News

• YouTube’s now counting public views from the “first frame,” hoping inflated numbers will help creators negotiate brand deals
• Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: MrBeast and the Mouse

  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.

  
• Top 50 Most Subscribed YouTube Channels Worldwide • Week Of 08/16/2026

  The most popular games on YouTube are the ones with the clearest connections to animals. Don't believe me? Check out Mewitto.

  
• Top 50 Most Viewed YouTube Channels Worldwide • Week Of 08/16/2026

  Tera Trigun is an Indian creator who has a short wife. He's managed to put that fact at the center of a leading YouTube Shorts channel.

  
• As YouTube airs Eurovision, TikTok brings back in-house music contest
• What happens when a content creator sponsors a NCAA team–and becomes its official media partner? Cullen Honohan is ready to find out.
• Creators rely on brand deals, but worry about the “tension” between sponsors and viewers–and just 15% say they fully trust sponsored content from other creators
• Have you heard? Kurzgesagt is not AI, John Nellis goes dancing, and Baby Shark’s K-pop idol.
• As social media lawsuits move forward, is Section 230 facing an existential threat?
• The World Cup put creators on the broadcast. Can KSI replicate that strategy for the club he co-owns?
• Spotify is cracking down on AI slop, but prompters can still post their generated music if they build a personal brand around it
• OnlyFans investor says it will “never use AI in any capacity to disrupt creators”
• Influencer endorsements have created a campaign finance loophole. A proposed law would close it.
• How do brands maximize Meta Partnership Ads? Agentio says that an “infinite creative engine” helps.
• By premiering Ziwe, Brave Wildnerness projects at TIFF, YouTube moves closer to film and TV
• “If it was opt-in, nobody would opt in”: Twitch auto-enrolls all streamers in having their content scraped for Amazon LLM training
• Spotify is turning Twitch into a distribution point for its video podcasts
• Super Cooper: Unwell’s podcast empire soars to $500 million valuation after strategic investment
• What can AI do for you? Facebook’s relaunched Creator Studio aims to answer that question.
• Are creator AI disclosures going to be a thing?
• Thanks to ReelShort and Arizona State University, you can now go to college for microdramas
• Kick believes its new ads can be a “direct line to Gen Z”
• X replaces revenue sharing model with new program centered around original content
• Can Zoom use creator partnerships to adjust the information served up by AI chatbots?