TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and if last year’s Super Bowl ads embraced creators, 2025’s commercial line-up is shaping up to be a full-on AI showcase—one that could cost buyers as much as $8 million per 30-second slot.

VIVA LAS VEGAS

MrBeast is launching a resort experience on the Las Vegas Strip

The experience: MrBeast is bringing the “ultimate” immersive fan activation to the Vegas Strip. The most-subscribed-to creator on YouTube—aka Jimmy Donaldson—has partnered with Resorts World Las Vegas to launch the MrBeast Experience, which will treat guests to “a series of on-site activations” from April 13-15.

While previous live MrBeast appearances (including the grand opening of his burger joint and promotional efforts for Beast Games) have focused on the man himself, Donaldson’s Vegas activation will transport guests into the gamified format of a typical MrBeast video. Fans eager to get in on the action can purchase a three-night package that includes a “mystery bag,” with contents ranging from MrBeast swag to a single $10,000 gift voucher.

The context: Donaldson isn’t the first creator to launch a branded resort-style experience. U.K. supergroup The Sidemen similarly worked with a partner to announce a “ghost hotel” themed around their shared YouTube channel, while a similar experience for Apex Legends fans arrived in Chicago last year.

Now, the MrBeast Experience will add to Las Vegas’ growing itinerary of influencer happenings. Between its big-ticket events and local community, Sin City is quickly becoming a hotspot for creator culture.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• A new fintech firm called Boring Stuff aims to help creators like Airrack with everything from bookkeeping to accounting to payroll management. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier this week that Threads has added 20 million new users in the last month. (TechCrunch)
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• Instagram is introducing a new “View Rate” metric that will help creators understand what percentage of viewers “continue to watch after the first three seconds.” (Instagram)
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• A recent study from Common Sense Media found that “nearly half” of U.S. teens don’t trust big tech companies “to make responsible decisions about AI use.” (Common Sense Media)

GO FOR THE GOLD

Spotify wants to beat YouTube at video podcasts—so it’s releasing its own version of Play Buttons

The context: In its quest to become the internet’s #1 podcast destination, Spotify has spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring production companies and individual shows like The Joe Rogan Experience. Video podcasts are a big part of that mission—and that puts Spotify in direct competition with YouTube.

Video podcast viewership seems to be growing on both platforms, but we’ve seen indications that YouTube might still be leading when it comes to creator adoption. One recent sign is SiriusXM and Unwell founder Alex Cooper’s decision to move the video versions of shows produced by her network—include those of her chart-topping podcast, Call Her Daddy—from Spotify to YouTube.

The awards: Now (presumably in an effort to close that apparent gap), Spotify is launching its own version of YouTube’s Play Buttons. According to a company blog post, those bronze, silver, and gold Creator Milestone Awards are designed to “to recognize the journey, growth, and streaming success of podcasts around the world” and will be hand-delivered to creators of shows that hit 100 million, 250 million, and 500 million streams, respectively. Spotify says Milestone Award winners will also “be spotlighted across Spotify’s social channels,” “featured in a new editorial hub on-platform” and have the chance to appear in a marketing campaign at New York City’s Penn Plaza.

The winners of Creator Milestone Awards will be based on quarterly “evaluations” of all podcasts on Spotify—and the inaugural batch of recipients has already been announced. (Unsurprisingly, The Joe Rogan Experience was one of the first to score a gold award.)

If those accolades are as well-received as YouTube’s Play Buttons (which have become coveted items to work toward), the initiative could very well boost creator engagement across Spotify—and bring it one step closer to becoming the web’s podcasting hub of choice.

SHOPPING SPREE

Ban or no ban, TikTok is still making Shop happen outside the U.S.

The tool: TikTok might be hanging on by a thread in the U.S., but that hasn’t stopped it from pushing forward in other markets. The platform recently announced a tool called GMV Max, which identifies and scales top-performing assets to optimize campaigns that deploy “all available TikTok Shop content.”

GMV Max caters to the 200,000 active small businesses that operate on Shop. Those sellers host 6,000 TikTok LIVE broadcasts per day. That community is part of a global wave of social sellers that earns billions per year for TikTok parent ByteDance.

The context: A majority of those sellers cater to consumers in Asia, in part because of the type of cultural clashes that hindered the rollout of TikTok Shop in the U.K. Recently, however, Shop has gained favor across the pond thanks to community-focused initiatives like in-person pop-ups in London.

Insights from Shop’s operations in the U.S. show that stateside consumers similarly prefer a shared shopping experience. Sandie Hawkins—who helped lead Shop’s U.S. push before her recent departure—explained that phenomenon in a conversation with Business Insider:

The takeaway: Enthusiasm for shared social experiences could be bad news for U.S. legislators hoping to limit the impact of foreign platforms. So far, efforts to ban TikTok have only instilled a deeper sense of community. That’s why, when the likelihood of a U.S. TikTok ban was at its highest, Shop sales spiked. Even if President Trump fails to save TikTok, then, it’s clear that American consumers have already developed a taste for social shopping—and a willingness to seek out community on other China-affiliated apps.

WATCH THIS 📺

After taking down Mike Tyson, Jake Paul is ready to face a new opponent: His brother

The vlog: It’s only been a couple months since Jake Paul faced Mike Tyson in the ring, but the creator-turned-boxer is apparently ready for his next challenge. In a recent vlog titled “Fighting My Brother,” Logan Paul insinuated that he and his younger sibling are preparing to go head-to-head in the ring.

The rumors: That video follows a pair of mysterious, HBO Max-branded social media posts from both brothers that could suggest an impending boxing match—but some sources say fans might be in for something completely different. According to anonymous insiders who spoke to ESPN, the brothers are actually teasing a reality series, not an in-the-ring face-off.

Whatever the case, viewers will know more this afternoon when the older Paul brother hosts a press conference at 4PM EST on Instagram.

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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.