Good morning. Yesterday afternoon, OpenAI announced it's shutting down its video generation app, Sora 2, along with video generation capabilities in ChatGPT. 

With other AI video platforms like Seedance 2.0 coming to the forefront, could OpenAI be gearing up for something bigger?

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

1) YouTube improves its brand partnerships portal
2) A creator that makes ads feel like movies
3) The Creators’ Guild of America launches a credentials platform

This week at YouTube NewFronts, the platform unveiled its new and improved Creator Partnerships portal in YouTube Studio (formerly known as BrandConnect), giving creators more discoverability with potential advertising partners.

Context: Creators have criticized BrandConnect in the past, claiming it produced low engagement rates, promoted scammy advertisers, and lowballed fees.

Here’s what’s new: Creators can share more channel insights with brands—which YouTube has said can lead to higher discovery rates with brands. For advertisers, Google Gemini will match creators with relevant campaigns and send out multiple inquiries at once.

What YouTube creators are saying:

Third-party brand partnership services have become increasingly popular among creators. 

The biggest difference? While Agentio takes 20% of the total campaign budget, Google isn’t currently taking a platform fee, according to a source on the YouTube comms team. Creator Partnerships could revive the in-platform advertising game for YouTube, with little risk to creators.

Filmmaker Braxton Haugen—a former apprentice of artist Van Neistat—has built a 100K following on Instagram in less than a year with his 20-part short film series, The World of Braxton Haugen. It includes diaristic videos such as a week-long artist residency, DIY Airpod case, and flower press notes.

It also includes work with brands. Haugen’s recent collaboration with luxury brand Smythson, which shows his affinity for stationery, became two of the brand’s most-viewed videos. 

The secret isn’t a transactional approach to sponsorship—it’s a creative philosophy that treats brand films as extensions of his artistic world, Haugen told us. Here’s how he keeps brand work on-brand ➡️

Form a narrative. Haugen writes scripts that advance both his story and the brand's. His first Smythson video documented the making of a film he released later on his own channel—showing how it came together using the brand's analog tools.

"The movies I've made with Smythson are stand-alone movies that have their own sequences that are meant to expand the scope of my world...those add to the series, they aren't detours,” Haugen said. “They are BTS movies about the actual series I make."

Stay selective. Haugen turns down more deals than he accepts, partnering only with brands that already fit naturally in his world, such as luxury stationery, clothing, and hotels. The result? Audience trust. "We were all pretty nervous to put [the first Smythson video] out at first, but right away it had the most engagement of any Reel they had on their account,” Haugen said.

Think long-term about short-form. "My dream would be that years from now, someone comes back and watches the diary I made in November of 2025 and buys a diary in November 2030,” Haugen said. “Those are the kind of ads I'm interested in making because they go beyond just the moment."

AI content and re-uploads makes it hard for creators and operators to verify original work. The non-profit Creators Guild of America wants to fix that with Mosaic, a free platform designed to verify and credit creators and operators for their work.

How it works: 

Worth noting: Other creator-led platforms (like Showrunner and Gondola) have attempted to build credential networks for creators—but similar to link-in-bio tools, no single platform has emerged as a dominant source across the industry.