TOGETHER WITH

It’s Wednesday, and engineer-slash-YouTuber Tom Stanton has at last realized his years-long dream—by literally breaking the sound barrier.

TRUMP TV

The stream: As Donald Trump faces a media blockade, he’s counting on YouTube to keep him on air. A “Trump TV” stream went live on the White House YouTube channel hours after five major news organizations united against the President.

Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, and CNN took Trump off their airwaves after he barred Politico, MS NOW, and CNN from the White House press room. In a joint statement, the news organizations said that “the public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government.”

Trump TV is the President’s response to that embargo. White House Head of Digital Strategy Kaelan Dorr described the stream as “the Administration’s greatest hits, unfiltered”—but so far, the public hasn’t shown much interest. Since its launch, Trump TV’s concurrent viewership has stayed below 10,000.

If the White House aims to up those numbers, turning Trump TV into a space for creator collabs may be its next step. Right-wing influencers have had White House access since the start of the President’s second term, and they’ve kept their credentials even as traditional news outlets have faced bans. Four days before launching his YouTube stream, for instance, the Trump administration solidified its alliance with Logan and Jake Paul by inviting them to speak to troops at the Pentagon.

The future: Regardless of whether Trump TV welcomes creator partners or continues to air reruns, its debut leaves YouTube in a complicated position.

Mainstream news outlets may be taking a stand against the White House’s power play, but YouTube, like other major social media platforms, has largely continued to play ball with the Trump administration.

With Trump TV now drawing comparisons to state-run media channels in authoritarian dictatorships, is there a point at which YouTube will fight for the freedom of the press by shutting it down?

With a fan-free environment and exclusive insights from 70+ industry leaders, VidSummit is a biz dev conference like no other—and this year’s event is less than a week away.

At VidSummit 2026, TikTok’s Global Creator Education team will show you how to unlock new revenue from an audience of over 1 billion global users without creating twice as much content.

Here’s what to expect from “Make It Your Way: One Calendar, Two Platforms, More Reward”:

On October 1, TikTok’s Education team and a panel of elite creators will provide an exact blueprint for…

Ready to learn the secrets to TikTok success from TikTok’s top experts?

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

GOSPEL STATS 📈

MrBeast has topped Gospel Stats’ Weekly Brand Reports for a month now, and he shows no sign of stepping down anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean this week’s rankings are all business-as-usual.

This is our first Gospel Stats Brand Report since YouTube introduced its first-frame view metric, and we can see it in the numbers. There’s a general rise in viewcounts across the board, with over a dozen sponsored videos hitting eight-figure counts and several hundred snagging one million views or more.

🥇 #1. MrBeast Gaming x MrBeast Lab: Worlds Largest Minecraft Build! (44M views)
Minecraft has maintained its spot as a top game across video platforms for the last fifteen years, and people are still finding new things to build in 2026. This week, MrBeast used his secondary channel to spotlight some of the biggest Minecraft builds in the world (and promote his MrBeast Lab toy collection in the process).

🥈 #2. Dr Insanity x SimpliSafe: Rich Mass Killer Realizes She’s Been Caught 8 Years Later (34.7M views)
Dr Insanity’s latest chart-topper makes a compelling argument for the value of a solid security system. Using police footage, the true crime creator chronicled a four-person homicide—and then presented SimpliSafe’s personal security product as a way to keep viewers safe from similar crimes.

Of course, SimpliSafe isn’t just relying on one creator to reach viewers. Altogether, the brand paid for almost 20 videos this week.

🎰 #5,231. Samantha x Ninja: With special guest: @theninjakitchen CrushBOSS #NinjaPartner #NinjaCrushBOSS (39K views)
Consumers eager to see Ninja’s new CrushBOSS blender in action don’t have to look much further than this Short from vlogger Samantha. But if they want to anyway, Ninja also sponsored videos from FutureCanoe, Dylan Nalbandian, and smoothieflip.

Check out the full branded ranking here and head over to Gospel Stats for more YouTube sponsorship insights.

AI WAVE

The report: According to Comscore, ChatGPT is still the most used AI chatbot in the U.S.—but its competitors are gaining fast. The media measurement firm found that ChatGPT now accounts for half of the “prompt volume” across the chatbot landscape, while Google Gemini’s share is up to 30% and Anthropic’s Claude is up to 11%.

Comscore has long published rankings of the most-used online video destinations. Now, the media measurement firm is applying a similar framework to the world of LLMs. For its AI Intelligence Report covering the second quarter of 2026, Comscore used an opt-in panel to assemble a respondent base between 500,000 and 1 million users.

Among that cohort, ChatGPT’s market share fell 20% over the past half-year, with Google Gemini rising 13% and Claude up 9% during the same period.

The context: As ChatGPT nears its fourth birthday, consumers have become aware of the chatbot’s biases and are finding reasons to look elsewhere for answers. Google Gemini, meanwhile, has benefited from the proliferation of its search overviews, partnerships with influential creators like MrBeast, and OpenAI’s decision to shut down its video generation model, Sora.

Another particularly big change has reshaped the LLM landscape since the start of the year. Answer engine optimization (AEO) has gone from a curiosity to a preferred marketing strategy that gives brands more visibility in chatbot results—and creates noticeable differences among LLMs that used to be more interchangeable.

That’s why Michael King, the Founder and CEO of the agency iPullRank, recommends a more targeted approach to chatbot marketing. According to King, it’s time for publishers to “stop asking ‘how do we show up in ChatGPT’ and start asking ‘where is our audience actually asking questions, and are we showing up there.’”

WATCH THIS 👀

The Map Men: Edutainment channels often top the charts on YouTube, but while hubs like Kurzgesagt cover everything from genetic engineering to exploding elephants, the Map Men offer viewers a narrower scope of knowledge.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, maps are at the center of the duo’s channel—and their 1.8 million subscribers can’t get enough of their geographic know-how.

While the Map Men often go a month or more between long-form uploads, almost every video on their channel has snagged over one million views. Their latest—a deep-dive into the impossibility of creating a global language map—has collected over 2 million views in just 24 hours. Check it out here to beef up your world trivia skills.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.