ZEVENT 16M€, Skippable Ads, Netflix Clipping, and Mafiathon Celebs

Welcome to the 170th edition of the newsletter! I've collected some really interesting updates this week, including Twitch testing skippable ads, YouTube's interactive gifts, ZEVENT raising a mind-blowing 16 million euros, and Kai Cenat's celebrity guests so far! So, let's jump into it!

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🟪 TWITCH

• Twitch is doing a very limited test of Skippable Ads.
• Twitch is running a global ad campaign to promote Kai Cenat's Mafiathon 3, including a mass email campaign to Twitch users and on-site notifications.
• Bleed Purple Watch Hour statues will no longer be shipped to 21 additional countries. 39 countries are now ineligible.
• New Global Emotes: SpaceShake, Mafiathon3, MegaphoneZ,
• New Twitch Badges: Hornet ($), ZEVENT25 (Watch), SUBtember 2025 ($), Mafiathon 3 ($)
• Amazon announced "Lens Live," a way to scan for and display real-time product matches.

🟥 YOUTUBE

• YouTube Live is testing Interactive Gifts on vertical streams in the USA.
• YouTube is cracking down on shared Premium accounts.
• Some creators are noticing that views on YouTube are down despite no real decline in revenue. Linus Tech Tips does the best job breaking down what they are seeing. Is YouTube cleaning up fake views?
• YouTube released its latest Culture & Trends Report about new creativity in content.

⬛ TIKTOK

• TikTok is adding Audio Messaging and Video DMs.
• TikTok is introducing Creator Level to gamify content creation.
• TikTok Live may be getting a simplified UI.

🟦 DISCORD & TWITTER X

• Discord released its monthly Patch Notes.
• The upcoming Discord Boost Game Server hosting feature appears to start at 3 Boosts, with additional boosts unlocking configuration improvements to RAM, CPU, and Storage.

🔲 OTHERS

• Kick updated its Terms of Service to include references to KICKs and Gifts.