WHO AM I?

My name is Scott Brown, founder and CEO of Second Rodeo, and I have been telling stories on YouTube since it was a dating site. For the past 15 years, I have built my career, serving as a producer, writer and director for some of the biggest names in the industry. I’ve crashed a train with MrBeast, launched The Rock’s YouTube channel, and directed an Emmy-nominated series with Larry King. But through all the stunts, shows, and subscribers, I’ve been waiting for one thing to finally break through online: scripted storytelling.

That moment has arrived.

But let’s take a look at how we got here.

YOUR WEB TV HISTORY LESSON

Half of you may not remember Web TV but I certainly do–the halcyon days of 2008. Simpler times. I had just graduated from USC with a degree in screenwriting. Just in time for the writer’s strike that year. Perfect timing. I found work at a company cataloging online video via manual data entry. It led me to discover this thing called “web series.”

With all the spare time on their hands, many big writers and directors had turned to the internet to express their creativity. Many budding storytellers followed in their wake. Back then, there were meetups hosted by this very publication. It felt like TV—but new. There were web series like Felicia Day’s The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris. It felt like something big was coming. But for most, it never quite arrived.

There were some breakout successes: Issa Rae, Derrick Comedy, and Good Neighbor all found their way to television. But there were just as many false starts. Companies like Sony Crackle, YouTube Originals, and Quibi tried to make scripted digital work. Many projects never got off the ground. Many talented, hardworking people never saw their scripted careers materialize.

Now, after nearly two decades of trying to get it right—we are finally on the brink of something incredible.

THE TWO PILLARS OF THE SCRIPTED DIGITAL BOOM…SO FAR

The creator economy grows seemingly exponentially every year, with its influence and revenue greater than ever. Where once digital was seen as an outside force to support legacy media, we’ve seen a reversal—legacy being metabolized by digital.

And yet, the vast majority of creator economy content is unscripted. Jimmy Donaldson AKA MrBeast is on the record in numerous podcasts making it an important point that his content is not scripted. Creators care deeply about authenticity, and so do audiences, but modes of authenticity are expanding.

In more recent years there have been two sectors of digital that herald the moment I have been waiting for: A sustained audience desire to consume scripted entertainment on digitally native platforms; and creators and channels that produce scripted work consistently, that perform extremely well on major platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.

On YouTube, you have creators like Dhar Mann, Alan Chikin Chow, and Kinigra Deon. Dhar produces five episodes weekly and earns billions of views monthly. Alan has a universe of characters. Kinigra’s movie-esque content is watched most on the YouTube TV app. If you look deeper, there are numerous relatively new channels on YouTube following their lead, making scripted content with 100K+ views and viral hits in the millions.

Beyond YouTube, we have TikTok shows like The Group Chat by Sydney Jo Robinson, that quickly went viral, with the first episode gaining over 30 million views.

These platforms are taking notice. YouTube recently announced its TV app will allow creators to present videos in intended order—perfect for serialized storytelling. The writing is on the wall.

We also have vertical microdramas. While scripted content is gaining traction across platforms, a second major pillar of the boom is quietly thriving: vertical microdramas. In 2024 alone, they generated over $1 billion in U.S. revenue—a number expected to double in 2025.

They’re often called vertical microdramas, but I prefer “vertical series”—because I believe nearly every genre will soon thrive in this format.

If you’re unfamiliar, these shows originated in China, where they recently out-earned the country’s entire box office. Think of them as 90-minute movies, broken into 75-second vertical episodes.

Their monetization model borrows from mobile gaming: the app is free, the first handful of episodes are free, and then viewers pay per minute to continue. And people are paying. Globally, these apps now generate $1.7 billion, with the U.S. accounting for roughly 60% of that total. By the end of a series, a viewer might spend $15–25—without any A-list talent or existing IP. (Though some vertical actors now command six-figure salaries.)

It mirrors the early studio system: high volume, actors on contract, and tight, low-six-figure budgets.

Critics often knock the quality—but beneath the low-production polish, there’s real screenwriting craft. Audiences are hooked by the fast pace, wild twists, and emotional urgency. And we are already seeing media companies like Televisa enter this space. With revenue in the 9-figure range for some of these companies, it would make sense that major streamers would be looking at this soon too.

This summer, Second Rodeo Productions released a vertical series of our own, The Diamond Rose, on the app My Drama, among the leading distributers of vertical series. We were given something rare: a high degree of creative control. Our goal: give the audience what they love—elevated in ways they feel. So far the response has been strong and data from My Drama indicates audiences are responding to the thesis.

If audience behavior continues to grow in this sector, I think this will be one of the most exciting places for filmmakers in the entertainment industry. It is my hope that like the other scripted digital content being made across the internet, we are in the early days of this vertical medium. It’s not TV on our phones. It’s something new.

And with it, a sustained audience behavior and organic drive to consume and pay for digitally native scripted stories.

THE NEW RULES OF DIGITAL SCRIPTED

It has always been true that digital stories fail when they try to just take TV and put it on the internet. That is just as true today. I’ve worked on scripted stories across many formats—web series, shorts, digital originals, and I can tell you: the fundamentals haven’t changed. Our goal should be to transpose the values of film and TV into this new medium. A few rules hold true:

• Meet the Audience Where They Are – The most successful of these series give audiences what they crave, in the style and format they gravitate toward.
• Data and Intuition Go Hand in Hand – The best creators use both algorithms and instinct. Data provides a framework, not a prescription.
• The Cadence of Digital – TikTok and YouTube have trained audiences to expect constant stimulation. The best storytellers deliver frequent entertainment while building long-term payoffs.
• The Tools of Speed – Tropes and genre are shorthand that engage viewers fast. They’re powerful when paired with originality.
• Give Them More – Audiences want rich, emotionally satisfying, time-respecting stories. If you deliver that, they’ll binge 50 one-minute episodes.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR ALL CREATORS

I have a firm belief that the word “creator” will soon mean anyone telling any kind of story. The creator economy will again be seen for what it truly is: a broad, interdisciplinary movement of people making things that matter.

As this space evolves, I think three key attributes will define all scripted creators:

1. Format Fluency – Understand the language of the medium. YouTube, TikTok, vertical apps—each has its own grammar.
2. Audience Empathy – Know who you’re making stories for. Social platforms are a powerful feedback loop.
3. Creative Authenticity – You have to show the world some real part of yourself. Even if they don’t always get it, with persistence they will.

When film started, Charlie Chaplin was falling down a lot. Not too long after, he was making The Great Dictator and performing one of the greatest monologues in movie history. He was also still falling down, still entertaining millions. We are in the early days of the scripted digital boom. It will be fascinating to see where we go.

IN CLOSING

There’s a song I love by LCD Soundsystem called “Losing My Edge,” about the fear of losing relevance as one gains years. By many measures I’m a veteran in digital. But like the words in the song, through all the ups and downs, “I was there.”

And I’m still here.

And here is now a home for scripted stories. A place where storytellers can find audiences not just waiting–but clamoring for more. A hopeful place–a shelter from the tumult of the rest of the entertainment industry–creatively vibrant, financially exciting. A scripted boom in digital is happening.

So to any creative person with a story in their heart, now I say:

Welcome home.

Now, let’s get to work.

Filed under: Homepage Feature by Scott Brown
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A solution to TikTok‘s problems in the U.S. seems to be on the horizon, with a buyer group lined up and a new regional app slated for debut in September.

Its problems in Canada, on the other hand, may be far from over.

Following a 2024 investigation by the federal Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Industry in Ottawa, TikTok has been ordered to shut down Canadian operations due to national security concerns.

As part of the wind-down, it just yanked sponsorship funding from a number of Canadian cultural institutions and events, including the Toronto Film Festival, the Juno Awards, and education charity MusiCounts. It’s also ended the National Screen Institute‘s TikTok Accelerator for Indigenous Creators.

TikTok had been sponsoring the Juno Awards since 2022, TIFF since 2022, and had provided $500,000 in funding to MusiCounts. The Accelerator for Indigenous Creators, meanwhile, worked with nearly 400 content-makers from Canada’s First Nations.

“The termination of TikTok Canada’s funding for cultural organizations like the Junos, TIFF and Adsiq is entirely due to the federal government’s order to shutdown TikTok Canada’s local operation,” Steve de Eyre, TikTok Canada’s Director of Public Policy & Government Affairs, said in a statement. “This harmful and misguided order not only eliminates funding for investments in Canadian culture and content creators–including programs like the TikTok Accelerator for Indigenous Creators–it also requires us to terminate hundreds of local jobs.”

To CBC, he added, “It breaks my heart that we’re being forced to cancel [these programs],” and said TikTok cannot commit to renewing partnerships while its fate is uncertain.

Much like it did in the U.S., TikTok is challenging the Canadian federal government’s cease-operations order in court, with de Eyre saying it’s offered to address security concerns with things like increased transparency about data handling. If its bid is unsuccessful, it’ll have to shut down offices in Toronto and Vancouver. (The TikTok app would, however, remain accessible to Canadian users; it’s just that TikTok wouldn’t be able to have local employees/offices/data centers.)

“We’re hopeful we can still avoid [a shutdown], but as it stands, there are starting to be real consequences,” de Eyre said. “We should be present, we should be investing in cultural organizations, we should have people who are accountable to Parliament, to regulators, to law enforcement. If there are concerns about security, let’s address them.”

The Canadian government is (perhaps unsurprisingly) much more close-mouthed about what it thinks of TikTok than the Trump administration is. However, it did say last week that it completed “a multi-step national security process” that found TikTok lacking–hence the stop order.

As things stand, TikTok is slated for Canadian shutdown. But if and when ByteDance finishes selling TikTok’s U.S. operations to Oracle et al., that might provide a path forward with our northern neighbor. Canada might accept a TikTok that isn’t owned by a Chinese conglomerate.

Then again, considering how tense things are between the U.S. and Canada right now, that deal might not make a difference.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, TikTok by James Hale
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Getting social media users to pay for verification is a great idea that works flawlessly all the time, right? Right?

Yeah, no. Paid verification was one of the most-hated elements of Elon Musk‘s Twitter takeover. It gutted Twitter’s original verification system, which gave checkmarks to people like politicians, celebrities, scientists and research institutions, and other recognized public figures. A checkmark meant the account was, in fact, owned and operated by the person it claimed to represent, so users could trust that tweets came straight from the source.

Musk’s new system, by contrast, allowed anyone to pay for a checkmark. Since every Betsy, Bob, and Joe with a phone number was able to pay for a checkmark to look official, the marks lost their meaning, and misinformation ran rampant.

Meta apparently took one look at that mess and thought, You know what? We should do that too.

It launched Meta Verified in March 2023, and admittedly did take security one step further than X, requiring users to send in a photo ID in order to get their checkmarks. But the base idea was still the same: Want to let followers know that you’re really you? Better fork over twelve bucks a month.

People who paid that fee got a checkmark, “proactive account protection from impersonation,” “dedicated account support from Meta’s team,” exclusive stickers for use on Instagram Stories and Reels, and 100 Stars a month to give to other creators on Facebook.

Those perks were apparently not enough to encourage the kind of creator uptake Meta was hoping for, because now, over two years later, it’s offering some creators one year of Meta Verified, for free.

Creator @ayfondo posted a screenshot on Threads showing Meta saying “valued creator[s]” can get Meta Verified for one year. That’s quite the lengthy free trial.

How could this pay off for Meta? First, the obvious: Some creators might like it enough to keep paying after the 12 months are up. There’s also the potential for Meta to count free users among its total Verified user base, making the amount of people using Verified look bulkier, though they still won’t add to its revenue.

How many people are already using Verified? Meta hasn’t publicly revealed that information, but Social Media Today estimates ~7 million, driving around ~$93 million in additional revenue per month, based on data from the company’s quarterly earnings. There’s no telling if those figures are accurate, but if they are, it would mean Meta is driving that much revenue from less than 1% of its user base paying for verification.

Creators, though, seem to be the target buyers, and in its message to “valued creator[s],” Meta doesn’t so much emphasize the prestige checkmarks once had attached to them. Instead, it hypes “enhanced support” from its team and promises protection from impersonation–an increasingly valuable service with generative AI running rampant.

Will creators take it up on the offer? That remains to be seen.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, Meta by James Hale
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Food & bev. Body care. Toys. These are some of the categories most popular with content creators who want to expand into products not directly connected to their social media accounts.

But Quackity‘s not entering any of them. Instead, his first major project is a real-time translation app aimed at helping streamers reach international audiences without learning to speak other languages.

The Minecraft YouTuber who was once part of Dream SMP has re-emerged after nearly three years of radio silence on his home platform to drop Dababel, which can translate conversations in real-time, while copying the original speaker’s voice.

That’s what sets it apart from other real-time translation services. Plenty of other real-time translation apps have been around for years, so Dababel’s claim that it’s the “first ever universal text and voice translation tool” is a little bit dicey. But it does make itself unique with voice replication.

And Quackity knows that: To promote his app, he got Breaking Bad actor Luis Moncada to sit down with his son, who only speaks English. Using Dababel, the two were able to have their first conversation in Spanish.

The clip lingers on Moncada as he cycles through surprise and delight, listening to Dababel’s recreation of his son speaking. “That’s amazing,” he says. “You’re going to make me cry. You gave me his voice, in Spanish. It touched my heart.”

 

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A post shared by quackity (@quackity)

All that heart-touching isn’t free, though–not for laypeople or streamers. Dababel has Conversation Mode, used for two people to talk back and forth, as well as Universal Mode, which allows for translation of both livestreams and VODs. Both of these, along with a Play Mode where users can hear their own voice in different languages, cost “credits” to operate.

Users get those credits by paying for subscriptions, which start at $9.99/week for individuals and up to $139/week for businesses.

Dababel’s website encourages creators to get in touch directly and says it offers a plan “tailored” for them that “includes all Dababel services, with higher limits and content-focused features.” There’s no pricing listed publicly.

That could be because Dababel doesn’t seem quite ready to roll out wide for streamers yet. Dexerto reports the app currently supports PC integration with communication platforms like Discord and Zoom, allowing live translation in calls (and, presumably, bigger broadcasts like those held in Discord’s Stage Channels). But support for OBS, the most-used streamer broadcasting software, isn’t available yet.

Also worth noting: The app’s website claims it lets users “speak any language instantly,” but right now only offers translation in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Japanese, or Korean. That’s two claims that aren’t quite as impressive as they first appear, so keen creators may want to keep that in mind.

Our take? People all over the world watch content, and platforms and creators are both increasingly looking to connect with audiences in different languages. YouTube has done this for VODs through things like subtitles and dubbing, but before Dababel, no solution had been designed for livestreamers.

Will this be the one? Maybe! It’s pretty pricey and currently offers just six languages. Its website doesn’t mention utilizing AI, but considering the real-time voice recreation, Dababel is almost guaranteed to be running on some sort of generative artificial intelligence, which might put some users off. But if it can add more languages and wrap into OBS with real-time, accurate translations that work, we can see streamers embracing it to reach regional audiences they otherwise would never have been able to speak to.

Filed under: Creator, Homepage Feature by James Hale
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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.

And so our bonus video pick turned out to be more prescient than we first thought. Like we mentioned in last week’s Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report, we picked a Dave Ramsey video as our bonus for the week of June 16, because we’d noticed his clips popping up more and more. Then, when we tallied last week’s list, Ramsey took spot #3. This week? He took spots #3 and #4, and by our count posted a total of over 30 sponsored videos this week. MrBeast is still in spot #1, of course…..but maybe not for long?

#1 Last Team Standing Wins $250,000
Channel: MrBeast Gaming
Brand: Epic Games
Views: 12,187,760

It doesn’t matter what channel MrBeast posts on–he’s pretty much always going to hit #1. While videos from MrBeast Gaming and other secondary channels don’t hit the towering view counts of his 410-million-subscriber main channel, they still put up some hefty numbers. Like this week’s gamer-bait upload, where four teams compete in rounds of Fortnite Reload to see who’s best at eviscerating their enemies. MrBeast Gaming tends to have slightly different content from the rest of his roster, in that competitors usually face off in the digital world, whereas competitions on his other channels usually take place IRL. But one thing’s still the same: there’s a massive cash prize for whoever comes out on top.

#2 #OldSpicePartner #ad When @oldspice stops u from sweating
Channel: Adam W
Brand: Old Spice
Views: 10,235,617

After hitting spot #1 with Adam W a couple weeks ago, meme-embracing deodorant brand Old Spice is back in his Shorts. And this time, they’re asking the age-old question: Is it better to flood an elevator with water, or B.O.? OK, we’re not sure anyone has ever asked that, but yeah, we’ll just spoil it. Water is the answer. Water is always going to be the answer. For Adam W and Old Spice, though, it’s not just water that’s filling an elevator, it’s the crisp clean scent of OS’s Fiji deodorant washing away Adam W’s funk. This minute-long Short is really just a 60-second ad, with a YouTuber’s creativity driving the message.

#3 Talk Me Out Of Buying A Super Car
Channel: The Ramsey Show Highlights
Brand: Yrefy
Views: 9,808,103

We all like to splash a little cash here and there. Buy a little treat. But things get real serious real fast when “a little treat” is a $250K supercar. For our first Dave Ramsey video of the week, a caller rings in asking whether he should buy a used Lamborghini Aventador. New, they can run around $500,000, but for a used one, it’s a cool quarter mil. Unlike many of Ramsey’s callers, this one doesn’t seem to be in financial distress; he does, however, have a nearly $800K mortgage, and Ramsey reps sponsor Yrefy, a student loan refinancing company, when he advises the guy to pay off that debt before he buys a new toy.

#4 There’s No “We.” It’s HIS Money
Channel: The Ramsey Show
Brand: Zander Insurance
Views: 5,705,690

Ramsey’s second clip of the week comes not from his secondary channel The Ramsey Show Highlights, but from his main channel The Ramsey Show. That’s the channel where episodes of his show are streamed in full, but like the highlights channel, it has a stock of Shorts racking up passive income for Ramsey through sponsorships and AdSense. In this clip–around the same length as the clip in spot #3–Ramsey advises a woman whose boyfriend is getting a half million-dollar settlement. The boyfriend thinks he should buy a house in cash; the caller thinks he should buy it with a down payment and mortgage. Ramsey’s advice takes a turn toward relationships as he reminds her that without a marriage, she’s not entitled to a penny of that settlement, and that she needs to “paint or get off the ladder.” Wonder if they’ll invite him to the reception…

BONUS #1,878 Will the Elden Ring movie FLOP?
Channel: Tulok & Mango
Brand: Squarespace
Views: 58,942

Elden Ring is getting a fresh wave of attention online after its DLC-that’s-really-a-whole-new-game, Nightreign, debuted May 30. Along with talk of the new co-op installment, there’s been talk of the recently announced Elden Ring film. It was picked up by internet-culture-savvy studio A24 in May, found a director in Alex Garland, and now is reportedly looking for a lead in Kit Connor, who’s perhaps best known for starring in Netflix‘s Heartstopper. Video game adaptations don’t have the best history in Hollywood, but this video from Tulok & Mango dives into what we know so far–and theorizes that the movie could, against all odds, end up being pretty good.

…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.

Filed under: Articles, Brands, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by James Hale
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Target is becoming quite the destination for creator products. It’s been the flagship destination for Ryan Trahan‘s Joyride (which is getting a big spotlight while Trahan travels the U.S., raising millions for St. Jude), and now it’s picking up AMP‘s personal care brand Tone.

AMP–aka Kai Cenat, Duke Dennis, Fanum, Agent 00, ChrisNxtDoor, and ImDavisss–launched Tone in February with a collection of body lotions, deodorants, and lip balms. Within three days, the brand (created in partnership with Dallas-based management company Night) had netted seven-figure sales.

To mark Tone’s nationwide Target debut, AMP is rolling out two new products: body wash and body mist, both in “Fresh, Citrus, Woodland and Coconut” scents.

Like most creator products, Tone started out DTC, for digital purchase only; this is its first time in an IRL retail environment. That move, the brand says, is strategic.

“Part of the Tone concept was a focus on accessibility, so being in brick-and-mortar where we can tell the story behind the brand and the product in a higher-touch way is important,” Nathaniel Weiss, Tone’s CEO and previous President of body care brand Nécessaire, told Women’s Wear Daily.

Weiss also talked up AMP’s strong presence on Twitch. Cenat is arguably the biggest creator on the platform, and the group is currently holding a monthlong subathon that’ll see them putting in some serious streaming hours. Together, they have tens of millions of followers across Twitch and YouTube, where they post high-octane sports collabs.

“The depth of connection between the viewer and the creator on Twitch is not like that of any other platform,” Weiss said. “Being streaming-native is, in some ways, just more intimate–there’s this constant, live reaction from the audience in the chat which creates a two-way dialogue; there are also people who subscribe and pay a certain amount each month to watch ad-free–it’s very different from other channels.”

AMP used Twitch to introduce Tone, and we’re guessing will give it big space during this fortuitously timed subathon, letting fans know they can pick up product at their local Target.

While food & bev remains the #1 category for creators expanding into products that aren’t strictly related to their channels, body care is on the rise. Just ask Jake Paul.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, Uncategorized by James Hale
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TikTok isn’t just getting a new owner–it’s getting a whole new app.

After receiving a third stay of ban from the Trump administration, TikTok appears to be on the verge of clinching a deal with a group of non-Chinese investors that includes Oracle, the software conglomerate that first surfaced as a potential owner in 2020.

As part of that deal, it’s introducing a new, U.S.-only version of the TikTok app this September, The Information reports. Dubbed “M2,” the app is intended to help assuage the U.S. government’s concerns about data security, people familiar with the matter said. TikTok will start nudging its ~170 million Stateside users to transfer to M2 Sept. 5, but will continue operating the original app until March 2026.

This is giving us flashbacks to musical.ly, the competitor app TikTok bought in 2017; less than a year later, it shut down the musical.ly app and pushed people over to the TikTok app, instantly bulking TikTok’s user base. Except in this case, TikTok stands to potentially lose some users. Not everyone will cross the attention span/convenience friction boundary of transferring their login credentials to a new app; others may blink when the OG app finally shuts off, realize just how much time they’re spending there, and try for a detox.

Either way, the move-over will whittle TikTok’s user base somewhat–but not enough to affect it in the long run.

We’re not surprised current owner ByteDance went with this setup. After all, it already operates a single-region version of TikTok: Douyin, which was designed for users in mainland China. This is just Douyin for the U.S., and though at debut M2 will probably look pretty identical to M, over time TikTok U.S. might introduce region-locked features or even monetization that will make it a more distinct digital locale.

Speaking of ByteDance, while this deal will have it divest primary ownership, transferring control to Oracle et al., it won’t be completely uninvolved. The Information reports it will retain a minority stake, allowing it to continue profiting from U.S. operations.

According to Donald Trump, the deal is “pretty much” done–but to be sealed, it must have approval from the Chinese government. And we’re not sure if you’ve heard, but the Chinese government hasn’t been too happy with Trump’s administration of late. Still, it’s more likely than not that the deal will go through, bringing this long saga to a close.

Here’s a timeline of just the last few months:

• Dec. 2024: With TikTok’s ban looming, the incoming Trump admin asks for a delay
• Jan. 18, 2025: The TikTok app briefly goes offline with dramatic messaging, is removed from U.S. app stores
• Jan. 20: On his first day in office, Trump signs an executive order giving TikTok 75 additional days to find a U.S. owner
• Mid-February: TikTok returns to app stores
• March: Trump tariffs kick in, scuppering a potential deal
• June 17: Trump admin announces it will extend TikTok’s ban once again
• July 4: Trump tells reporters on Air Force One that a deal is close to being clinched

Filed under: Homepage Feature, TikTok by James Hale
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Amazon is going for the throat amid uncertainty at TikTok Shop.

To mark its annual deep-discount shopathon Prime Day, the ecommerce giant is offering influencers up to double commission through its affiliate program. That means the thousands of content creators who recommend products to their viewers using official Amazon affiliate links could be raking it in if all those eyeballs convert to cash.

Adweek reports these high commissions will be in place July 1-20. That’s a wide window around Prime Day, which started as one day in 2015, then went up to two days. This year? For the first time, it’s up to four days: July 8-11.

Creators won’t get big commissions for every product. Amazon’s only giving them out in 13 popular categories, like beauty, home goods, cooking/dining, and toys/games. Like we mentioned above, some categories offer double commission, like jewelry (which is going from 4% to 8% of each sale) and power tools (from 3% to 6%), but some have smaller bumps, like beauty (10% to 12.5%) and toys/games (3% to 5%).

Still, every increase is more money in creators’ pockets…and, of course, more incentive for them to really push those Amazon links.

“Amazon offers a variety of creator incentives during and around Prime Day, as well as during other key shopping moments throughout the year,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “Some of these incentives include increases on the standard rate card, bounties, and gift cards. Creators work hard in the lead-up to Prime Day, and these are just some of the ways we can reward their commitment.”

Amazon hasn’t been putting quite as much oomph into attracting influencers as, say, TikTok Shop, but as the internet’s undisputed king of consumption, it still churns out millions of creator-driven sales. It’s been making other moves in the creator space, and this commission top-up might be signs of bigger things to come.

Filed under: Amazon, Homepage Feature by James Hale
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There’s a popular sentiment in the floundering video game industry right now: It doesn’t matter if you make a bad game or a good game. It doesn’t matter if your game makes money or doesn’t make money. Either way, in either case, you’re getting fired, not because you underperformed by any normal person’s standards, but because the corporate developer you worked for wants to rehire lower-paid staff for the next title, and cut costs in the interim.

That sounds an awful lot like what’s happening at TikTok Shop right now.

The ecommerce hub is the fastest-growing part of TikTok’s business. With it, ByteDance has finally managed to replicate a portion of the social shopping success it’s had with Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sister app.

And though some sellers are anecdotally reporting that they’ve seen a drop in sales over the past couple weeks, TikTok Shop is still churning out billions of dollars in sales. Orca, an ecommerce startup focusing on helping digital content creators sell through TikTok Shop, has by itself sold over $100 million in the last 12 months.

But despite continued sales, TikTok is implementing yet another round of layoffs, cutting U.S.-based Shop staff for the third time in three months.

“As the TikTok Shop business evolves, we regularly review our operations to ensure long-term success,” a TikTok spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We’ve made the difficult decision to adjust parts of our team to better align with strategic priorities.”

TikTok wouldn’t say how many staffers were laid off, or at what level. Bloomberg reports that the layoffs are due to Shop falling short of internal sales targets, and says the company has been simultaneously replacing U.S.-hired staff near Seattle with managers in China.

TikTok hardly ever discusses things in hard numbers, so we’ll probably never know what TikTok Shop is actually selling vs what company execs expected it to sell.

What we do know is that all this is happening while TikTok is still on the ban chopping block. The Trump administration recently extended its stay-of-ban again and says a Stateside buyer has been approved, but is waiting for the Chinese government to give the OK. That uncertainty might be a contributing factor here, but from the outside, it looks like ByteDance is mostly trying to save a buck.

Filed under: Homepage Feature, TikTok, TikTok Shop by James Hale
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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, one creator got back on the job market, another got a deal for her movie, and a third got some chicken in an unexpected location.

Creator commotion

Pirate Software is out at Ludwig’s Offbrand Games. The Blizzard alum turned Twitch streamer, whose real name is Jason “Thor” Hall, chose to leave Offbrand after his dissenting opinion on the “Stop Killing Games” movement caused critics to review-bomb Offbrand’s Rivals of Aether 2. Ludwig already shut down Offbrand’s events wing to focus on game publishing — so what happens next?

Kai Cenat talked to Eric Adams about another NYC giveaway. The Mayor of the Big Apple told Cenat that he could do a giveaway “the right way” after the streamer’s 2023 Union Square event ended in chaos and arrests. To set the record straight, can we get Zohran Mamdani’s stance on future Kai Cenat giveaways?

Nonstop Dan’s Kuwait Airways vlog turns into a fracas. Representatives for the airline demanded that Dan delete his footage after he was accosted by flight staff for recording mid-flight. Even if Kuwait Airways gets its hands on that footage, something tells me they won’t come out of this situation looking like the heroes.

Pop culture minute

Lilly Singh is Doin’ It with a theatrical deal. The creator-turned-director premiered her debut feature at SXSW. In September, Doin’ It will get a nationwide theatrical run thanks to a distribution deal with Aura Entertainment. YouTube’s favorite Superwoman is showing the world that her powers are not limited to the internet.

YouTube-born IP Lostlings is getting developed for television. The TalesVision channel is a hub that puts a digital spin on the traditional pilot process. Clearly, there’s something to that idea, because Lion Forge Entertainment has agreed to develop a series based on a TalesVision-incubated young adult concept.

Creators are starting to contribute to local TV broadcasts. A station in L.A. has added some creator collabs to its lineup. With the way creators are evolving news coverage, this trend feels inevitable, but it’s still nice to see influencers becoming more than just the subject of local news.

The biz

MrBeast, meet Nick DiGiovanni. Nick, meet Jimmy. One of the most popular and active chefs on YouTube has joined Feastables as an official brand partner. Leveling up a notable creator snack brand seems easy enough, but teaching MrBeast how to cook? Now that’s a challenge of epic proportions.

The VTubers of hololive are heading to Kura Sushi USA. The chain known for its conveyor belt-based service has new menu items and merch designed in collaboration with some of the world’s biggest VTubers. Between this partnership and an upcoming return to Dodger Stadium, hololive is fully committed to its westward push.

Here’s why retailers are launching their own creator programs. Modern Retail has published interviews with execs from Best Buy and Lowe’s, both of which have ramped up their creator partnerships. Best Buy CMO Jennie Weber said “the market was moving in this direction,” while Lowe’s CMO Jen Wilson noted that “creators are often more trusted than brands.”

Platform headlines

YouTube wants to turn audience loyalty measurements into the hot new metrics. That’s why a “viewer segmentation” option is replacing the “returning viewers” figure on the platform’s analytics dashboard. This is yet another step in YouTube’s plan to focus on sustainable viewership rather than cheap hits.

Substack doubles down on live video. Newsletter creators who go live will be able to better promote their streams to followers while also integrating their live content into YouTube Shorts. I don’t know if this will make Substack the next TikTok Live, but it certainly expands the platform’s capabilities as a source for breaking news.

TikTok is making younger consumers more interested in luxury brands. Here’s a tip for strapping young lads who want to live it up: As a start, stop buying stuff from Temu and Shein.

The internet is a strange place

AMP’s summer subathon involves a private Nando’s. The creator group is hosting its month-long bash at the Texas mansion of former NBA star Tony Parker. One of the accoutrements inside the Frenchman’s pied a terre is a fully-stocked Nando’s location, complete with all the peri-peri chicken six hungry creators could ever want.

Adding insult to injury: Korean creator deletes YouTube channel after losing fight. Stand-up comedian Yoon Hyung-bin defeated creator Banzz in an MMA match, and thanks to the terms of a bet, Banzz must delete his YouTube channel. His two million subscribers are probably wishing he’d kicked and punched a little harder.

Persona 5: The Phantom X won’t let you name characters after certain streamers. Want to traverse an RPG world with Asmongold and HasanAbi at your side? Well, too bad. If you name your Persona character after those controversial lightning rods, the game won’t let you proceed. You can try Twitch Plays Pokemon instead.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News by Sam Gutelle
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It would be nice to live in a world in which creators only upload original content, but since we don’t live in that fantasy land, YouTube is making some changes. The video platform is tightening its enforcement of its monetization guidelines to crack down on channels that specialize in “mass-produced or repetitive” content.

YouTube announced the new enforcement parameters via a bulletin on a page dedicated to tracking platform-wide policy updates. Per the bulletin, which was posted at the start of July, creators are required to publish “original” and “authentic” videos if they wish to reap revenue from the YouTube Partner Program.

More details can be found on the page that lists YouTube’s channel monetization policies. Creators who reupload content from other sources will need to “change it significantly” to comply with YouTube’s terms. Videos must also possess clear value for viewers to be eligible for monetization. “Your content should be made for the enjoyment or education of viewers, rather than for the sole purpose of getting views,” reads the policy page.

In a tweet, YouTube clarified that repetitive, mass-produced videos have always been ineligible for the Partner Program. The main change here concerns the platform’s enforcement of its policies, which will be enhanced by technological updates.

Much of the coverage surrounding the policy update has centered on the reaction genre, which has long been criticized as a glorified form of content piracy. But in the opinion of someone who peruses hundreds of low-effort channels while compiling our Tubefilter charts, fans of SSSniperWolf can rest easy. I don’t think this change is aimed at reaction channels; it has everything to do with YouTube Shorts.

YouTube loves to tout the high viewership and cultural impact of its TikTok-style format. At the recently-concluded Cannes Lions festival in France, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan revealed that Shorts now averages 200 billion views per day.

That’s a jaw-dropping number, but what is the quality of those views? Each week, our YouTube viewership rankings are filled with channels that peddle the exact sort of mass-produced and repetitive videos YouTube is trying to bar from monetization.

New Man Magic (pictured above), which finished 30th in June’s Global Top 100 after adding nearly 1.7 million monthly subscribers, gets millions of views on reuploaded videos whose titles are changed to shill for a product called the “VitaWear Smart Band.” On the more repetitive side of things, there are channels like Oren Shorts, which added nearly 1.2 million monthly subscribers in June to finish 69th in the Global Top 100. Almost all of the top-performing Oren Shorts videos have the same title, and they share the exact same premise: Italian Brainrot characters traversing endless-runner mobile games.

The problem of Shorts spam has become so severe that there are now guides showing creators how to profit from short-form reuploads. YouTube has protected rights holders for nearly two decades with its Content ID system. Now, it needs to step up its enforcement to ensure that violative channels can’t make a quick buck from piracy.

Filed under: Articles, Featured, Homepage Feature, News, YouTube by Sam Gutelle
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[Tubefilter Charts is a periodic rankings column from Tubefilter with data provided by GospelStats. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a top number ranking of YouTube channels based on statistics collected within a given time frame. We use data directly from YouTube and in terms of subscribers, YouTube rounds that data to the first three significant figures. Check out all of our Tubefilter Charts with new installments every week right here.] 

Scroll down for this week’s Tubefilter Chart.

Last month, Masters of Prophecy outpaced MrBeast to take the #1 spot in our Global Top 100 subscriber rankings. In June 2025, however, the Masters were unable to fulfill their destiny, and MrBeast reclaimed the top spot after adding 11 million new subscribers during the month.

You have to go to 16th place before you find the highest Indian channel in the ranking (and yes, it’s T-Series). Even if India is not as frequently represented among the uppermost channels in the Global Top 100, the world’s most populous nation is still making its mark on YouTube. Allow me to elaborate:

Indian creators are all about the in-jokes

Even though there are no Indian channels among the top 15 finishers in the Global Top 100 for June, the South Asian nation still dominated the chart in terms of sheer numbers. Nearly one-third of the 100 channels that got the most subscribers in June hail from India, making it the most represented country in the ranking.

When you take a look at some of the Indian channels that are making their mark in the charts, a hypothesis for the uneven distribution begins to take shape. The top-performing Indian creators are doing incredible numbers domestically, but they aren’t focusing as much on viewers from other countries. That theory would explain why Indian channels are big, but not that big.

That philosophy is a departure from the mindset of a typical Top 100 hub. U.S.-based channels like Alan’s Universe (#28 in the Global Top 100) and iShowSpeed (#39) have catalyzed rapid growth by making videos that still make sense when translated into other languages and presented to other cultures. After all, why seek viewers from one nation when you can seek viewers from 200 nations?

Indian creators like Sejal Gaba don’t think that way. Gaba is 61st in this month’s Global Top 100 thanks to the 1.2 million new subscribers she added during June, and few of her videos appeal to viewers outside of the Indian diaspora. If you don’t know what “khadoos” means, you’re going to be out of the loop on Gaba’s most-watched Short, even if you can still enjoy the silly scenarios and over-the-top acting. (A khadoos bride is basically an Indian version of the bridezilla.)

Part of the reason why this approach works is because of ongoing investment in Indian content. The Modi government has pledged $1 billion to support homegrown creators, many of whom — like Gaba — operate out of regional cities and small villages. YouTube has offered its own support via a $100 million capital injection announced earlier this year by CEO Neal Mohan.

Those investments lead to financial security for many Indian creators, who gain the freedom to pursue passion projects without fear of alienating viewers. Gaba now has 16.4 million subscribers hanging onto her hyper-localized content.

Another Indian YouTube star, Tera Trigun, is enjoying an uptick of his own. With skits that appeal predominantly to Indian tastes, Trigun added more than 1.2 million new subs during June while also boosting his weekly viewership to unprecedented heights.

Data via Gospel Stats

If money continues to flow into the Indian creator economy, these kinds of numbers will become even more commonplace. The Sejal Gabas and Tera Triguns of the world may not be able to keep up with MrBeast’s subscriber rate, but they’re taking up more and more space in the Global Top 100, and the rest of the world is taking notice (even if we don’t get the jokes about khadoos brides).

Channel Distribution

Here’s a breakdown of the Top 100 Most Subscribed channels this month in terms of their countries of origin:

• India: 32
• United States: 23
• Hong Kong and Spain: 4
• Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam: 3
• Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and Ukraine: 2
• Argentina, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, China, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Peru, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom and Uzbekistan: 1

This month, 81 channels in the Top 100 are primarily active on YouTube Shorts.

As always, keep up to speed with the latest Tubefilter Charts and all our news by subscribing to our newsletter. You’re going to love it. 👉  Newsletter.Tubefilter.com.

Filed under: Articles, Homepage Feature, statistics, YouTube, Youtube Chart by Sam Gutelle
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