TOGETHER WITH

It’s Wednesday and if you attended college in the ‘00s, you probably have a story involving Four Loko (that is, if you can remember it). Now, the alcohol brand hopes to reach the next generation by teaming up with FaZe Clan to promote a new flavor: CAMO.

Today’s News

NUMBERS GAME

A fresh estimate suggests that YouTube could be worth as much as $550 billion

The estimate: When Google acquired YouTube in a $1.65 billion all-stock deal, the 2006 purchase was viewed by many as risky business. Nearly a decade later, the video site’s value has skyrocketed—and according to recent estimates from MoffettNathason, Google’s initial gamble may have already paid off 500 times over.

Morgan Stanley had pegged YouTube’s worth at $160 billion in 2018. Five years later, investment bank Needham put the video sit’s value in the $350-400 billion range. Now, research from MoffettNathason suggests that YouTube could be worth as much as $550 billion. The prominent Wall Street firm estimates that Alphabet‘s video-focused subsidiary hauled in $54.2 billion of revenue in 2024, and now accounts for about 30% of the parent company’s valuation.

The potential: YouTube’s annual revenue is expected to climb even higher in 2025, which would push it ahead of Disney to give it the highest revenue total among media companies. (It’s worth noting that Disney’s parks and product divisions are excluded from that accounting.) As of now, however, the two companies are currently engaged in a battle for attention that is playing out across multiple fronts, including children’s entertainment and TV screen viewership.

MoffettNathanson’s report argues that YouTube can widen the distance between itself and Disney by continuing to bring new forms of monetization to its leaned-back TV experience. The firm confidently deemed the Alphabet-owned video platform “the king of all media.” Now, we’ll have to see if YouTube can hold onto that title.

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The problem: Posting quickly and consistently is one of the key aspects of being a pro YouTuber. But that need for speed can make it difficult to optimize ideas for maximum impact. 

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Spotter Studio’s Idea Bank feature makes it easy to save, organize, and prioritize your video ideas in seconds. The best part: Idea Bank ranks your video concept and titles based on relevance and engagement trends with machine learning models built specifically for YouTube. 

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• MrBeast’s primary YouTube channel brought in nearly double the amount of views collected by any other U.S. hub this week, with a seven-day sum of 906.5 million views. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• As it expands its partnership with Google, Roblox is introducing a new ad format that will offer users in-game rewards in exchange for watching sponsored videos. (VentureBeat)
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• Meta’s VP of AI research, Joelle Pineau, announced yesterday that she plans to depart the company on May 30. (TechCrunch)
  
  

• TikTok Notes—aka TikTok’s photo-sharing Instagram competitor—has reportedly informed users that it will be shutting down on May 8, at which point “all related features will no longer be available.” (TechCrunch)

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

Creators won’t dominate the next phase of the creator economy

The vision: As the former CEO and Co-Founder of Electric Monster (a digital media acquisitions company sold to Brat TV in 2021), Matthew Gielen has spent his career “building media companies in the digital video space.” Now, he’s sharing his predictions for the future of digital media with Tubefilter.

In an in-depth examination of the creator economy (which you can find on our website), Gielen defines “creators and companies that become Digital Media Studios that make long-form, YouTube-first content” as the future leaders of the industry. Examples include Spy Ninjas, Mythical, Blogilates, Theorist Inc., MKBHD, and Dude Perfect.

The determining factors: Gielen believes digital media studios will dominate the creator economy over the next twenty years for six reasons:

1. Scaleability: Personality-fueled brands come with a built-in ceiling. As Gielen points out, “only a handful of celebrities have successfully built a media company on the back of their celebrity that have stood for significant (20+ years) lengths of time.” Digital media studios circumvent that issue by producing content that isn’t tied to a single creator’s popularity.

2. Resources: A digital media studio with multiple IPs and revenue streams can “take bigger swings” because it has more resources to create “better” content and hire specialized talent.

3. Amortization and cost reduction: Gielen says “digital media studios will have a competitive advantage with reduced costs.“

4. Centralized knowledge base: “Digital media studios will have a centralized knowledge base of how each platform works, what audiences are gravitating towards, and what is simmering under the surface.”

5. Varied skillsets: “While not every brand is right for every potential revenue stream, having the skillsets and experience to exploit a brand in any potential revenue stream is vital.”

6. Professionalization, standardization, stability, and sustainability: Digital media studios will bring these four attributes to an industry “fragmented with limited regulations and standards.”

The takeaway: Gielen predicts that companies built by entrepreneurial creators focused on long-form, YouTube-first content will rival traditional studios in the next 10-20 years. Early movers in the space have already initiated a wave of acquisitions—but they haven’t yet made a dent in the available asset class of digital media companies. According to Gielen, this means we can expect “more capital to flow into the creator economy from private equity, family offices, strategics, VCs, and advertisers” in the next 3-5 years.

GOING VERTICAL

Substack wants creators to stick around—so it’s introducing a TikTok-style feed

The context: Over the last couple of years, Substack has become a refuge for displaced journalists—especially those whose content centers on politics. To support that rising class of reporters, the newsletter platform has partnered with the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression to defend writers targeted by the federal government and established a $20 million fund to reward creators who port over their followers.

Now—mere days before the deadline for the divestment or banning of TikTok—Substack has transformed its Media tab into a new discoverability tool for creators: a vertical video feed aimed at attracting weary TikTok users.

The context: Though text-focused newsletters are Substack’s bread and butter, its 2022 introduction of native video paved the way for enhanced monetization features and new products. Three years later, the platform says 82% of its top-earning authors utilize a multimedia approach. Its new TikTok-style hub will further tie into video monetization, while potentially serving as a tool for newsletter promotion and audience growth.

An increasing focus on creator-friendly resources has sent Substack’s paid subscriber numbers soaring past five million and made it increasingly popular among political reporters—but not everyone is pleased with the platform’s pivot toward political content. According to a report from Digiday, approximately 3,000 creators have moved from Substack to rival platform beehiiv over the past year. beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk told Digiday that nearly 1,000 of those creators changed over during the first three months of the second Trump term.

Substack may not be able to woo back creators disgruntled by its defense of political reporters, but it can continue optimizing the experience of its current user base. The TikTok-style feed is part of that effort.

WATCH THIS 📺

Tech companies leaned hard on sass for April Fools’ Day

The pranks: It’s become a tradition for major brands to make consumers cringe on April 1—and this year’s holiday was no exception. Every company from Hasbro to Duolingo took to social media to make fake announcements, post parody clips, and show off products that will never come to fruition. Several of those brands leaned into internet culture for their April Fools’ Day jokes, with Razer introducing a new “Skibidi” brainrot translator headset.

Then there were the spicier posts. Two tech companies in particular dialed up the sass to 100: Bluesky posted a fake word limit announcement that included the words “I ain’t reading all that,” while OpenAI announced the release of a sarcastic chatbot voice named “Monday.”

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