The one thing to know this week

Nick DiGiovanni has 46.7 million subscribers and a new deal to put his videos on Netflix, and in the past year he didn't do a single spoken read for an outside brand. The product he keeps talking up on camera is Osmo, the salt and seasoning company he co-founded. And he's not the only Netflix signing who looks like this.

Netflix has spent the year signing YouTubers, from Mythical and Drew Binsky to, this week, Sam and Colby, while YouTube has reportedly been offering its biggest creators millions to stay put. So we went through the sponsored videos on every YouTuber Netflix signed this year, and two channels carry 80% of them.

Keep reading to find out

why YouTube wants to sell one sponsor read into 20 videos at once

which history channel has added 200,000 subscribers in two years

how a card-sleeve company built a loyal roster out of small channels

why IShowSpeed and Airrack both took fast-food jobs on the same weekend

Our team spent this week at VidSummit in Dallas, and we're coming home with plenty to write about in the issues ahead. Let's get into it.

This week's deep dive

Netflix Is Shopping for YouTubers. YouTube Wants Them to Stay.

This is the week Netflix's YouTube signings hit the screen. Sam and Colby, who built 16.3 million subscribers filming themselves in haunted buildings, announced on September 23 that a collection of their spooky episodes lands on Netflix on October 1, and on Monday the Sidemen went a step further and premiered Outside, a Netflix original. Sam and Colby aren't leaving YouTube to do it; in their words, they now get to post to Netflix too. They join a list that's started to read like a talent roster: Mythical, Nick DiGiovanni, the Stokes Twins, Alan Chikin Chow, Kevin Langue and, since September 19, travel creator Drew Binsky. As far as we can tell from the announcements, nearly all of them signed non-exclusive deals, most of which put new episodes on Netflix the same day they go up on YouTube.

When we wrote in July about Netflix licensing short videos from publishers, it looked like Netflix wanted YouTube's format. It turns out it wants YouTube's people.

In August we flagged that YouTube was fighting back. Bloomberg reported that it was offering some of its biggest creators millions of dollars to keep new videos YouTube-only for a set period, paid through funded shows, a share of platform brand-deal money and cash. The Ankler put it at about 15 creators, with offers from the low seven figures up to around $10 million, and reported that creators who take Netflix's money risk losing perks like Brandcast slots and billboards. Netflix has signed Binsky and Sam and Colby since then anyway.

For brands, the part to watch is the reads. One line in Bloomberg's reporting, from unnamed sources, says Netflix asks creators to remove certain brand sponsorships and wants finished videos delivered in advance. Nobody has published what actually happens to an integration when an episode crosses over, whether it's cut, kept or re-edited. So we went and looked at who's actually paying these creators.

Zooming Out

A creator's Netflix deal is now something to ask about before you book, the same way you'd ask about their audience. Put three lines in the contract: whether your read can run anywhere other than YouTube, what happens if another platform asks for it to be cut, and what you're owed if it is. And ask whether a YouTube-only window is on the table, because a platform deal can change where and when your read runs.

The story behind the numbers

From Our Data

Two Channels Carry Netflix's Sponsored Videos

We took the ten YouTube channels Netflix signed this year that post long-form regularly and counted every video from the last 12 months with a real sponsorship: an outside brand named as the sponsor at the top of the description, with its link. Creators plugging their own products don't count. You'd expect Netflix to be buying YouTube's most commercial creators. Mostly, it isn't.

Two channels carry most of the sponsored videos

Good Mythical Morning

28 of 247 videos

Sam and Colby

8 of 13

Drew Binsky

5 of 29

Sidemen

3 of 50

Stokes Twins

1 of 23

Good Mythical Morning has the most sponsored videos, 28, for brands like Mint Mobile, Bombas, Oura and Zocdoc, while Sam and Colby have the highest share, with a sponsorship on 8 of their 13 long-form videos. Between them, those two channels carry 80% of the sponsored videos on the whole list.

The Netflix deals haven't scared those sponsors off. Since Good Mythical Morning's deal was announced on July 14, 18% of its uploads have carried a sponsorship, against 10% before it, though at 7 videos out of 39, that's still a small number for now. Drew Binsky, with 5 sponsored videos out of 29, posted one for SoFi on September 19, the day his show launched on Netflix.

The rest are barely sold. The Stokes Twins ran one, for Adobe Firefly, and the Sidemen three, for O2, Lynx and Google Gemini. Nick DiGiovanni, whose on-camera plugs are for his own Osmo, had none, and neither did Kevin Langue, Alan's Universe, Jordan Matter or First We Feast.

Why it matters

So far, the sponsor money on these channels is still being made on YouTube, and none of it has moved. If Netflix does start asking for sponsorships to come out, the brands that feel it are concentrated on two channels. For everyone else, the more interesting read runs the other way: most of Netflix's new YouTube roster carries almost no third-party sponsors, which makes it some of the least crowded inventory attached to a streaming deal right now.

Links Roundup

Quick hits from across the web

Back in May we told you YouTube was making sponsor slots rentable, and at Made on YouTube last week it said creators will be able to drop one read into up to 20 long-form videos at once, aim it at chosen countries and swap it out when the deal ends.

YouTube is expanding Watch With to long-form videos later this year: creators who react live to another creator's video keep the live ad revenue and fan funding, while the original creator gets the credit and chooses which videos can be reacted to, so it's worth asking whether the channel you sponsor allows it.

Tech YouTuber Matt Robb says Meta's Muse AI agent shared his home address with a Facebook Marketplace buyer without asking (Meta says the agent was following instructions), which is worth remembering now that Meta wants the same agent screening brand-deal offers for Instagram creators.

Twitch had its strongest month of 2026 in August, with 1.56 billion hours watched and viewership up 7% on last year, and CEO Dan Clancy, who's speaking at VidSummit this week, says he wants short clips to drive viewers back to the livestream.

Patreon co-founder Sam Yam joined OpenAI last week to lead its creator products, and told followers to pay attention to OpenAI's DevDay conference this week.

Partner message Before you book a holiday read, open the channel on YouTube: the ThoughtLeaders Chrome extension, free to download, shows the audience split by gender, country and age right next to the channel's sponsor history.

Creator on the Rise · add to your watch list

IT'S HISTORY

890K subscribers • History and infrastructure explainers

Oct 2024: 689K

Sep 2026: 890K

Subscribers

IT'S HISTORY answers the questions you didn't know you had about North American infrastructure, like why a Chicago highway runs through a giant hole or why Niagara Falls was once switched off, for an audience that's 86% male and 74% in the United States. It's been growing steadily, from 689,000 subscribers two years ago to 890,000 now, and its new uploads are landing: a blast furnace episode this summer is past 550,000 views, and last week's The Dangerous Military History of California's Mare Island passed 330,000 in six days.

Top country

United States 74%

Audience age

45-54

median age

Gender split

Male 86% · Female 14%

Reach — 92K

projected views at day 30

Partner with the channel →

Advertiser Spotlight

Brand Strategies Worth Stealing

Dragon Shield Found Its Channels and Never Left

Dragon Shield makes the card sleeves serious Magic and Pokemon players keep their decks in, and it isn't chasing reach. Over the last 12 months it sponsored long-form videos on just 65 channels, and 1,035 of those videos carried a spoken read. The biggest channel, Team APS, has 614,000 subscribers; the median one it buys has about 40,000, and 50 of the 65 have fewer than 100,000.

It keeps going back to the same ones. Over two years, 28 of the 57 channels that had time to come back got a second round of Dragon Shield videos at least 70 days after the first, which makes them what we call "winners": channels a brand keeps paying for after seeing results. That makes Dragon Shield a guide brand in its own right for anyone selling to tabletop players. Several videos bought together on one channel are a package rather than a renewal, and buys from the last couple of months are too fresh to judge.

The biggest placements this year are hobby videos where the product is on screen anyway. Joel Are Magic's September 9 video passed 360,000 views with a spoken read and the channel's own code, JOEL, and CovertGoBlue, which sells its own Dragon Shield sleeve line, thanked "Dragon Shield, who gave us these sweet sleeves and these awesome playmats to play with" in an April video that's past 265,000.

The steal is the shape of the roster: instead of buying one video each on hundreds of channels, it picks a few dozen channels whose viewers already buy sleeves and keeps paying the ones that work.

Trending on YouTube

What's going viral right now

Two YouTubers Took Fast-Food Jobs. Only One Came With a Promo Code.

4.8M

views on Speed's KFC stream

IShowSpeed spent Sunday working a KFC shift on a three-hour stream, and the replay is past 4.8 million views, with KFC's offer terms and a code, KFSPEED, right at the top of the description. A day earlier Airrack went undercover at McDonald's for a video that's past 3.3 million, and McDonald's appears nowhere in his description; the only partner tag on it is Whatnot's. Watch Speed's shift.

Mat Armstrong Bought a Yacht That Doesn't Run

28M+

views in 9 days

Mat Armstrong usually rebuilds wrecked supercars, so naturally his next project floats. His video about buying a non-running luxury yacht is past 28 million views in nine days. Watch the boat.

MrBeast Gaming Found a 13-Year-Old Minecraft World

24M+

views in 3 days

MrBeast Gaming dug up a Minecraft world from 13 years ago, and the tour passed 24 million views in three days. Watch the tour.

The Sidemen Got Lost in a Forest for Google

7.5M+

views

The Sidemen spent 24 hours surviving a forest in the first of five videos in their Gemini campaign with Google, with Gemini worked into the challenge itself. It's past 7.5 million views, and the other four are due on MoreSidemen from late October. Watch them survive.

BOYNEXTDOOR's Animal Came Out Swinging

4M+

views since Monday

HYBE boy band BOYNEXTDOOR posted the video for "ANIMAL" to HYBE LABELS on Monday, and it's already past 4 million views. Watch the video.