How This Creator Drew 87,000 Fans to a Mall | Jordan Matter | Creator Upload

0:00Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren? Yes. I have a question for you. Yes. When's the last time you watched linear television? Just two nights ago, I was watching my favorite show, Dancing with the Stars. It is back, baby. It is better than ever. I love it. It's like appointment viewing. I look forward to it every week. Like, my dream is to be famous enough to go on Dancing with the Stars, which when I asked my dear friend Eliza Schlesinger, who is a pretty famous comedian, she was like, I kind of think you're famous enough to go on Dancing with the Stars.

0:35Which I was like, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Although I just think about, like, between the frozen shoulder and the back, I would be one of those people. And, like, the, you know, the confessionals, what do they call them? You know, the interviews or whatever. And just be like, my shoulder, my toe. Like, or just be terrible. The blisters. Liza was a great Lauren Shipper compliment and sick Dancing with the Stars burn. I mean. At the same time. Wow. I think that's a burn to me, but go on. And so your kids watch it with you too, or what's the deal? I thought you were no screens.

1:07So as you know, unlike you, I don't let them watch screens during the week. So I was like, it's Mommy's Dancing Show. It's back. If you guys get ready for bed, you can come watch it to me. And so everybody was psyched. They're like into it, like Mommy's Dancing Show. And we didn't watch the whole thing because it's like an hour and a half. So I still have to go back. So I linear, but I'm still utilizing the recording function because we... Because you want to watch it later. Sorry to cut you off, but I just got excited about this. On linear television, what's your platform you're watching it on?

1:35We subscribe to Hulu. So I'm what I like to call... Which has gone up in price. It's gotten expensive, by the way. All of them have gone up in price, which is why I decided to cut all of them. And I'm what I call now a linear television purist. but like are you not watching no netflix you gotta have netflix so oh i do have netflix you got netflix and amazon prime yeah and youtube premium but not youtube tv because when i first subscribed to youtube tv it was 50 bucks a month or like 45 or something several years ago it's great now it's over 80 a month which for a thousand bucks a year for the quantity of television that i consume doesn't quite make sense i know i know it's wait what's wait for what you what's premium Premium is just no ads, right?

2:16Premium is just no ads on YouTube. Right, versus the TV, right. Well, I mean, George keeps wanting to cancel the Hulu because we really don't watch. But there's some special series and stuff that come on Hulu that I wouldn't get to watch if I didn't pay for it. But I subscribe to Peacock. I'm like a Peacock fan. I love me some Peacock because I love SVU and I love Dateline. But the truth of the matter is, I don't watch it that much. So I should unsubscribe to all of these things. Lauren, you should unsubscribe to all these things and get yourself a pair of bunny ears. We did do bunny ears several years ago.

2:50And here's the thing that people don't know about bunny ears. And because is the picture quality is actually really good on bunny ears. You can get digital. You can get a digital antenna for like$35. It goes up on your wall. You might have to like hide it in some way if you want your wall to still look cool. I've done that a little bit. And you get, yes, totally really crisp HD quality television through the airwaves. and it has been an amazing experience. That's why I wanted to bring it up. Wow. Maybe it's the nostalgia of it. I don't know. Maybe it's the seeming just temporal nature of the thing.

3:27But when Jeopardy comes on at seven, Wheel of Fortune comes on at eight. Sometimes at nine, you can catch Family Feud. Depends on whether the game show pops up. Last night we were watching MasterChef. and you turn it on and what's i tell my kids all the time i was like we just would have to turn on the tv and watch what was ever there and i think it creates this experience that i'm really enjoying with my family i mean we get a ton of screen time now we get collective community screen time in front of a television that you can't pause during commercial breaks you can talk to one another you can go get a snack you can go to the bathroom here's where i where i will agree with you like I might we don't have TV in the bedroom because again you know we're not trying to watch TV all the time but as a result my kids don't other than Dancing with the Stars they don't really know what I watch right they don't really know what I like the TV's not you know whatever and it's like you know I sort of am making an argument that we should get a TV in the room to be like this is my TV you want to come in here you're watching what I'm watching so that my kids know that I like watch SNL that I want you know I mean I watch you know sometimes I'll watch the news or whatever it's like how are we going to you know sort of imprint and our you know make impressions on the kids and let them know what we like if i'm just letting them like pick you know phineas and fur every day on netflix exactly exactly you know what i mean like so i'm like i kind of get like i like that everybody has to decide we try to do like a family movie night on like friday night so everybody has to let decide on a movie uh doesn't always happen but you know I understand what that that vibe I appreciate and I will give you that I respect that like trying to make like a family vibe as like we're all watching this thing and we watch it together and then you can experience together.

5:12Yes, I get that. And at a specific time and where you have to kind of be more in the moment because you can't stop it. I think it's been this incredible experience and some of my best memories growing up with my parents were not all of them, but some of them were related screens. It's related to screens. This is all me. This all makes sense. My dad and I used to watch Get Smart and Quantum Leap. Get Smart at Nick and Night and Quantum Leap. Quantum Leap was a great show. Quantum Leap was a fantastic show. Look it up, kids. It was a fantastic show. I support this for you. I'm like, I'm... Thank you.

5:44I'm starting a trend. All right. Before we get to our big story, what we're going to talk about and Josh getting out of the house this week, I do want to mention that Jordan Matter is coming on today and we're going to interview him about just the new launch, his daughter's product. It's amazing. We're so excited. Like thousands and thousands of people showed up at them all last week. And so we're going to get all the details around that. Josh, we have a lot to talk about. You once again, shockingly got out of the house. Why? You went to YouTube's Made On, which is their sort of annual conference now.

6:12What, three, four years running maybe now? I think it's since COVID that they did this, right? Is that what I'm making? If I'm not mistaken, I can't remember. But anyway. Here's a quick history of how it came to be, Lauren. So YouTube used to be the title sponsor of VidCon. They still are the title sponsor of VidCon as of last year. at VidCon they used to have this big keynote presentation where the CEO of YouTube would come up on stage and announce all of these different product launches and new ways that they're giving creators more control more monetization capabilities and more Facebook meta whatever you want to call it used to like YouTube used to be like the event that you had all these announcements sort of like tailored around and then it was a big curve a competition between platforms of like who's going to say their announcements when and how around around VidCon Yes.

6:57It was a moment in the year that the companies in this ecosystem aligned to have all their product developments and announcements ready to go so they could capture the attention of everybody that was at VidCon and all the press and media that was there too. Yes. Then TikTok became the title sponsor. Yes. And when TikTok became the title sponsor, they did more of a dog and pony show at VidCon during their keynote feature presentation. Yeah, that's putting it mildly and nicely. Go on. It was a missed opportunity for sure. And so YouTube's like, oh, we don't have this place in time to do this anymore.

7:33We got to come up with our own event. So that's when they started having made on. And the sort of behind the scenes tea of that is that it was sort of VidCon was waiting and waiting and waiting for YouTube to be like, OK, we're back on as the title sponsor. and they weren't kind of getting back to them because YouTube's just sort of like, you know, that's not uncommon for people in these organizations to drag their feet because like they, there's a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of approvals and they just kind of felt like they probably wouldn't, they don't have to rush. So they kept asking, kept asking, weren't getting answers and TikTok was like, we want to sponsor it.

8:05So they did. They took their thing and they accepted the sponsorship from TikTok and YouTube was pissed. They were pissed. So then like the other side of the coin is that they were like, fine, we're going to do our own event. Which in the long term, really, I think, ultimately hurts VidCon, because VidCon is no longer the place where people are going for the big announcements. And instead, for YouTube specifically, it is Made On, which was this week, Tuesday, and they made a ton of announcements around the big one, which I know you're going to talk a lot about is dynamically inserted ads, tons of stuff around live and channel memberships.

8:42And there's just so much. But I feel like, you know, you were there, Josh. Tell us the highlights. Tell us what you're excited about. Lauren, to be clear, VidCon is still, has been for the last several years, except for that one year where TikTok was the title sponsor of VidCon. And they do give a keynote presentation. It just doesn't have the same weight or gravitas. It doesn't have the same weight. And it's not filled with all these different kind of product announcements that they used to have at the same kind of space and time. But like the platforms, and again, I'll speak about meta too, because they're not really using it as a place for announcements either.

9:11I think it got so crowded with announcements. So then the comms people were like, we don't want to announce everything, you know, irrespective of the whole VidCon TikTok, you know, YouTube sponsorship sort of situation. Like the metas of the world were just like, well, we don't want to fight with that. So we're going to just kind of do – they just realized they don't have to be beholden. The creator economy got like diverse and bigger that they didn't have to like wait for this one event to do all this stuff. So as a result, unfortunately for VidCon, it's become like less significant as it relates to product announcements with platforms, etc., which is kind of not great in the long, like ultimately, like, and I don't really blame VidCon, which is this is a whole other conversation.

9:50But like, I don't really blame VidCon for taking the TikTok sponsorship because they were waiting for YouTube that wasn't coming through. But I think in the end, it really actually hurt the brand and hurt the whole conference. But like, I don't know that like they had a choice really at the time. You can't foresee these things. It's kind of also like, I think this would have inevitably happened one way or the other. Apple did the same thing. Apple and Steve Jobs used to give big, huge keynotes at Macworld, which was this independent Macintosh conference that would happen every year. And then Apple just transitioned.

10:22They said, hey, we're not going to be in Macworld anymore. We're going to have this worldwide developers conference that we're going to own. We're going to control. We're going to get to decide when and where it is, who speaks, et cetera. It just makes more sense for a company moving forward. Yeah. So tell us about Maynard. Tell us what happened. Okay, so Lauren, there was, in short, a lot that happened at this event. And I usually don't say that, but there was a ton that took place here in terms of product announcements from a bunch of different teams and just PR announcements about how big, great, and grand YouTube is.

10:54We'll start with some of those. So YouTube said that it has paid out more than$100 billion to creators, artists, and media companies in the last four years. That's since January 2021 through December 2024. Over 60 million videos have been auto-dubbed across 20 languages as of August 2025. YouTube has this new auto-dubbing feature where it can automatically dub the audio in your video. And they revealed this other new AI feature where it's actually going to change how your lips and mouth move to match the auto-dub. Fascinating. It looks great. YouTube Studio has over 30 million creators using it every month.

11:36Creators have run over 15 million experiments since the thumbnail AB testing feature launched in 2023. In the past 12 months, the number of YouTube channels that earn six figures in US dollars or more in revenue from TV screens is up 45 % year over year. I kind of hate those stats. Like, of course it's up. Well, just because we don't know what the starting point is. Truth. Keep going. On average, over 30 % of daily logged in YouTube viewers watched live content in Q2 2025 alone. I thought this was fascinating. So it's saying 30 % of daily YouTube viewers interact with live content in some capacity.

12:17I'm guessing the threshold for interaction with live content as denoted in the stat is very low. Like maybe they scrolled by it. Maybe they watched it for a second. but still it shows that live content on YouTube is definitely a thing. YouTube also said users consume over 100 million hours of podcasts every day and more than 30 % of those hours starting as a live stream or premiere could also be where YouTube gets a lot of those live streaming numbers from. YouTube shopping's gross merchandise value has grown 5x year over year from Q2 2024 to Q2 2025. Again, it's an increase from what? Who knows, but you know, it's on the up and up.

12:55And there are more than 500 ,000 creators enrolled in YouTube shopping globally as of July, 2025. So those were the key press highlights that they wanted to get out. Then they have over 30 plus other product announcements in a bunch of different categories, including AI creation tools for shorts, a new suite of tools in YouTube studio, live streaming updates, other tools for podcasters, ways to connect artists and fans, musical this in fans. More ways to earn with shopping and brand deals. For me, and I think for lots of creators and just the general public who cares about this stuff, the most compelling piece of product development news came in that later category.

13:38More ways to earn with shopping and brand deals. Specifically, this new development that starting in the early part of 2026, YouTube is going to roll out a small test with creators about dynamic ad insertion. What does this mean? It means that creators will be able to swap in and out sponsored video segments within their individual videos. So basically, it's like if you have a show on linear television that might be a rerun in Seinfeld from the 90s, you're not going to see commercials from the 90s. You're going to see new commercials, correct? Exactly. That's perfectly right. Where did you get that analogy from?

14:20That's a genius analogy. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Whoever came up with that analogy should win, I don't know, just like prizes. The LinkedIn post award. You don't get a post, the fucking award for posting on LinkedIn one time like a goddamn year. Go on. Congratulations, Josh. So, Lauren, that's exactly right. So, there's a ton of sponsorship activity going on on YouTube at any given time. There's thousands of videos a week that are uploaded with a branded segment included in the video. We're not talking about ads. We're not talking about TrueView. We're talking about burned in into the video file.

14:55There's a portion of it that says like, hey, thanks for watching. You should go subscribe to HelloFresh. They're great. And then a 30-second read for HelloFresh or 60-second read or whatever it is for not just HelloFresh, but a growing list of thousands of different brands. And what would happen in the past is that segment would be burned into your video file. And seven years from now, people would be seeing the same ad in that video whenever they watched it. Correct. Not a great experience. Potentially not a great experience for the creator and the viewer. Fantastic experience for the brand because they get this long tail of viewership on YouTube that doesn't exist on any other given platform.

15:35And if you talk with brands that have been doing this for a while, they will tell you that they still get conversions from videos that were uploaded three, four, five, six, seven years ago. and also we work and know a lot of the sponsorship activity that happens on youtube through our data platform gospel stats you check it out at the gospel stats.com talking with a bunch of these brands that have done this they will tell you that a good portion maybe upwards of 20 30 percent of the conversions and sales that they get happen from videos that are like 90 days old or older so brands love it and that's the trick also like you know people talk about like how you make money on YouTube and like fortunately, unfortunately, whatever, it's a numbers game.

16:19And like the bigger your library content, the more, you know, sort of money you make. And so people are watching these older videos. And so you should have ads that are relevant to folks that might watch that video years, months, whatever, after it was initially released. There is a fear that those ads could not be relevant anymore. What creators have been doing is they've been incorporating timeframes into the deals that they do with these brands so that they can trim out. YouTube does lets you trim out certain pieces of the video later. It doesn't let you add any things, but people would trim out these sponsor video sections.

16:50And so what's going to happen in the future is YouTube is giving people the ability to trim out and then insert, swap whatever they want into these areas that they have in their videos. Even if you didn't have a portion of your video in your content library that have a sponsorship area, you can actually go back and insert it too. And what this means is that the same moment in a video can host multiple brands over time. And that these back catalogs are basically these living assets that aren't locked up. The renewable inventory for creators. Yeah. Which I think is going to have potentially immediate and huge implications for this industry.

17:27Basically, at first, it's going to allow brands to buy more inventory at larger scales and also go to market with fresher campaigns. But it turns all of these YouTubers into basically media companies. Yeah. They were before to a certain extent, but now even more so where they have their own inventory that they can sell. So if you can go and sponsor one Clio Abram video for whatever several thousand, tens of thousands of dollars that costs, that's great for Clio Abram, presumably great for the brand if they want to spend that money. But now if you can buy Clio Abram's whole catalog for three months, like that just puts it on a totally different level and different buckets of media dollars that didn't exist to creators before.

18:09Yeah. Yeah, no, it's true. And, you know, it's also like something to be said about like the spotters of the world who bought all these back catalogs. Now they have sort of like they become more valuable, you know, like they could sell them in like, you know, they could sell them in different ways, which I think is really interesting. It could be potentially really lucrative for Spotter if that was incorporated into their deals and it makes sense for them to do it for sure. Right. But the thing is, the truth of the matter is, I spoke with an executive that shall not be named in our industry. And we were talking a bit about this yesterday.

18:37And he's like, yeah, the problem is they're nowhere close to like this actually being live. They've not tested it. They haven't built it. It's not real. And in fact, this person cited that last year it made on YouTube announced shows. And that hasn't launched yet. So the question I have is when is this going to actually happen? Because it's not happened yet. This person works with creators that are ostensibly in the beta testing. And they haven't even built it yet. They haven't even done any beta testing around it. Well, they're saying early 2026 they're going to start to roll out with a small group of creators.

19:15We'll see. um it was really interesting too because this person cited that like they met somebody fairly recently who was uh working on this and they were talking about how this has existed in podcasting and audio for a long time and they were like what do you mean and like this is somebody at youtube so it's just um true story yeah dynamic ad insertion has been a staple of podcasts correct for a while now yeah it basically it basically comes from the platform side where you upload a podcast to Spotify, you put ads on it. Spotify is going to dynamically insert ads into breaks in that podcast. So if I downloaded the episode three months ago, I could get and hear different ads, host-read ads or not, than if you download the episode today.

19:59Correct. So this is not a new technology, but it's new to be, you know, with YouTube, obviously. And it could be great and it's awesome. But like, I wouldn't hold your breath if this, I think this will happen. I just don't know that it's going to happen early 26. Like they haven't even beta tested it yet. No, I think it's going to be for a while. But also, if you were lucky enough to be invited among the select group of people who are at the event. Yeah, no, it's just one day, man. And you could see... The good thing about when Josh goes to events, all people do is ask him where I am. So it makes me feel...

20:27Zero people ask me where I am. Like, literally. Because what's his favorite bit? His favorite bit. Tell him your favorite bit. So people... We're going to role play, right? So I'm not me, but I'm like, hey, Josh, where's Lauren? We're not talking anymore. That's his favorite bit. But I don't want to bring it out in the universe anymore. So I'm going to say she's fantastic from now on. We're not speaking anymore. Yeah. I've leveled up and going into Q4 of 2025. Great. No, we all appreciate your leveling up. So Lauren, if you were at the event and you saw Neil Mohan talk about this, he maybe was the most emphatic and effusive about the importance of this particular component of YouTube coordinating more deals and sponsorship between creators on the platform and the brands.

21:11in the marketplace than he was about anything else. So not only are they doing this sponsorship swapping, but he said they're also going to have more live events curated by YouTube that brings brands and sponsors together. And Neil was asked, are you going to eventually take a cut of this? And he responded with, do you want me to? So that was a pretty good jab from him. basically maybe in the future distant future i think youtube would maybe get a portion of these brand deals but what they basically want to do is they just want to get more brands incorporated into the ecosystem and give them tools to show the efficacy of how great it is to work with creators because if they are able to show that in a meaningful capacity and make it easy for brands to see the benefits and the roi and the click-through rates and everything else from these different sponsorship deals, then it's going to be a lot easier to tell the brands, hey, you should back this up with some media.

22:13You should boost this post. You should do some TrueView ads. You should get on YouTube shopping more. Put your content up, put your products up there as well. There are lots of ways that this benefits YouTube, even if they're not taking a cut of this, but they're getting just more brands into the ecosystem and inserted into this space that then YouTube can make a lot of money from them in other places. Yeah, of course. And to your point, who knows when this will actually launch? They're saying early 2026. If you look at YouTube's track record, maybe it'll take a little bit longer. Also, it brings up some questions like, if I pay for YouTube Premium and I skip ads, am I going to be able to skip these sponsorship ads?

22:50I don't know. Like, if YouTube knows the point in time where these ads happen in the video, what does that mean for its relationship with premium subscribers? And then also, do these spots then compete with the TrueView ads that are on YouTube and the different types of display advertising there. It raises some interesting questions. Also with compliance, if I'm a brand, am I going to have to go check if my ads are still up when they're supposed to be per the terms of the contract? All these little idiosyncrasies can surface for how this is actually going to take place and what needs to be thought of for it to be a very smooth and successful and fruitful launch for all.

23:29Well, excited once again that you left the house and that you were going to places and you got invited somewhere. I mean, these are all big things and for YouTube announcements. Yes, huge things for me. Huge things for us, Lauren. Huge things for us. For us. For us. Like, please, what's yours is mine. I mean, come on. Okay, so next up, we have an interview with Jordan Matter. So excited to hear all about he and his daughter, Salish Matters, skincare launch and how they actually packed the mall in Josh's basically town. And so Josh couldn't even get in. So very excited to hear all about that. Jordan, so stoked for you to be on Creator Upload again.

24:08I believe this is your second time on the cast. Welcome back. Thank you so much. So for those in the audience that may not know, I don't know how you couldn't, but Jordan Matter is a photographer, filmmaker, and YouTube creator with over 32 million subscribers on his main channel, over 12 billion views. Once known for his signature kind of like 10-minute photo challenge series and other different photography oriented videos, including creative dance photography, has now over the past several years worked with your children, especially Salish. You also have Hudson who now does a YouTube consultancy that I hear is going well, but works with your daughter Salish on the channel, doing different storytelling and kind of vlogs and to great success.

24:53I mean, you have your average long form videos getting anywhere from like 4 million to 20, 30 million views recently, which is just absolutely incredible. Puts you at the top upper echelon of YouTube creators in terms of viewership. You also, I think will be one of the first people to tell people that on famous birthdays, your daughter Salish Matter has been the number one celebrity on famous birthdays for what, two, three years running now? Maybe it's been two years by now.

25:21Jordan Matter:Yeah. Which is no short feat. Salish Birthdays is kind of like a Wikipedia for Gen Z. And its rankings are determined by search activity on the site. So lots of people want to know when your daughter's birthday is and some more info about her. And now I think that has manifested in this real world kind of tangible manifestation of that audience. in this skincare launch you all had at the American Dream Mall here in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which is about six minutes away from my house. I want to really dive into it. Reports of upwards of 87 ,000 people showed up to this event, but I really want to get into it and how that event came to be and what it was like.