TOGETHER WITH

It's Thursday and according to The Wall Street Journal, an “AI-first mentality” is coming to a Pizza Hut near you. Do you want a side of breadsticks with that?

BY THE NUMBERS

“Oops”: Discord accidentally racked up 1.4 billion YouTube views in 24 hours

Discord’s April Fools’ Day joke has turned into a much bigger prank than anyone anticipated—including Discord itself.

The video: On April 1, the platform uploaded a 17-second YouTube video advertising the launch of (totally not fake) loot boxes, which viewers were encouraged to claim by clicking a link. The gag: that link led straight to a clown icon.

The fallout: Discord’s mischievous video was one of several branded pranks to hit YouTube on April Fools' Day. But while prankish videos from Razer and Duolingo gathered a few hundred thousand views, Discord’s racked up hundreds of millions within hours.

• By nightfall, that loot box video had smashed YouTube’s 24-hour non-music-video viewership record (previously held by MrBeast and then the GTA 6 trailer). By the morning of April 2, Discord’s clip had claimed over 1 billion views and a #1 spot on Trending.
  
  

• The (hypothetical) reason for that virality: According to YouTuber The Horizon and software developer Marvin Witt, something went wrong in Discord’s code when it linked the YouTube video back to its own platform. As a result, the clip looped in the background of every active user’s session over and over. As for Discord’s response?

Why it matters: Regardless of the reason for Discord’s record-breaking view count, YouTube’s response to the event will set a precedent—especially if the prank video served ads while looping unseen in the background of users’ Discord sessions.

• Tubefilter has reached out to both Discord and YouTube. Two questions still linger: Will Discord get to keep its impressive view count? And, more importantly, will YouTube have to repay advertisers for 1.4 billion views’ worth of unseen marketing?

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

Breeze: Creator Funding That Keeps More Money in Your Pocket!

Breeze is the creator-friendly solution to funding. With AdSense-based cash advances from $50,000 to $25 million, Breeze puts more control in the hands of creators and more money in their pockets.

🔍 No hidden fees, no tax-season stress: With Breeze, capital advances are 100% tax-free—meaning no unexpected fees when tax season comes around.

• Plus, the fees you pay back to Breeze are tax-deductible, meaning more earnings stay in your pocket and less go to uncle Sam.

💸 Keep the upside to your channel’s growth: Breeze’s fixed-fee model and flexible payback schedule mean you aren’t locked into a long-term partnership that could eat away at your profits over time.

• Best of all: with Breeze, creators never have to license their catalogs, commit to perpetual royalties, or sell equity. 

🔥 Fair, simple funding: Breeze doesn’t meddle in your business. Creators who work with Breeze always maintain full creative control over their content. That means you can invest in your channel however you’d like!

From start to finish, you’ll always know exactly what to expect. That’s why creators who partner with Breeze return for future capital needs.

Calculate Your Offer Today →

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has revealed the full agenda for the 2024 NewFronts, which will return to New York from April 29 to May 2. (Tubefilter)
  ​

• A recent report from eMarketer predicts that creator earnings from sponsored content could reach $8.1 billion in 2024. (Tubefilter)

• Newly-announced “Podcasts For You” shelves will offer personalized show recommendations in the home feed on YouTube’s mobile app. (Tubefilter)
  ​

• Facebook users in the U.S. and Canada now have access to a “fullscreen, vertically oriented” video feed with major TikTok FYP vibes. (TechCrunch)

COLUMNS • CREATORS ON THE RISE 📈

This creator is reminding mothers “that they’re actually people” (and saving Mother Earth in the process)

How it started: Meredith Masony enjoyed teaching P.E.—she really did. But after 13 years on the job, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to “play dodgeball with ninth graders” for another decade. Especially since she’d only recently been given a “second opportunity” at life.

• Masony was around 34 when she started feeling seriously sick. Several months and an endoscopy later, she was diagnosed with an esophageal tumor.
  
  

• The tumor itself turned out to be benign—but the surgery to remove it came with a long recovery. And while Masony was “lying in the hospital bed,” she “made this oath” to herself:

How it’s going: From folding laundry on Facebook Live to posting about the ups and downs of motherhood on TikTok, Masony has spent the last eight years fulfilling that promise. She now owns a wash-and-fold laundry service and shares “unfiltered” life updates with over 3 million followers on Facebook, 660,000 on Instagram, 350,000 on TikTok, and nearly 100,000 on YouTube.

What’s up next: After two years of development, Masony just launched her own plant-based laundry detergent sheets—and she has big hopes for the future of her detergent brand, The Laundry Lady:

DATA • MONTHLY U.S. TOP 100 📊

From Roblox to nursery rhymes, Gen A made its mark on the charts last month

The monthly recap: From March Madness to MrBeast’s $100 million Amazon deal, last month proved to be a wild time for the creator economy. Jesus climbed the charts, Mark Rober built a Nerf gun-equipped wheelchair, and a YouTube channel hit a quarter-billion lifetime views for the first time ever.

• But amid all that craziness, one enormous group of Roblox-playing, CoComelon-loving viewers still managed to make their voices heard: Generation Alpha.

🥇 The victor: Gen A’s impact on social media trends grows stronger by the day—and Roblox-inspired channels like Rainbow Friends Fans are reaping the benefits. The colorful Shorts channel rose from #13 to #1 in our monthly U.S. ranking over the course of just 30 days (and scored 2.3 billion views in the process). If that doesn’t demonstrate the power of YouTube’s youngest viewers, we don’t know what does.

🥈 The show runner: Rainbow Friends Fans was the only U.S. channel to top 2 billion views in March, but MrBeast still managed to make a serious impact on YouTube. In between scoring 1.92 billion monthly views and landing a spot at #2 on our U.S. Top 100 chart, the serial challenger revealed his plan to bring a record-breaking game show to Amazon Prime Video—the kind that comes with a $5 million grand prize.

🥉 The Pied Piper: CoComelon – Nursery Rhymes is on the edge of breaking a record of its own. After picking up 1.8 billion monthly views in March, the kid-friendly hub is likely to become the first U.S.-based YouTube channel with at least 180 billion lifetime views by the end of April.

WATCH THIS 📺

This “Transition Chef” is blowing minds across TikTok

The viral sensation: 163 million views might seem like a lot for a clip of a sugar-coated bundt cake—but on Nikolai Savic’s channel, nothing is just a piece of cake.

• The Transition Chef’s ability to seamlessly turn powdered sugar into snow-capped peaks and salt into stars frequently leaves his comment section awestruck (and usually arguing over which clip constitutes Savic’s best transition yet).
  
  

• Check out the creator’s “hottest meals” here.

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.​

Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.