TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and thanks to YouTube creator Amelia Dimoldenberg, fans will soon bear witness to Deadpool and Wolverine’s first double-date (at a chicken shop, of course).

Today’s News

MIND THE GAP

Here are the highlights of YouTube’s Q2 earnings call:

The quarterly call: The second quarter of 2024 is a wrap. YouTube execs outlined the platform’s Q2 performance in a recent call spearheaded by Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat (who will soon trade in that role for a new title and become President and Chief Investment Officer). Here are the main highlights of YouTube’s Q2:

1. Quarterly ad earnings increased by 13% year-over-year.

Two years ago, Shorts’ knack for pulling views from long-form videos was putting a major dent in YouTube’s ad revenue. That isn’t the case anymore. By introducing Shorts ads in February 2023 and gradually closing “the monetization gap” between long and short-form content, YouTube earned $9.2 billion in Q4 2023 ad revenue, $8.1 billion in Q1 2024, and—most recently—$8.66 billion in Q2 2024.

2. YouTube is killing it on connected TV.

Porat didn’t offer exact numbers, but noted that YouTube is seeing “continued momentum in connected TV, with brands benefiting in part from an ongoing shift in budgets from linear television to digital.” That trend isn’t new: back in February, CEO Neal Mohan revealed that viewers watch “an average of one billion hours of YouTube content on TV screens each day.”

3. Alphabet’s subscriptions sector is growing.

Alphabet SVP/Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said the parent company’s subscriptions sector grew 14% quarter over quarter, “driven again by strong YouTube subscriptions.” (No word yet on the actual figure that 14% improved upon.)

tldr: YouTube saw “healthy growth” in Q2—but ultimately missed projections.
Despite gaining “momentum in connected TV” and getting a boost from Shorts ad earnings, YouTube didn’t hit analysts’ projection of $8.9 billion in advertising revenues. The result: Alphabet’s share prices dropped by 4.6% post-earnings call.

🔆 SPONSORED 🔆

Does OpusClip really work? We examined the evidence to find out:

OpusClip’s award-winning video clipping platform turns long videos into optimized Shorts, TikToks, and Reels in seconds—but how do we know those clips actually help creators grow?

To verify the success of OpusClip’s AI video creation tools, we checked in with three creators who are currently using Opus. Here’s how the results shook out:

Exhibit A: Jenny Hoyos used OpusClip’s AI editing tool to transform hours of her mom’s raw footage into viral Shorts.
The outcome: her mom’s channel, Saving Lady, jumped to 1 million YouTube subscribers.

Exhibit B: Podcaster Zach Justice gave OpusClip one chance to create a viral TikTok.
The resulting video immediately outperformed his 10 previous hand-edited uploads.

Exhibit C: Ruben Hassid decided to test OpusClip’s mettle by starting from scratch.
The creator helped his assistant grow from reaching 0 to over 1 million LinkedIn accounts in under 2 months by clipping interviews of famous business leaders as inspirational hooks tell personal stories about her own journey.

With data-driven virality scores, keyword highlights, custom captions, b-rolls, and more, OpusClip has already helped 6M+ users produce incredible results—from 70% higher revenue (Ebonie Dion) to 65% more subscribers (Ricardo Hernandez).

Hit the link below to start turning your videos into viral clips:

Get started with OpusClip → 

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Ava Kris Tyson says she will “permanently step away from all things MrBeast” amid accusations that she sent inappropriate messages to a 13-year-old when she was 20. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• Ridge—a social media-savvy wallet company that claims Marques Brownlee as its Chief Creative Partner—is joining forces with YouTuber Tyler Winer to launch a limited-edition WILDCAT Ridge Wallet. (Ridge)
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• LOST iN, a travel media brand led by the founders of Jukin Media, has acquired Buzzfeed’s Bring Me! franchise just one month after securing $4 million in funding. (AdWeek)
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• The 2024 Paris Olympics’ Chessboxing Exhibition will feature English commentary from one of the internet’s favorite creators: YouTube star Ludwig Ahgren. (Dextero)

DATA • U.S. TOP 50 📈

U.S. Top 3: When it comes to MrBeast and magic tricks , the stats don’t lie

🥇 The challenger: As it turns out, uniting 50 million YouTubers can do a lot for a channel’s weekly view count. MrBeast’s most recent video—a star-powered challenge featuring popular creators like Kai Cenat and Logan Paul—was a major contributor to his main channel’s latest seven-day haul, which added up to 715.5 million views.

🥈 The family channel: MrBeast’s 53% week-over-week viewership increase was impossible to beat, but J House jr. still made a good showing with 567 million weekly views.

• The family channel’s 29% week-over-week increase was the result of months of hard work. Since the start of 2024, J House jr. has gone from posting 15 Shorts a month (January 2024) to a whopping 189 (June 2024).

🥉 The magic maker: Posting nearly 200 monthly videos while wrangling five kids is a special kind of magic, but YouTube fans are into more traditional forms of wizardry, too. As a genre, magic has produced the platform’s most-watched Short of all time (aka Justin Flom’s famous dress trick) and routinely generates billions upon billions of views.

• Zack D. Films contributed 522.1 million of those views over the course of our last seven-day count. Like Flom, the creator loves a good magic trick—but it’s his knack for combining edutainment, animation, internet ephemera, and a host of other viral genres that has made Zack D. Films a repeat chart-topper.

Head over to Gospel Stats to find out more about YouTube’s most-viewed channels.

LET’S BE CLEAR

Twitch just made its stance on sexual harassment very clear

The policy update: Twitch is updating its sexual harassment policy to “remove ambiguity” and make the rules “easier to understand.” The platform has compiled a list of clearly-defined banned behaviors, which includes “attacks related to a person’s perceived sexual behaviors” and “sexual objectification.”

• In addition to defining specific policy violations, Twitch has updated AutoMod to filter messages that “could be considered sexual harassment.” Offending posts will be blocked before they show up in chat, but streamers and mods will still be able to see, delete, and report them.
  
  

• According to Twitch, its mods “look at a range of signals” to confirm that reported comments “are unwanted and aren’t consensual” and may report nonconsensual images/videos “to authorities.”

The context: After a long history of enforcing and subsequently walking back confusing policies, Twitch seems to be getting its act together. The platform has spent the last year redefining policies around things like nudity, violent content, deepfakes, and swatting/doxxing.

• Twitch’s most recent policy clarification comes shortly after the permabanning of Dr Disrespect, a prominent creator who sent inappropriate messages to a minor using the platform’s DM system. With any luck, AutoMod’s new filter and Twitch’s stated willingness to involve authorities will prevent similar situations from taking place in the future.

WATCH THIS 📺

JaidenAnimations is retiring…eventually

The anniversary post: It’s officially been ten years since JaidenAnimations uploaded her first animated YouTube video. In that time, the creator has attracted 13.3 million subscribers and more than 2.5 billion lifetime views.

• Now, JaidenAnimations is moving onto the next phase of her career—and she’s “come to accept that YouTube isn’t going to be part of it.” The animator isn’t quitting just yet, but she is giving fans time to adjust to the idea of her upcoming retirement.

The content: That reveal follows similar retirement, hiatus, and/or sales announcements from long-time YouTubers like Tom Scott and MatPat. Like those creators, JaidenAnimations’ reason for (eventually) leaving YouTube is simple: she’s tired.

• As more and more creators exit YouTube in 2024, it’s becoming clear that burnout is a natural consequence of the industry’s ‘grind culture.’ Or maybe it’s not burnout at all and just a product of these top creators wanting to stop their day jobs after making a LOT of money? Either way, what happens now?

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, James Hale, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.