Creator Weekly: YouTube Views, Twitch Affiliate Sponsorships, Search Preferred Sources

Hello readers! I hope you are enjoying the last days of summer.

This week there’s updates to YouTube views counts, Stations, and AI claims, Twitch sponsorships, Google Search Preferred Sources, beehiiv, Facebook, LinkedIn and more.

Top Updates

YouTube will now count a “View” from the first frame long form videos. When someone stops to watch or clicks a thumbnail, that’s an Engaged View.
YouTube is expanding Stations beyond music videos. They may include creator content, media channels and podcasts, and can appear in the Home Feed and Search on YouTube and YouTube Music.
Twitch Affiliates can now access sponsorships. And all Partners and Affiliates can add Sponsorship Highlight clips to their Creator Profile.
Google Search has published the code for an interactive Preferred Source button you can add to your website or blog.
YouTube made it easier to manage AI Likeness claims on your channel.
YouTube improved the TV viewing interface, especially for watching Shows and Podcasts.
Edits lets you organize your video projects into folders, and can generate bilingual captions.
LinkedIn Live events can be automatically turned into Clips.
LinkedIn adds a message in Post Analytics if your post is reported as AI slop.
Divine, the Vine reboot, has publicly launched. Watch (or record) looping 6 second videos.
beehiiv added AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) features to its websites.
WordPress 7.1 is out, with improved image handling, easy responsive design styling, more consistent post editor and more.
Meta wants pages and professional profiles to pay to post links on Facebook.
Record a Google Slides presentation with Google Vids,
Google Notebooks now lets you copy entire notebooks.

YouTube Views Counted from the First Frame

On August 24, YouTube will start counting "Views" on long-form videos, podcasts and live streams the way Shorts Views are counted, “from the very first frame". This makes Views more consistent across formats, and comparable to Views counted on other video platforms.

For example, imagine if someone hovers over a video on the Home page and the video starts playing. That will now be a View, even if only the first frame opens.

If the person watches more of your video or clicks a video thumbnail, that will be counted as an Engaged View. (No, people don’t need to watch 30 seconds, that’s a myth.)

Right now, Engaged Views and Views for longform videos are the same. When this change launches, you will likely start to see higher Views than Engaged Views. The Views count on existing videos will not be updated retroactively.

Check out my write-up for all the details.

The new Views will be what is publicly visible. You can find your channel’s Engaged Views in YouTube Studio Analytics Advanced Mode.
This will not change metrics like Click Through Rate (CTR) or Average View Duration (AVD).
This will not affect monetization eligibility or your revenue.

YouTube Stations Expansion

YouTube is expanding experimental Stations. A Station is a 24/7 stream of curated videos, like a TV station. It also has a live chat that lets viewers watch or listen together.
This initially piloted with a small group of music artists, but now will now include creator content, media channels, podcasts and new music artists.

You may see Stations recommended in your Home and Search feeds

Available in YouTube and YouTube Music.
Available on mobile, desktop and TVs.
Available globally, except in Portugal, Switzerland and Turkiye.
It includes a limited number of new creators.

More Sponsorships for Twitch Streamers

Twitch announced several updates that make it easier for streamers to earn from sponsorships.

Twitch Affiliates can now access sponsorship deals on the Twitch Sponsorship Dashboard. This was previously limited to Partners.

Affiliates must take the Creator Sponsorships course in Creator Camp to be Creator Sponsorship Certified and be eligible for sponsorship opportunities.

Twitch is partnering with a company called Wehype “to surface additional sponsorship offers directly in your dashboard. You can find invites under Third Party Campaigns.

And Partners and Affiliates can customize their Creator Profile with clips that “showcase the type of sponsored content you create” in the Sponsorship Highlights section. Only brands with an “advertising relationship with Twitch” can see your Creator Profile.

Is this a good thing? Word is that the offered sponsorships often don’t have very favorable terms, so Affiliates should be sure to understand the agreement before jumping in.

New Interactive Preferred Source Button

If you publish a blog or news publication, and it’s available to be added as a Preferred Source, it’s time to update the button on your site.

People can set their favorite publications as a Preferred Source for Google Search, which makes those sources more easily found in Search Top Stories, Discover, AI Overviews and AI Mode.

When this originally launched, Google offered publishers a pretty basic button. Now there’s an interactive button that only requires adding a couple of lines of javascript to your site..

When a site visitor clicks the button, it adds the site as a Preferred Source to their Google Account, and then returns them to the page where the button was clicked.

Learn how to implement the Add Preferred Sources button.

YouTube and Video

YouTube has made it easier to manage content restrictions for using an AI likeness. The Copyright menu on the Video Details Page is now “Claims”. There are also new dispute categories if you think someone incorrectly claimed your video used a generative AI likeness of them. YouTube notes that this is not a policy change, and likeness claims do not result in Community Guidelines or copyright strikes (although the video may be blocked).

YouTube has made a number of improvements for TVs:

Immersive pages for Shows (now widely available to Creators)
Show and Podcast tabs on the Watch page, making it easy to navigate to the next episode.
Previous/Next buttons to
Shortcut to Shorts on the left navigation menu.
Live badge on the Top Channels shelf.
Music Artist Channel Pages have a new Releases (Albums) shelf

Twitch reminds streamers to beware of phishing scams and “think before you click”. If your account is hacked, follow these steps (or contact support).

Edits, Instagram’s video editing app, has new features: organize projects into folders, use AI to turn a photo into a video clip (US only), and save text styles. They also highlighted its bilingual captioning feature, available in 15 languages, and lyric captions.

StreamYard has made it easier to control the volume of shared audio.

LinkedIn Live Events can now be easily turned into Clips. Open “Create a Clip” on the Event Management page and there are automatically created “Recommended Clips” and "Recommended Chapters”. You can edit those before publishing and manually create Clips. This feature is available to page admins.

If you miss Vine, check out the reboot site Divine. You can watch millions of clips from the original Vine platform that was killed by Twitter. And you can add your own videos by recording with the in-app camera (limited to prevent AI or unoriginal clips).

Web Publishing

The Google Search August 2026 Spam Update rolled out. Check your Analytics to see if it looks like your site was affected.

WordPress 7.1 (“Mary Lou”) is out.

Easily style a block in the Site Editor for different screen sizes without custom CSS. Responsive design made easy.
The admin bar is always at the top of the screen.
Updated cropping tool in the media editor.
Improved image handling in the browser, and native support for AVIF, HEIC, and HDR.
For collaborative work, notes support rich text and mentions, and can be left on a specific bit of text.
Create audio playlists with an optional waveform visualizer.
Customize content breakpoints for mobile and tablets.
Organize content into tabbed panels.
Add custom icon collections.
Give Buttons distinct styles
More consistent post editor.

beehiiv added new features that supposedly increase visibility for AI. It’s not clear to me that any of this AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) will actually help your site be cited more often, beyond regular SEO. But it’s there:

Easily add structured data for FAQ, How-To, Video, Events and other types of content.
An llms.txt file for your content. (There’s no evidence any AI provider uses this)
Author pages include Person and ProfilePage markup that link to any social accounts you’ve connected.
Paywalled posts now have the proper paywall markup.
AI Crawl Control (in partnership with Cloudflare) lets you see which AI bots have crawled your content, and control crawler access. This is available with a custom domain.
beehiiv Agent (formerly Copilot) can now hel pyou design your website or digital products.

Social Media

Meta on Facebook is testing pushing Meta One subscriptions to Pages that share links. According to posts on Threads, after sharing 2 posts with links, there’s a popup that says you need Meta One to “share links more often”. A Meta One Advanced plan that allows 8 Facebook Posts with links and 4 Instagram Posts with links, is $50 per month, which is steep for a small business, club or organization. Yes, there are other features, but they are aimed at “growing” your Page.

Meta is also informing some users that their Facebook Page or professional profile will be limited to sharing links in two posts per month, unless they pay for Meta Verified by December 16th. Apparently this is a limited test. Meta Verified is not the same as Meta One. It includes verification and direct support.

LinkedIn’s Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan says that over a million people have clicked the “seems like AI slop” reporting option since it launched two weeks ago. Over the past few weeks there has also been 40% fewer views on content classified as AI slop. AI slop may have reduced distribution, based on multiple signals (not just reports). Now LinkedIn will add a message in Post Analytics if your post has received enough community reports. This is worth keeping an eye on, especially if you use generative AI tools.

Bluesky is redesigning the notifications tab.

Tools

There’s a new option in Google Slides that lets you record a presentation using Google Vids from the Slides interface. There’s a new Record button on the right panel. This feature is available to everyone with either a personal or Workspace account.

If you get unwanted event invites, you can now block those individuals in Google Calendar. This uses the Google-wide blocklist, so will block the account in Chat, Maps, Photos and other Google products.

Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) lets you copy entire notebooks, including the sources and studio items (Audio and Video Overviews, Study Guides, Slide Decks, Quizzes, Flashcards, including any generation prompts). User-generated notes and chat are not copied. Copying can be disabled by Notebook owners.

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