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Today’s News

INDUSTRY BUZZ

IAB is giving creators their own upfronts

The big event: Every year, the NewFronts give brands and agencies the opportunity to buy ads on digital-native content. In 2026, the Interactive Advertising Bureau will offer creators a chance to join in on the fun with a new CreatorFronts event.

According to the IAB (which has organized the NewFronts for more than a decade), that NYC-set event will connect brands “with creator-led solutions grounded in authenticity, culture, and influence.” In other words, creators will pitch their upcoming programming to attending advertisers, who will have the chance to go into business with the tastemakers who best fit their brands.

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because Spotter gave creators like MrBeast, Dude Perfect, and Kinigra Deon their own upfront last year, in the form of a presentation series that coincided with the TV industry’s upfronts blitz.

The details: The 2026 CreatorFronts is IAB’s answer to that event. Though the participating creators haven’t yet been announced, we know that the event will take place on September 15 (about six months after the height of upfronts season).

To be clear, the CreatorFronts won’t replace the NewFronts, which will return to the Big Apple from March 23-26, 2026. That’s earlier than its usual May timeframe at the beginning of traditional Upfront season. The IAB says the calendar shift is so it can “better align with annual planning and investment cycles” of brands and advertisers.

So, to complement its first-quarter gathering, the IAB is assembling a three-day fall lineup that will include the CreatorFronts on the 15th, the company’s Podcast Upfront on the 16th, and its gaming-oriented PlayFronts on the 17th. The biannual model will allow the Bureau to account for the “always-on nature of digital investments,” according to IAB CEO David Cohen.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• CreatorWeek Macao—a festival, fan interaction, and biz dev event designed to be creators’ “gateway to the booming Greater China market and beyond”—will run from October 24-28. (Tubefilter - Partner Story)
  
  

• A new “likeness detection” tool will help creators in YouTube’s Partner Program find and request the removal of “content where your face may have been altered or generated by AI.” (The Verge)
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• A Los Angeles judge has ordered Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel to testify in a trial focused on the addictiveness of social media algorithms. (Engadget)
  
  

• Netflix told investors on Tuesday that it is “very well positioned to effectively leverage ongoing advances in AI.” (TechCrunch)

GOSPEL STATS 📈

Top Branded Videos of the Week: MrBeast, sunken cities, and fried rice

Jimmy Donaldson is once again at the top of Gospel Stats’ Weekly Brand Report—and this time, the man behind MrBeast Labs is joined by another creator with an experiment-focused toy brand: CrunchLabs founder Mark Rober. Further down the rankings, Uncle Roger would prefer Jamie Oliver stop experimenting with fried rice. (Although viewers don’t seem to mind.)

🥇 #1. MrBeast x Feastables, Costco: 100 Kids Vs World’s Strongest Man (97.8M views)
MrBeast’s Feastables brand is a frequent backer of its founder’s YouTube content. This week, however, the snack company wasn’t the only sponsor supporting MrBeast; instead, Feastables joined forces with Costco, a brand it recently partnered with for the launch of a minis variety bag. The timing of that team-up is no surprise: Feastables has spent the past few months releasing new product after new product, and getting a high-profile placement in Costco ahead of Halloween will undoubtedly help pad the brand’s profit margins.

🥈 #2. Mark Rober x CrunchLabs: Uncovering America’s Underwater City (12.4M views)
For his latest CrunchLabs-sponsored video, Rober reminded viewers why he’s one of the biggest science guys on YouTube. With help from some sophisticated equipment, the former NASA engineer explored Folsom Lake, the site of a town that was destroyed by a fire in 1856 and later flooded by the Folsom Dam Project.

🎰 #11. mrnigellg x ExpressVPN: Jamie Oliver DESTROY FRIED RICE AGAIN (3.4M views)
Uncle Roger‘s takedowns of Jamie Oliver have become the stuff of legend, and unlike Gordon Ramsay, Oliver has apparently learned nothing. His newest recipe is “Korean fried rice,” made with American barbecue sauce and (unwashed) basmati rice. Understandably, Uncle Roger’s ExpressVPN-sponsored response video was punctuated by some choice words and a healthy amount of disgust.

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

FIGHT CLUB

A creator boxing event set a Kick record with 4.6M concurrent viewers

The big event: A record-setting influencer boxing event shows that Kick still has a fighting chance in the streaming industry. Stream Fighters 4—which was organized by creator Luis ‘Westcol’ Villa and held on October 18 in Colombia—reached a peak concurrent audience of 4.6 million viewers. That’s the most traffic ever registered on a Kick stream.

With its mix of live music, in-arena entertainment, and public creator showdowns, the Stream Fighters series resembles other major influencer boxing events. Its last edition, Stream Fighters 3, set a new high-water mark for the series by gathering 1.7 million viewers—but the fourth installment outdid that sum more than two times over. Four million of Stream Fighters 4’s concurrent viewers were attributed to Westcol himself, with a few other broadcasters making smaller contributions to the record-setting tally.

The context: In terms of peak numbers, it’s clear that Kick still trails its competition. (The biggest Hispanic influencer boxing event in streaming history, for example, is Ibai’s Velada del Año, which attracted twice as many concurrent viewers as Stream Fighters 4 during its latest run on Twitch.)

Even so, Kick’s current outlook is rosy. The streaming hub has uplifted creators big and small, and has turned those investments into unprecedented platform-wide viewership. During Stream Fighters 4, for instance, Kick briefly had more active viewers than Twitch and YouTube.

The upstart platform celebrated that moment with a victory lap on social media, but it will still need to address viewbotting allegations and safety concerns if it hopes to build on the momentum created by Westcol’s influencer boxing event.

WATCH THIS 📺

John Oliver is talking about Air Bud (again)

“Air Bud Pt. II”: Long-time Last Week Tonight fans will know that John Oliver has some intense feelings about a certain children’s film franchise: Air Bud. His original dissection of the nearly thirty-year-old IP has snagged over 5 million views on YouTube since going live three years ago.

Now, Oliver is back at it with “Air Bud Pt. II”—and 2 million people have already tuned in to discover what else he could possibly say about a sports-savvy canine whose puppies eventually fly to the moon. Apparently, the answer is “a lot,” because Oliver’s latest Air Bud-themed video clocks in at 20 minutes long.

Check it out here to see why the host thinks he deserves a role in the next installment of the franchise (which, coincidentally, is set to arrive next year).

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