TOGETHER WITH

It’s Tuesday and Bluesky’s newly-crowned CEO says the platform is motivated by one key belief: “the future of social media should serve the public good.”

ASMR UPHEAVAL

The nuke: ASMR creators ItsBunniiASMR, Slight Sounds, Nananightray, Roseasmr, Simoneasmr, and Janina Wilhelmsen opened their emails last week to an unpleasant surprise. YouTube had deleted their channels without prior warning.

The platform informed them they had “severely violated” its policies, and that “[e]xplicit content that’s meant to be sexually gratifying isn’t allowed on YouTube.”

In a later comment to 404 Media, YouTube said the creators had violated its external link policy, which says creators can’t link their channels to content that’s against YouTube’s TOS, even if said content is hosted on an entirely different platform.

Some of these creators do post NSFW ASMR content, but say they keep that content completely separate from their YouTube videos. Slight Sounds, who’s been posting ASMR videos online since 2013, said she thinks her content was targeted because “people, especially men, confuse closeness and intimacy with sex.”

The policy: YouTube targeted these channels under established policies, but creators say its policies aren’t clear, and that their safe-for-work content—often aimed at helping viewers relax, sleep, or calm down from panic attacks—is being incorrectly labeled “gratifying.”

This case is also a wake-up call that, via its external link policy, YouTube considers any content that creators link to within its purview, regardless of where that content is hosted.

Every year, VidSummit tickets sell out as top creators and industry pros prepare for a biz dev event like no other. 

With a fan-free environment and a speaker lineup dedicated to furthering your career, VidSummit is more than a creator industry conference. It’s where digital entrepreneurs learn to dominate the industry—with exclusive insights from the world’s top experts.

Meet the speaker behind one of VidSummit’s hottest sessions: “How I Get 50 Million Views: Dr. Plants Takes the Stage”

Dr. Plants is one of the fastest growing YouTube channels in the creator economy, averaging over 50M views per video. His nature-themed content has attracted more than 670M views and 5.5M subscribers on YouTube alone.

At VidSummit, Dr. Plants will join 70+ other expert speakers—including Financial Audit creator Caleb Hammer, Hammer Media President & COO Robert Kaliati, and award-winning streamer Cody "Clix" Conrod—to share actionable growth strategies you won’t discover anywhere else. 

VidSummit 2026 will run from September 29 to October 1 in Dallas, Texas. Visit the website to claim your spot:

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

GOSPEL STATS 📈

The FIFA fever hasn’t quite passed, but this week we’ve only got one World Cup video in the Gospel Stats Brand Report. The remaining top five videos are essentially business as usual, with Salish Matter and her skincare company, Sincerely Yours, leading the pack.

🥇 #1. Jordan and Salish Matter x Sincerely Yours: Meeting My Dads TWIN For The First Time (13.3M views)
The Matters’ latest chart-topper includes an unorthodox challenge, with Salish searching for a stand-in dad who can take over her father’s role while he’s traveling. (And maybe takes her on a trip to Sephora to restock her Sincerely Yours collection.)

🥈 #2. Zhong x FIFA: I Hid a Soccer Field In My Room! (12.4M views)
For the second week in a row, Zhong is clocking in with a FIFA-sponsored clip. Unlike last week’s short uploads, this Zhong video is a full-length VOD where he tears through various World Cup games around the globe looking for things he can add to a “secret” soccer field he built in his house.

🎰 #3,340 and 3,341. Bobby Plays x ExitLag and BalorMobile x Call of Duty Mobile: The new Mythic Hurricane is INSANE (38K views) and mythic FSS Hurricane attachments in codm (38K views)
Further down the rankings, we have a double bonus this week (mostly because the circumstances were simply too interesting to pass up). Videos #3,340 and #3,341 are both sponsored clips about Call of Duty Mobile with nearly identical view counts—despite being made by two different creators and backed by two different companies.

Check out the full branded ranking here and head over to Gospel Stats for more YouTube sponsorship insights.

SHORT STUFF

The good news: Long-form YouTube videos are still popular—but according to a recent report, the arrival of Shorts may have changed the habits of the typical U.S. YouTube user.

That insight comes from Metricool’s 2026 YouTube Study, a broad survey of the platform that incorporated data from 799,718 videos across 71,177 accounts. One of the report’s key findings is a win-win for creators of long and short-form content alike. Year-over-year, YouTube videos are getting more views on average—regardless of format.

On the long-form side of the platform, Metricool found that views are up 76% year-over-year, while watch time has risen by 11%. Shorts traffic, meanwhile, has more than doubled year-over-year, with 61% of all measured views now coming from the Shorts feed. Overall, YouTube now reaches nine out of every ten Americans.

The concern: The most notable result of Metricool’s 2026 YouTube Study, however, could spell trouble for advertisers. While viewers are watching more long-form videos, they’re moving on to the next one at a rapid pace, with much less average watch time than in previous eras. According to Metricool, YouTube’s long-form engagement is down 45% year-over-year. Even on the Shorts feed, where YouTube now facilitates longer videos, the average view duration has fallen dramatically.

So while Shorts may not be cannibalizing long-form videos—as many creators initially feared—long-form videos are behaving more like Shorts. As indicated by a 51% year-over-year drop in YouTube ad impressions, that trend has massive ramifications for advertisers. After all, if viewers are clicking away earlier, then there are fewer opportunities to serve mid-roll ads.

Metricool’s solution to that problem involves gaming the algorithm with a more restrained approach to posting. The report recommends “2-4 videos per week” as “the sweet spot for maximum long-form video views.”

WATCH THIS 👀

The BTS successor: Once upon a time, BTS was a regular chart-topper in our Global Top 50. Now, however, the group’s recent decision to omit their music from Grammy consideration seems to suggest that BTS is ready to tone down their fame.

That step back would leave room in our YouTube charts for the next big pop sensation—and another HYBE product seems ready to fill that gap. KATSEYE, a “global girl group” associated with the same K-pop hitmaker that brought BTS to the world, is thriving on YouTube, where its lifetime view count totals nearly ten billion.

As fans await the group’s upcoming album, Wild, a single called “Animal” has been lighting up the YouTube charts. Even during a week when other channels saw their viewership drop, the song allowed KATSEYE to snag 347.7 million weekly views—twice as much traffic as they earned the previous week.

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