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It’s Tuesday and Mark Zuckerberg has a new arch nemesis: bees. If we’re being honest, those aren’t the kind of bugs we expected to thwart Meta’s plans for nuclear-powered AI domination.

Today’s News

📈 DATA • GOSPEL STATS

Top 3 Branded Videos of the Week: There’s nothing scarier than haunted schools and U.S. politics

Gospel Stats’ latest brand report was dominated by two equally terrifying genres: ghost-hunting and politics. Despite the horror, sponsors chose to sign onto YouTube videos in both categories, bringing us this ranking of the most-viewed branded videos of the week:

🥇 Sam and Colby x Opera: Surviving A Week in OUR Demonic School PT 2 (WE SPLIT UP) (7.5M views)
It’s hard to beat the fear factor of U.S. elections, but Sam and Colby’s trip to the most haunted school in America comes close. The ghost-hunting duo recruited the Sturniolo Triplets to join them on a jaunt through eerily quiet classrooms—before making the questionable decision to split up.

🥈 Sam and Colby x Dragon City: Surviving A Week in OUR Demonic School PT 3 (THE POSSESSION) (5.8M views)
The good news: Sam and Colby survived Part 2 of their Demonic School series. The bad news: Part 3 goes beyond ghosts to follow Sam, Colby, KallMeKris, and CelinaSpookyBoo as they attempt to hunt down an alleged demon. Fans enthralled by that kind of adrenaline might also enjoy Dragon City, a mobile game that dishes out mayhem and monsters galore (even if the aforementioned monsters are admittedly kind of cute).

🥉 Theo Von x Kalshi, PrizePicks, Füm, Tommy John, ShipStation: Sen. JD Vance | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #540 (4.3M views)
TikTok isn’t the only digital battlefield at the center of the U.S. presidential election. In the lead-up to today’s final voting sprint, podcasters like Joe Rogan (who sat down for a multi-hour interview with Donald Trump) and the Smartless crew (who sat down for an hour interview with Tim Walz) have invited notable politicians to chat it up in the studio. The latest iteration of that trend comes from Theo Von, who hosted a heavily sponsored two-hour talk with Trump’s running mate, JD Vance.

Check out the full Top 5 ranking here or head over to Gospel Stats for more YouTube sponsorship insights.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• A year ago, J House jr. was nowhere to be found in our ranking of Top 50 Most Viewed U.S. YouTube Channels. Now, the kid-friendly hub is sitting pretty at #1 with more than 722 million weekly views. (Tubefilter)
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• Just weeks after shuttering its AAA game studio, Netflix is reportedly delisting all but four of its interactive shows. (Gizmodo)
  
  

• Instagram will reportedly begin leveraging an “adult classifier” in early 2025 in order to identify underage users who attempt to circumvent the platform’s age-based privacy settings. (Engadget)
  
  

• Meta has announced plans to make its AI Llama models “available to U.S. government agencies, including those that are working on defense and national security applications.” (Gizmodo)

BROKEN RECORD

Sony just broke the record for most comments on a single TikTok video

The campaign: TikTok’s Spotlight feature is proving its mettle. The suite of tools—which TikTok launched in August to help TV and film studios reach its users—was at the center of a record-breaking campaign promoting Sony‘s third Venom film, The Last Dance. The structure of that promotion was simple: fans had a chance to unlock eight unique animations by commenting specific words on videos posted by the official @venommovie account. 

The response: By the end of October, Sony’s easter egg hunt had pushed the @venommovie account up from 141,000 followers to more than 4.5 million. Fans left over 20.5 million comments on a single 13-second video posted October 26, setting TikTok’s new record for most comments on a single video. (The previous record—10.9 million comments—was set by Minecraft content creator meqs in 2021.)

Marvel enthusiasts didn’t stop at The Last Dance promo videos, either. Fans stuck around to check out @venommovie’s previous posts—which shot the account’s average per-video view count up to 11 million—and even created their own content about the campaign. As a TikTok spokesperson pointed out, creators like @brandonspam (9.3 million followers) drove millions of organic views by chronicling their hunt for all eight animations.

The context: Those results are good news for TikTok, which has been pushing hard for ad dollars from studios. The platform’s Head of Industry, Entertainment, Edvin Dapcevic, recently told The Hollywood Reporter that advertising movies and shows on TikTok “drives affinity and resonance” while encouraging users to “go and consume that content in real time.”

That could very well be the case for The Last Dance, although we don’t have data on how many TikTok users ended up buying tickets. What we do know is that the film is No. 1 at the box office for the second week in a row and has already grossed $317 million.

📈 DATA • GLOBAL TOP 100

Global Top 100: T-Series makes a comeback and Pakistani TV hubs climb the charts

The stats: Twelve times a year, we rank YouTube’s top channels based on the number of views they earned during the previous month. Here’s how October’s Top 100 chart shook out in terms of country of origin:

• India: 35 channels

• United States: 22

• Hong Kong: 5

• Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, and Vietnam: 3

• Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, and United Arab Emirates: 2

• Argentina, Austria, Belgium, China, Czechia, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Spain, and South Korea: 1

The chart-topper: T-Series came in at the very top of October’s ranking. Thanks to the ascension of MrBeast, the Indian record label is no longer the most subscribed-to hub on YouTube—but it is the most viewed. During October, T-Series earned over 4 billion monthly views, bringing it to a leading lifetime total of 271.7 billion.

The industry trend: TikTok isn’t the only platform looking to frame itself as a home for TV and film content. As the first streamer to claim 10% of all TV watch time, YouTube has become a haven for entertainment companies looking to reach online audiences.

Pakistani companies are no exception. All three of the Pakistan-based channels in October’s Global Top 100—HAR PAL GEO (#8), ARY Digital (#15), and HUM TV (#39)—are digital outposts for major entertainment hubs that serve the Urdu-speaking world. The first of those channels earned over 2 billion views in October, a continuation of the impressive growth it’s seen over the last 12 months. Altogether, HAR PAL GEO is now getting more than twice as many weekly views as it was this time last year.

Check out the full Top 100 chart here for more details on October’s rising channels.

WATCH THIS 📺

Justin Flom is casting a spell on YouTube Shorts

The creator: Justin Flom is feeling the magic. Over the last few weeks, the creator has cranked out multiple viral videos, announced a brand-new creator product, and successfully climbed the YouTube charts.

The result: the audience on Flom’s primary YouTube channel went up 70% in October, resulting in more than one billion monthly views. We can’t say whether the release of the magician’s Walmart-exclusive airbrush kit had an impact on the volume of his monthly viewership—but we’re guessing all those views will get at least a few feet through the door of your local Walmart.

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