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If you’re finding value in our Creator Economy newsletter, I encourage you to consider subscribing to The Information. It contains exclusive reporting on the most important stories in tech. Save up to $250 on your first year of access. Hello! We’re hearing a lot of YouTube creators and media executives have already descended on New Orleans ahead of Super Bowl Sunday. Back at home in rainy Mountain View, Google leaders have been talking up the last national event that boosted YouTube—the 2024 presidential election. In a call with investors late Tuesday, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said more than 45 million viewers in the U.S. watched election-related content on YouTube on Election Day. He also shouted out YouTube’s early investment in podcasting, which is “paying off.” Those successes helped YouTube revenue outpace its parent’s. Alphabet revenue slowed to 12% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, to $96.5 billion. YouTube revenue rose 14% to $10.47 billion, a slightly higher rate than the previous period, driven by strong spending on ads for the U.S. election from both political parties, which executives said was double from 2020. With the election over, YouTube executives focused on other drivers, including TikTok rival Shorts and the popularity of watching YouTube on TV screens. Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, asserted that Shorts are “closing the gap” with long-form video, a mainstay of YouTube. He said the monetization rate for Shorts, or the percentage of revenue YouTubers earn from those videos, increased by 30 percentage points. He expects that rate to keep increasing this year. Creators may beg to differ, as many we speak with still say they earn significantly more money from longer videos, while their viewership on Shorts largely hasn’t resulted in the same revenue opportunities. As we’ve reported, nearly half of U.S. YouTube watching has been happening on TV screens. Recently the company has been trying to convince creators and users to watch Shorts on big screens as well. Schindler said 15% of Shorts viewing in the U.S. is now happening on connected TV screens. Schindler also noted 400 million hours of podcasts were watched each month just on living room devices last year. Creators are “the number one most important thing we care about,” Schindler said, pointing to the fact that its YouTube Partner Program, which allows creators to make money from their videos, includes more than 3 million channels. “We’re very confident with the position we have.” Here’s what else is going on… Snapchat’s daily active users rose 9% to 453 million during the fourth quarter compared to the prior year. Revenue during the period increased 14% to $1.56 billion, at the high end of its previous forecast, though it warned of lackluster demand from some large ad clients. Shares rose 5% after hours. The company’s efforts to encourage more creators to post on Snapchat by paying them some revenue from advertisements on short-form videos and disappearing Stories appears to be working. The number of creators posting content on Snapchat rose 40% in the fourth quarter. One of those new creators: Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, who turned his profile public on Snapchat on Monday night, seemingly taking a page out of Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s playbook. Mosseri has been posting videos on Instagram particularly frequently amid uncertainty around TikTok’s future. Spiegel kicked things off on his Snapchat account by encouraging users to ask him a question—which ranged from his favorite office snack (Cheez-its) to his Uber rating (4.8 out of 5). Under his profile he wrote “Loving husband, father to 4 boys, VP Product @ Meta”, an apparent joke referring to Meta’s copying of Snapchat features over the years, such as Stories. • President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to create a sovereign wealth fund for the U.S., which he said could own part of TikTok. However, Trump ordered a plan for the new fund to be delivered within 90 days, while his administration indicated the actual fund could take a year to set up, which falls well beyond his 75-day deadline for TikTok. Read more here. • Emily Stubbs, TikTok’s global head of litigation since 2020, left the company, The Information reported. See The Information’s Creator Economy Database for an exclusive list of private companies and their investors. Spotify shares rose 13% on Tuesday after the company reported its first full year of profitability in 2024. LinkedIn announced new updates to its video features, including bringing its TikTok-like For You feed of videos to desktop and a new profile feature to see a creator’s recent videos. It’s also adding more videos in search results, a more prominent follow button within the full-screen video player and a new metric for creators: average watch time of their videos. Snapchat and the NFL are launching a creator program that brings some Snap creators to the Super Bowl in person. Creators including Katie Austin, Ross Smith, Jack Mancuso and Treasure Wilson will post Stories and Spotlight videos to share behind the scenes views of the big game. Sixteenth, an influencer talent firm acquired by Whalar in October, announced a new sports division focused on turning professional athletes into online creators. ICYMI: Instagram is testing a pause feature on Reels with a small group of users that allows people to start and stop videos with a tap, similar to TikTok. Tom Brady launched a newsletter on Kit, a creator-focused email marketing platform previously known as Convertkit. Called 199, his newsletter will give his “unfiltered takes” about topics including business, football and health. Lilly Singh is back on YouTube after a multi-year hiatus. Singh, who started making YouTube videos in 2010, pursued other projects after making it big as a creator, including publishing books, premiere a documentary film and host a late-night talk show for NBC, which was canceled in 2021. Now she’s back, saying in a new YouTube video that she plans to share with viewers how she’s pursuing dreams in Hollywood, including movies she wants to make, while on Shorts she will share get-ready-with-me videos and stories from her life. Shadi Nayyer joined Meta Platforms in a new role focused on building relationships with metaverse creators and developers. Nayyer previously was TikTok’s global head of creator programs. Dylan Siegel joined influencer marketing agency Social Studies as account director. Thank you for reading the Creator Economy Newsletter! I’d love your feedback, ideas and tips: kaya@theinformation.com. If you think someone else might enjoy this newsletter, please pass it forward or they can sign up here: https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/creator-economy | 
