Global trends
creatorshubViews from abroad. MrBeast, Steven Bartlett, Hollywood and other signals that run ahead of the Czech market.
Steven Bartlett is hiring 100 people and has poached a product chief from Amazon
The podcaster is building its product and data teams the way a tech company does, and has hired the head of technology from Amazon. Steven.com shows how a creator becomes a company competing for the same people as big tech.
Google funded a vertical series by podcaster Alex Cooper
Google Pixel co-financed a vertical series by podcaster Alex Cooper’s company Unwell. TikTok and Sundance are teaching creators to write micro-series, and Mipcom has added vertical content to its main programme. Entertainment is now developed in public before studios arrive.
US late-night talk shows have lost half their ad spend
US late-night ad spend fell from $439 million in 2018 to $220 million in 2024. Sean Evans of Hot Ones told Forbes why stars choose hot wings over talk shows: a clip’s second life, a child’s plea and the certainty that someone will see the stop.
Hollywood launches VertTV for vertical micro-dramas, but cheap Chinese apps lead the market
Producers from Netflix and Hallmark have launched VertTV, a subscription service for minute-long vertical series with stars from classic TV. Cheap Chinese apps built the market, and Deloitte expects $7.8 billion in revenue this year.
CDs outgrow vinyl for the first time in a decade as they become merch
US CD sales rose 16% in the first half, far faster than vinyl. K-pop, led by BTS, tops the chart, and half of young buyers do not own a CD player. The CD has become a cheap collectible, and that is a lesson for creators too.
Bartlett and MrBeast are heading to Shark Tank
Steven Bartlett and MrBeast will sit as guest investors in the eighteenth series of Shark Tank on ABC. Bartlett’s company Steven.com is valued at around $425 million. Creators are moving from the pitch to the chair that decides where the money goes.
Second-hand in the US grows four times faster than new fashion
A thirty-year cultural cycle has reached the 1990s, and the generation that lived through them now has spending power. Creators and films are switching on old catalogues and second-hand clothes again, and nostalgia is turning into business.
Dua Lipa opened a library of banned books. Reading shapes a voice
Dua Lipa opened a permanent library of banned books in Porto, Portugal, under her Service95 Book Club. It is a cultural gesture that reminds anyone building a brand of a simple rule: read before you speak.
Studios compete for YouTube horror and buy the rights from creators
Hollywood studios are bidding for horror series that began online. Eleven studios competed for one, and the box office of an adaptation set the price at over $330 million. Rights are bought directly from creators, whose audiences built the value years earlier.
Creators earned a billion for the first time. Bartlett ranks highest from Europe
The 50 highest-earning creators on the Forbes Top Creators 2026 list earned $1.02 billion between them, the first time the group has passed a billion dollars and up 20% on last year. MrBeast tops the list for a fifth year. Steven Bartlett ranks third, the highest of any European.
Phia has $35 million and a cap table instead of a media plan. The investor is also the audience
Phia raised a $35 million Series A at a $185 million valuation in January 2026. Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni built an AI shopping app at a time when founder and creator are starting to mean the same thing.
Streaming giants stop competing for evenings. They are competing for the tram ride
Streaming apps have adopted a vertical feed as their new default. Netflix Clips, Disney+ Verts and YouTube Shorts on Google TV all arrived within a single month. TikTok’s mechanics now carry a Madison Avenue signature.