Agentio secures $40 million from Forerunner as it scales its creator marketplace beyond YouTube techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/ag…

Agentio secures $40 million from Forerunner as it scales its creator marketplace beyond YouTube techcrunch.com/2025/11/18/ag…

"You arent paying enough attention to youtube"- A lesson from me: Despite the rise of tik tok, the rise of live streaming, the shift from mainstream to podcasts- Youtube integrations are still the gold standard. But why? Reach, Attention, Validation, Excitement. R.A.V.E. 1- Reach: Livestream reach is just tiny. The biggest streamers might get 30k, 50, 100k!!! viewers... That just isnt that much reach. Its amazing for a live event, and blows cable out of the water. But I have tweets that reach 100k people- Now looking at a tweet and being active in a live chat are obviously not the same. But the most bumping livestream on twitch is the same reach as a normal youtube video. Its because of daily active users- Twitch might have 30 million daily active users. Youtube has 3-10x that. And comparing youtube to podcasts- Youtube reach is real and validated. You can see how many views a video gets, how many comments, how many likes. Podcasts sometimes just lie about all this. And they try to sell you on downloads- like anyone on earth clears there podcast downloads EVER Livestreams are too small/niche and podcasts are too opaque. 2. Attention: Youtube is a main screen activity. Sound is on, average session duration is 40 minutes. More and more of youtube is being watch on TVs. You get the viewers full attention. You get that with livestreams- but podcasts? That person is at the gym or doing dishes. With insta/shortform- views are massively inflated, and its passive consumption. "Show me funny videos" vs clicking a thumbnail and at least showing SOME initiative. This is main screen vs second screen and youtube tends to be more main screen. 3. Validation: Youtubers are more recognizable than tik tokers. Its all about minutes spent. Actors become stars because we spend hours with them. Youtubers are filling that long form content void, and short form cant. Name 10 tik tokers- you know their face, their content, their voice- but dont know their names. Live streamers and podcasters can give you the same validation EXCEPT: Livestreamers tend to have smaller audiences and podcasts COULD be audio only (dumb to do this in 2024) Youtubers are mainstream celebs and have that level of creditability 4. Excitement. This should really be called authenticity, but that fucks up the acronym. This is the power of a youtube ad read. It is directly into the camera. it is host read. It is 30 seconds long. And there is only 1 of them. Livestream ads are 30 seconds in a 5 hour video. Podcast ads are crammed in between each other with an ad every 10 minutes. Tik tok/shortform is nothing BUT ADS. Youtube is unique. You get to borrow creditability, with a direct, honest endorsement. SUMMARY- If I was building a SAAS/Consumer brand today, the only thing I would spend on is youtube creators. I would pay out the nose, would pay $40 CPMs, I would go wide, be generous, be consistent, always be there to fill the void. No single channel is better bang for the buck at driving awareness and trust. You are sleeping on youtube. And out of the 10,000 brands that read this- No one will act on it. Because its too hard :/