It’s Thursday and as TikTok Shop continues to push luxury goods, it isn’t limiting itself to $11,000 handbags. The hub is dipping its proverbial toes into fine art, too.

MONEY MOVES

The earnings call: It’s been just over six years since Alphabet began disclosing YouTube’s ad revenue during its quarterly earnings calls. The first disclosure, released in February 2020, revealed that YouTube made a total of ~$15 billion in 2019 ad revenue (up from ~$10 billion total in 2018).

Now, according to Alphabet’s latest earnings call, YouTube is raking in nearly $10 billion a quarter.

The company’s Q1 2026 earnings showed that the video platform brought in $9.88 billion, a 10.7% year-over-year increase from Q1 2025. That figure comes in just shy of analyst expectations ($9.99 billion), but still makes up a sizable portion of Google’s total ad revenue ($77.25 billion for the quarter, a 15.5% year-over-year increase).

Alphabet also nodded to YouTube as one of the core components driving overall paid subscriptions to 350 million, which makes sense given that YouTube Premium hit 125 million subscribers late last year.

The big picture: The other subscription growth factor Alphabet pointed to was Google One, a bundle subscription for Google’s AI, cloud storage, and other features.

Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai also noted that Google Search had a strong quarter “with AI experiences driving usage, queries at an all-time high, and 19% revenue growth.” Given that creators’ videos are the leading information source for LLMs like Google’s AI search summaries, YouTube likely played a part in that growth, too.

Overall, Alphabet’s total revenue for the quarter was $109.9 billion, with a net income of $62.6 billion (aka $5.11 per share). Those figures beat analyst expectations of ~$107 billion and $2.63/share.

SHORT STUFF

The updates: Back in 2024, Patreon announced its plan to establish a greater “network effect.” Now, the platform is bringing that vision to life with wider rollouts of existing discovery features—and a shiny new homepage feed featuring a short-form format called Quips.

A Patreon blog post describes Quips as “new, free, short-form posts that live in the Home feed and reach fans across Patreon’s app and website.” While creators can use Quips to preview exclusive perks that can be unlocked by paying patrons, the format will act as a sort of recommendation engine for viewers, who will see Quips from creators they don’t yet support.

The other facets of Patreon’s discovery push—including Instagram-style Collaboration posts—also prioritize community. Collaborating creators can put both their names on joint posts, building tighter connections between their respective patrons.

The context: Patreon has repeatedly insisted that it’s not a social media platform, and—despite having a lot in common with TikTok’s For You Page—its approach to Quips’ overall setup aligns with that claim. Rather than keeping viewers scrolling for as long as possible, the format directs homepage visitors to relevant pages. Users who aren’t interested in discovering new accounts can toggle over to a “Memberships-only feed” instead.

That network-based approach might not put Patreon in competition with TikTok, but it does give the platform a leg-up in an increasingly crowded field of creator-focused platforms. Competitors like beehiiv and Substack have challenged Patreon by building robust toolkits for partner creators. Now, by rolling out new features to 300,000 creators and nearly 80 million fans, Patreon is making sure it can keep up with the Joneses.

CREATOR COMMOTION

The clipping biz: A few months ago, a Reddit user claimed to have gotten people paid “in total millions” for posting clips of N3on on TikTok. Now, Business Insider has done a deep dive into the gambling streamer’s clipping factory—and it looks like OP was telling the truth.

For those unfamiliar, N3on has ~558K followers on Kick and is primarily known for his association with Iggy Azalea (and for making headlines when he threatened to dox and sexually assault an underage fan).

In September 2025, N3on became a partner and co-owner of Azalea’s MOTHERLAND Casino, which describes itself as “the wildest and sexiest online casino and sports betting experience.” The company was acquired by crypto casino Gamdom last month in a deal that included long-term ambassador agreements for Azalea and N3on.

Now, N3on is promoting himself with what BI calls an “army” of clippers. Across one five-week period, the 21-year-old streamer paid out over $1.4 million to 303 individual clippers. His going pay rate is $40/100,000 views and top clippers can make $100,000+ each month.

The context: N3on told BI that his clipper network consists of ~1,000 people, about half of whom belong to a group that he built alongside fellow streamer Adin Ross. The other half of that network is apparently funded by Kick—meaning the platform itself is paying people to spam TikTok in hopes of attracting viewers.

N3on didn’t provide much hard data regarding the effectiveness of that system, but BI reports that “a successful clip” from a stream with 40K live viewers “can fetch millions of views” and open streamers up to brand and celebrity partnerships.

N3on isn’t the only streamer spending big on clipping, either. In addition to personally paying clippers $50/100K views, MrBeast launched Vyro—a platform that pays clippers who fulfill briefs from creators and/or brands—last October.

WATCH THIS 👀

The Vine dupe: Jack Dorsey is hoping Vine fans will “do it for Divine.” The Twitter co-founder is the financial muscle behind Divine, a six-second social video app that features 500,000 original Vine videos and (at least in theory) no AI.

In a trailer for the platform, Divine is described as “a new version of Vine that includes the Vine archive.” That promo video was studded with stars like Logan Paul, Megan McCarthy, and King Bach, but regular folks may have a while to wait before hopping on the app. Divine launched on the App Store yesterday, but is currently invite-only.

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