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It's Thursday and Fat Bear Week isn’t the only chunky animal contest on the block. After an intense voting round, Chunkosaurus Rex has officially claimed victory in the first-ever Fat Squirrel Week competition.

Today’s News

MONEY MOVES

Shorts now make more money for YouTube than long-form videos

The Q3 stats: In an after-hours earnings call, Google reported record revenue of $102.35 billion for Q3 2025, with YouTube’s ad earnings accounting for $10.26 billion of that total.

Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai called the quarter “terrific,” with “double-digit growth across every major part of our business.” He attributed much of that growth—which encompassed a 16% year-over-year jump for overall earnings, 15% YOY for YouTube’s ad revenue, and 33% YOY for net income of $34.98 billion—to Google’s efforts to incorporate generative AI into absolutely everything it offers.

Given all that growth and increasing investments in AI, it’s no surprise that costs are on the rise, too. With this earnings call, Alphabet upped its capital expenditures estimate for this year from $85 billion to $91-93 billion.

The Shorts angle: YouTube is doing its part to make sure those expenditures are fueling its continued growth—and Shorts is an increasingly large part of that equation. In addition to highlighting new AI tools for creators and YouTube’s exclusive broadcast of the Sept. 5 Chiefs/Chargers NFL game (which saw 19 million viewers and set a record for most concurrent users on a YouTube livestream), Pichai pointed to the mounting success of YouTube’s short-form product.

According to the CEO, the vertical-upload format now generates more revenue per watch hour than long-form content—a revelation that, while not surprising, raises important questions regarding the revenue-earning potential of long-form creators.

When YouTube first introduced Shorts, its own revenue dropped as viewer attention shifted from long-form content to short-form videos (which were not yet monetized). Creator companies were also impacted. Spotter, for instance, recently laid off 40% of its staff after missing financial goals due to the rise of short-form pulling views from YouTube’s long-form content.

Now that Shorts are here to stay, will long-form creators have to reckon with any kind of earnings dip in the future? Will rising Shorts revenue make up for it? Or will the continued influx of media dollars to the platform push rates high enough that none of these nuances will really matter?

🌟 SPONSORED 🌟

Didn’t make it to Advertising Week New York 2025? Here’s the scoop:

From October 6-9, the leading festival for all things marketing and media brought over 20,000 attendees and 1,200+ speakers to Manhattan for two days of vital industry intercommunication. 

Across 500+ sessions and 28 content tracks, Advertising Week New York spotlit the crucial intersection of human imagination and technology—with a heavy focus on AI’s impact on storytelling and the evolving creator economy. 

The response: Over 81% of respondents described this year’s sessions and speakers as relevant to their industry.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Tubi is teaming up with Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat studio to distribute a four-film slate headlined by star creators like Kinigra Deon. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• During Meta's third-quarter earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Threads now reaches 150 million daily active users. (Engadget)
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• YouTube has confirmed the launch of a “voluntary exit program” that offers severance to U.S.-based employees who choose to leave the company. (TechCrunch)
  
  

• In the face of mounting scrutiny, Character.AI has announced that it will be “removing the ability for users under 18 to engage in open-ended chat” with its AI bots. (Character.AI)

TIKTOK TALK

TikTok will give creators a chance to keep “up to 90%” of Subscription earnings

The announcements: With the deal to create a U.S.-exclusive version of TikTok expected to close this week, the video platform is unveiling new perks for its American users. At its annual U.S. Creator Summit, TikTok announced multiple new AI-powered tools and a revamped payout structure for its Subscriptions revenue stream.

The Subscriptions shake-up: As on Twitch and YouTube, TikTok’s Subscriptions are typically purchased by fans, with creators and the platform splitting the resulting earnings. 70/30 has historically been the baseline split “after fees” for TikTok Subscriptions—but going forward, creators will be able to chase incentive-based bonuses to up their share. By reaching milestones like 10,000 followers and 100,000 monthly views, TikTokers will have the chance to push their split as high as 90/10.

The AI updates: The other announcements made at the U.S. Creator Summit center around AI-powered tools. A new feature called Smart Split, for example, will automate the process of creating clips from long-form uploads. The debut of that tool marks TikTok’s entry into the crowded field of clipping, which has become big business for creators (and an increasingly accessible one thanks to companies like OpusClip and MrBeast’s Vyro). On TikTok, Smart Split will allow users to reframe long-form videos while captioning and transcribing the resulting short-form clips.

The other feature announced at the U.S. Creator Summit, AI Outline, resembles existing creativity aids available through YouTube, Meta, and Adobe. The TikTok tool will allow users to enter their ideas into an AI-powered engine, which spits out a full outline that can form the basis of the resulting video.

Between those AI-powered capabilities and the promise of a 90/10 split for streamers, TikTok is giving creators plenty of incentive to stick around amidst the uncertain future of its U.S.-exclusive platform.

PLATFORM PARTNERSHIPS

Twitch’s first Hololive collab will bring a wave of VTubers to its platform

The context: Up until this past summer, two major VTuber talent agencies were relatively well-known by Western viewers. San Francisco-based VShojo housed creators who dominated on Twitch, while Tokyo-based Hololive reps creators who streamed on YouTube.

There’s a reason we use the past tense in reference to VShojo. Back in July, the agency abruptly shuttered due to financial mishandling. Since then, Twitch’s VTuber presence has been largely led by independent creators and folks signed with Mythic Talent, the two-year-old management company co-founded by OTK members Asmongold and TipsOut.

The partnership: Now, however, Hololive is looking to stake out a larger presence on Twitch. Cover Corporation (the tech/entertainment company that owns Hololive) has entered into a partnership with the platform that will see its creators regularly stream there.

According to PC Gamer, that deal won’t result in Hololive’s creators abandoning YouTube (where they amass millions of views a month). Instead, they’ll likely multistream (aka stream on both YouTube and Twitch simultaneously). Even so, the partnership marks Hololive’s first time establishing a real presence on Twitch—and gives the Amazon-owned platform its biggest contingent of non-independent Japanese-language VTubers yet.

To kick off their partnership, Hololive and Twitch are hosting an all-day “Holoday” event on November 20, just a few days before American Thanksgiving. According to Hololive, “talents from hololive Indonesia, hololive English, and HOLOSTARS English will take over the front page of Twitch” and host a “variety of fun streams” to entertain fans.

Participating stars include Kureiji Ollie, Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame, Octavio, Crimzon Ruze, Axel Syrios, Banzoin Hakka, and Josuiji Shinri (among others). Each of the featured VTubers have their own individual Twitch channels, while Hololive itself has a channel with 28,000 followers.

WATCH THIS 📺

Nascar is pitting pro drivers against Twitch streamers

The series: Nascar is promoting the 2025 edition of its official video game—which hit shelves earlier this month—by collaborating with some of Twitch’s biggest streamers. TimTheTatman, Emiru, and StableRonaldo are among several creators set to take part in the NASCAR 25 Creator Series, which pits pro drivers against streamers on Twitch.

The four-event series began yesterday and will run until February on NASCAR’s official Twitch channel, with participants competing in pairs for a $100,000 grand prize. Driver Carson Hocevar (who is also a Twitch streamer in his own right) hit the track for the series’ first episode, which featured racer-turned-broadcaster Mamba Smith as the host of the official NASCAR broadcast.

Check out a trailer for the series here.

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