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The creator economy magazineAnalyses of the European creator economy from primary sources. Pick a topic and read.
TikTok US lets surprise sets into live auctions
Buyers under 25 may win no more than eight surprise sets with random contents a day in TikTok’s US live auctions. Yet TikTok claims that only the highest bid decides its auctions. Because of similar goods, the Whatnot app faces arbitration claims in the US alleging illegal gambling.
US small business agency assigns creators an industry code
On 15 October the US Small Business Administration placed creator businesses in the film and video group for its loans and contracts. In August it proposed rewriting the group's small business threshold and will consider an exception for creators only after 20 November.
Goalhanger builds a venture around columnist Marina Hyde
Columnist Marina Hyde has left Britain's Guardian after a quarter of a century and launched a venture called Always On with the studio Goalhanger. For earlier creator deals, the studio disclosed the type of deal. The parties have not said who owns how much of the new venture or how revenue is split.
YouTube tests a Shorts bonus creators are not entitled to
YouTube is testing a minimum monthly payment for invited creators who upload a set number of Shorts each month, plus a views bonus. The rules do not guarantee the bonus. Meanwhile, from February 2027, Shorts ad revenue share goes only to channels that stay above a new views threshold every month.
Most US ad teams can't see into a brand's YouTube channel
Only 24% of teams running YouTube ads at US agencies can see into the unpaid content on a brand's channel. Yet in a survey published in January 2026 the same agencies see YouTube mainly as a video platform (73%) and TV (63%). Meanwhile, a creator show came out on Hot Topic's channel.
Zelenskyy on The Diary of a CEO: 110 minutes of hope marketing
Zelenskyy gave Steven Bartlett 110 minutes and speaks in them as a man who doesn't sleep, not as a president. 2.5 million views in the first nineteen hours. Why it works and which awards it could aim for.
TikTok moves its ads elsewhere after Meta ban, estimates say
Since 8 October, neither TikTok's ads nor other advertisers' ads linking to TikTok can run on Facebook and Instagram in the US, Japan and five other countries. TikTok's money is heading to in-app ad networks and YouTube, according to Sensor Tower. Neither Czechia nor any other EU state is affected.
YouTube's Channel Search test showed brands creator data
In a YouTube test, a small number of brand channels got data on other YouTubers in Studio. According to a company spokesperson, it covered only creators who had agreed to share. Audience filters in the Creator Search tool exclude creators without sharing turned on.
From 30 October, Meta may crawl business accounts' websites
After criticism, Meta struck the word train from its commercial terms. Its permission to crawl and download the websites of Facebook business users from 30 October 2026 remains. The Meta-ExternalAgent crawler, which also crawls sites to train foundation AI models, is stopped by a line in robots.txt.
French league's channel also wanted the YouTuber's matches
The French Football Federation handed its under-21 matches to YouTuber Zack Nani, who streams them for free, and the league's channel then wanted to simulcast them. In Portugal, DAZN, which holds the rights to all 380 Premier League matches, lets LiveModeTV also show one match per round for free.
Billion Dollar Boy acquires agency Creator Authority
Billion Dollar Boy is paying for Creator Authority in cash and tying part of the price to future results. The deal began in 2023 with a LinkedIn message to the agency's future co-founder. LinkedIn has so far opened its creator marketplace only to selected brands and creators in the US and Canada.
Advertisers pay more for ads next to AI slop
Ad verification rated AI slop sites better than slop-free inventory, and advertisers paid more for them, a TAG and ANA analysis of the first quarter of 2026 found. Slop sites were more than five times as numerous year on year in Q2, according to DoubleVerify data published by Axios.