Greetings from Prague. I turned on the television this week and ended up on YouTube without meaning to. Turns out I have company. The most-watched TV in America is now a website that even Britain's BBC shoots for.

YouTube took 14.2% of all US television time in July 2026, according to Nielsen — more than any other distributor, and more than double Netflix's 7.8%. Streaming crossed 49% of viewing that month.

This is not phone-screen time. This is the living room. YouTube is watched on the big screen, and broadcasters are treating it that way. BBC Studios, the commercial arm of Britain's public broadcaster, is now producing shows directly for YouTube.

So why is legacy television handing its most expensive real estate to a platform it spent years treating as second-rate?

Because that is where the audience sits, and the prestige is following. A new report from YouTube and NRG claims 77% of Americans aged 14 to 44 see creators as widely known, against 79% for Hollywood stars. The gap is two points. Backrooms, a horror born on YouTube, has since reached cinemas through A24 and grossed more than $393 million.

The broadcasters' bet is simple. Whoever produces for YouTube as a primary channel keeps the attention linear TV is losing. Whoever keeps treating it as a supplement loses both. YouTube gathers creators next week for its annual Made On YouTube event in New York, where last year it showed generative Veo for Shorts and AI-assisted editing. Expect another round of tools that make production even cheaper.

Five things you need to know

  • VidCon is leaving Anaheim as Informa folds it into LIONS, the group behind Cannes Lions. From autumn 2027 it joins the Nashville festival, and in June 2027 it gets a presence in Cannes.
  • Advertising Week put creator Dhar Mann in the role of Chief Creator Officer and opened a marketplace aiming to close $100 million in deals between 500 brands and 2,500 creators. The edition starts October 5, and Europe enforces stricter ad-disclosure rules.
  • Gen Z trusts 94% of brands less than adults do, per Morning Consult. Platforms and creators hold the highest trust, and a repainted campaign does not fix it, per ADWEEK.
  • The clean girl era is ending. Per Pinterest Predicts, 42% of people join only the trends that suit them, and value is shifting from a single aesthetic toward taste.
  • Spotify added 35 regions to its Partner Program, including Poland. A Czech creator still cannot join, and at home is left with 30% of the ad on Podcasty.cz plus YouTube income.

Brands are buying creators as inventory and as credit

A brand used to hire a creator for a single post and wait to see what the algorithm delivered. The past few days showed how fast that one-off is turning into standing financial infrastructure.

The ad is now the creator's organic content. Meta launched its Creator Marketing Hub globally. A brand finds a creator inside it, edits the post, and turns it into an ad draft with one click. From September 29 it adds ads built from Instagram live video. YouTube is moving the same way with Creator Partnership Ads, and paid support of creator content in the US is set to rise 48% this year to $13.2 billion, faster than the rest of the ad market. Noise pushed the idea onto ordinary phone owners, paying them for branded videos by view count regardless of audience size. Brands spent roughly $37 billion on creator partnerships in the US last year, per the IAB, so the stakes are real.

The creator gets credit against their own income. CreatorFi raised $45 million from investors and lenders and pays creators advances repaid straight from their Roblox, Spotify or YouTube income. The creator keeps the company and the catalogue. It is the model every startup knows as revenue-based financing, only it was never available to a person with a channel before.

The direction of the money is legible. Content is getting cheaper to make, so capital moves to the plumbing between a creator and their audience. Whoever hands the creator both an ad marketplace and a credit line takes their margin before the platform does.

Best of CreatorsHub

Number of the week, 93 percent

Pocket FM says 93% of its catalogue is now made with AI. That makes production roughly 80 times cheaper, and annualized revenue has climbed to $500 million. Per Mint, the company is raising $100 to $120 million at a $1.5 to $2 billion valuation, and the parent describes itself as profitable.

  • 93% of the catalogue made with AI, humans do the rest.
  • Roughly 80 times lower cost to produce a title.
  • $500 million in annualized revenue, double the prior run-rate.
  • A fresh round of $100 to $120 million at a $1.5 to $2 billion valuation.

The half-trillion nobody will see

Every other creator-economy slide flashes half a trillion dollars as the size of the market in 2027. We traced where that number comes from. It is a single Goldman Sachs estimate from 2023, and it has not been repeated since.

Newer models count a wider market, creators, tools and advertising together, and still land about a fifth lower for the same year. The market keeps growing, just slower than a three-year-old slide promised. Anyone building a plan on half a trillion today is building on a number its own author stopped citing.

Deals of the week

  • CreatorFi raised $45 million for creator advances repaid from their income.
  • Noise raised $5.5 million in a seed round and reports 1.5 million creators on the platform.
  • Pocket FM is raising $100 to $120 million at a $1.5 to $2 billion valuation.
  • Paid support of creator content in the US is set to rise 48% this year to $13.2 billion.

Thanks for reading. Next week I'll watch what YouTube actually showed at Made On YouTube, and whether it settles who counts as television now.

By Tereza Tiller