TOGETHER WITH

It’s Wednesday and a legendary gaming franchise is coming to the big screen. Brace yourself for…The Legend of Zelda in live-action.

DEFUNDING THE FUND

TikTok is closing the door on its $1 billion creator fund. But better options are already here.

TikTok’s three-year creator fund has reached its end (at least, for creators in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and France). Starting December 16, video makers based in those countries will no longer receive payouts from the platform’s $1 billion pool.

Many creators won’t notice much of a dent in their wallets.

TikTok launched its billion-dollar fund back in 2020 as a static pool of money, with $200 million reserved for U.S. creators. That left the platform around $550,000 per day to divvy up between all U.S. creators—and as more creators qualified for the fund, the amount paid per view continued to drop.

The result: many creators—including beloved Vlogbrother Hank Green—received only a few cents per 1,000 views. (On YouTube, the generally accepted CPM for long-form videos is $7 per 1,000 views.)

TikTok does offer another option—if creators are willing to go long-form.

According to the platform, TikTokers who were part of the old creator fund will be grandfathered into the Creativity Program, which pays out on videos longer than one minute. That option won’t be of much help to creators who publish videos under 60 seconds, but it does have a clear advantage over the previous fund. TikTok says the Creativity Program doles out payments based on views and other engagement metrics (meaning, presumably, that it doesn’t pull from a stagnant pool of money).

The other upside: a TikTok spokesperson told The Verge that eligible creators can expect to earn 20 times more from the Creativity Program than they did from the creator fund.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• According to the IAB’s eighth annual podcast report, brand spending now accounts for 61% of all podcast marketing. (Tubefilter)
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• MrBeast’s primary YouTube hub pulled in 2.6 billion views in October, making it the top-viewed channel of the month. (Tubefilter)
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• Meta, Google, Discord, and other tech giants have joined forces to fight online child exploitation through a “new cross-platform information sharing program.” (The Verge)
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• Google isn’t letting TikTok Shop steal all the holiday buzz. The company has introduced a new “shop deals” hub and an icon that grants Search users access to coupon codes. (Engadget)

DATA • U.S. TOP 100 📈

Could YouTube Shorts be the next big search engine?

If TikTok has taught us anything, it’s that young viewers are happy to search through short-form videos for everything from restaurant recs to their next cozy fantasy read. In fact, the platform’s potential as a search engine has already caused Google plenty of grief.

Could YouTube Shorts cut into TikTok’s burgeoning potential as a search engine?

One of the top-viewed YouTube channels of October makes a good case for that argument. Answered That For You made its debut in our U.S. Top 100 chart last month by providing responses to questions about everything from Olivia Rodrigo’s fashion preferences to the likelihood of balancing potatoes on lamp posts. (As it turns out, a lot of viewers are interested in the answer to that last query—like 23 million of them.)

Of course, the Shorts hub’s method of “answering the world’s toughest questions” isn’t the most original. Answered That For You is, at its core, an aggregator of viral short-form content. Luckily for the channel’s creators, viewers don’t seem to mind if its content isn’t wholly original.

In fact, Answered That For You tallied 342.8 million monthly views just a few short weeks after celebrating its first billion views on YouTube. The result: the short-form hub doubled its traffic month-over-month to reach 67th place in our ranking of the most-watched U.S.-based YouTube channels.

HOWDY, PARTNERS

Pocket.watch is harnessing the power of short-form video with 8 new signees

Pocket.watch is taking the world of vertical video by storm. The kid-friendly media company has added eight new partner channels to its roster, including The McClure Twins, Wilson World, Dominoki Kids Songs, and Daniel Labelle. Those short-form powerhouses will bring billions of YouTube Shorts views to pocket.watch’s already impressive repertoire.

‘Impressive’ might be a bit of an understatement.

• As of now, the company works with 48 creator partners who reach 830 million YouTube subscribers.

• Altogether, those partners count 561 billion lifetime YouTube views among them.

• The result: pocket.watch’s library now includes 37,000 hours of distributable content—a 51% year-over-year increase.

Pocket.watch’s latest wave of signings also includes its fair share of traditional partner channels. Gaby and Alex, Papa Jake, and Toys AndFun Sisters have earned multi-million subscriber followings with family-friendly long-form videos, while Akili and Me appeals to young viewers with both long- and short-form content.

WATCH THIS 📺

Stranger Things is making its on-stage debut

Get this: a prequel to Stranger Things is coming to London’s West End. According to a new trailer for the stage play, Stranger Things: The First Shadow invites theater-goers to follow along as Joyce, Hopper, Bob, and “the infamous Henry Creel” navigate high school in 1959.

It might not be the spin-off Stranger Things fans were expecting, but given that the Duffer Brothers and famed director Stephen Daldry are involved in the production, we’re willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Find out more about the big show here.

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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.