YouTube's $60 Billion Haul and Iron Lung's Hollywood Chokehold

0:28Welcome to Creator Upload, your Creator Economy Podcast. slap on some gross, like, lipstick or whatever, and I look terrifying. Just, like, those, like, deep, like, this is around the time of year, like, Feb, like, late Feb, like, early March, it's still kind of cold, you're tired, and you're just like, like, those are not, it's not pretty. It's not pretty. I haven't lived in New Jersey when the snow has been on the ground for this long. We're going on, like, two, three weeks now. Tell me, tell me more about it. Two things to know here. One, I'm always reminiscent of a quote that's attributed to Ronald Reagan during this time.

1:02And he said, if pilgrims had landed in California instead of back east, nobody would have bothered to discover the rest of the country. I think it's fair. Totally fair. I think it's fair. Totally fair. And then something else that comes to mind this time of year is, do you know the YouTuber Ryan Hall, y 'all? Uh-uh. He's a digital meteorologist who has 3.12 million subscribers now. Started getting hugely popular around pandemic or immediately post-pandemic times and brought this subject matter of meteorology to the masses through his YouTube channel, which is just fascinating because everybody likes a weather guy, right?

1:39I mean, sure. Well, like your local weather guy. They don't like not like him, but I don't think people like actively like him. But go on, yeah. I'm sorry, it's 2026. Everyone likes a weather person. Sure, thank you. Everyone likes a meteorologist. Thank you. Jesus Christ. It's like fucking gross. And so you'd think that someone would have come out earlier and gotten a lot of acclaim on YouTube or some type of streaming platform being the internet's meteorologist, but it didn't happen until Ryan Hall, y 'all. His numbers start to peak this time of year. He has these viewership surges, I think around like one, natural weather disasters and two, just when it starts to get really cold.

2:17People want to just look and see. That's like, isn't the Weather Channel? The Weather Channel is like a business. Like what's his name bought it byron allen or whatever and it's like it's a whole thing it's a multi-billion dollar business yeah no people like the weather people like the weather first big story youtube made more than 60 billion dollars of revenue last year a little bit of youtube earnings and apparently they reported 325 million paid subscriptions in its fourth quarter across consumer services which includes youtube premium josh what say you about this youtube earnings So first, this$60 billion figure, Lauren, this is the first time Google has released YouTube's total revenue.

2:58Okay. Previously, since 2018, Google had broken out YouTube's only advertising revenue in its earnings reports. In 2018, it made$11.16 billion. 2019,$15 billion. 2020,$19 billion. Don't worry, there's only five more of these. 2021,$28 billion. 2022,$29 billion. 2023,$31 billion. 2024,$36 billion. And now in 2025, Google reported that YouTube made$40 billion in advertising revenues for the year. It's just like wild to think that in seven years, they've almost 3X'd their advertising revenues. It's just the speed at which it's happening is unprecedented. totally and i think you can use this as kind of like a microcosm or a fractal of the trajectory of the creator economy if you want to look at the growth of the creator economy i think you can really just point to youtube's advertising revenues and look at that increase i mean i think how much it's expanded i think that's the definitive definition of how the youtube the creator economy has grown like yeah but yes but it's not like oh you should maybe you should Like this is this is this would be the thing to look at to show the growth.

4:15Right. This isn't the footnote. It's a chapter. It's the title of the book. This is the title of the book. And then everything kind of goes from there. Go on. Got it. That's fair. Yeah. And so that means that in 2025, YouTube made around 20 billion dollars in revenue outside of its advertising. So that includes all the subscription revenue from YouTube Premium, which now has ad previewing, background play, offline downloads, YouTube music access, YouTube Music Premium, which they split it out. It's the standalone music streaming service, which is a little less than YouTube Premium. YouTube TV, which is their basically cable television product and NFL Sunday Ticket, which they're paying billions of dollars a year for for at least another couple of years.

4:58I'm kind of curious about why they decided now to release the overall YouTube revenue numbers. And one, it's just a big number. $60 billion is a lot. I'm guessing it was over$50 billion last year. My question is, it's like not why did they, but like why wouldn't they at this point? I guess it's like at this point, what's the benefit of not? Right. They just want to show Wall Street their dominance. Yeah. And also just the general public, their dominance in this space, in this ecosystem. I also think Alphabet and Google, just as the parent company here, wants to play up the success of YouTube, especially as there's growing concern over whether or not this whole AI thing is going to pan out.

5:36And Sundar Pichai noted in the earnings call that they're going to increase their expenditures into AI dramatically over the next year. It actually caused the stock to dip despite a 15 % year-over-year revenue growth because investors are wary that maybe this AI thing isn't going to quite pan out how everybody thinks of this. And in that light, hey, yo, let's talk up YouTube. It's doing great. Yeah, I mean, there you go. That's probably the reason. Lauren, just a couple other stats. YouTube said that shorts now average 200 billion daily views and that shorts ads now earn more revenue per watch hour than long form in-stream ads in lots of countries.

6:17It's kind of interesting. It's just people just keep watching shorts. They love it. I know. It's terrifying. I do too. Shorts has actually gotten way better too. I used to watch YouTube shorts because I wouldn't be addicted to it and I wouldn't just wake up an hour later and wonder where the time went. I could watch it for 10 minutes and then it wouldn't be as good. And now it's just I get sucked into YouTube shorts, too. People are saying that about Reels, too. Like Instagram Reels is getting much better, too. It's just so good now. Yeah. I think it's because with YouTube specifically, there's a glut of content on the platform now, too.

6:55Sure. And maybe there wasn't as much short form programming a year ago, especially two years ago, to satisfy anyone's individual algorithm. But now, I mean, they found my sweet spot. I'm watching like 80s, 90s basketball highlights. Oh, okay. Intercut with like Jordan interviews. Oh, okay. No, that's solid. My feed is, my short feed is a lot of Dave Ramsey content. I'm obsessed. Like I get these through these phases. Like back in the day when I had like Sirius XM and I would listen to like Dr. Laura Schlesinger or whatever her name was. I love listening to like therapists therapizing and like just telling people about their terrible choices.

7:30so Dave Ramsey specifically like kind of therapizing around that's not a word I don't know if it is around money and then there's John Deloney who's in his thing who's just like he's just regular therapy and that so it's like that and then food content a lot of recipe I found this new dough guy and apparently like I'm gonna make pizza dough all weekend cause like wow that's amazing yeah so like that's happening and like he actually here's the hack about how to make like Trader Joe's pizza dough like really good like I'm just like a lot of dough content happening Trader Joe's gluten free pizza dough pretty amazing solid yeah no i got it um also there's that guy who does those like just he goes to like the grossest most just like disgusting and diners in and around the tri-state area and he's like here's the monster burger slam from shecky's on long island city and it's like it's like a burger in between two like mozzarella sticks that are that are instead of the bun or like the mozzarella sticks with bacon and like fucking fries and of course cheese obviously and like just all the things.

8:29And I just, and then I just send them to my brother-in-law all the time. It's like, it's like our bit. It's like, you love a bit. It's like our bit. Do you think telling other people what you watch on YouTube is kind of like the new telling other people your dreams? No, nothing is bad. Nothing is as bad. I think number one. Are you sure? Because, because that was just like kind of, kind of not great. It felt like you were like, no, Josh, I had this wild dream. No, no, no. So the worst is telling someone your dream. I think close second to telling someone your dream. because it's basically like a dream, is if you've ever done improv comedy and you have like an amazing like scene, is then trying to describe to you that amazing scene and like what happened is like the worst because improv comedy is only funny in the moment.

9:12It just is. Like there's no really translating it. And I think like creeping up in a close third might be what's in my algorithm. I don't know. No? I think it might be third, but it's not close third. Okay, distant third. Because like I might, you might tell me something and then I can go watch that and then I can experience it. I can't experience your dream. I can't experience your improv. So like this is just torture because like I'm never going to like it as much as you. Okay, fair. And that, I mean, no, this is like my new TED talk because I like feel like that's just, that was wrong. You were very wrong.

9:44That was wrong. Let me just say, maybe it's your delivery then because your delivery started to be like this is a Lauren's dream kind of vibe. First of all, my delivery is fantastic. First of all. talking about okay we're back to youtube i'm gonna send you these like bacon stuff cheese burgers so good youtube also touted how it remains the number one streamer in the u.s it's been that for nearly three years now that's based on nielsen's overall living room watch time and also youtube was quick to point out it still has a very dominant place in the category of podcasts if you remember in october 2025 alone over 700 million hours of podcasts were streamed from YouTube on living room devices, which is wild to me.

10:28Crazy. Well, on that note, I want to get to another that's very related around stats and TV. So Google, well, I should say last July, there was a UK based measurement nonprofit called Barb, and they announced a new form of ratings that's specifically designed for YouTube content. And so basically, instead of just counting views and subscriptions, they wanted sort of to do, you know, which is hard to compare against like sort your normal kind of TV traffic. They wanted to, you know, create something that was similar to like a Nielsen sort of rating system. And so this is informed by audience panels that track YouTube activity within individual households.

11:07So again, similar to sort of YouTube. So Google has recently issued a cease and desist order against Barb and Cantor Media, which is the market research company that they partnered with, forcing them to suspend their rating system. Google expressed doubt around the accuracy of the ratings, but that was not the reason that they did a cease and desist. They said it was because that Google claimed that the ratings breached the YouTube's terms of service by mishandling creator content. Specifically, Cantor Media used audio-matching automatic content recognition to determine which YouTube channel's panel numbers were watching on their TV screens, and that, according to Google, constituted a misuse of the YouTube API.

11:48That's kind of like the FBI busting mobsters on tax evasion charges. Yeah, kind of. It's basically like YouTube didn't like what they were doing, and so they found this... Workaround. Workaround in the terms of service in order to go after them. It's like one of my favorite movies of all time, The Firm, where they got the mobsters on mail fraud. Oh, so good. So good. So Tom Cruise didn't have to violate attorney-client privilege. privilege oh my god and like every one of those mail fraud charges is like 10 years it's not sexy but it's got teeth one of the greatest lines in movie history totally so they so google to your point being very transparent with all of their earnings and you know touting they're the number one streaming service is all of a sudden really not comfortable allegedly with this new rating system and they are sending them a cease and desist it is super interesting that YouTube is putting the kibosh on this, especially when their television traffic is ballooning.

12:49They like to say how much their television traffic is ballooning at any given opportunity. And marketers still want that apples to apples comparison on how to relate YouTube consumption on television to what they're used to buying on television. You'd think that this would benefit YouTube too, because they want to go after television advertising dollars, which are way bigger in terms of CPM, generally speaking, than digital advertising dollars. And so why not make it as much of an apples to apples comparison as you can in order to entice those marketers to easily shift their spend over? I mean, clearly they didn't like something coming out of this because I don't think this is, to your point, like I don't think it's about the misuse of the API.

13:32I really just don't think it is. Barb's initial findings were kind of interesting. We reported on them at 2Filter in August of last year. It basically said children's content is king among the 200 channels including Barb's TV set analysis. The official hub of Peppa Pig consistently ranked number one in viewership, averaging about 1 million weekly viewers. The viewership also spiked around 3 p.m., confirming that lots of kids come home from school and then turn on their YouTube TV sets once they get home. And just sit on the TV. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've heard. I mean, maybe YouTube doesn't want to showcase that it's giving a ton of viewership from children's programming.

14:12Of course they don't. They don't want that to be the main thing because they can't target kids like the way they can target other content. Yeah, that's true. So that's the number one kind of viewer on the platform. It's much less valuable than if it was content that was for, you know, non-kid content. So that makes a ton of sense to me. or maybe also the barb data was not entirely accurate to youtube's liking i mean to youtube's liking i think that's i think that's fair it'll be interesting to see if nielsen kantar barb comes out with some other different type of methodology to really once again compare these on an equal playing field because then it just makes a much easier transition from dollars from one media outlet to another media outlet and can and can inject a lot of new money into the system i mean they i mean it should be a third party but they might also want to create their own version of that too so yeah i want to talk about talk about something that i find really interesting just considering the trends and and the sort of waves of everything that's happened in this sort of creator economy since we have begun and this is around iron long which is a movie adaptation of an indie video game from Markiplier, also known as Markfish Botch.

15:25It pulled an$18.19 million in the domestic box office, aka people went to the movies to see this in its opening weekend that comes from Comscore. That is more than six times its reported$3 million budget. Markiplier wrote and directed it, and it played in 3 ,015 theaters across U.S. and Canada, and it came in close second to the Sam Raimi-directed horror thriller Send Help, which was the number one movie at$19.1 million. So it was like less than a million dollars less than that movie. Comscore's head of Marketplace Trends, Paul, I'm going to say his last name, Dergarbedian, said to see really savvy creators and influences parlay their small screen YouTube success either to traditional television or into the big screen is remarkable, and I think we're going to see more of it.

16:13You never know where the next big hit film is going to come from. I find this just fascinating because when we started in this business, it was definitely thought that YouTube was sort of the stepping stone to TV or film. And so that was like all the initial kind of call it diversification of monetization. I was involved in a lot of those. I produced the Annoying Orange pilot. I obviously did a ton of stuff with Shane Dawson where I produced TV shows and movies and all that sort of stuff. And back then, and you could make arguments for why, but like we did a feature with Shane. And unless Shane showed up to the screening, like nobody showed up in theaters.

16:46And I do think that there is likely for that movie that we did at the time, probably partly due to like maybe the quality of the film. Let's just be honest. Like, I don't think he was the most, you know, fantastic cinematic feat. But also, I just think that, you know, if you think about it, he was like the number two or number one YouTube channel in the world. And he had something at one point two to seven million subscribers. The number one channels now have hundreds and hundreds of millions of followers. So like the permeation of this industry is obviously like, you know, grown exponentially.

17:19And so I just think because because I think what the lessons were at that point were like, that's OK. Like you could just have just a digital business and like you don't need a transition. And I still think that that's true. But I think it's I don't want to call it easier because it's not easy. The film has to be good. There's a lot of things that have to sort of come into place. but it's just this is what the kids are watching period and so if they get an opportunity to watch something that might not be bad and it might even be good in the theaters like that's what you're going to get the kids to go to the theaters for and everybody's doing it and while people like a lot of kids are watching it back then it's just it can't you can't compare to what it is today so I just think it's interesting you know that that's a very viable option for creators now if it makes sense whereas like I think there was a trend for a while where like this isn't a thing really to do theatrical releases of YouTuber films.

18:10I also want to note, I read an article that just made me really sad. The actress, writer, director, Jennifer Esposito, like, mortgaged her home for some what looks like a really good movie that she wrote and, like, directed and, like, lost her home. And was, like, crying. And there was, like, all these articles about it. And it just kind of broke my heart. And then you see these YouTubers, like, you know, killing it and making$18 million. And I'm just like, it's like, this is what it takes to get butts in seats now, I think. I don't know. Hey, they call show friends.

18:39it ain't called show friends keep going i do feel for any entrepreneur when it doesn't work out for them but you've got to have a marketing angle here and obviously the kids on youtube who are huge stars on youtube have a marketing angle i want to be clear with a couple things here one markiplier is in another echelon of youtube creator uh in terms of his stardom his longevity his the affinity that his fans have for him and more it's not like any youtube creator can go out and make a movie even if they have as many followers as he does he's not at like jimmy mr beast level of popularity and influence and appeal but he's definitely in top 99.9 percent right for sure yeah so this is this is not going to work for everybody i think is the point yes and two i it worked but i want but i want to make the point that at the time when i was working with Shane Toss and he was in the 99%.

19:31But the numbers just by definition were smaller because the universe was smaller. Right. There weren't as many people watching YouTube. YouTube's annual advertising revenue were in the several hundred millions of low digit billions of dollars back at that time. And there was just less consumption going on. Where now the average YouTube creator who is at the same level of stardom that Shane was back then has probably like 10x more opportunities than Shane did at that time. Yeah, yeah. If not 100x. We had to create the opportunities, Joshua. And by we, I mean me. Go on. Hey, Laura, no one was confused.

20:07Yeah, no. That you meant you when you said that. All right, just want to be clear. The second thing I want to talk about here is like, yes, this totally worked in many ways. So it was reported that the movie had a budget of about$3 million. It made$17.8 million in its first weekend domestically,$3 million internationally. And so obviously turned a profit for Mark and everyone involved. The other thing I want to point out here is that I don't know if this is going to have legs going into subsequent weekends. And I think that's the thing to look at and to really focus on, where it did have a very successful opening weekend.

20:47It also has on Rotten Tomatoes a 43 % from critics score, 89 % from fans. Audience, yeah. So critics didn't love it. That really doesn't mean anything. There's tons of movies that critics don't love that do very well, incredibly well at the box office and beyond. But this was mostly for, I think, fans of the game and fans of Markiplier. But by the way, that's fine. Yeah, that's totally fine. I'm trying to figure out if this has legs beyond this and I want to look how it does this weekend. as well because it grossed at the domestic box office nine million dollars on friday 5.3 million dollars on saturday and 3.5 million dollars on sunday so we're going down every day we're going down yeah send help meanwhile grossed 7.2 million dollars on friday seven million dollars on saturday and 4.7 million dollars on sunday i think people that that's something to note yeah people that were really fans of this they want to be the first ones to see it they want to see a Friday night.

21:47They really want to go in and get it. It's worthwhile looking at what's going to happen this weekend and beyond in terms of the box office numbers to see if there's just this one initial big surge of people coming to see this movie or it's going to have any type of longevity. And then the second question after that is, if it doesn't have any type of longevity, does it really matter? It reminds me of like when people were talking like back in the day when like you go to a studio executive and like a female, you know, whatever filmmaker would pitch something, they'd be like, we already have like our one female film happening like this month.

22:19And it's like with YouTubers are sort of like the women of like the entertainment industry. And I don't mean that. I mean, that's a bad way. It's like, well, they did one with a YouTuber and it like it did 18 million. But like, it's just like, yeah, I think it is worth it. I think that like there's different windows. There's no rules around how long something has to be in a theater. And like 18 million dollars, you know, in a three million dollar film. Right. So I think if Mark and people like him can continue to make movies at a low single digit millions figure budget and then they gross 20 million plus at the box office, like there's going to be a production company that wants to get those singles and doubles all day long.

22:59All day long. All day long. Josh, do you have any uploads or downloads this week? Lauren, I got one for you. Dar Mann, and we had his chief strategy officer, Ross Habif, on the episode last week talking about his NFL deal where he was announced as the chief kindness officer for the Super Bowl. Dude's just on a deal roll. I know. In addition to that, Dar Mann, who everyone knows is the, quote, moral philosopher of YouTube, end quote, and whose channel brings in around 200 million views a month with these didactic, dramatic stories about doing the right thing. Very dramatic. Very dramatic. Uh-huh.

23:34He's also doing a deal with Old Navy for a short-form branded series that pits the company's clothing against far pricier designer options. Darman first met Gap, Inc.'s head of consumer digital entertainment, Damon Berger, at Advertising Week New York in 2025. From there, they started talking, and now they have a four-part series called Old Navy vs. Designer, in which Darman does these man-on-the-street interviews, meets up with fellow creators to see if they can differentiate between Old Navy and these high-end luxe fashion. I like this because it's very kind of on-brand. You can see a Dhar Mann video about someone wearing Old Navy clothes and getting made fun of and then wearing slightly different Old Navy clothes and saying they're not Old Navy clothes, but they're some designer clothes and then not getting made fun of.

24:17And then at the end, feeling some validation about the whole thing. I like this. It'll be interesting to see how the series performs. And also maybe Dhar Mann can turn this into a micro drama as well. I mean, he signed that 4D micro drama deal with Fox and the Holy Water just a couple of weeks ago too. Yeah. I think it's worth noting, like, this partnership isn't coming out of thin air. Like, Damon Berger, who's at Gap now, but he has a very long history in our industry. Full screen, you know, spotter, et cetera. So, like, this makes sense when you, you know, you can see how these things kind of all collide.

24:47I will say that Sean Atkins, like, tagged me in a LinkedIn post about this, like, chief kindness thing. And I'm supposed to say something nice about my rival. And he's like, I tag Lauren Schnipper and, like, some other random people. And, like, I'm really stressing out of this. So this is my like call to like, I don't know what to do. And I was literally like, should I do something funny? Like make you my rival and like wear like, you know what I mean? Cause he was wearing a USC shirt, but he was talking about Notre Dame, which is like a big rival. And I was like, what's my big, I don't have a big rival.

25:12Like what's my big rival? I don't know. I thought it would be like a bid to like do you. So like, I don't know. Like saying you're my big rival and then we'll tag you. Is this a dream you had? It's funny. That was funny. That was a good callback. And then not to be outdone real quick. I'd be remiss not to mention that YouTubers, Salish Matter and Jordan Matter, daughter, father, respectively, they have a big development deal with Netflix coming out. They're going to do unscripted and animated projects coming out this spring. And, you know, 2025, Salish won the Kid Choice Award for Female Creator of the Year and launched that skincare brand called Sincerely Yours, which apparently 90 billion people went to a mall to go get.

25:57and um or like 20 30 40 000 i think it was like 80 000 it was anyway a billion and one people uh went to buy the skincare so very excited to see that i saw jordan just a couple weeks ago he didn't mention it but just thought i'd mention that i saw him the matter is just crushing it crushing it crushing it jordan will tell you this if you talk with him for more than 90 seconds that Salish is the number one most popular person on the internet, according to famousbirthdays.com. I think Evan Britton would tell us that too. But like much faster. You think much faster? Yeah, because Evan talks really fast.

26:34Yeah. Okay, Josh, I think we did it. Lauren, I think that's it. I'll see you just doing some good work with your therapy. Therapy. Just like trying to figure out how you can like resolve any tensions you have with a frenemy or a rival or just... It's like when parents are trying to borrow money from their kids and it's just like a lot going on and these therapizing things I watch. I really enjoy it. And if not, there's next week on Creator Upload. Today's show is produced by Lauren Schnipper, Joshua Cohen, that's me, and Adam Conner. It's edited by Adam Conner too. Original music is by London Bridge.

27:09You can check him out on Instagram at London Bridge Music. Make sure you subscribe to Creator Upload right here on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts, as well as Spotify or wherever you're listening. While you're there, give us a rating and leave us a comment. If you want to talk, hit us up at info at creatorupload.com. If you like our show, recommend it to a friend. If you love it, just tell everyone. Thanks for listening to Creator Upload, and we will be back next week.