TOGETHER WITH

It’s Friday, and Meta is throwing AI at just about everything—including Tamagotchi-style virtual pets and an Instagram-linked style app.

MONEY MOVES

The proposals: Instagram isn’t just chasing YouTube’s TV watch time and ad revenue—it’s chasing its talent, too. The Meta-owned platform has offered to pay some YouTubers up to $500,000 to post videos with its newly announced long-form horizontal “Features” format.

According to Business Insider, Instagram has approached “select” YouTubers with a floor price of $50,000; others have gotten six-figure offers, and things top out at a half-million dollars.

So far, exclusivity doesn’t seem to be part of the bargain; people familiar with the deals told BI that Instagram’s terms just ask creators to post their long-form videos as Features on the same day they upload to YouTube.

It’s not clear how Instagram is paying out these amounts. Meta has already said that it’s “too early to share a long-term monetization model [for Features], but we’re exploring ways for creators to earn from brands, fans, and Instagram, including performance-based incentives.”

The context: Reza Izad, who reps creators like Kareem Rahma and Noah Beck as a Partner at Underscore Talent, told BI these deals are an “exciting opportunity” for YouTubers. The money is part of that excitement, sure, but Izad said this is also an opportunity for creators’ content to get a boost.

It’s worth noting, however, that creators looking for equal viewership across YouTube and Features will likely be disappointed—at least for now. A major part of YouTube’s living room success is the relative attractiveness and easy UX of its TV app. Google has put stock into making the TV app a banger, and Instagram isn’t there yet.

As Instagram head Adam Mosseri put it, “We’re going to try to support these different types of formats, both in the mobile app, but also on the TV app, which […] is going to take some time to get it right.”

The launch: Chronicle Media just solved one of the biggest problems in entertainment. 

Its new frontier model, Ubiquity, is the first end-to-end platform capable of identifying a creator, brand, or studio’s audience, predicting future demand, and automating social marketing—all before millions of dollars are spent in the dark.

The process: Built and trained by researchers from Stanford, Columbia, and Carnegie Mellon and former Google, Amazon, and Spotify experts, Ubiquity’s frontier AI model is trained on watch data from over 1 million audience segments.

Ubiquity follows and then simulates what real audiences watch, where they drop off, what brings them back, and why they become fans.

The case studies: The model has already been used by over 50 customers in beta, including…

Ubiquity’s audience predictions have proven to be 94-98% accurate. What could you do with that kind of critical growth advantage?

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

HOLIDAY SEASON

The partnership: As the holiday season approaches, TikTok is joining forces with the second-most valuable entertainment company in the world.

Disney will promote items on TikTok Shop as part of the ecommerce hub’s Super Brand Days campaign, a week-long activation that combines advertising, creator content, and Shop listings to drive sales. Other brands expected to take part in Super Brand Days include Old Navy and Crocs.

Disney fans will be able to participate in the Mouse House’s Super Brand Days from November 4-10. Offers will span multiple Disney properties, including Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. Some of the items featured in the TikTok promotion will hit the official Disney store upon the conclusion of the Super Brand Days campaign.

The benefits: Super Brand Days have been key drivers of holiday season sales for TikTok since their debut in 2024. Last year, November and December were bountiful months on TikTok Shop; on Black Friday weekend alone, TikTok’s U.S. sales topped $500 million.

Now, by bringing Disney into the fold, the ecommerce platform is stocking even more items that show up on millions of wish lists.

The partnership also has tangible benefits for Disney, which is eager to increase its presence on TikTok. A landmark deal announced earlier this year gave TikTokers the license to use characters from well-known Disney properties. At the same time, Disney is reimagining its own apps, infusing them with more short-form content and making them look more like TikTok as a result.

P.E., YOUTUBE-STYLE

The product: Kids watch a lot of YouTube. And that generally means a lot of sedentary, butt-in-seat time. But what if they had to pedal to keep the content coming?

That’s the question entrepreneur couple Arnav Dalmia and Shivani Jain are asking with their new company/product Tovie.

Described as a “sensory-friendly bike that helps kids use movement to self-regulate,” Tovie is a pedaling machine that allows children to sit and have screen time while keeping their feet moving.

Dalmia and Jain say their proprietary “Pedal-to-Play” system “makes movement the controller.” It works by connecting Tovie to a kid’s device via Bluetooth, and whenever they stop pedaling, the YouTube video they’re watching (or the video game they’re playing) stops working.

The process: This isn’t Dalmia and Jain’s first stationary exercise product. In 2013, they created an under-desk elliptical called Cubii and raised almost $300,000 on Kickstarter to bring it to life.

The duo is producing Tovie the same way, this time with a Kickstarter goal of only $50K (a number they’ve already surpassed thanks to over 100 backers). Once Dalmia and Jain have shipped the initial models to Kickstarter supporters, the couple hopes to put Tovie in big-box stores like Target and Walmart—and then keep developing products.

“The Tovie bike will be the first of many bikes focused on children’s health,” Dalmia told Inc. 

WATCH THIS 👀

The costume: That’s the claim Sundquist makes in a new TikTok post—but of course, his 2026 Halloween costume isn’t actually straight-up trash. Instead, it’s a clever take on a Toy Story character that, like many of the Paralympic skier’s past costumes, is built around his amputation.

Sundquist’s embodiment of Forky (aka the sentient spork from Toy Story 4 and 5) is the latest in a long line of viral Halloween costumes, including a partially eaten gingerbread man, the leg lamp from A Christmas Story, a flamingo, and Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. Get a glimpse of all of them—and the creator’s latest masterpiece—here.

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