TOGETHER WITH

It’s Friday and Amazon is adding teeth to its live shopping empire by launching its very own version of Shark Tank.

Today’s News

ALL ABOUT ADS

Watching YouTube on TV? You’ll probably start seeing more unskippable ads.

The shift: If you feel like you’ve been seeing more unskippable ads on YouTube lately…well, you probably have. The platform has reportedly begun offering marketers both 30-second and 60-second unskippable ads, with minute-long ads specifically targeted for TVs.

The arrival of those ads coincides with the introduction of pause-vertising. Both formats were announced well over a year ago at Brandcast 2023, but are just now making their way onto viewers’ screens.

YouTube’s perspective: YouTube confirmed that it chose to debut longer unskippables at the beginning of September because it’s noticed that people don’t like frequent ad breaks. In fact, its data shows that 79% of viewers prefer to sit through one bigger ad break than deal with multiple breaks in a single video—and it’s in YouTube’s best interests to keep viewers watching for as long as possible.

Brand perspective: Unskippable ads are appealing to brands, too. In addition to commanding viewers’ attention for a solid 30 to 60 seconds, the format costs less than alternative options. According to Jackie Mogol—who serves as Senior Vice President of Strategic Account Sales at marketing agency Pixability—unskippable ads are now one of the most cost-effective types of YouTube marketing out there, with an 87.84% decrease in CPMs from 2019 to 2024.

The effectiveness of unskippables has also increased alongside its affordability. Mogol says the number of impressions generated by YouTube’s CTV ads has gone up 140% from 2019 to 2024, “as there’s a growing preference of watching content on the big screen, especially in the context of advertising.”

Brands are eager to tap into that preference—and YouTube has proven that it’s the place to do it. The Alphabet-owned platform is now the #1 streaming service on connected TVs, accounting for 10.4% of all television watch time. Every day, millions of YouTube viewers watch over a billion hours of creator-made content on a living room-sized screen.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Meta has announced Orion, a line of smart spectacles it describes as the “first consumer full holographic AR glasses.” (Tubefilter)
  
  

• X has suspended Ken Klippenstein’s account in response to the journalist’s decision to post a dossier containing the full address of Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. (Engadget)
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• Disney+ has announced that it will begin charging subscribers between $7 and $9 to share their account with a family member or friend located at a different address. (Gizmodo)
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• Actress Kristen Bell will reportedly lend her voice to Instagram’s AI chatbot just three months after encouraging the platform to “get rid of the AI program.” (The Verge)

THE PURGE

TikTok is joining forces with the World Health Organization to purge misinformation from its platform

The mission: With the U.S. presidential election just five weeks away, TikTok is ramping up its efforts to reduce the amount of misinformation on its platform. The app recently announced its decision to purge accounts with ties to RT (short for Russia Today) and Sputnik, both of which have been linked to the Kremlin. A post discussing the terminations claimed that the affected accounts had engaged in “covert influence operations.”

The collaboration: Political misinformation isn’t the only nuisance on TikTok’s hit list. The platform also aims to combat misleading health-related content by increasing the number of accurate medical opinions available to viewers. To accomplish that goal, TikTok has announced a year-long collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). The United Nations agency currently reaches 2.8 million followers through its TikTok account, which provides dispatches from the world of public health.

That account won’t be viewers’ only resource for trustworthy health information. Fides—a WHO-backed network of medical opinions—will also play an important role in WHO and TikTok’s shared mission. The Fides community currently includes 800 health creators, who collectively reach 150 million followers across platforms.

The context: TikTok’s court battle against the U.S. government gives it a particularly strong incentive to combat misinformation, but it isn’t the only platform taking action. YouTube has taken similar measures to cull both medical and political misinformation, including by imposing sanctions on RT and related channels.

THE END IS NIGH

Wait, Twitch licenses emojis?

The announcement: Viewers may soon have to say goodbye to one of Twitch’s OG emotes. In a tweet posted earlier this week, the platform announced that “the end of the BibleThump Era is nigh”:

But what does that announcement actually mean?

For readers not well-versed in Twitch history, BibleThump is a crying pink blob the platform acquired in 2013 to celebrate the release of indie video game The Binding of Isaac. Twitch’s tweet insinuates that it has no choice but to retire the emote when its deal with The Binding of Isaac developers Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl expires. According to McMillen, however, that isn’t exactly the case: the dev has said that he’s happy to devise “a good solution to keep or modify the emote” and “would be 100% fine with [Twitch] renewing.”

The motivation: So, why is Twitch surrendering its rights to BibleThump? Part of the reason might be that times have simply changed. Instead of paying licensing fees, most emotes are now introduced by streamers who either make the icons themselves or hire artists to create them.

An emoji license certainly doesn’t cost as much as an exclusive streaming deal with a top creator, but Twitch’s focus on tightening its books could also be a motivating factor.

CEO Dan Clancy has admitted that Twitch isn’t profitable, and recent layoffs have led staffers to worry that the platform is morphing into a “zombie brand.” Those concerns have already lent ammo to Twitch’s competition. The platform no longer offers the kind of exclusive, multimillion-dollar deals that once wooed livestreaming’s biggest stars, leading rivals like Kick to poach talent with lucrative offers.

If Twitch doesn’t take action soon, a similar situation could see BibleThump switch hands. Shortly after confirming that he still owned the rights to the emoji, McMillen retweeted a post from Kick, which had @’d him with a shot of BibleThump done up in its color palette and posed the question “we cooking?”

WATCH THIS 📺

Christian Brighty turned his regency comedy into a BBC podcast

The creator: Christian Brighty is killing it on TikTok. Since 2020, the sketch comedian has attracted nearly 500,000 followers and more than 20 million likes with his regency-themed skits—and now, he’s also captured the attention of the BBC.

As Brightly announced late last month, he recently starred in The Many Wrongs of Lord Christian Brightly, a “Regency era audience sitcom about a hedonistic aristocrat.” The podcast—which turns the creator’s short-form humor into a professional long-formproduction—is a major treat for long-time fans.

Listeners can tune into the full show here, or check out behind-the-scenes clips on Brightly’s TikTok channel.

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