Platforms
TikTok Tests Paid Microdrama App LimeShorts in the U.S.
Business Insider reports full access costs $20 a week or $200 a year; Apple's U.S. listing labels a $19.99 Weekly Pass but also describes that price as monthly.
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Facebook Will Test Opening Straight Into Full-Screen Video
The test starts later this year in unspecified video-heavy countries, with a Feed-first opt-out and only a possible U.S. expansion next year.
Platforms
YouTube Turns Creator Playlists Into TV-Style Shows
Shows may surface in search, Recommended shows and Continue watching, giving serialized creator videos a presentation designed for bigger screens.
Funding
Passionfroot Raises $15M for B2B Creator Marketing
Insight Partners led the Series A, which will fund Passionfroot’s Zest AI agent, creator dataset and U.S. expansion. No valuation was disclosed.
Platforms
TikTok Shop Tests a $10,000 Managed Service for Sellers
Business Insider reports the August pilot adds a 10% to 20% sales commission; TikTok’s terms put ads, creators and AI content inside the plan while keeping product and compliance liability with sellers.
Platforms
YouTube’s U.S. Creator-Economy GDP Estimate Passed $60B in 2025
The 2025 U.S. report puts the ecosystem above 540,000 full-time-equivalent jobs, compared with 490,000 in YouTube's 2024 estimate.
Platforms
TikTok’s NBA and WNBA Deal Tries to Turn Highlight Watchers Into Live Viewers
TikTok says its 2026 NBA Finals hubs generated 497 million impressions and 426,000 watch referrals, figures that do not show how many people completed a tune-in.
Money
Podean’s Sixth Acquisition in Nine Months Adds 70 TikTok Shop Specialists
Social Commerce Club will retain its brand and leadership inside the combined business. Podean did not disclose the deal's financial terms.
Platforms
Madonna’s Album Premiere Became TikTok LIVE’s Biggest Artist Broadcast
TikTok says 2.16 million unique viewers watched the July 2 Confessions II event, a record limited to its standalone artist broadcasts.
Platforms
Good Mythical Morning Comes to Netflix and Stays on YouTube
New episodes of Good Mythical Morning, Mythical Kitchen and Last Meals will reach Netflix and YouTube on the same day starting September 7.
The Business
Cannes Put 250+ Creators Where CMOs Spend. Now the Deals Have to Follow
A €1,245 creator pass, Adobe-backed beach and content studios put creators beside brand buyers; the harder question is how much access becomes signed budget.
Research
7,095 TikTok Videos Show Teen Ad Rules Can Miss Influencer Posts
The formal ad product looked DSA-compliant. The risk was sponsored-looking creator and brand posts that kept reaching minor accounts through the recommendation feed.
Platforms
Yahoo Turned Its NBA Draft Expert Into an AI Chatbot. Brands Need the Rights Terms
Yahoo reaches 250 million monthly U.S. users, and its NBA Draft bot shows why brands need approval, disclosure, and payment terms before turning a creator's expertise into AI.
Platforms
78 U.S. World Cup Matches Put Creator Trips Inside Visa Review
The U.S. hosts 78 of 104 World Cup matches, and CBP/DHS say foreign influencers making paid content on visitor status may be working illegally.
Platforms
Klipy Raised $3.8M as Tenor's API Shutdown Reopens the Meme Infrastructure Market
Google will decommission current Tenor API integrations on June 30, and Klipy says 8,500 developers and 40,000 creators have migrated since January.
The Business
P&G and Albertsons Built Rico's Tacos Around 25 Grocery Trips. Now the Store Has to Prove the Lift
Albertsons and P&G will launch Rico's Tacos on June 23, using 25 shopper-trip insights, 15-second store teasers, app viewing, and sales measurement to test branded entertainment as retail media.
What Worked
e.l.f. Put Hair on TikTok Shop First. 77% of Its Community Had Already Asked for It
e.l.f. Hair opened on TikTok Shop on June 16 before Target, after a limited hair test sold out in 48 hours and brought in 65% new e.l.f. customers.
Field Guide
What Is Creator Clipping? How Brands Turn One Video Into Hundreds of Posts
The marketer's guide to clipping campaigns, pay-per-view creator rewards, platforms like Content Rewards, Whop, Vyro, and Mainstage, and the checks that keep cheap reach from becoming bad media.
Money
Substack Is Quietly Building an Ad Network for Newsletters
Substack says its first flagship sponsors are putting millions into creators, turning paid newsletter trust into brand inventory without calling itself an ad platform.
Platforms
New York Just Made AI Influencers a Compliance Problem
New York can now fine undisclosed synthetic-performer ads $1,000, forcing brands using AI influencers to prove the label survived every post.
Platforms
AI Influencers Are Getting Harder to Spot. Four Profiles Show the Disclosure Gap
Ana Zelu, Mia Zelu, Aitana Lopez, and Granny Spills all surface synthetic identity in profile copy, while TikTok, YouTube, and Meta policies still center on labeling AI media.
Money
Creator Economy M&A Hit 81 Deals as AI and Commerce Pulled In the Funding
Quartermast and New Economies counted 81 creator-economy M&A deals in 2025, while large 2025 funding rounds clustered around AI, social commerce, and new communities.
The Business
Kit Opened a 5,000-Square-Foot NYC Studio. Creator Software Is Moving Offline
Kit's 5,000-square-foot New York studio is free for Creator or Pro customers, putting professional production space inside the software subscription.
Field Guide
Clipping Pays Up to $5 per 1,000 Views. The Disclosure Has to Travel With Every Post
Clip Tech says brands pay clippers up to $5 per 1,000 views, while FTC guidance still requires each paid endorsement to disclose the material connection where viewers will see it.
Research
YouTube Affiliate Videos Clearly Disclosed Paid Links 12.2% of the Time
A 2 million-video YouTube study found 146,800 affiliate videos; 45.5% had any disclosure and 12.2% clearly told viewers about compensation and the linked relationship.
Money
Accenture is buying Whalar’s 170-person agency — creator marketing has entered the consulting budget
Accenture is buying Whalar’s 170-person agency, with terms undisclosed and one outside estimate at $225M–$300M — a carve-out that turns creator marketing into enterprise growth infrastructure.
The Business
A Synthetic Influencer's 2024 Brand-Deal Income Is Estimated at $2.5 Million. Eleven People Run the Comparable Account.
Lu do Magalu's ~$2.5M figure is a Kapwing rate-card model, not disclosed revenue — but the real story is the three cost lines a synthetic creator deletes, run by a team of eleven.
Money
FaZe Clan Went Public at a $725M Valuation in 2022. GameSquare Bought It for About $17M in 2024.
FaZe closed its de-SPAC at about $725 million, then disclosed in the same proxy that sold the deal that it expected to miss its own revenue forecasts by 20% — GameSquare bought the whole company for roughly $17 million.
Money
Substack Raised $100M at a $1.1B Valuation on About $45M in Revenue
The $1.1 billion price implies roughly 24 times forward revenue, all of it earned by taking a flat 10% of writer subscriptions — a cut Beehiiv and Ghost are undercutting at the top.
Money
OnlyFans paid one owner $497M last year — more than its bottom ~397,000 creators earned combined
OnlyFans markets an 80% creator split, but its audited 2024 filing routed $497M to one owner — about what 397,000 average creator accounts earned all year.
Creator Brands
Prime committed to buying 18.5M cases of itself a year — then a $67.7M suit showed demand never arrived
Congo Brands committed to buy 18.5M cases of Prime a year — a $67.7M bottler suit and Prime's 71% UK revenue drop show how far real demand fell short.
Creator Brands
e.l.f. took a $57.6M charge because Rhode beat its targets — how an earnout punishes a winning acquisition
Hailey Bieber's Rhode ran so far past its earnout thresholds that e.l.f. marked the liability up $57.6M — flipping Q4 to a $49.4M GAAP loss on 35% sales growth.
Money
GameSquare paid 0.69x revenue for Click Management — the multiple the roll-up actually clears
GameSquare bought Click Management — $12.4M revenue, 545 deals, 75 creators — for $8.5M, a 0.69x revenue mark that sits below almost every creator-economy M&A headline.
Analysis
e.l.f. spends a quarter of sales on marketing and grew 28 straight quarters — the always-on creator loop behind it
e.l.f. held marketing near a quarter of net sales while L’Oréal’s ad-and-promo ran 32.4% — and rode 28 straight quarters of growth to $1.31B. Here’s the always-on creator engine closing the gap.
Creator Brands
Coty paid $600M for half of Kylie Cosmetics — then its filings put revenue at a third of the public figure
Coty’s 8-K pegged Kylie Cosmetics at $177M in trailing revenue; months later its filings let Forbes reset 2018 sales to ~$125M against the ~$360M the family had promoted — the gap a public-company audit forced open.