TOGETHER WITH

It's Monday and if you ever felt a pang of guilt watching the iconic “You wouldn’t steal a car” anti-piracy ad of the ‘00s, here’s some delicious irony for you: it looks like the ad itself may have indulged in a bit of pirated material.

Today’s News

MONEY MOVES

YouTube’s Q1 ad revenue hit $8.9B after a year-over-year bump

The quarterly report: Alphabet is starting 2025 on a high note. The YouTube parent company has reported $90.23 billion in first-quarter revenue, exceeding analyst projections that pegged the company’s topline figure at $89.12 billion.

YouTube’s own Q1 results demonstrate its importance as a holding, especially as fellow subsidiary Google faces pressure from Capitol Hill. During an earnings call on April 24, Alphabet execs reported that YouTube’s quarterly ad revenue totaled $8.9 billion—a year-over-year increase of 10.3%.

Although those gains fell slightly short of analyst expectations (YouTube had been projected to achieve $8.97 billion in Q1 ad revenue), the platform’s first-quarter activity demonstrated its effort to diversify beyond ads. Increasing viewership from podcast fans and senior citizens has contributed to YouTube’s massive growth on TV screens, while a new Premium Lite tier could serve to attract more subscribers.

The context: YouTube’s rapid expansion has led Wall Street firm MoffettNathanson to tag the video hub with a $550 million valuation at a time when Alphabet’s other properties are facing increased scrutiny from governmental authorities. Thanks to a recent court decision, the breakup of Google’s ad business—which opponents see as a monopoly—is looking likely. If that dissolution comes to pass, YouTube will become an even more important asset for its parent company, making its continued growth a high priority.

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

More and more creators are moving to Dubai. Here’s why:

From Yes Theory to Liam Dipple, some of the world’s biggest creators are moving to Dubai. We already know resources like Creators HQ—an initiative that offers Golden Visa assistance, expert-led workshops, and more—can be a big draw for digital stars. But we wanted to know why creators are relocating to the UAE in their own words. So, we did a little digging.

Here’s what three creators had to say about moving to Dubai:

Bayleigh Daily (500K Cross-Platform Followers): “Dubai is the land of opportunities right now. When I go to Dubai, I’m on my grind.”

Samantha Harvey (830K TikTok Followers): “There’s so much to do here. Literally you can do anything and everything. It feels a lot safer here.”

For creators considering a move to Dubai, Creators HQ is there to help: With $40.8 million in backing and partners like Meta, YouTube, Komi, and Colin and Samir, Creators HQ offers everything creators need to thrive in Dubai—from relocation assistance to cutting-edge studio space.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Instagram’s Edits app scored over 7 million downloads within a few days of hitting app stores, outpacing CapCut’s initial launch by a wide margin. (TechCrunch)
  
  

• YouTube is testing out AI overviews. Following the success of Google’s own summaries, the platform says it is “experimenting with a new video results carousel that appears after entering certain search queries.” (YouTube Help)
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• Amazon Prime Video has renewed the YouTube hit Hazbin Hotel for a sixth season and plans to begin streaming the spinoff series Helluva Boss in fall 2025. (Gizmodo)
  
  

• Elon Musk’s xAI is reportedly gearing up to raise $20 billion in what would be “the second-largest startup funding round ever.” (TechCrunch)

CREATOR TV

Creators are building streaming services on Vimeo for a reason—just ask Dropout

The obstacle: As shifting algorithms and short-form video continue to impact ad revenue, more and more YouTube channels are turning to paywalled content. But going off-platform isn’t easy—especially when you’re trying to design an entire streaming service.

That’s the problem Dropout (then called CollegeHumor) faced in 2020, when it was cut by its corporate owner and bought by then-Chief Creative Officer Sam Reich. At the time, Reich urged fans to stay subscribed to the comedy brand’s Dropout streaming service amid its risky revamp.

They listened. Five years later, Reich is CEO, Dropout has 15 million subscribers on YouTube with successful shows like Game Changer, and the company says it is “no longer beholden to social media algorithms and inconsistent ad revenue” thanks to its custom streaming service.

The solution: That service is powered by Vimeo Streaming, which encourages creators “to build your own Netflix-style streaming service.” Although Vimeo only debuted the product to the public earlier this month, it’s already been adopted by major creators (including Dropout, the Try Guys, and the Sidemen), and has been used to launch more than 5,400 apps that have collectively attracted 13+ million subscribers and generated nearly $430 million in annual revenue for creators.

For Dropout, Vimeo Streaming has been a game changer (pun intended).

With Vimeo Streaming’s tools, Dropout has been able to build, maintain, and monetize a service that can support hundreds of episodes. Vimeo handles infrastructure, customer support, and troubleshooting—all of which has helped keep the price of Dropout low for its loyal subscribers.

FYI: Vimeo is a Tubefilter partner.

PREDICTIVE POWER

Why does the internet love Akinator? We asked the company behind the genie.

The genie: If you encountered Akinator as a kid in the ‘00s, you might have thought the guessing game was a real magic trick.

The sleuthing genie was first introduced by French company Elokence in 2007 and challenged players to think of any celebrity they could imagine. No matter who you dreamt up, Akinator seemed to guess who was on your mind more times than not. Early reviews described the predictive program as magic, wondrous, and a timekiller.

Eventually, Akinator’s search volume dipped—but then a funny thing happened. Over the past decade, YouTube creators have rediscovered Elokence’s genie. Markiplier played in 2015, AliA in 2022, and Foltyn just a couple of months ago. The advent of Shorts has led to Akinator clips from creators like CaseOh, NotLeah, and Sambucha, too.

The X factor: Viral marketing has helped Akinator stay relevant, but it doesn’t explain why the program is still so popular now, when generative AI should have made it obsolete. So, what makes the genie stand out?

A Medium post identified four “key components” to Akinator’s “algorithmic magic”: binary search, decision trees, machine learning, and collaborative filtering. Through deductive reasoning, Akinator is able to whittle millions of potential answers into a much smaller subset of educated guesses.

Elokence’s R&D team continues to refine Akinator with help from the data collected from player guesses. (Although Chief Commercial and Marketing Office Jérôme Soreau says that data isn’t used for external purposes outside of Elokence.)

The result is “huge guessing power” and a refined alogrithm that Soreau says keeps Akinator relevant amid an AI boom—and keeps creators coming back:

LISTEN UP 🎙️

This week on the podcast…

“A Conversation with Reid AI”: The latest episode of Creator Upload is one for the record books. Reid AI—aka the digital version of LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman—dropped in on host Lauren Schnipper for its first ever podcast guest appearance. The AI wiz was joined by Ben Relles, who manages content strategy for Reid in all forms of existence.

Also on the episode agenda: YouTube just turned 20 and Linktree is rolling out new monetization features for creators. Find out more by tuning into the show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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