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Today’s News

HOME ENTERTAINMENT

TikTok and Meta want in on YouTube’s TV success

The context: YouTube is absolutely dominating TV screens. The platform is not only the most-watched streaming service in the U.S., but also the most-watched anything. According to data from Nielsen, it’s officially generating more watch time than any linear or broadcast TV network.

Now, TikTok and Instagram’s parent companies are hoping to get in on the action. Per The Information, ByteDance and Meta are planning to chase YouTube’s success by introducing TV apps of their own. Both apps will frontload short-form content, which will make it difficult for them to come anywhere close to YouTube’s TV watch time.

The apps: Meta reportedly plans to populate its app with Reels. That’s no surprise, especially considering the company’s recent push to unify video publishing across platforms and pump up Reels viewership by rebranding all Facebook videos as Reels.

So far, there aren’t many more concrete details regarding Meta’s efforts—but TikTok’s upcoming app seem to be more fleshed out. TikTok staff have reportedly spent the past six months strategizing how to appeal to older viewers and encourage higher-production-value videos that will look good on TV screens (rather than pulling from TikTok’s base content library). Those ideas may be further along than Meta’s because TikTok previously launched a TV app way back in November 2021—albeit one that was never well-promoted and appears to have been pulled earlier this month.

Neither Meta nor TikTok would comment on potential TV apps. It’s worth noting, however, that TikTok’s Global Head of Product Operations and Solutions, David Kaufman, told Cannes Lions attendees last week that “the living room is definitely a new frontier for us that we’re taking very seriously.”

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

Gushcloud just secured a top YouTube-certified MCN. What’s next for the global creator company?

Gushcloud International is making moves. The global creator management and licensing company has acquired Wizdeo’s MCN asset—one of Europe’s largest YouTube-certified MCN networks and a pioneer in creator analytics.

Wizdeo was the first company to be granted the MCN certification by YouTube in Europe. Now, with 500+ creators and 700M monthly views, its MCN continues to rank as one of the largest YouTube creator networks in the region.

With this acquisition, Gushcloud will expand its global influencer roster to welcome 150+ top YouTube channels from Wizdeo—and further its multi-year investment in AI-powered monetization infrastructure. 

From its proprietary Bankeble platform to the Creator Venture Program (a $20M fund aimed at providing strategic support to creators), Gushcloud is rising fast. 

Investors and creators can hit the link below to find out more:

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• YouTube has announced the introduction of a search carousel resembling Google Search’s AI Overviews and an expanded version of a conversational AI chatbot. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• Threads has updated its Hidden Words feature to include “newly added custom filters to block words, phrases, and emojis in batches,” as well as separating it from Instagram’s same-named tool. (Threads)
  
  

• Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says the Facebook parent company is “succeeding at getting talent from OpenAI” in the wake of public criticism from Sam Altman. (The Verge)
  
  

• Spotify’s stock price hit an all-time high on Wednesday, leading Guggenheim Securities analyst Michael Morris to identify the company as a “long-term growth opportunity” for investors. (Investor’s Business Daily)

20 YEARS OF YOUTUBE

In 2013, PewDiePie crossed borders and gender gaps to entertain fans

In February 2025, YouTube turned 20. The site has gone through a lot over the past two decades, including an acquisition, an earnings glow-up, and multiple generations of star creators. In our 20 Years of YouTube series, we’ll examine the milestone hat have defined the world’s favorite video platform—one year at a time. Click here for a full archive of the series.

The creator: In 2013, PewDiePie—aka Felix Kjellberg—was riding high. The Swedish gamer became YouTube’s most-subscribed creator in August of that year, and his channel established the 15-million-subscriber club in November. By the end of the year, he’d reportedly grossed a cool $4 million. So, what was the secret to PewDiePie’s 2010s success?

1. PewDiePie was a boundary-breaking gamer in an era defined by gamers. 
In the 2010s, YouTube realigned its recommendation algorithm to favor channels with more watch time and engagement. That update was a godsend for creators who uploaded hours-long gaming sessions—and PewDiePie was arguably the biggest beneficiary of the change.

2. Kids loved the subversiveness of Kjellberg’s edgy approach.
Profanity is everywhere in “A Funny Montage”—aka the 2013 video compilation that headed up PewDiePie’s homepage for years—and it’s a big reason why the gamer became such a massive phenomenon. By lacing his videos with edgy language, Kjellberg was capitalizing on a simple truth: kids like watching content that offends older generations.

3. PewDiePie’s “Bros” were the ultimate in-group—even for girls.
Subscribing to PewDiePie was an admission to a club that offered members a sense of belonging. By placing a shoutout to his Bros in his Funny Montage, PewDiePie invited casual viewers to come along for the ride—including women and girls. Between his dashing looks and his relationship with CutiePieMarzia (whose romantic chemistry with Kjellberg was always a big part of his appeal), the creator was able to transcend gaming’s traditional gender gap to reach a sizable female audience.

4. The Swedish accent mattered.
2013 was the year after “Gangnam Style,” when YouTube was exploding internationally. With his combination of European attitude and English-language humor, Kjellberg was one of the first creators to prove that subscriber acquisition could be a global game.

THE BIZ

For influencer marketing, “the days of unchecked spending are over”

The report: eMarketer predicts that U.S. brands and agencies will spend over $10 billion on sponsored content in 2025—but despite the creator economy’s rapid growth, influencer marketing still has some maturing to do.

According to eMarketer’s 2025 Influencer Marketing Measurement Report, marketers are trying to make their creator-related spend more efficient, but are struggling to accurately measure the impact of their campaigns. The study—which examined August 2024 data provided by CreatorIQ—noted that “the days of unchecked spending are over” as marketers shift their focus from experimentation to optimization.

The problem: According to the report, “marketers no longer have to fight for executive buy-in, but they are under increasing pressure to prove the impact of their growing investments.” The problem: influencer campaign goals are so varied that finding a single metric to meet each marketer’s measurement needs is next to impossible.

In the current influencer marketing landscape, analysis requires several different metrics, ranging from reach (used by half of marketers) to engagement rate (48%) to conversion rate (46%) to sales (44%). In terms of desired campaign outcomes, four different goals were cited by at least half of the surveyed marketers in eMarketer’s report: brand awareness (66%), audience engagement (59%), building credibility and trust (55%), and revenue growth (55%).

Enlisting creators on the analytical side of the equation could help provide clearer outcomes and standardize metrics for sponsors—but many influencers are still kept in the dark when it comes to performance. eMarketer cited a May 2024 survey from Creator Vision and The Harris Poll, who found that 85% of U.S. creators don’t get feedback from brands regarding the evaluation methods they employ. At the same time, 89% of creators said they possess audience insights that brands do not access.

WATCH THIS 📺

Things got a little awkward on the latest episode of Hard Fork

The episode: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman didn’t hold back on a recent installment of Hard Fork. The tech wiz teamed up with fellow OpenAI exec Brad Lightcap to join hosts/New York Times contributors Kevin Roose and Casey Newton on-stage for a live episode of their podcast.

It took all of a few minutes for Altman to dive into OpenAI’s legal conflict with The New York Times. As TechCrunch pointed out, he tackled the subject almost immediately, asking the podcast hosts if they were “going to talk about where you sue us because you don’t like user privacy?”

Check out the full episode here to learn more about Altman and Lightcap’s views on user privacy, Donald Trump, and Meta’s alleged role in talent poaching.

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