Creator Weekly: YouTube Media Kit, AdSense Auto Ads, Instagram Shopping Reels

As I wrote this, the Artemis II astronauts successfully returned to Earth. It was a triumph of physics, engineering, math and human ingenuity. It was a bright spot this week. 

If you are in a music mood, the Coachella Music Festival is live on YouTube. 

There are updates this week for YouTube, AdSense, Instagram, Substack, Reddit, SEO and more. There are also AI updates for Gemini, Lyria, Firefly, Meta Muse Spark and Copilot. 

All the inside information for YouTube creators is now on one channel! Subscribe to the Creator Insider channel to stay informed. 

The YouTube Media Kit for creators now includes information not found in Analytics, like your viewers’ family status, household income, audience and shopping interests. The customized Media Kit is available to all creators in the YouTube Partner Program. Learn more.

YouTube Shorts has a new feature that lets you create an AI avatar of yourself, based on your selfie and voice. It's also available in the YouTube Create video editing app.  You can use a prompt to make a short video with your avatar, or to insert it into another Short as a Reimagine Remix. YouTube says this is rolling out slowly. 

Nano Banana is now available in the YouTube Create app. You can upload up to 3 reference images as “ingredients” to generate a new image. Learn more.

If you have a Gemini subscription, you can now edit your AI generated scripts when you convert Slides to Google Vids. Previously you could only edit after the import was complete.

StreamElements is now a YouTube Creator Partnerships API partner. In an announcement aimed at advertisers, they said “By combining YouTube’s data layer with our data science engine, BOSS, we turn creator marketing into a measurable growth system built on deep audience insights, real purchase intent across 3M YouTube Partnered channels, and outcome prediction before you spend.”

StreamYard now lets you add live polls.

For the first time, Twitch Affiliates can participate in a sponsored campaign (previously limited to Partners). Twitch says they are "expanding access because we believe in supporting creators at every level." Streamers can earn up to $1000 with the Minecraft campaign. 

Instagram is adding more shopping features to Reels, including the ability to tag products. “Meta noted that it is not taking commissions from the new product links. Instead, the feature is designed to uplift the creator economy across the platform.”

Businesses can link their Wix site with TikTok to make it easier to run product ad campaigns. 

Go audio only!  On Spotify, Family Plan managers can now switch off video content for plan members. There are also new video control settings for individual users.

If you tend to accumulate lots of open browser tabs, the latest version of Chrome has a feature for you: a vertical tab menu. 

Google wants you to know that your Gmail email remains private, even if you use the built in AI tools. 

Google has stated this multiple times, and it's a sign of how little trust people have in Google and other big Tech companies. 

Microsoft is killing Publisher in October 2026. They recommend exporting your files as PDFs, which can then be imported into Word. They also recommend using Word or PowerPoint as an alternative platform, with templates available in Microsoft Create.

AdSense has made a major update to the Auto Ad banner settings, giving you more control over the ads on your site. The new Advanced Settings (replacing “fine tube your ads”) let you specify the maximum number of ads per page, the minimum spacing between ads, and whether you want the system to find more potential ad placements. This goes into effect April 16. 

If you run a paid newsletter on WordPress (dot) com using Jetpack Newsletters, you can now comp a subscription. Give family, friends or select fans free access.

Tumblr engineering had a Hack Day, with new features whipped up, including a unified Inbox, GIFs in replies, in-blog search filters, Memories that resurface old posts, Reblogs with videos and more. They may or may not be implemented in production. 

Substack added a bunch of new features.

Barry Adams on SEO: The Dangerous Seduction of Click-Chasing

Lily Ray @ AlgoRhythmic: Google’s Response to the NYT AI Overviews Article Doesn’t Tell the Full Story. She writes, "... the main fix for Google is to stop generating AI Overviews at all when the underlying web corpus doesn’t support a confident, sourced, consensus answer."

Reddit has officially killed r/all (but it's still available using old Reddit). Also new: Video posts in comments in select communities and the Advisor role for moderators.

You can now edit Instagram comments within 15 minutes of posting. 

The new version of Bluesky lets you search without clicking, using just keyboard shortcuts.

Mastodon is launching its first iteration of Collections. These are shareable bundles of profiles, similar to Bluesky Starter Packs. They can include up to 25 profiles, and you can opt out from being included. Madison is looking for feedback. 

X says it is purging bot accounts. 

X now lets you edit (or use Grok to generate) images before you post. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has left X. They noted “an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.” They are still on Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

Gemini is introducing Notebooks that sync with NotebookLM. You can add your Gemini chats as well as documents. This is rolling out to Gemini Plus, Pro and Ultra subscribers on the web, and will soon expand to mobile, free users and more locations. 

Lyria 3 Pro now lets you generate music up to 3 minutes long, with improved musical composition in the Gemini app. Personal accounts with an AI Plus subscription (included with Google One Premium) have access, as do select Workspace Editions. 

Google also shared a Lyria 3 ultimate prompting guide. 

Microsoft acknowledged user complaints about Copilot in Windows. They are “reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad.”

Meta released their new Large Language Model (LLM) Muse Spark. Meta AI (and meta.ai) have a new look, and lets you switch between quick answer Instant mode and Thinking modes. The new model is supposed to be better at answering local, shopping and health questions. And, of course it's going to be inserted everywhere, including Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and more. 

Adobe Firefly Custom Models let you train an AI model on your own images. This can capture your illustration or photographic style. Or remember a character that appears in multiple scenes. This is currently in public beta.

On Spotify, listeners can use prompted playlists to discover podcast episodes. Podcasters need to opt in to Chapters in Spotify for Creators for content to be surfaced this way. 

Cleo Abrams interviews DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis on the hardest problem AI ever solved, and the future of AI. 

The C2PA standard not only can include whether an image was AI generated, but also info about standard edits like cropping. Watch this really interesting discussion on how it works in general and how it applies in Google Photos and Pixel phones.

EFF wrote: Blocking the Internet Archive Won’t Stop AI, But It Will Erase the Web’s Historical Record. It will be a great loss if a decade from now, what we're seeing online today is no longer available. 

Thanks for reading! 🏵️