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It’s Wednesday and YouTube is empowering Premium subscribers to skip to the good part (with a little help from AI).

GET IN THE GAME 🎮

Need a reason to get into game advertising? IAB has 40 pages worth:

The “first large-scale quantitative analysis” of game advertising has arrived.

The subject: That’s how the Interactive Advertising Bureau describes its latest study, which offers 40 pages of statistics and analysis related to game ad spend—a sector that’s caught the attention of industry power players.

• Advertising in video games is on the rise. 📈 The industry is expected to level up 40% this year $8.5 billion and hit $11.5 billion by 2027.

• According to the bureau’s findings (which were revealed at the IAB PlayFronts), 86% of brands and marketers think video game advertising is of growing importance. 40% plan to increase their budgets over the next year. 
  
  

• 50% of brands who consider gaming to be its own channel spent $2 million or more on game advertising last year. (Check out our full article here for more info on that qualification.)

The context: Those stats make it clear that game ads are becoming an integral resource for brands. But what makes the gaming sector so appealing?

• For one, game ads reach young viewers in a way that isn’t always possible for more traditional media. According to IAB, 90% of Gen Z and 94% of Gen A play video games.

  
  

• Brands and advertisers have clearly picked up on that benefit: 90% of surveyed brands told IAB that gaming is effective at targeting hard-to-reach audiences, while 78% of advertisers said game advertising is “good or excellent” at building brand awareness.

The big picture: According to IAB Senior Vice President of Research & Insights Jack Koch, brands “can no longer afford to ignore” gaming as an advertising medium—but that doesn’t mean the channel is without its pitfalls. As companies devote more resources to game ads, they should be aware that the field still falls “behind other digital media channels concerning ease of buying and planning” and “additional effort” may be required to generate positive results (per IAB).

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

March Madness and Beyond: These 3 Viral Nation Basketball Stars Are Changing the Game on and off the Court

As March Madness kicks into high gear, basketball fans are coming to social media for game highlights and analysis—and staying to keep up with their favorite online stars. 

Here’s how 3 Viral Nation stars keep viewers immersed in basketball culture all year round:

🎬 Anthony Hamilton Jr.
From co-founding The Dunk Collective to acting in White Men Can’t Jump 2, former college baller Anthony Hamilton Jr.’s exciting career and motivational content have earned him the undivided attention of a brand-safe audience of 1.44M TikTok and Instagram followers.

🤣 Larry "Bone Collector" Williams: The Streetball Icon
Streetball legend Larry Williams has contributed tremendously to shaping basketball culture—including as a trainer to celeb clients like Drake. By partnering with Williams, brands gain an opportunity to produce iconic streetball content and engage audiences during major events.

🏀 Chris Staples
Former Harlem Globetrotter Chris Staples entertains 2.46M cross-platform followers with slam dunk challenges, comedic Shorts, and collabs with NBA players like Paul George. Last year, he repped the USA in the 3×3 FIBA World Cup Dunk Content and served as a brand ambassador for Playmaker.

Hit the link below to find out how your brand can link up with Viral Nation’s roster of 900+ top creators:

Team up with Viral Nation →

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Federal authorities reportedly asked Google to turn over viewer data on specific videos as part of an inquiry into a Bitcoin vendor—a request that has raised concerns from privacy advocates. (Tubefilter)
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• TikTok could face a suit from the FTC over claims that it allegedly “misled its users by stating falsely that individuals in China do not have access to U.S. user data.” (Engadget)
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• Documents released by a California federal court appear to show efforts by Facebook to “intercept and decrypt the network traffic between people using Snapchat’s app” in 2016. (TechCrunch)
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• Elon Musk announced yesterday that Premium subscribers will gain access to the X’s AI chatbot, Grok, by the end of the week. (TechCrunch)

DATA • GLOBAL TOP 50 📈

Meet the very first YouTube channel to score a quarter trillion views:

For the first time in history, a YouTube channel has topped 250 billion lifetime views.

The channel: That record-breaking achievement belongs to T-Series, an Indian record label that frequently snags the #1 spot in our weekly Global Top 50 charts. T-Series (which describes itself as “India's largest Music Label & Movie Studio”) has been a Bollywood staple for decades now, making it a go-to channel for fans of some of the world’s biggest actors.

• High-production music videos featuring stars like Shah Rukh Khan routinely draw in tens of millions of views—often within a matter of days. This teaser for the hit 2023 film Jawan (pictured above) has collected nearly 360 million views all on its own.
  
  

• Given that T-Series has uploaded at least 140 videos every month for the last year, it’s not hard to see how the channel achieved its record-breaking view count.

The views: T-Series’ combination of highly anticipated movie trailers and star-studded music videos has earned it more than 260 million subscribers—not to mention sole membership in YouTube’s quarter-trillionaire club.

• The label claimed that status during the third full week of March by bringing in a whopping 578.7 million weekly views.
  
  

• That number pales in comparison to T-Series’ March total, which has already passed 2.3 billion views.
  
  

• Those kinds of stats are nothing out of the ordinary for the Bollywood chart-topper. T-Series has scored at least 2 billion views every month for the last three years.

DOWN TO A SCIENCE

Common Sense Networks is joining forces with a Roblox publisher to keep gaming ads kid-friendly

Companies convinced by the IAB’s game ad study can find expert support through “a new initiative that enables brands to connect with young audiences on a global scale in safe and suitable ways across major gaming and video platforms.”

The partnership: Two industry power players are at the center of that initiative. As Roblox continues to establish itself as a touchstone of Gen A culture, Common Sense is teaming up with Roblox Partner Program member Super League to introduce brand safety measures to game-based campaigns across “Roblox, Fortnite Creative, Minecraft, YouTube, TikTok, and beyond.”

• Both companies bring impressive resources to the table: Common Sense will lend a comprehensive suite of data and distribution tools to the partnership, while Super League plans to leverage its sandbox expertise to help advertisers access the top 100 maps on the Fortnite Creative hubs and more than 3,500 Roblox experiences.

The big picture: Super League and Common Sense’s partnership comes at a crucial turning point in the advertising world. Advertisers like Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media have found that Roblox-based campaigns deliver the same level of buzz as a $60 million initiative.

• As the IAB pointed out, much of the buzz generated by game ads comes from hard-to-reach audiences—especially Gen A and Gen Z consumers. By helping brands connect with those users in age-appropriate ways, Super League and Common Sense are tapping into a platform that “captured Gen Z’s attention for more minutes per day than TikTok did in 2023” (per 11:11).

WATCH THIS 📺

Wisdom Kaye is a style icon in every era (even the prehistoric ones)

The creator: There’s a reason Vogue deemed Wisdom Kaye “the best-dressed guy on TikTok.” The IMG-represented model has made a splash on social media with his killer fashion sense and willingness to take on over-the-top fashion challenges from commenters.

The challenge: For his latest fan-suggested feat, Kaye curated outfits to represent dozens of time periods throughout human history—all of human history. More than 35 million viewers tuned in to watch the final video, which featured looks from 10,000 BCE to 2023 and beyond.

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