couple people and realized that I don’t love it. It’s not something I enjoy doing.”

But those experiences got her thinking. How could she combine her lifelong love of teaching, her newfound knowledge of YouTube, and the coaching people wanted from her?

“In a group environment, I loved it,” she says. “I love breaking down different videos and giving my thoughts and helping people, and the cohort model was particularly intriguing to me because I had taken a cohort myself back when I was just starting YouTube. It was a transformative experience for me, so I wondered if I could create an experience of my own, in a group setting, and curate a number of people who are all intermediate. All above a certain level, but I’d help them get to that next level by providing more personal support and feedback than they would get from watching YouTube videos.”

From these ideas came Creator Crew, Alter’s six-month course. For this first cohort, she’ll accept 30 intermediate-level creators, and the program will be “incredibly action-oriented,” featuring “workshops, time with me, personalized feedback, and action sessions all centered around the exercises and activities that actually drive results,” she says.

Want to make 2025 the year you crush YouTube?

Announcing: Creator Crew 🎉

– 6-month coaching program
– Workshops to level up your YouTube knowledge
– Personalized feedback on your videos
– Action sessions to actually do what matters
– 30 spots
– Intermediate creators only

👇

— Aprilynne Alter (@AprilynneAlter) April 11, 2025

But what about Alter’s own leveling up?

She says Spotter plays a major role in it. The creator services and catalog licensing company has expanded over the past year, getting into AI with production platform Spotter Studio and making appearances at creator events like VidSummit and Open Sauce. It also recently held a creator upfront, spotlighting some of our industry’s top makers, from MrBeast, Dude Perfect, Kinigra Deon, Ryan Trahan, and Rebecca Zamolo to Jordan Matter, The Try Guys, Sam & Colby, Airrack, and Michelle Khare.

Alter partnered with Spotter in October 2024 and began using Spotter Studio in her creative process. Even more than that, though, she says having Spotter as a partner has worked for her because of “the reach they have within the creator economy space.”

“There’s the concept of working with a brand in terms of using their product, but there’s also working with a brand when it comes to partner relations,” she says. “On the partner relations side, what’s really freaking cool about Spotter Studio is their presence and the network they have within the creator economy industry.”

She adds that working with Spotter was “an eye-opener for me in terms of the brands I choose to work with, because in brand deals the money you receive for an integration is only one part of it. What else does a brand provide you? What else could come from being affiliated with this brand?”

Events like Spotter’s Ideas Summit, held earlier this year in Los Angeles, are “surreal experiences to be a part of,” Alter says. “That’s something only Spotter could have provided, and those in-person elements are so special in this world where so much is virtual.”

Alter thinks she can accomplish big things with Spotter’s backing. For now, she’s focused on the first Creator Crew cohort, and says that’ll take up much of her time over the next few months, since it’s a “beefy program.” After that, though, there are “larger-scale” things she wants to do, on top of continuing to run one or two Creator Crew courses a year.

“My main thing I love doing is really, really deep research into certain areas of the YouTube world and breaking down the psychology of why things work and why people are doing what they’re doing,” she says. “A lot of people have told me that huge creators use my videos as training material for new members of their own internal teams. How cool would it be if I made my own program training people up to potentially be editors or thumbnail designers? I could maybe help them get placed at big creator companies, or even have those companies send me their people to go through a training program and level up their knowledge.”

Ultimately, Alter says, she’s “an educator at heart, and there’s so much that can be done within the education space and the YouTube space and working those two together. That’s where I’m going.”

Spotter is a Tubefilter partner.

Filed under: Creator, Homepage Feature, Spotter Spotlight Series by James Hale
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Substack has landed a nine-digit investment that will further its commitment to independent creator content. The newsletter platform has announced a $100 million Series C funding round that will be used to develop and upgrade the platform’s suite of features.

Investors at BOND and The Chernin Group led the round, which will install BOND partner Mood Rowghani on the Substack board. Other participants included Andreessen Horowitz, LeBron James’ agent Rich Paul, and SKIMS Co-Founder Jens Grede.

Substack launched in 2017, establishing itself as one of the first platforms to cater to the growing community of newsletter writers. In the eight years since, the company led by Co-Founders Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj Sethi has built out a full complement of features, transforming Substack into a multimedia hub replete with revenue streams.

Notable improvements have included a native video player and tools for marketers. A recent update heightened Substack’s similarities to Twitch and TikTok by bringing more discovery to live videos.

Those enhancements have enabled multiple forms of monetization on Substack, encouraging opportunistic creators to join the platform. Earlier this year, Substack announced that it has more than five million paying subscribers across its newsletter library.

In a blog post announcing the Series C round, Substack pledged to continue uplifting its base of independent newsletter publishers. “We’ll invest in better tools, broader reach, and deeper support for the writers and creators driving Substack’s ecosystem,” reads the post. “Already, hundreds of millions of dollars flow from audiences to creators there every year. Millions use the app weekly, and pay for the work they discover. But this is just the beginning.”

That investment in creators is well-timed. Newsletter platforms are drawing widespread interest from VC firms, with Substack rivals like beehiiv also raising major funding rounds. Substack has deployed its capital to woo creators away from competitors, as it did with the $20 million fund that rewarded newsletter authors who brought their built-in audiences to the platform. McKenzie, Best, and Sethi are now set up to continue those efforts — and Substack seems to be just getting started.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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Since the 2024 election cycle, much has been said about creators and the political power they possess. A new study, however, found that YouTube’s automated systems may be curbing that influence. A group of researchers led by Mert Can Cakmak of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock tracked recommended videos on YouTube Shorts and determined that the algorithm tends to steer viewers of political content toward more typical forms of entertainment.

The study required the classification of 685,842 videos to examine an experimental group of politically-charged uploads. The researchers then tracked more than 2,100 videos that touched on one of three categories: Ongoing territorial disputes in the South China Sea, the 2024 Taiwan presidential election, and more “general” topics (for the control group).

The researchers then simulated 50 video recommendations per clip across multiple viewership scenarios (i.e. the amount of time spent watching the initial video). For content within the politically-charged categories, recommendations tended to shift toward non-politicized entertainment, and the tone of the recommended videos shifted from “neutral or angry” to “joyous or neutral.”

Cakmak suggested that the YouTube Shorts algorithm’s recommendation choices are not informed by any sort of political animus, but rather by a potential engagement bump associated with positive content. “What YouTube is trying to do,” he wrote, “[is] remove you from that area or topic, and push you [to a happier] topic so that it can increase…engagement [and] earn more money.”

The algorithm’s apparent disfavor for political content is yet another hurdle for the young, motivated generation of creators who are looking to cover newsworthy topics. Those creators’ monetization struggles have become so pronounced that YouTube reportedly urged its moderators to ease up on sensitive cultural, social, and political topics. A recent study published by NeoReach found that news and political creators have the lowest average annual revenue among all surveyed categories.

Even though the evidence suggests that YouTube puts its thumb on the scales to limit the reach of political content, the platform is nevertheless a trusted news source for millions of its viewers. One gets the sense that YouTube’s decision-makers aren’t sure how to handle the complex political reality we live in, as evidenced by the repeated flip-flops on the subject of election denialism. If YouTube’s creator class is going to get involved in local and national politics, the platform itself needs to figure out its own role.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, Politics by Sam Gutelle
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We just wrote about Roblox‘s new initiative giving game developers the legal A-OK to make games based on blockbuster IPs like Squid Game, Stranger Things, Twilight, and Saw. We also gave some context around transformative works, and how fan projects have some copyright protection–but not enough to prevent attention if they’re raking in millions of dollars.

Basically, before Roblox’s initiative, if a fanmade game got big, the IP’s rightsholder had two options: (1) contact the developer and do a revenue-share deal directly, something that’s time-consuming and takes a lot of logistical effort; or (2) hit them with a cease & desist and get the game pulled down.

With the new deal, though, rightsholders can now use Roblox’s platform to leave fanmade games live, and take a share of their revenue. In theory, this should smooth the rightsholder/fan creator relationship, protecting creators from potential litigation and letting them keep their passion projects alive for other fans to enjoy.

In practice, though, things might get a little more complicated.

See, Roblox isn’t the only game creation platform doing these kinds of deals. Fortnite also did a deal for the rights to Squid Game–a deal that, like Roblox’s, would give creators permission to make games/experiences based off the hit South Korean IP. It would also introduce official Squid Game-themed assets for creators to use in their games.

But after the deal was sealed, fans who’d already made and published Squid Game-themed islands on Fortnite, like the creators of Squid Guys and Octo Game 2, saw their projects deleted.

That’s because while Netflix has agreed to let creators make stuff based on Squid Game, they’re not allowed to publish anything until Aug. 14–almost two months after the show’s third and final season aired. So, creators of previously published games effectively have a two-month ban, and creators of new projects have to wait till that date and hope the Season 3 hype hasn’t entirely died down.

The only Squid Game game available on Fortnite right now is Reload, which is not a fan project; it was produced in-house by Fortnite owner Epic Games‘ development team.

An Epic Games spokesperson told Digiday the Aug. 14 date was deliberately chosen to give creators time to build islands before the release of Squid Game assets. We’re not sure how much sense that makes, since creators would need to use the assets during the building process. And we also all know how quickly digital creators can move. Had Netflix/Epic allowed immediate game creation after the release of Season 3, there would likely be dozens of games already bringing in players (and revenue for both Netflix and Epic).

The spokesperson added that Epic has “heard feedback” about creators’ concerns, and said it plans to lift publishing holds earlier for future IP deals.

“A staggered publish date gives creators time to build unique and high-quality gameplay experiences in Fortnite, and is consistent with our most recent IP collaborations. We want creators to find success that outlasts a show’s launch weekend or any other singular moment,” they said. “While ‘Squid Game’ season 3 remains in the No. 1 spot for non-English shows globally, we hear the feedback from the community and going forward we’ll aim to lift publishing holds so they align with what works best for creators and players.”

Right now, it’s not clear whether Netflix plans to let previously published islands (the aforementioned Squid Guys etc) come back online, or if it’s only giving approval to new games. Roblox’s program appears to be retroactive.

As Digiday notes, this crackdown has made Fortnite creators nervous about making fan projects of owned IPs like Five Nights at Freddy’s. Creators like Tom Jank told the outlet this situation has made them want to focus entirely on their own original IP, so they don’t risk their games being deleted.

Roblox creators haven’t seen similar crackdowns on games made with the IPs covered in its new initiative—at least, not yet. From our perspective, the smartest move for rightsholders is to leave fan projects on both Roblox and Fortnite up and let them keep drawing thousands of players. Doing so will tap a fresh stream of passive revenue (after all, IP owners don’t have to do anything to build or maintain these games; they’re free and positive publicity) and keep creators’ good will. That’s a priceless commodity these days.

Filed under: Fortnite, Homepage Feature, Roblox by James Hale
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IShowSpeed is currently on a world tour, taking his 42 million YouTube subscribers, 38 million Instagram followers, and 1.1 million Twitch followers around the globe. He’s hitting major countries, hosting livestreams showing what it’s like to visit–and droves of his fans are tuning in. A recent stream from Turkey brought ~437K concurrent viewers on YouTube and ~48K on Twitch, making Speed the most-watched live creator on both platforms simultaneously.

Basically, he’s bringing a lot of eyes everywhere he goes. And at least some of those eyes belong to potential tourists who might want to follow in his footsteps.

So, with that in mind, countries are paying Speed to pay them a visit.

Regions like Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have paid him €30,000 each (around ~$35K USD) to make them a stop on his tour, local press LRT reports. €20,000 of that goes into Speed’s pockets, and the other €10,000 funds logistics during his visits.

The money comes from countries’ taxpayers, and is disbursed through their tourism efforts. In Lithuania, for example, Speed’s visit was arranged for and paid by official tourism promotion agencies Go Vilnius and Travel Lithuania.

These agencies say investing in visits like Speed’s is part of the constant battle for tourists’ attention.

“Every destination is fighting for the attention of the same travelers,” Kaarel Kõvatu, Tourism Marketing Project Manager at Estonia’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Foundation, said. “We always take the opportunity when Estonia is featured in the plans of an influencer with a very large following.”

The investment seems to be paying off, too. We have the aforementioned Turkey numbers, and in Estonia, Speed’s July 15 stream got nearly 2 million viewers, Kõvatu said. Whether those viewers will translate into tourism dollars (er, Euros) remains to be seen.

Either way, though, in this industry, we’re used used to entities like brands paying creators for their endorsement and audience reach. It simply comes with the territory. But entire countries banding together to invite creators? That’s new, and shows just how much influence influencers really have these days.

Filed under: Creator, Homepage Feature by James Hale
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The latest news coming out of Netflix HQ reveals a clear trend regarding the streamer’s recent output: South Korea is so hot right now.

In one sense, that assertion is nothing new. Korean TV, films, and pop music have influenced global culture since the days of Oldboy and Girls’ Generation, and international distribution of Korean properties ramped up during the COVID-19 pandemic, when shows like Squid Game filled a void created by delayed production schedules.

Speaking of Squid Game, the dystopian thriller’s ongoing success is the main piece of evidence supporting the theory that Korean originals represent Netflix’s past, present, and future. According to data shared by Nielsen, Squid Game was the most-watched streaming original during the first half of 2025 and the ninth-most watched program of any type on streaming. Hwang Dong-hyuk’s magnum opus achieved those blockbuster numbers even though its hotly anticipated second season premiered a few days before the start of Nielsen’s H1 2025 measurement period.

Let’s move from the past to the present and talk about KPop Demon Hunters. The genre-bending animated film, which borrows from pop music and action cinema, has been a smash hit since its June 20 premiere. It’s not just a mainstay on Netflix’s ranking of its ten most popular films — it’s also a dominant force on the pop charts. The lead single from the film, “Golden,” hit #1 on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs Global Chart. KPop Demon Hunters is also making its mark on the Billboard Hot 100, where seven of its songs simultaneously held spots.

Bolstered by hits like KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix enjoyed a viewership boost in the latest edition of Nielsen’s The Gauge report. That uptick may have inspired the platform’s next move, which involves — you guessed it — more Korean content.

Physical 100, one of the aforementioned Korean-language pandemic breakouts, is going overseas. The competition contested by burly celebrities and athletes has been picked up for international editions in the U.S. and Europe.

Netflix’s Korean feeding frenzy is following viewership trends, but it’s also affording the streamer another opportunity to compete with YouTube. Some of the biggest YouTube success stories are now moving to Netflix, and Korean cultural touchstones are the latest example of that trend.

YouTube has been a major exporter of Korean culture ever since Psy danced his way into global consciousness. Even as viewership shifts to Shorts, Korean channels like KIMPRO are still topping YouTube viewership charts. Netflix is doing whatever it can to get a piece of that traffic, even if that effort requires it to hunt demonic boy bands.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, Netflix, News by Sam Gutelle
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When ChatGPT first hit the creator space, it seemed like it might be another fad. We’d just been through crypto and NFTs in rapid succession, and in both cases purveyors had sworn they heralded a new age of content creation–that web3 flashes in the pan like fan tokens and CryptoZoo were going to become an integral part of our world, making it easier (supposedly) for creators to monetize content and connect with fans.

But, they didn’t.

Generative AI, however, looks like it’s sticking around. It arrived on the scene with similar promises, but unlike crypto and NFTs, which were never embraced–let alone endorsed–by major platforms, gen AI has gotten a seal of approval from the big-tech owners of YouTube and TikTok, and has become a ubiquitous presence in our industry. Creators hear it from everyone: they should be using gen AI to improve production process speed and cost-saving.

The marketers who do their selling on creator-driven platforms are hearing the same thing. And they’re listening.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau‘s 2025 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Full Report, 30% of digital video ads are currently made with or “enhanced by” gen AI tools. That’s up from 22% last year.

In 2026, we can expect nearly 40% of the ads we see online to have gen AI involvement.

86% of companies told the IAB they either already do use gen AI or are planning to use gen AI to build their video ads. Their top two reasons for using it? (1) to create different versions of the same ad to target different audiences, and (2) to make “visual and style changes.”

The IAB asserts that gen AI tools “become more valuable [to marketers] when buyers have already solved for reaching the right audience first.” So these tools won’t take over the entire pipeline; marketers still have to know who their buyers are (and hope those buyers aren’t turned off by their use of AI).

At the same time, IAB CEO David Cohen said gen AI is “[transforming] the economics of advertising.”

“As the costs of production fall, the opportunities for advertisers multiply,” he said.

Advertisers intend to exploit those opportunities outside of browser and mobile ads. If you’ve been following YouTube’s updates, you know the platform is now the #1 most-watched connected TV destination in the U.S., beating all streaming services and TV networks for watch time. To, well, connect with these many living room viewers, YouTube has been increasingly rolling out more TV-specific ad formats.

Marketers told IAB they want in on connected TV, with 74% saying they have built or intend to build internal teams specifically to secure living room spots.

While much of the content watched on TV is VODs, marketers are also looking at live and sports content, the report added. A third of marketers said they want platforms like YouTube and Twitch to offer inventive, digital-exclusive ways to weave brand content into interactive experiences during things like livestreams.

“Buyers are excited about sports and other live content coming to streaming,” Chris Bruderle, the IAB’s VP of Industry Insights & Content Strategy, said. “They expect to see new and better capabilities than they can get in linear.”

Where does all this leave us? With gen AI as an inextricable part of digital content, apparently. While this data is about marketers, their usage of gen AI reflects what’s happening in the creator industry. Long-established creator services companies like RHEI (formerly BBTV) and Spotter have turned quickly to build their businesses around gen AI products for creators–and now, more and more creators are using those tools in their content and talking them up in biz dev chats. Just look at MrBeast‘s AI thumbnails and Colin & Samir talking about how AI is “powering” production.

So yes, gen AI is going to be used in 40% of digital ads in 2026. That number is big. But we’re guessing the amount of digital content produced with AI over the next 12 months will be astronomical.

Filed under: Homepage Feature by James Hale
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As creators embrace data-driven approaches to video production, YouTube is equipping them with enhanced insights about their titles and thumbnails. Google’s video platform is expanding the size of the experimental group for a “test and compare” feature that brings A/B tests to YouTube Studio.

According to the YouTube Help page that lists ongoing tests and experiments on the platform, YouTube is “starting to experiment” with title and thumbnail tests by opening up the comparative option among “a small percentage of creators.” Despite the novelty of the experiment, this product isn’t exactly new. YouTube announced A/B tests for thumbnails at VidCon in 2023, and the corresponding rollout began in 2024.

A/B tests for titles and thumbnails meet the demands of creators who are looking to optimize their videos in search of the highest possible viewership. Specifically, robust thumbnail testing is a strategy favored by MrBeast, who built A/B tests into his analytical platform ViewStats.

MrBeast’s findings regarding thumbnails have been massively influential on YouTube. Though he was not the first creator to drill down into thumbnails in search of the most clickable designs, his signature approach to thumbnails is often imitated on the platform where he has more than 400 million subscribers. Even when MrBeast changes his thumbnails to account for his latest research, many other creators quickly follow suit.

ViewStats gave the ordinary creator access to the secret sauce that informs MrBeast’s ideas about thumbnails, and that functionality is now being built into YouTube Studio. It’s not the first time that a product championed by MrBeast has received official support from YouTube; he has long been a proponent of automated language dubbing software, and he worked with YouTube to develop a first-party version of that tool.

There’s still at least one burning question about the new options in the “test and compare” tab: Is YouTube too late to get into thumbnail tests? MrBeast is already employing AI to take some of the guesswork out of thumbnail generation, much to the chagrin of the humans who are involved in that process. A tidal wave of backlash led MrBeast to remove AI thumbnails from ViewStats, but their widespread adoption may be an inevitability. In that ecosystem, YouTube’s A/B tests could be doomed to obsolescence.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, YouTube by Sam Gutelle
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