James Hale

• Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: It’s like if your dad watched The Amazing Digital Circus
• YouTube joins Mark Rober’s $55 million mission to help teachers spread the good word of STEM

  Rober unveiled Class CrunchLabs last year on Tubefilter's own Creator Upload podcast. He'd mentioned the project vaguely before our episode, but during his chat with COO Joshua Cohen and co-host Lauren Schnipper, he got into the deets.

  
• Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: Big views

  This week's Gospel Stats Brand Report is four Shorts and a long (chosen by yours truly). If anything's a sign of the times, it's that. We've officially arrived at a time where brands are paying creators for punchy, 60-second content--and creators are using the same format to advertise their own products.

  
• Expedia’s newest campaign tells travelers they can go global just like IShowSpeed

  The Travel Like Speed YouTube ad (which follows Speed on adventures across the U.S., accompanied by an Expedia-branded mannequin who's a stand-in for the viewer) links out to Exspeedia.com, a dedicated map that shows global destinations and activities Speed experienced. Tap on a locale, and you'll see photos of Speed at the site along with recommendations for travelers who want to follow in his footsteps.

  
• Twitch says its ads–both pre- and mid-roll–aren’t getting longer. Viewers say otherwise.
• Second Rodeo’s Scott Brown says a new age of creator-fronted scripted content is here–and vertical microseries like Playback are leading the charge
• Starbucks and its barista-creators are piloting TikTok’s new custom ad networks
• Forbes’ latest top 50 creators list has arrived–and for the first time, these movers and shakers collectively made over $1 billion in a single year
• Netflix just picked up a Hot Ones spinoff–and Will Ferrell is its first guest
• A new class-action lawsuit accuses Gymshark of telling creators not to disclose ads
• Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: Yeah, it’s all AI
• Standing in line at the Albertsons deli? P&G might show you a microdrama episode