It's Friday and Twitch is pulling out all the stops to celebrate Minecraft’s 15th birthday. Feel old yet?

ON BRAND

YouTube’s Brandcast message is simple: nothing compares to the power of creator fandoms

The pitch: YouTube’s latest Brandcast presentation packed a powerful punch. Rather than framing itself as an alternative to traditional TV, the platform reminded brands that it isn’t comparable to anything else on the advertising market—it’s better.

• The power of YouTube’s creator fanbases figured heavily into that pitch. Chief Business Officer Mary Ellen Coe highlighted the unique value of viewers who “rush to their favorite creator’s channel in the 24 hours after new videos are released,” noting that “no one is more engaged than loyal YouTube fans.”

The big reveal: A fresh slate of products will give brands new ways to capitalize on those “creator-fan connections.” At Brandcast, YouTube announced the official launch of branded QR codes, nonskippable TV ads, and YouTube Select Creator Takeovers, a product that lets advertisers “collaborate with top creators to own 100% share of voice on their channel.”

• YouTube began testing Takeovers with a small number of creators last year. That experiment marked the first time a YouTube offering had given brands 100% of the ad space on a single creator’s channel. Now, Takeovers is being rolled out to all advertisers.

The stats: YouTube’s presentation backed up the value of its new marketing products with cold hard stats. According to Nielsen, the platform has been the #1 most-watched streaming service on living room TVs for 17 months straight. In March 2024, it accounted for 10% of all watch time on TVs.

• The result: Mohan says viewers now watch an average of 1 billion hours of YouTube content on TVs every single day.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Instagram head Adam Mosseri sat down with comedian Ezee for the premiere episode of Creator POV, a new interview series focused on issues affecting Instagram users. (Tubefilter)
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• TikTok is edging further into YouTube territory with the deployment of yet another long-form test feature: 60-minute videos. (The Verge)

• OpenAI and Reddit are joining forces to “bring Reddit content to ChatGPT and new products.” (Engadget)
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• X has announced the rollout of several new Communities features, including recommendations that will appear in users’ timelines. (TechCrunch)

COLUMNS • CREATORS ON THE RISE 📈

This manga creator just snagged his first anime deal at 26 years old

How it started: Brandon Chen’s manga career began way back in kindergarten, when he started drawing and selling episodes “on the playground for 25 cents.” By age 14, the creator had been making manga for nearly a decade—but he hadn’t yet decided between writing or drawing. So, he flipped a coin.

• The result was all Chen needed to devote himself to writing. He published his first novel at 17, and continued writing and publishing throughout college and after graduation. Then, just as he was adjusting to an 80-hour-a-week job in finance, a project he’d created with artist mangakaua983 “blew up on social media.”
  
  

• That virality was enough to capture the attention of Webtoon. The platform invited Chen to pitch a project he’d started in college (AKA Just a Goblin) and quickly gave it the green light. So, he decided to pitch another series…and then another.

How it’s going: These days, Chen is a full-time writer and content creator with his own manga studio. His first-ever Webtoon series is in the midst of its second season, while a newer project, Samurai no Tora, is set to continue its own second season later this year.

• In the meantime, Chen is gearing up for the debut of Angel Wings and Double Kill, “two series that are coming out later this year that are pretty intensive.”

What’s up next: In addition to diving into upcoming manga series and seasons, fans will soon have a chance to see the culmination of Chen’s lifelong dream on-screen:

BEAST IN THE BOX

Craving chicken? Head over to Zaxby’s for a MrBeast Box.

The partnership: MrBeast Burger might not have cooked up the kind of success Jimmy Donaldson had in mind, but that doesn’t mean the man known as MrBeast is giving up on fast food. The YouTube star has announced a partnership with Zaxby’s that will bring Feastables-branded meal boxes to locations nationwide.

• Regular visitors to the chain’s 900+ locations will find plenty of familiar favorites within its new “MrBeast Box.” Each $12.99 meal includes a plethora of Zaxby’s menu items, including chicken, fries, Texas toast, and a milk chocolate bar from Donaldson’s Feastables snack line.

The context: Donaldson’s partnership with Zaxby’s is about more than promoting his recently reformulated chocolate bars. A positive reception to the MrBeast Box will likely help repair damage done to Donaldson’s brand during the rapid expansion of his last fast food venture.

• MrBeast Burger—a national delivery chain launched in partnership with Virtual Dining Concepts in 2020—quickly devolved from a viral hit into a PR nightmare. According to a lawsuit filed by Donaldson in 2023, Viral Dining’s focus on growth led to serious quality control issues “despite numerous objections by MrBeast.”
  
  

• Now, a new partnership will switch up the narrative surrounding MrBeast’s fast food presence. In addition to the MrBeast Box, Donaldson and Zaxby’s plan to collaborate on video integrations, social media content, and more.

WATCH THIS 📺

TikTokers are having a field day with this viral graduation speech

The speech: Harrison Butker’s latest commencement address probably won’t win him any MVP awards. In a speech delivered to the graduating class of Benedictine College, the Chiefs kicker tearfully encouraged female students to embrace lives as homemakers rather than buying into the “diabolical lies” of promising careers and promotions.

• It didn’t take long for that address to become one of the most spoofed speeches on TikTok. Creators like Maya and Hunter quickly (and hilariously) addressed the situation with gender-flipped skits, while others have encouraged viewers to sign a Change.org petition urging the Chiefs to cut Butker from its roster.
  
  

• So far, that petition has earned nearly 165,000 signatures—and more than 8 million views on TikTok.

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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.