Is an Adpocalypse Coming for Roblox? | Creator Upload

0:00Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy podcast. I'm Lauren Schnipper. And I'm Joshua Cohen. Lauren. Yes. You'd be getting out of the house more. What's that? Me? Getting out of the house? Yeah. Yeah. Yesterday, I went to a really cool event. Weird that you weren't invited. So Ben Relis, I would call him AI Superman to the stars, also known as, you know, longtime YouTube executive, creator in his own right. and he's been working with Reid Hoffman for many years now on sort of all of his AI initiatives. He famously co-hosted this podcast with me, and it was the first podcast ever that AI Reid showed up to and was interviewed, which was very exciting.

0:42And he sort of did this kind of class yesterday at UCLA, invited about 70, 75 people total, and we were all in like a classroom setting at UCLA at Anderson School of Business. And it was just kind of speed dating AI-like discussion. So it was Chatham House Rules, which for those that are not familiar, I'm sort of not at liberty to say exactly who said what. But like some of the big sort of topics of discussion, as you can imagine, because the whole thing was about AI and creativity and everything, were talking about attribution and how, you know, that's a way for, for folk, I should zoom out a little bit is to say one of the big main topic of conversation was like, how to get creators, creatives paid for contributing to ultimately what AI is using in spitting out kind of whatever creative that they're going to spit out, because obviously, all of that is informed by sort of humans.

1:40And so there's a lot of conversation about attribution. And there was a very sort of I wouldn't say heated, but spirited exchange with somebody who's working on some of these initiatives being like, this isn't rocket science. Like, we can do this. Like, it's called content ID. Like, YouTube finally did it when they had to. Like, this is possible. And then, of course, somebody brought up sort of this idea that like, which is what the tech companies supposedly sort of use in terms of their argument. Like, if you're a writer, you are influenced by all the books you have read and research you've done.

2:12And so how is that any different than, you know, what, you know, AI is doing? And somebody, you know, very firmly said, like, if we start, you know, comparing human capacity to these machines, that is the end of humanity. Like it was like, you know, so a lot of these discussions, a couple of professors from UCLA, we did like mini breakout sessions. One of them was really funny. It was like, OK, in the next two minutes, come up with three solutions with how like the industry should tackle this. And we're like, yeah, no problem. We're on it. Do you think that that's a normal thought exercise because you're constrained by the time?

2:45So people just have these innovative ideas or is that just a product of how much time you had in the session? Yeah, it was a 90 minute thing. It was one of those things where it was like awesome that it was 90 minutes because it was just felt like you were like getting so much really quickly. It definitely could have been longer, but like loved that it was 90 minutes because we were like in and out. One of the, you know, professors did this whole spiel, which like, frankly, this is what they did when I was at Facebook was like historical context and talking about all the people that were like, you know, VCRs are going to be the end of humanity.

3:12E-books, you know, Jonathan Franzen had some quote being like, e-books is like literally going to be the downfall of society. and like mp3s will ruin the music industry and then you know we're all supposed to look and be like haha that's so funny like that didn't happen but the truth is it did completely those technologies i would specifically say like mp3s meaning one and and he didn't mention streaming by the way streaming did decimate pieces of the entertainment industry in terms of revenue driving And so as an artist, if you're a big musician, like you cannot rely on record sales anymore. Like you must tour kind of relentlessly if you want to make the kind of money that they were making back in the day.

3:55Like, you know, streaming has decimated the VCR DVD industry, which was a huge, huge moneymaker for movies. If you didn't make money in theaters, you knew you were going to make some money in DVDs or VCRs. And that has completely gone away. So what has that resulted in? It's resulted in a certain kind of movie being made for the theaters that you know you can get butts in seats for, which are your franchises and things that are not like your indie rom-cons, which maybe you see now on streamers, but they don't have the impact. So to say that these things aren't cataclysmic, these kinds of technologies, is inaccurate.

4:30it, we don't know what it's going to do. And it doesn't mean that there's not going to be other amazing innovations as a result of it, or there's not going to be, you know, really cool things. But you know, I took a little bit of issue because I was like, noticeably absent from these examples or streaming, which, you know, again, decimated a huge, huge monetization, you know, kind of stream for the industry. So it was really cool. I definitely feel like it was more positive than sort of negative. Yeah. So, so what's the net? What are we doing? Yeah. I mean, I think that it was like, there was no necessarily solutions, 90 minutes.

5:07Right. But it was like, you know, the question was sort of like, you know, AI should, or I should say the, the sort of main takeaway to, for me anyway, was like, AI should not be feared. Instead, we need to be asking, how do we like shape a future where we can thrive alongside AI and like, it's here, you know what I mean? So let's all get on board. Um, one person who was a very storied kind of executive sort of at the end of the class was like, you know, I'm arguably the oldest person here. And he was like, you know, Ben, I would suggest that like next time you do this, you get like under 30s here.

5:37And then Ben, of course, was like, I mean, I texted them, but they didn't get back to me, which was hilarious. But there were a couple of students from UCLA that like all of a sudden he was like, wait, there's a couple of people here. Like some of the professors invited their students. But, you know, it was very cool. It really is interesting, this bifurcation between the younger generations about like the ones that are really into ai versus the ones that think it's stealing humanity at its core right right so you see these people that are under the age of 30 under the age of 25 in high school in college and a lot of them are like ai is terrible and i'm only going to support real artists for now and for the rest of my life and the other half is like vibe coding the next trillion dollar company oh there was a lot of talk of vibe coding too yeah yeah Yeah, 100%.

6:22Yeah. For those that don't know, actually, you described vibe coding because I'm probably going to do it terribly. Well, it's coding for coders that don't know how to code. Yeah. So it's you working with these different platforms and typing in whatever you want to type in to create the product that you want to create. And then just basically following a set list of instructions. It's like a cookbook that gets generated in real time for whatever you want to code. Right. And they were saying like, you know, somebody when the discussion of sort of vibe coding came up, somebody was saying like at the end of the day, that's all great.

6:53But like we're going to end up with like a sea of like terrible shitty apps. And like true like even if like, you know, yes, vibe coding is can be good, but you still need a product manager. You still need a person with a vision who like can instruct. And, you know, I think you're just going to open up that field of who can be that sort of person with a vision. Sure. There's some recent more easy corollaries with that, with the rise of blogs and the rise of vlogging and making online video. Right. When it first came around, you were looking at everything, but now you're only reading the good stuff.

7:25And the same thing applies to all these other inflection points in technology that made it so a greater percentage of humans could do that thing. Yeah. where, yes, there's going to be this glut of all these shitty apps. Like there was this glut of all these shitty blogs. Yep. And the good ones get used. Yeah. And like, of course, the argument is like, therefore, like in order to stand out, you have to be like that much more excellent, which like maybe isn't such a bad thing. Right. Like, so there's a sea of terrible and like, yeah. So you have to just you have to be so good to sort of stand out from the crowd of terrible.

8:00Yeah. It just gives access to people that wouldn't have had access to it before. Or the same way that low-cost production materials gave access to people in the creator economy to produce stuff that they wouldn't be able to produce before. Yeah, for sure. Which, you know, good and bad in that, am I right? Yeah, sure. But it was cool. Yeah, I know Ben was like, you know, like, if you guys like this, tell everybody. And I was like, I thought it was awesome. I was really, I was psyched. It was sort of a last minute. It was really funny because everybody, you know, it was like a last minute thing that I certainly found out about.

8:27And he's like, don't get offended if you were the last person, you know, just found out about this. He's like, I've been planning this for months, but like basically forgot to send the invites out until last week. So I was like, he's like, you're not all B-list. Thanks. Oh, what a guy. Anyway, so that was really exciting. And then I've got an event tonight. She's very busy right now. I probably mentioned it before on the podcast. I have a sort of a networking kind of female networking group that I started with Jamie Goodfriend called Smart Girls, which is like women, media and tech and all the things, you know, no assholes allowed is sort of a general kind of like threshold that we have.

9:00And so we have our third year running, which is kind of crazy. Oh, that's awesome. Congrats. Thank you. End of summer sort of bash. And so that's happening tonight. And we're having a really cool speaker also about, I should say, two speakers that are going to come talk about like a very big marketing campaign that went viral in the last month or two. I can't get the details. I'm just in a lot of really confidential. It's pretty obvious what it is, Lauren, too. It's pretty obvious based on what you've talked about even on this podcast before. Like, it's like I'm very, like, I'm very important.

9:31And I'm like, like, I can't talk about like a lot of really important things. So getting out of the house, Josh, you've been doing a lot of outside activities recently. And I know you're exhausted. So I'm sort of taking one for the team this week. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, no problem. All right, let's get to some bigger stories. So apparently the Oscars might be on YouTube. So the Oscars, of course, also known as the Academy Awards, which are, you know, celebrating the best in film. apparently YouTube has inquired with the Academy about the Oscars broadcast rights. So apparently it's been on ABC since I think 1976 or something like that, but the window to negotiate kind of came and went.

10:06So it's kind of an open field right now. And so this is, this is something, you know, much like the NFL rights, the YouTube is, you know, looking to have the Oscars on the platform. And I, I just, I haven't decided how we feel about this. I think it's different than, than the NFL, which I don't know, like, it doesn't feel like the NFL. I don't know how to describe this. I was going to say something probably insulting to people that love football and I like football, but I was going to say it doesn't feel as sacred, you know, to like have the NFL, you know, sort of be broadcast on YouTube. But the Oscars, for lack of its, you know, despite its sort of irrelevancy, increasing irrelevancy, feels like it should not be on YouTube, but maybe that will make it more relevant and highlighting YouTubers that made great films.

10:54But I don't know. How do you feel about this, Josh? Lauren, I have lots of thoughts here. So first, let's just look at what ABC and the Walt Disney Company were paying for the Oscars. This deal that they're currently in runs from 2021 to 2028, wherein, according to reports, ABC is obligated to pay no less than$1.03 billion to the Academy over the course of those years. How many years is that? For the right to produce the Oscars. How many years? 2021 through 2028. So that's nine years. Okay. 21 to 28 would be seven years? Cool. You have to include both the beginning and the end year. So it's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

11:35It's eight years. Guys, welcome to Crater Upload where we can do math. Go on. Public math is our specialty. So$110 to$120,$130 million a year, ABCs. terrible deal for ABC. Seems like a terrible deal for ABC. And we'll get to why more in a moment. But so they had this exclusive negotiating rights where they could talk about who's going to get the show after 2028. They let that lapse. So now it's open for everyone to come and make their bids. And here's why the deal seems terrible now for ABC. It's because the Oscars haven't been doing so great. Now, they peaked in terms of viewership with 57 million viewers in Lauren, guess what year?

12:17Okay, hold on, because I do want to think about this. I used to have like Oscar parties every year. This was my jam. And I was deep in it. I'm going to say 2007. 1998. Wow. Guess what movie precipitated that huge increase in viewership? Isn't that Titanic year? Titanic year. Yeah. 40 million viewers in 97, 57 million in 98, 45 million in 99. And then it just keeps going down from there. The last time the Oscars broke 40 million was in 2014. Last time it broke 30 million was in 2017. And in the past three years post pandemic, it's gotten 18.7, 19.49 and 19.69 million viewers. Yeah, no, it's not.

13:03I mean, it's still substantial for one night of broadcast, but it's not even... That's pretty... Totally substantial for one night of broadcast. Also ranks among heavily viewed Sunday night football games for the NFL. I was going to say, what does the Super Bowl get? Can you give me a curious number of the Super Bowl? I'm so glad you asked because I have that up as well. To compare it to Super Bowl numbers. Yeah. So in 1998, the Super Bowl got 90 million viewers. So like a 1.8X Oscar or so, almost 2X Oscars. Okay, so 98 Oscars got like you said 56? 57. And Super Bowl got 98. Super Bowl got 90.

13:41Got it. And then in 2010, the Super Bowl passed 100 million viewers. And it hasn't looked back. 2019 dipped. 2021 and 22 also dipped below 100 million because of the pandemic. But in 2025, the most recent year, Super Bowl got 127 million viewers. So they kind of gone up. What do you mean kind of? Yes, totally gone up. And you can see why YouTube was interested in associating itself with the NFL. Basically, any live sports right now. That's what all these broadcasters want. Because that's what people are doing for. That's the only thing left. It's the only secrets by the television outside of maybe this handful of award shows.

14:19I used to have the best Oscar parties. I mean, I would just do the trivia. We would do the this, that. And I just don't anymore. I mean, oh, God, it's so sad. So I see why YouTube wants to do this because they've had success with NFL and the NFL Sunday ticket and more closely aligning themselves with this property and this franchise and this team, this league that is on an upward trajectory but brings more people into the fold. They can inject their creators into NFL programming. The NFL can become more entwined in YouTube programming. And there's this real symbiotic relationship moving forward.

14:52the oscars presents a similar opportunity where youtube which desperately wants to be seen as more professional more hollywood more premium yeah it presents a and a similar opportunity where it can more entwine itself with that community in that ecosystem with that kind of content creators it's yeah it can have a creators maybe not host but present be part of the red carpet, et cetera, bring more of the people who are being honored at the Oscars into the YouTube fold and family, create programming around that. And let's, let's just zoom out a little bit. Why do they want to do this? They want to do this because brands want to align themselves with premium content that they feel is worthy of their brand, right?

15:36Brand friendly is what people say. And like, to be clear, there's incredible content being made on YouTube. It's effectively like the new indie, you know, movie studio. If you want to look at that way, like obviously independent filmmakers are putting their stuff on YouTube. So it's not like this stuff doesn't exist. There's just a whole swath of other shit that's on there that's, I would argue, not that, right? And so there is a total, it totally makes sense for them from like a financials perspective, from a gravitas perspective, from the ability to sort of like highlight, you know, that kind of content on the platform, which does exist again.

16:09And so, but it just feels like, you know, it's like, how far are we going to take this democratization of of content you know what i mean like they're like they're there's got like if everything is sacred nothing is sacred anymore you know what i mean like so it just feels and of course i'm old school and of course i've stopped and i haven't stopped watching the oscars but i've stopped watching it to the extent that i have like i was obsessed so like i'm a part of the the the the problem if you will you know what i mean but it just it's there i don't know i don't know how i feel about this Like you said, YouTube wants to shift this perception among basically media buyers that it's a more premium quality entertainment experience so it can get television advertising dollars.

16:52Yep. They're doing this a bunch of different ways, part of which is through the different types of programming they're paying for to have on their site. And part of it is through their increasing dominance of the television screen at home. YouTube in July got 13.4 % of all television viewership. I mean, that's huge. I just think we need to like... It's huge. Hold on. It's huge. Two months earlier in May, it had 12.4%. So it's averaging about a percent increase every two months. Lauren, if we map this out in 14 years, it's going to be 100 % of television. You know how good we are at maths. I definitely think we should be mapping this out.

17:31I just think that we need to take a moment and just talk about how crazy it is that we're even having this conversation. You and I have been in this business for a long time. I will say, so one of the people that I ran into yesterday was the executive that helped, that basically got on board and sold the show that I co-created with Shane Dawson in 2011 to NBC. So we were the, he was the first YouTuber ever to sell a show to NBC. He was the one executive who got it. We pitched it all over town. We went to movie studios. Like we were banging down doors to do stuff with these studios and they were all like, yeah, you're cute.

18:10Sign this, you know, take a picture for my kid. But like, no, thank you. So this was going back, call it between 2010 and like 2014 when we were getting like every door slammed in our face. Right. And so here we are a decade later talking about the Oscars on YouTube. Like that is, I believe the word would be cataclysmic in terms of change. And that would be like just like how fast that has happened. We're talking about a movie industry that's been around for over 100 years. And in a decade, now we're talking about the Oscars on YouTube. Like, I just think we need to like, change is happening so quickly right now, especially with AI.

18:48And like, I just think we need to like, take a moment, take a beat to like, really understand how fast, especially the last couple of years, like, it feels like it was like a slow build. And then the last like three to five years, it's just all of a sudden been like, all right, we're all in this. Let's do it. Let's go. AI, creators, blah, blah, blah. And you're just like, and I think that's why you and I are always kind of like, you don't know what it's like. You don't know what it's been like. like the first few years i mean guys should we cut to like the clip of josh with like telsey tv back in the day and like the ponytail i mean that was a thing not that long ago google it if you haven't um and so telsey telsey i don't know it was the precursor to the tube filter google it um and so this is bananas totally bananas and i like how it's just commonplace right now it's just like obviously i don't know if i like it i haven't decided i feel like i've been part of the reason that's commonplace and I haven't decided if I like it.

19:40I like it. Everything's impossible before. It's inevitable. Now it just feels inevitable. I know. But again, if nothing's sacred, if everything's sacred, nothing's sacred. So like where, you know, I mean, it's true. What are we talking about? Sacred stuff now? What's sacred? Well, I'm just saying the Oscars was this like huge like moment in Hollywood. And it was like, if you get this award and now if it's like on the biggest platform where everybody can make content, it's not that thing anymore. And by the way, it might mean something different. It also is not that thing now. It's not that thing now.

20:08It's not that thing now. So I get it. The change is already, we're already in it. Like, you know, yesterday when people were talking about how we regulated AI, half the room was like, we can't, we're done. Like, just like go and like deal. So like, I understand that I'm in the change right now and we're here and we're doing it. But it's also like, wow. Okay. And Lauren, to your point about the ever evolving landscape and how things are way different now, if you were pitching shows with creators to big networks, some of them might get picked up. Netflix, for instance, is continuing its creator push, bringing Mark Rober on board.

20:42Obviously, Mark Rober, the famous YouTuber, he has over 70 million subscribers and 13.7 billion lifetime views on his primary channel. And he had previously done a show with Jimmy Kimmel and his Kimmelot Productions for Discovery Channel in 2023. You know, he guest hosted for Jimmy Kimmel a couple of times in 2022. I did know that. Yeah. Yeah. And but next up, Robert and Kimmel are bringing a quote, kids and family competition series and quote to Netflix. That's according to a Netflix blog post that is going to be produced by Robert's Crunch Labs and Kimmel's Kimmelot. Along with Scott Lewers, who has supercharged Crunch Labs content output since joining the brand earlier this year, is also executive producing on the upcoming project.

21:25Kimmel, yeah, I saw that. Kimmel said, my kids love Mark Rober and so do their parents. Mark's videos are so clever and inventive. It's easy to forget that they're educational too. We can't wait to introduce one of the best and brightest creators to Netflix. I think it's going to be amazing. Also, his Crunch Labs, his subscription box, if it was doing like 30, 40, 50 million bucks a year before, after he gets his Netflix show, I mean, that could be bananas. Could be bananas. Bananas. Netflix is not the only platform that's like, sort of call it mainstream platform. I don't know what to call it anymore.

21:57Nothing's mainstream. Everything, nothing is sacred, Josh. I don't know if I've mentioned that. But Tubi, which is owned by Fox, is also making a big push to creators. They've recently brought on Rich Bloom, who's a longtime Vimeo exec to run sort of creator programs. He recently hired Kudzi Chickenboo, who was, of course, a longtime TikTok executive to be their VP of creator partnerships. And they've been announcing a bunch of different initiatives. We're actually going to have Rich on the podcast soon to talk about that. So there's a lot of platforms getting into working and bringing creators on board because they know, y 'all.

22:30Lauren, they do know. And along with Kudzi's announcement, they are bringing content on board the platform from the likes of Mr. Beast, John Boy Media, Selena Spooky Boost, Stephen He, Alan Chicken Chow's, Alan's Universe, and more. and I think also 2B had the shift in just like culture and the kind of cultural consciousness after the 2025 Super Bowl where Fox used it as an integral part of its distribution strategy. I mean, 13.6 million viewers watched the Super Bowl on 2B, which is a huge number for a platform that I don't think necessarily was getting a lot of recognition or notoriety or being noticed that much beforehand.

23:07And I think what 2B has been able to do with that is really leverage the brand themselves into something that can be a real competitor in this ecosystem and this marketplace, especially going after younger demographics with getting more of these creators on board. It'll be really interesting to see how creators work themselves into 2B's programming, whether it's just another distribution source or whether there are more originals being produced. And then how that possibly like trickles up in the Fox in general. Yep. Yep. Which of course acquired 2B. So yeah, super interesting to see how that's going to play out.

23:43The next big thing I want to talk about is sort of like what is starting to seem like it could be sort of not good days for Roblox. So Roblox, of course, is famously like kind of positioned itself as like the kid friendly platform, right? You can build on it and all this sort of stuff. So they have like they have very notably like a lot of younger sort of users, like 20 % of them are under the age of eight. And the other another the 20 % are between 9 and 12. And the state of Louisiana is actually now suing Roblox due to their lack of sort of protections against like explicit content towards minors.

24:20So the attorney general in Louisiana said, due to Roblox's lack of safety protocols, it endangers the safety of children of the children of Louisiana. Roblox is overrun with harmful content and child predators because it prioritizes user growth, revenue, and profits over child safety. Every parent should be aware of the clear and present danger poised to their children by roadblocks so they can prevent the unthinkable from ever happening in their own home. The lawsuit points to several sexually explicit experiences, one called Escape to Epstein Island, Diddy Party, and Public Bathroom Simulator Vibe.