It's Wednesday and in Mark Zuckerberg’s strangest hiring spree yet, the Meta boss is on the hunt not for a lifeguard, but for a “Beach Water Person.”

TIKTOK TALK

The data: TikTok Shop is proving its value to small businesses in a big way. According to research spearheaded by GlobalData and commissioned by TikTok Shop, 67% of consumers turn to TikTok’s ecommerce hub as their go-to discovery engine for products and brands. That data point positions TikTok Shop as a more popular product discovery engine than Amazon, physical stores, and YouTube.

Small businesses have benefited the most from TikTok Shop’s meteoric rise. GlobalData found that, over the past year, 72% of the brands discovered by Shop users were small businesses that pull in less than $15 million of annual revenue. About 58% of surveyed consumers who discovered a small business on Shop later bought from that company on the platform.

According to TikTok, small businesses increased their Shop sales by 66% year-over-year in 2025, while the number of small businesses selling on the platform rose 25% year-over-year to reach 215,000. The power of creator recommendations has been a major boon for those companies. Per GlobalData, 70% of Shop consumers have purchased a creator-recommended product, and 73% have used the platform to find inspiration related to creator-backed products.

The approach: Of course, small businesses aren’t the only companies thriving on TikTok’s ecommerce hub. As TikTok Shop Head of Strategic Initiatives Patrick Nommensen told Modern Retail, “through the video and live streaming and community elements, there’s really a lot for brands of any size to be able to connect with the target audience. We really see it as an ecosystem and a platform where brands of all sizes can be successful.”

The broadness of that approach has lifted TikTok Shop’s bottom line. Between January and April of this year, the hub’s U.S. sales reached $6.75 billion (per Charm.io). That was nearly twice the equivalent figure from 2025.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

X FACTOR

The “creator era”: In March, X revamped its “Creator Subscriptions," which it describes as a set of “powerful new tools to grow your subscribers and earn more.” One of those tools, “Exclusive Threads,” allows creators to paywall a string of posts.

Now, the platform is taking another stab at the creator economy with the launch of “Creator Connect,” a marketplace that hooks up brands and creators for sponcon deals. According to Global Head of Content Partnerships Mitchell Smith, that development is happening now because X is entering its “creator era as a platform, and really trying to build a platform that fosters a healthy creator economy.”

Unsurprisingly, X’s vision for its creator era involves generative AI. Per The Hollywood Reporter, when a brand enters Creator Connect and wants to run a specific campaign, X will use AI to plow through thousands of creators’ text, video, and photo content, then identify which ones the brand should be working with. It’ll then reach out to those creators and see if they’re interested.

The context: X’s matchmaking marketplace is nothing new for our industry. (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, for instance, all have their own versions.) Platforms benefit from those marketplaces not by taking a cut of the resulting sponcon deals, but by showing off the caliber of their creators—and theoretically attracting advertisers willing to pay platforms directly for programmatic ads. 

In other words, the launch of Creator Connect means X thinks it has creators that brands will want to work with.

The platform said it’s already used the marketplace to arrange a couple of campaigns, including “one for a premium laptop company that wanted tech creators who were F1 enthusiasts, and a major movie studio for a recent horror film.” It’s also looking at partnerships around the upcoming World Cup.

THE BIZ

The report: Is there a “right way” for brands to work with creators? The Influencer Marketing Factory looked to answer that question with its 2026 Brand Deals Report.

To compile its study, the agency synthesized more than 300,000 promoted posts across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. On each of those platforms, at least 2,300 creators were involved in the measured campaigns.

The resulting data was clear. 63% of brand-creator relationships are one-off deals—but repeated collabs instill more audience trust and display stronger commercial signals. And to execute those recurring deals, YouTube is the place to go.

Less than half of the YouTube posts measured by The Influencer Marketing Factory were one-off engagements, and nearly 20% of those posts were part of long-running brand ambassadorships. For comparison, on TikTok, over 71% of the measured posts were one-offs, and fewer than 3% were part of ambassadorships.

The context: But before brands start deploying all their marketing dollars on YouTube, they should keep in mind that no platform is perfect. The issue of sponsorship disclosures is a key example. Less than one-third of measured posts on Instagram were properly disclosed and, while YouTube fared a bit better in that regard, its small creators still struggled. Under 20% of YouTube creators with 100,000 subscribers or less properly disclosed their brand partnerships.

The ultimate takeaway from the Brand Deals Report, then, is that repeat creator partnerships produce stronger results than one-off collabs across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. But since all campaigns come with their own strengths and weaknesses depending on where they’re deployed, the most effective ones move across multiple platforms and formats.

The donation: Just one week after becoming the first Twitch streamer to deliver a TED Talk, Maya Higa has secured a $100,000 donation for her wildlife foundation. That chunk of change comes from fellow creator Jacksepticeye, who announced his decision to support Alveus Sactuary during an appearance on Higa’s channel.

The Irish YouTuber (aka Seán McLoughlin) surprised Higa with his donation after accompanying her on a livestreamed tour of the wildlife sanctuary/virtual education center. Check out the full stream here to get a peek at Alveus Sanctuary and find out what it’s all about.

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