Did Honey hoodwink top YouTubers?

The web's stars have (allegedly) been scammed.

TOGETHER WITH

It’s Friday and as the year of AI comes to a close, we’re looking back on the most ridiculous viral deepfakes of 2024. Dinosaur croissants, anyone?

Today’s News

  • ️‍🍯 A scam sends shockwaves through the creator economy

  • 📱 Bluesky beefs up its list of features

  • 🏎️ Top Branded Videos: Supersonic Nerf darts and tiny homes

  • 🤑 Nearly half of all streaming services turn to ads

  • 👀 Is Google’s text-to-video AI better than Sora?

CREATOR COMMOTION

A YouTuber’s exposé just uncovered a shocking influencer marketing scandal

The scandal: After spending millions on creator partnerships, Honey is facing major backlash from influencers and users alike. According to an exposé posted by YouTuber Metalag, the Paypal-owned browser extension has been scamming its partners and customers by manipulating the affiliate system and colluding with sellers.

The allegations: Honey claims to save consumers money by finding coupon codes and applying them at checkout—but Metalag’s video tells a different story. The YouTuber alleges that Honey manipulated the last-click attribution model to reroute affiliate commissions through its own links, giving it the ability to claim commissions even if a creator’s endorsement led to the purchase or no discount codes were applied at all. According to Metalag, Honey also colluded with sellers to dupe customers by ignoring bigger mark-offs while pushing coupons of lesser value.

Those details are alarming enough, but Metalag says he plans to reveal “an even darker side to PayPal’s scam” in a follow-up that will be posted “soon.”

The response: Several of Honey’s former partners have responded to the scandal in horror and surprise, with YouTubers like Moist Cr1TiKaL deeming the extension the “biggest scam in YouTube history.” But not all creators were left stunned by Megalag’s exposé.

Markiplier, for instance, explained his reasons for refusing a Honey sponsorship in 2020, when he said he had a “natural distrust” of the brand due to its suspicious financials. Other creators caught on after partnering with Honey. In 2022, Linus Media Group Head of Business Development Colton Potter wrote that Linus Tech Tips had “ended the partnership with Honey due to the way their service interacted with affiliate links.”

The question: As evidenced by the fall of the Russia-backed influence operation Tenet Media, creator naivete about partners’ true intentions can have widespread ramifications. So, as Hank Green asked in response to MegaLag’s video, ”How responsible should creators be for understanding the business models of the companies that they do brand deals for?”

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

Girls That Invest: Simran Kaur Built a 7-Figure Biz on Kajabi—and Revolutionized Finance in the Process

The entrepreneur: Simran Kaur breaks down barriers in the male-dominated world of finance—and makes 7 figures doing it. Her company, Girls That Invest, has one of the top global business podcasts, one of the world’s largest investing newsletters for women, a best-selling book, and an online investing course with thousands of students. 

The all in one platform: With all those moving pieces, Simran knew she needed to host her digital products somewhere she “could manage the website, products, marketing, and customer relationships from one dashboard.” Her platform of choice: Kajabi.

Kajabi is a creator commerce platform that helps entrepreneurs turn their knowledge, passions, and experiences into digital products that they own 100%.

The results: Since switching to Kajabi, Girls That Invest has increased enrollment by 50% and earned $1M in annual revenue.

Simran’s company has now generated over 10M podcast downloads and enrolled 7,000+ women in online investing courses. So, what’s her advice to up-and-coming creators?

With Kajabi, you’ll build a business that’s completely your ownand keep 100% of the revenue.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

DATA • GOSPEL STATS 📈

Top Branded Videos: Supersonic Nerf darts and a doggie dream home

For the second week in a row, science experiments and DIY builds are at the top of Gospel Stats’ ranking of most-viewed branded YouTube videos. We can’t say we’re surprised: after all, viewers seem to have an ongoing obsession with dangerous projectiles and tiny homes (especially when there’s a furry friend involved).

🥇 #1. Mike Shake x KiwiCo: How Dangerous is a Supersonic Nerf Dart? (6M views)
STEM experiments often top Gospel’s list of top branded videos and this week is no exception. Italian tinkerer Mike Shake showed off the perilous potential of Nerf Darts in a video that was not, in fact, sponsored by Nerf. Instead, Shake’s high-stakes stunt got financial backing from KiwiCo, a creative subscription service for kiddos.

🥈 #2. MSA previously My Story Animated x Infinity Nikki: He Found Me Playing His RIVAL! (5.2M views)
MSA’s latest anime-inspired visual narrative is more than just the story of star-crossed rivals—it’s also a promo designed to nudge viewers into the world of Infinity Nikki. The fifth installment of the free-to-play adventure series just hit the iOS and Android app stores at the start of December, which is probably why its publisher is doubling down on YouTube advertising.

🥉 #3. HAUS PLANS x Great Stuff: We Built a Tiny Home for Our Employee and Sealed It Up with @greatstufffoam Wide Spray (4.7M views)
Long-form creators like Shake and MSA aren’t the only ones linking up with brands on YouTube. As advertising continues to mature on Shorts, vertical video creators are taking up more space in Gospel’s weekly reports—including HAUS PLANS, a general contractor with an adorable canine “employee” and a recent partnership with Great Stuff.

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

THE BIZ

Nearly half of all streaming subscriptions are now supported by ads

The stats: When streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ first launched, their ad-free nature was a big selling point—but by 2022, both services had introduced ad-supported tiers. While advertisers were initially skeptical about that change, viewers embraced the lower-cost options.

The proof is in the pudding: during the Mouse House’s Q3 2024 earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed that “60 percent of all new subs are buying our streaming services’ advertising-supported [options].” Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing gave some subscribers an additional push toward ad-supported streaming. As of November 2024, Netflix with Ads is up to 70 million monthly active users—an increase of more than 100% from the start of the year.

The domino effect: While Disney has been relatively hush-hush about its ad-supported gains, Netflix’s outspoken success contributed to a significant rise in the adoption of ad-supported tiers between 2022 and 2024. The percentage of ad-supported subs went up for the fifth quarter in a row in Q3 2024, at which point 43% of all streaming subscriptions were supported by ads (per market data firm Antenna). That’s a 15% rise from Q3 2022, when just 28% of streaming subscribers had turned on ads.

Free, ad-supported TV (FAST) services are growing, too. As more and more consumers look to save money during an economic downturn, FAST hubs like Roku and Tubi have begun attracting millions of new viewers—and industry leaders are taking notice.

WATCH THIS 📺

Google’s Veo 2 might need to brush up on copyright law (but it gets an A in physics)

The review: Google announced the latest model of its artificial intelligence video generator Veo 2 less than two weeks ago, and Marques Brownlee, Andrew Manganelli, and David Imel are already giving viewers an inside look. In a new clip uploaded to YouTube, the three Waveform hosts shot a few prompts at Veo 2 to see how it stacks up against OpenAI’s Sora model.

Brownlee, Manganelli, and Imel’s first prompt asked the model to generate “a humanoid sponge living in a pineapple at the bottom of the ocean.” The resulting video offers a pleasingly realistic rendition of bubbles…and a cartoon character that looks a little too much like everyone’s favorite burger-flipping invertebrate. The Waveform hosts’ consensus: Veo 2 might have Sora beat when it comes to physics, but it probably needs to take a second look at copyright law.

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