Olha Kapinos

A Short goes viral when it holds attention past the first three seconds, keeps a stay-to-watch rate above 70%, and is packaged so the algorithm can confidently match it to an audience. None of that grows a channel on its own. Across 18,000 channels tracked for a full year, the ones that grew fastest kept Shorts to 25–40% of total uploads and used every one of them to route traffic into long-form, where the revenue lives. Shorts RPM runs 3–14% of long-form RPM in almost every niche according to AIR data.

Cannes Lions has been the advertising industry's north star for seven decades, long before the creator economy even existed. In 2024, Cannes finally made room for creators. It wasn't much: a rooftop slot on the Palais, easy to miss, and marketers still ran the agenda. This year that changed. The conversations that used to happen about creators started happening with them, and their side events were everywhere.

YouTube Play Buttons — or YouTube plaques, as most creators call them — are the closest thing the internet has to an Oscar. The platform officially calls them Creator Awards.