It's Friday and that means we’re just two days away from the Streamy Awards! Tune in this Sunday (Aug 27) at 6pm PT/9pm ET on all @streamys platforms and streamys.watch.

NIGHT’S BIG DAY

A major acquisition is transforming Night’s talent roster—and Kai Cenat is just the start

Night has acquired LFM Management. As a major management company with 60+ creator clients, Night is known for repping big names like MrBeast, Dream, Safiya Nygaard, and Ryan Trahan—and now, it’s adding LFM’s entire roster to the mix.

That acquisition will port over several top stars, including Kai Cenat (who frequently ranks as Twitch’s most-watched and most-subscribed streamer) and fellow AMP creators Agent 00, Chrisnxtdoor, Duke Dennis, ImDavisss, and Fanum. FGTeeV, Deshae Frost, Tommy G, Daydrian Harding, and Salt Papi will also add their names to Night’s expanded roster.

Night’s leadership is getting an update of its own.

John Nelson—who founded LFM in 2019—will join Night as a VP of talent. In that role, he’ll continue to represent LFM’s roster across all areas.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Twitch CEO Dan Clancy says the platform is in the process of adjusting its restrictive simulcasting policy. (Tubefilter)
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• Max (aka the service formerly known as HBO Max) is introducing a 24/7 CNN streaming channel on September 27. (Engadget)
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• According to Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, a web version of Threads is now available to all users. (Engadget)
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• Reddit has announced the launch of a “Mod Helper Program” designed to reward moderators who prove to be “a source of valuable information” to other moderators. (TechCrunch)

DATA • CREATORS ON THE RISE 📈

This “Corporate Bro” is the Robin Hood of the sales world

If you know Ross Pomerantz as “Corporate Bro,” then you might think his sales-centric videos are just hilarious skits. And to be fair, they are—but they’re also based on Pomerantz’ lived experience in the tech sales industry.

In fact, the “soul-sucking” reality of working in sales is exactly what inspired Pomerantz to begin posting in the first place. Back then, the creator says, he was making Vines “purely out of catharsis.” His comedy tapped into the universal ugh of working in sales—the high quotas, rude clients, and low pay.

As it turns out, that subject appealed to a lot of people.

Pomerantz says it best: his satirical, “edutainment”-style videos might seem niche, but sales is “the largest, oldest profession on Earth. There are probably 50 million salespeople on Earth. If you aren’t in sales, you know what sales is.”

By 2020, Pomerantz had been in sales long enough to know that he needed a more substantial creative outlet. So, the corporate comedian took a chance: he switched to creating content full-time, got to work developing a long-form pilot, and began posting “on every single social platform.”

That approach turned out to be a winner. Three years later, Pomerantz has collected hundreds of thousands of followers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. He’s also “dominating” on LinkedIn, where he runs an investment group in addition to posting his “Robin Hood-esque” Corporate Bro videos.

Wondering what viral success looks like on a platform like LinkedIn? Check out our full interview with Pomerantz here.

GOOGLE VS. TIKTOK

TikTok isn’t giving up on its rivalry with Google. Here come the search ads.

TikTok is getting back into the search game. Last July, Google exec Prabhakar Raghavan noted that the ByteDance-owned app was eating into Google Search traffic—to the point that “almost 40% of young people” were visiting “TikTok or Instagram” to find lunch recommendations.

Things have changed since then.

Shortly after Raghavan’s announcement, Google began incorporating more dynamic results pages and offering younger users the same sort of multimedia tableau provided on short-form platforms. TikTok made moves of its own, including the development of new ads and the release of commercials highlighting its utility as a search engine. But it looks like Google may have won the initial battle: according to CivicScience, the use of TikTok as a search is down 7% year-over-year.

Now, the Bytedance-owned app has a new tool for its brand partners.

According to The Verge, TikTok will begin putting ads labeled as “sponsored” in its search results. The app announced in March that it would use “scenery, images, voice-to-text, captions, and keywords” to determine which sponsored posts and search results should be paired together.

If TikTok hopes to reassert itself as a search engine, its latest ad launch is a good place to start. In a post discussing the upcoming rollout, TikTok shared data from a 2021 study, which found that 58% of the app’s users discover new brands and products on the platform—a 1.5x increase over other hubs.

WATCH THIS 📺

We found out exactly how far creators will go to avoid demonetization

The 2023 Streamy Awards is just around the corner, and that means it’s time for one last round of Demonetized or Demoralized. We linked up with creators to ask some hard questions—and discovered that hell will probably freeze over before MatPat touches a ukulele.

For more dramatic revelations, check out the full Short here. (And don’t forget to tune into the Streamys on August 27!)

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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.