TOGETHER WITH

It’s Wednesday and if you’ve ever had the urge to edit a raccoon into your videos, you’re in luck: Snapchat Premium’s new AI-powered lenses are designed to do exactly that.

MONEY MOVES

TikTok’s economic impact in the U.S. adds up to 7.5M businesses and 28M jobs

The report: As a ban looms overhead, a new report from Oxford Economics says TikTok has “become an indispensable platform for businesses all across the country.” In its report, Measuring the Number of Jobs that benefit from US Businesses using TikTok, the analytics/advisory firm estimates that 4.7 million U.S. jobs “benefit from utilizing TikTok.”

Those include over 3.1 million jobs that directly use TikTok in their work—either by creating content or managing businesses’ accounts—and another 1.6 million workers who indirectly benefit from the platform “in areas like lead generation for sales teams, customer engagement for marketing, or product teams.”

Overall, the study estimates that 7.5 million businesses “leverage TikTok’s features,” (per Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s President of Global Business Solutions). Those companies collectively employ around ~28 million people. (For comparison, Oxford Economics’ report on YouTube found that it contributed over $45 billion to the U.S.’s GDP in 2023, and supported the equivalent of 430,000 full-time jobs.)

The context: Oxford Economics’ latest findings focused largely on how many jobs are potentially benefiting from TikTok’s existence in the U.S.—and, unsurprisingly, the platform itself is pretty keen to advertise the firm’s findings. Thanks to the growth of TikTok Shop and the sheer number of small businesses earning revenue through the platform, conversations surrounding a potential U.S. ban have shifted to center the American businesses relying on TikTok for sales and/or advertising.

Putting these kinds of case studies forward might help TikTok convince the Trump administration that its economic benefits outweigh any potential national security issues. Key word: might.

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Who knows social-first better than the agency that was first to social?

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Here’s how Viral Nation rose to become the industry’s top talent network and a world-leading influencer marketing agency:

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Viral Nation builds creators into household names with a 360° approach that redefines representation.

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Viral Nation accelerates the transition of brands to social-first with a full suite of marketing services, including:

• influencer marketing at scale

• dynamic community management

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3. Proprietary AI-powered technology
At the center of it all is Viral Nation Secure, an award-winning influencer vetting solution for greater brand safety and fit. 

With 360° services for brands and creators, Viral Nation is rewriting the marketing playbook.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Fixated—a creator management firm led by Co-Founders Zach Katz and Jason Wilhelm—has announced a $12.8 million round that includes a $10 million injection from Eldridge Ventures. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• Former Netflix Games head Mike Verdu has departed the company only five months after transitioning to the role of Vice President of genAI. (VentureBeat)
  
  

• A letter from Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr reportedly asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan whether YouTube TV discriminates again religious programs. (Gizmodo)
  ​

• Amazon, Meta, Google, and other tech giants have signed a pledge that supports the goal of “tripling nuclear capacity around the world by 2050.” (Reuters)

BY THE NUMBERS

Reddit is the internet’s fastest-growing social media site. Why?

The findings: With all the recent hullabaloo surrounding TikTok, you might think it would rank among the internet’s fastest-growing social media sites. But according to eMarketer, the real speedster is Reddit.

The market research company’s latest data shows that adult U.S. Reddit users spend 3.5% more time there per day than they did in Q1 2024. That adds up to 34 minutes on average per day, per user. Instagram’s gain, meanwhile, has been just 0.3% year-over-year (bringing it to 35 minutes on average per day, per user). Other platforms are even worse off:

• Time spent on Facebook has dropped by 2.6% (dropping it to 31 minutes).

• Time spent on both Snapchat and X is down 3.4% (31 minutes).

• And, most surprisingly, time spent on TikTok has declined by 7% from Q1 2024 (47 minutes).

Altogether, that means Reddit is growing faster in terms of user engagement than any of its social media counterparts—or, at least, those included in eMarketer’s dataset. It’s worth noting that the company didn’t include YouTube or Twitch in its findings.

The reasons: eMarketer attributes Reddit’s time growth to the fact that it offers “perspectives from real people”—but we’re guessing there’s an additional force at play. Various changes to Google Search (including the introduction of AI) have made it more difficult for searchers to easily find accurate information. As a result, more users may be turning to Reddit.

Adobe recently found that nearly two in three people in the U.S. use Reddit as a search engine at least once per week, with 41% of Reddit users believing the site is a better search engine than Google. To top it off, 6% of small business owners say they’ve begun generating more revenue from Reddit than Google. That tracks with another eMarketer report, which estimated that the company’s year-over-year ad revenue will grow by over 30% this year.

LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE

Substack just passed 5 million paid subscribers. Welcome to the new world of journalism.

The milestone: Newsletter platforms are changing the face of journalism and drawing in millions of readers along the way. Substack, the home of over 50,000 moneymaking publications, now has more than five million paying subscribers. According to Substack Head of Writer Relations Sophia Efthimiatou, that milestone comes just four months after the platform eclipsed the four million mark in the same category.

Paid subscriptions only account for a fraction of Substack’s total signups. According to the platform’s website, the total number of active paid and unpaid subs is north of 35 million. In the interest of growing its subscriber base, Substack has invested in several creator-friendly initiatives designed to draw in big names. Those include a $20 million Creator Accelerator Fund (which rewards publishers who port subscribers from other sites to Substack) and technical upgrades like native video.

The context: Substack’s growing influence in digital media has encouraged notable journalists like CNN vet Jim Acosta and internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz to set up on its platform—but it’s not the only distributor catering to journalists in a changing news landscape. The beehiiv Media Collective, for example, provides services like legal support and insurance. Other reporters, such as Tara Palmieri, now bring scoops directly to viewers on platforms like YouTube.

This new mode of independent journalism is bringing traditional media members into contact with creators like never before. At the 2024 Democratic National Convention, for example, established journalists and influencers jockeyed for access to the floor. The Trump administration has encouraged—and intensified—that new dynamic by eagerly welcoming creators into the media landscape.

WATCH THIS 📺

India’s YouTube obsession is turning rural villages into creator hotspots

The “YouTuber village”: A small village in the Indian state of Chhjattisgarh has become its nation’s answer to Greenville, North Carolina. Though Tulsi was once nothing more than a small dot on the map, approximately one-fourth of its population now makes videos for platforms like YouTube.

As this video from Lokmat Times explains, Tulsi’s creator community began with the launch of Being Chhattisgarhiya, a YouTube channel co-founded by Jai Varma and Gyanendra Shukla. After reaching a six-digit subscriber count, Varma and Shukla began earning more than 30,000 rupees per month. That converts to around $344 per month and is well above the states reported median income of 17,500 rupees per month (or about $201). Their success inspired other Tulsi residents to pick up cameras. According to one estimate, there are now more than 1,000 active creators among the village’s total population of 4,000.

The context: Tulsi’s transformation into a “YouTuber village” is part of a broader trend that has seen creator content explode in India’s non-English-speaking communities. Altogether, channels that use regional South Asian languages have hauled in billions of views by connecting with hard-to-reach consumers in rural areas. It’s a phenomenon that we see play out in the data on our Tubefilter Charts all the time.

Creator economy marketing starts here. Get in touch to advertise with Tubefilter.

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Today's newsletter is from: James Hale, Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.