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TOGETHER WITH |
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It's Monday, and Amazon Prime Video is entering its TikTok era with the launch of its very own short-form video feed. |
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Today’s News |
🐭 Disney focuses on short-form ⏪ TikTok rolls back video descriptions 👊 Twitch punishes viewbotters 💬 Snapchat studies chat ads 🎙️ This week on the podcast…
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HOUSE OF MOUSE |
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Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro is all in on Verts. (Photo by Ricardo Moreira/Getty Images for Disney.) |
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Disney says short-form is "driving deeper engagement" |
The fresh feed: In his first earnings call as the House of Mouse’s CEO, Josh D’Amaro praised “Verts,” the TikTok-y vertical feed Disney+ rolled out earlier this year. He said it’s “already driving deeper engagement” with Disney’s various IPs. |
Verts launched with a content library mostly comprised of clips from its movies and TV shows. But, crucially, Disney also sourced a handful of videos from content creators that focus on new franchise releases like Predator: Badlands and the live-action Lilo & Stitch. |
The creator edge: Apparently, it's going well. D’Amaro said Disney plans to “advance that work [with content creators] in the months ahead. |
Those advancements won't just be about pumping content in to the Disney+ app, though. The flow will run the other way, too. D’Amaro said Disney also plans to "[make] sure that our IP shows up in relevant ways across social platforms.” |
Of course, that brings us back to Gen Z and Gen Alpha—aka the ears (and attention spans) Disney hopes to reach with short-form. |
“[Short-form is] an area we’re focused on because we have deeply committed fans who love our brands and our franchises and characters, and they want to engage with them in this new way. And this is specifically important when we think about Gen Alpha, obviously, the newest generation of Disney fans.” |
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| - Josh D’Amaro, Disney CEO |
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Basically, Disney has figured out what YouTube was talking about years ago. Modern fans are die-hard passionates, and when you build digital hubs for them to engage with art they love, you can bet on significant engagement. |
Now, all that’s left for Disney to do is make art that fans will actually care about. |
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Celebrate Tribeca Festival’s 25th anniversary with Bruce Springsteen, Robert De Niro, and other top stars |
The 25th annual Tribeca Festival is shaping up to be a star-studded affair. |
Since its founding, the Festival has served as a launchpad for visionary filmmakers and artists by championing storytellers across film, television, music, talks, podcasts, and more. |
This year, a special programming slate will honor that history with talks, reunions, and tributes featuring your favorite actors, musicians, and more, including… |
Bruce Springsteen, who will receive the 2026 Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award
Katy Perry, who will participate in a live conversation following the world premiere of Katy Perry: The Lifetimes Tour – Live From Paris
Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, who will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Taxi Driver with a post-screening conversation
Director Sharon Maguire and Renée Zellweger, who will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Bridget Jones’s Diary
Malik Elassal, Lucy Freyer, Jack Innanen, Amita Rao, and Owen Thiele, who star in FX’s new comedy series, Adults
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Tickets to the 25th Tribeca Festival are available now. |
Attendees will also have the opportunity to hear from Paul Rudd, NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade, Grammy-winning writer/producer Finneas, BAFTA-nominated composer Anthony Willis, Keke Palmer, and Whoopi Goldberg as part of the 2026 Storytellers Series. |
Tribeca Festival will return to New York from June 3-14. |
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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰 |
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TikTok’s AI descriptions might need some workshopping. (Photo via Getty Images.) |
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TikTok is reversing course on its AI-generated video descriptions in the wake of several memorable errors, including one description that referred to creator Charli D’Amelio as “a collection of various blueberries.” (BBC) French prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into Elon Musk and X following an initial probe into sexually explicit deepfakes generated by Grok. (Ars Technica) Meta is facing a $50 million lawsuit over the death of a teenager who was allegedly murdered after enduring weeks of harassment on Instagram. (New York Post)
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PLATFORM UPDATES |
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Twitch CEO Dan Clancy has thoughts on viewbots. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Semafor World Economy.) |
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Twitch is punishing viewbotters by capping their concurrent viewership |
The policy: Last year, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy promised that the platform would take a stronger approach to regulating the “thousands of small streamers” who use inflated view counts to generate “bogus revenue.” |
The necessity of that promised escalation was backed up by a whitepaper published by Streams Charts, which found that Q2 2025 was the first quarter when at least 10% of Twitch accounts with at least 50 average quarterly viewers “displayed clear signs of persistent viewbotting.” |
Now, Clancy has announced the platform’s solution to viewbots. In an X post, the CEO revealed that streamers who are charged with artificially inflating their view counts will be punished by having a cap placed on their concurrent viewership. |
“For channels identified as persistently viewbotting, we will apply a cap to the streamer’s [concurrent viewership] for a fixed period of time, on all of the Twitch surfaces. The cap will be based upon historical data regarding that creator’s non-viewbotted traffic. Repeated violations will result in longer penalties.” |
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| - Dan Clancy, Twitch CEO |
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The TLDR: In his post, Clancy noted that “viewbotting is bad for our business” while also admitting that “effectively combating viewbotting is challenging.” |
Viewbotting companies can quickly respond to enforcement attempts by updating their own tactics. So, in addition to enacting policies that target viewbot providers (such as the mass removal of bot-owned accounts), Twitch is gearing up to target accounts that benefit from that forbidden practice. |
That crackdown could affect some traffic numbers for legitimate streamers. At the end of the day, however, the new policy bodes well for Twitch’s bottom line, since advertisers concerned about inflated view counts might adjust their budgets in response. |
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AD WORLD |
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Are DMs the future of social media? (Photo Illustration by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images.) |
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Snapchat is getting serious about Chat ads |
The study: Is online culture “moving away from public feeds into personal conversations”? That’s the claim made by Snap Head of India Ad Solutions Yagnesh Ravi, who suggested in a recent statement that “we’re seeing a clear shift across the industry” as users turn their attention to chat windows. |
According to Ravi, Sponsored Snaps (aka ad spots that show up in the Chat feed next to Snaps from other users) are strategically positioned to help brands capitalize on that shift. Now, Snapchat has the necessary data to back up that assertion. |
In India, the app teamed up with Kantar to measure the impact of Sponsored Snaps and found that the ad format—combined with video—delivered a 38-point lift in top-of-mind awareness among Indian Snapchat users. Consumers themselves spoke positively of the spots, with 93% of respondents saying Sponsored Snaps fit naturally into their habits and 94% claiming that Sponsored Snaps made it easier to share relevant ads with friends. |
Those findings build on insights Snap reported last month, when it revealed that Sponsored Snaps deliver 2x more conversions per full-screen ad view compared to other inventory types. |
The paradigm shift: As Ravi suggested, the rise of Sponsored Snaps isn’t just about one particular format. Snap is forecasting a broader transition, with advertisers moving budgets from feeds to DMs—and it’s not the only platform preparing for that paradigm shift. Meta has souped up Instagram’s DMs by adding dozens of new features, and Threads recently gained enhanced chatting capabilities as well. YouTube has also tested direct messages in response to a “top feature request.” |
If Snapchat can keep up with the Joneses, it has a lot to gain from a greater investment in Sponsored Snaps. The app’s Q1 2026 earnings report met analyst expectations, but ad tech investments will need to pay off going forward if Snap hopes to continue gaining ground. |
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LISTEN UP 🎙️ |
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We’re talking memes, conferences, and scaling the content biz. (Photo illustration by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images.) |
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This week on the podcast… |
The episode: On the latest installment of Creator Upload, hosts Lauren Schnipper and Joshua Cohen were joined by two industry experts, ICYMI's Lia Haberman and Climate Cardinals founder Sophia Kianni. |
Haberman sat down with Schnipper to discuss her takeaways from the Scalable Summit, Meta's new AI teen surveillance, and the truth about the meme account crackdown, while Kianni shared insights on leveraging AI, scaling businesses as a Gen Z founder, and her podcast, The Burnouts. |
Tune into the full episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts to learn more. |
The survey: Creator Upload wants your opinion! Take this survey to help us understand who’s tuning in and what you want more (or less) of from the show. |
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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, James Hale, and Josh Cohen. |
