Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

The Walt Disney Company’s stock price soared on Wednesday, up by 10% at the time of publishing, as the company surpassed earnings expectations and unveiled its first new theme park development in 15 years. Following Disney’s second quarter earnings report, the entertainment giant announced an agreement to build a new resort and theme park in Yas Island, United Arab Emirates. “As our seventh theme park destination, it will rise from this land in spectacular fashion, blending contemporary architecture with cutting edge technology to offer guests deeply immersive entertainment experiences in unique and modern ways,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement. While…

When Greg Giczi retired in February, his company threw him a party. Giczi had spent 12 years as president and general manager of WNIT-TV, a public television station based in South Bend, Indiana. Public broadcasting isn’t known for lavish budgets, so the party took place at the studio—a “big, open space with dramatic lighting,” Giczi describes. There were appetizers, wine, and beer, as well as heartfelt speeches. A huge snowstorm hit that night. But that didn’t stop a roomful family, coworkers, and others from coming out to celebrate Giczi; one person traveled over two-and-a-half hours. The board knew Giczi had been eyeing some electronics, so they gave him a “ni…

Authenticity is currency. You can spend it recklessly and go broke, or invest it strategically and build wealth. Most leaders are choosing bankruptcy without even realizing it. Right now, workplaces are debating authenticity. Some call “bring your whole self to work” a dangerous myth that punishes marginalized employees. Others claim it’s the secret to engagement and retention. Both are right—and both are missing something. Unfiltered authenticity without skill can be destructive. And yes, marginalized employees pay a higher price when they try to be authentic in systems that weren’t built for them. But your team already knows when you’re faking it. Th…

Artificial intelligence is infiltrating every corner of professional sports, from scouting and injury prevention to scheduling. Now, it looks like golf has its most sophisticated AI adoption yet, and it’s happening in the bag of Bryson DeChambeau, the sport’s most notorious tinkerer. “We’re building an AI golf coach,” DeChambeau says. “Essentially, it will be a golf coach that, based on data, will be able to tell you exactly what you’re doing, how to practice, and how to improve your game. We can take a golf swing, compile the information, upload it, and within a minute, it will give me what’s different from my gold standard set of swings.” The setup is decep…

The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point Wednesday for the third time since September, bringing its key rate to about 3.6%, the lowest in nearly three years. Before September, it had gone nine months without a cut. The benchmark rate is the rate at which banks borrow and lend to one another, and the Fed has two goals when it sets the rate: one, to manage prices for goods and services, and two, to encourage full employment. The benchmark rate also affects the interest rates consumers pay to borrow money via credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and other financial products. Typically, the Fed might increase the rate to try to bring down infla…

In part four of How YouTube Ate TV, Fast Company’s oral history of YouTube, insiders describe how the company’s Partner Program began sharing ad revenue with creators, kicking off the age of the professional YouTuber. As monetization transformed the platform, creators faced the newfangled challenges of managing fame in the viral video age. YouTube, meanwhile, wrestled with hate speech and other unsavory content. With YouTube increasingly competing with TV in its classic form, it also spent billions to bring one of broadcasting’s most iconic offerings—the NFL—on board. Comments have been edited for length and clarity. Read more How YouTube Ate TV Part one: YouTube…

Below, Tom Griffiths shares five key insights from his new book, The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind. Griffiths is a professor of psychology and computer science at Princeton University and director of the Princeton Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence. What’s the big idea? How can we study something we can’t see or touch? Mathematics allows us to develop rigorous theories about how minds work. It also lets us use those theories to build artificial intelligence systems. Just as physicists seek to identify Laws of Nature, cognitive scientists hope to discover the Laws of Thought. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bit…

Klarna just announced its first quarter 2025 financial results, and they show that a larger chunk of customers are buying now and not paying later. This morning, the Swedish “buy now, pay later” (BPNL) fintech company gave consumers a look at its performance for the first three months of 2025. The news came in the form of a press release and an accompanying AI-generated video of CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowskim (likely as a play to emphasize Klarna’s all-in approach to AI.) In the video, Siemiatkowski’s look-alike shared that Klarna has “started the year strong,” hitting 100 active users in Q1 and $701 million in revenue, a 15% year-over-year increase. But there’s a c…

Every season, the Next Big Idea Club editorial team reviews dozens of upcoming books to curate a selection of the most exciting, must-read nonfiction titles. We start with a broad pool of nominees from which we identify a small handful of finalists and, ultimately, an official season selection. Today, it’s our pleasure to share our list of five finalists for Season 29! Without further ado, the new books we’re most excited about right now are . . . The Way of Excellence: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World By Brad Stulberg Publication Date: January 27, 2026 A practical guide to realizing our potential amid the chaos of mode…

To observe a SpaceX launch in person, as I did in February, is to witness a stunning and galvanic event. Two of the company’s greatest feats occur in quick succession. First, there’s the launch itself, with the rocket ferrying its payload—perhaps its own Starlink internet satellites, or ones for other businesses and the government, or even humans—and painting the night sky a blazing orange. Then there’s the second act, one that changed spaceflight forever. It begins with a wary silence, and then, suddenly, there’s the rocket’s first-stage booster returning to Earth, announcing itself with a sonic boom and ferrying down from the heavens. It descends, before hovering an…

A college degree is usually thought of as a ticket to a great job and a secure future. Yet, the job market over the past few years has not been kind to graduates. Rapid changes in technology and uncertainty about the influence of AI on the economy have made it harder for companies to know what their new employees need to know to be successful. I have argued in the past that this uncertainty actually makes college degrees more useful than ever, but higher education is doing a poor job of helping students navigate this uncertainty. Sadly, universities aren’t going to fix this problem by hiring more career counselors. Instead, they’re going to have to do the hard work of…

Soooo, do you Labubu? The furry creature went viral this year thanks to Dua Lipa, Blackpink’s Lisa, and Kim Kardashian all buying into the adorably bizarre, plushy monsters. The results were millions in sales, long lines, and frantic scrambles as people tried to get their hands on this latest trendy phenom. Labubu’s Chinese parent company, Pop Mart, reported global revenue for Q3 (July through September) jumped by about 250% compared to a year earlier, and sales in America were up by more than 1,200%. But it goes beyond Pop Mart, as brands from South Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries are finding more inroads into American culture. Just as American cultural influ…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos brings together an incongruous mix of celebrities (this year included Matt Damon, David Beckham, and Katy Perry, who was accompanying ex-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau), world leaders (President Donald The President), and nonprofit le…

Whoopi Goldberg has been a household name since she starred in The Color Purple in 1985. Fast forward over 50 years, and she’s still as driven as ever. Goldberg, 70, cohosts daytime talk show The View. In 2024, she founded AWSN, the All Women’s Sports Network. She’s also an author, activist, mother, and grandmother. And, she’s also doing it all solo. Goldberg is happily single and has been for decades. She says that will never change. In a recent interview with Interview magazine, Goldberg opened up about her solo life, which she happens to genuinely love. So much, in fact, that she says she plans to stay single because, as she put it, “in the last 25 years, I re…

The other night, I heard cabinets opening in the kitchen and the shuffling of bags and containers. My husband was looking for snacks with our 9-year-old. After, he got him ready for bed, read him a book, and ordered us dinner. Then he sat down at his laptop and worked until 9 p.m. As I unloaded the dishwasher, I realized two things. First: My husband was killing it. Second: The second shift isn’t women’s work anymore. It’s everyone’s burnout. The second shift, rewritten In 1989, sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild introduced “the second shift” to describe what happened when women got home from their paid job to an unpaid one: making dinner, folding laundry, shuttl…

Humans have long been transfixed by the moon, awed and inspired by its reassuring presence in the night sky and its influence on the tides. In recent decades, though, our fascination with our nearest celestial neighbor has become somewhat more opportunistic: The moon contains valuable resources, and governments and companies are eager to get their hands on them. One such resource is helium-3 (He-3), a gas that some experts say could unlock clean and abundant energy on Earth as a fuel for fusion. It’s this gas that Interlune, a Seattle-based startup, has its sights on. The company wants to be the first to commercialize space resources, starting with He-3, which it pla…

Home ownership is receding further out of reach for most Americans as elevated mortgage rates and rising prices stretch the limits of what buyers can afford. A homebuyer now needs to earn at least $114,000 a year to afford a $431,250 home—the national median listing price in April, according to data released Thursday by Realtor.com The analysis assumes that a homebuyer will make a 20% down payment, finance the rest of the purchase with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, and that the buyer’s housing costs won’t exceed 30% of their gross monthly income—an often-used barometer of housing affordability. Based off the latest U.S. median home listing price, homebuyers need to ea…

A new year often starts with a simple question: How can we do better? For businesses, it’s a question that applies to almost everything, from product innovation to climate impact—an area of increasing urgency for many. The goal of achieving net-zero is now a staple of most businesses’ annual plans, however the journey there is often challenging. It can be fraught with hidden trade-offs, making it difficult for ESG leaders to know whether they are truly backing the right solutions in pursuit of their climate goals. Take aviation, for example. As one of the world’s most difficult sectors to decarbonize, its 2.5% share of global CO2 emissions represents a major chall…

Any leader who steps into the role of CEO at an established company competes with the legacy of their predecessors. Only some of us are lucky enough to have had a mentor come before them, one who was as vested in their successor’s success as they were in their own. Jerry Lee, now a retired architect and executive director of our MG2 Foundation, was my CEO predecessor at MG2 and my mentor. Jerry has always understood growth as something far deeper than financial success. From the earliest days of his career, he learned that resilience and purpose come from how we show up for others. “Part of being generous,” he once said in a commencement speech at Washington State Uni…

When Chinese automaker BYD announced plans to build a massive factory in the hardscrabble city of Camacari, in Brazil’s northeastern Bahia state, locals saw a new beginning. After years of economic stagnation following Ford’s exit from the region in 2021, there was hope that the global leader in electric vehicles would bring back well-paying jobs and a brighter future. The timing seemed right. Brazil, the world’s sixth-largest auto market, is seeing a surge in EV sales—and BYD is leading the charge. For Camacari, the deal promised to fill the economic vacuum left by the American company, which had once been the city’s largest employer. Then plans went off track. A D…

Americans can’t get enough chicken—brands like Raising Cane’s and Chick-fil-A have risen as fast-food superstars while others race to consolidate their spot as winners of the chicken sandwich wars. Now, Chili’s is entering the game in a big way. Value menus, a staple of chain and fast-food restaurants, bundle multiple menu items at a discounted price, giving customers a full meal without the full cost. Now, Chili’s—whose value meal includes an entrée, fries, a soda, and bottomless chips and salsa—is adding chicken sandwiches to the mix. “We’re setting our sights on fast food chicken sandwiches, offering our gigantic Big Crispy and Spicy Big Crispy chicken sandwich…

California’s top insurance regulator said Tuesday that State Farm can soon start raising premiums by 17% for all of its home insurance customers in the state to help the insurer rebuild its capital following the Los Angeles wildfires. State Farm has argued the emergency rate hikes are necessary to help the company avoid a “dire” financial crisis that could force them to drop more California policies. The state’s largest home insurer said it was already struggling financially before this year but the LA fires, which destroyed more than 16,000 buildings in January, have made things worse. The increase will apply to all of the roughly one million homeowners State Farm insu…