It's Wednesday, but more importantly, it's recap season. As platforms like Amazon Music, Twitch, and YouTube look ahead to the new year, they're giving users insights into what content they consumed most in 2025.

Today's News

🎁 TikTok Live gifts fuel creators
🇦🇺 Cadel and Mia beat out KIMPRO
📈 This week on the branded charts…
🚽 Fans want to #BringBoomBack
🏦 A bank tells small biz stories

CREATOR COMMOTION

60,000 TikTok LIVE creators earn a part-time salary from gifts (Exclusive)

The context: During the early days of COVID, people suddenly found themselves with more time than ever to consume content. That surge, combined with a growing understanding of the financial instability facing creators, led to generous support from viewers. They subscribed to Patreons, bought merch, and sent donations at record levels. In response, platforms like TikTok introduced new and expanded ways to give.

Now, five years on, TikTok's version of gifts—aka little virtual items that cost anywhere from 1 cent to ~$560 and pop up as in-stream animations—are facilitating creator/fan interactivity and paying creators' salaries.

The study: To measure that impact, TikTok commissioned a study from Ipsos that dives into how gifting affects both livestreamers and viewers. Between June and July 2025, the marketing research company asked 300 TikTok users and 200 non-users between the ages of 18-49 about their knowledge and utilization of TikTok Live gifting. The key findings:

In 2025, more than 60,000 U.S.-based TikTok Live creators will make "more than the median part-time monthly income" from gift earnings. (And that's after TikTok takes its ~50% cut of the revenue from gifts.)
1 in 5 U.S.-based creators will receive a TikTok Live gift from a viewer the very first time they go live.
On the viewer side of the equation, 68% of TikTok users have tried gifting on TikTok Live, and 50% are likely to use gifting in the next month.
35% of people said they send gifts on TikTok Live to "show appreciation for the creator's content," while 34% cited wanting to "enhance the viewing experience with interactive elements" and to "stand out or be noticed within the community of viewers."

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

KIMPRO needed one more #1 finish to complete a month-long run at the top of our Global Top 50 ranking—but the Korean channel fell to #3 last week. In its place, Cadel and Mia claimed victory with 1.19 billion views. (Tubefilter)
Irish regulators have launched investigations into TikTok and LinkedIn over potential violations of the E.U.'s Digital Services Act. (Engadget)
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reportedly declared a "code red" and urged employees to focus on enhancing ChatGPT following the release of Google's Gemini 3 model. (Ars Technica)
According to Google public policy senior manager Rachel Lord, Australia's upcoming social media ban—which aims to block users under 16 from major platforms—will "make Australian kids less safe on YouTube." (BBC)

GOSPEL STATS 📈

Top Branded Videos of the Week: Fortnite's new dawn

Is Fortnite unkillable? After hosting some astronomical events in 2020, the game seemed to go through a lull as battle royales with more adult appeal, like Apex Legends, entered the arena.

Now, however, Apex has hit a rough patch following a controversial sale to Saudi Arabia—and Fortnite is surging thanks to a series of flashy IP partnerships. Is there any better evidence of that rise than seeing Epic Games share space with MrBeast in Gospel Stats' branded YouTube charts?

🥇 #1. MrBeast x Moose Toys: World's Fastest Man Vs Robot (66.3M views)
Can the fastest man on Earth outrace a bot? Can the strongest man outwrestle a giant mech? MrBeast answers those questions in his latest video, which was backed by Moose Toys (aka the maker of both MrBeast Lab toys and the MrBeast Lab YouTube series, which scored nearly 6 million views on its first episode).

🥈 #2. SPLShortStories x Epic Games: Fortnite won't EVER be the same… (23.4M views)
On November 29, over 10 million players gathered live for Fortnite's Zero Hour, a massive multiuniverse event that concluded Chapter 6. Ahead of the event, Fortnite developer Epic Games set up a creator-driven promo so successful that it claimed spots at #2, #3, and #4 in this week's rankings. The top-performing video of that campaign: a 60-second preview of Zero Hour and Season 7 from SPLShortStories.

🥉 #3. LEGIQN x Epic Games: Next Week Fortnite Changes FOREVER (13.5M views)
Epic's second top-performing video came from LEGIQN, a gaming-focused creator who normally brings in between 1 and 2 million views per month. The creator's entire channel is full of Fortnite—and considering this video got nearly 14 million views, it's clear the passion paid off.

Check out the full branded ranking here and head over to Gospel Stats for more YouTube sponsorship insights.

THAT SKIBIDI RIZZ

As Skibidi takes on Hollywood, some fans want to #BringBoomBack

The context: Skibidi Toilet is ready for its Hollywood close-up—but as the YouTube sensation evolves into a full-fledged franchise, some fans are wondering where DaFuq the brand's creator is.

That visionary—aka Alexey "Boom" Gerasimov—emerged out of obscurity to turn his YouTube home, DaFuq!?Boom!, into the platform's most-watched channel. At the peak of Skibidi mania in 2023, Boom's universe was pulling nearly three billion views per month.

Outside forces began swooping in not long after. A 2024 partnership between Bonkers Toys and Invisible Narratives begat a line of bestselling toys, and the latter company is now building a film and TV franchise based around Skibidi (with Michael Bay involved in the proceedings). Most recently, the trailer for an upcoming spinoff with the subtitle Emergence dropped on the DaFuq!?Boom! YouTube hub.

That flurry of activity has spawned some confusion about the nature of Boom's role. A widely-circulated tweet accused Invisible Narratives of pushing out the creator, while the hashtag #BringBoomBack is filled with missives from worried fans.

The statement: In an attempt to quell those concerns, Invisible Narratives and Boom both provided statements to IGN. The studio confirmed that the original creator behind Skibidi has chosen to "step back," although he still has "an ongoing financial and creative stake in the franchise." Boom went into further detail, noting that in his "new role as executive producer, I'm still guiding the stories, characters, and the energy that make Skibidi what it is, but now I'll have a larger support structure."

Will those statements be enough to satisfy die-hard fans? Under the right leadership, Skibidi has a chance to be the next Minecraft Movie once it arrives at the Hollywood box office. To reach that high potential, however, Invisible Narratives will have to contend with the franchise's Gen A-dominated legion of viewers.

WATCH THIS 👀

South Asian banks are reeling in views on YouTube Shorts

The banking rivalry: India and Pakistan have never been the best of friends, but it's rare to see a rivalry between nations reshape the YouTube subscriber charts. Thanks to two social media-savvy banks, however, that's exactly what happened during the last week of November.

Pakistan's Allied Bank snagged a spot at #41 in our Global Top 50 Sub ranking by attracting 240,000 new subscribers in a single week, pushing its lifetime total above 3.5 million. The bank's Shorts strategy: telling bite-sized stories about small business owners.

Not to be outdone, the State Bank of India finished at #31 in our worldwide ranking after adding 290,000 new subscribers at the end of November. While its Pakistani counterpart relies on heartwarming success stories to gather views, the State Bank of India offers cybersecurity from animated mascots and occasionally posts PSAs related to topics like deepfakes.