13 November 2025 · 3 min read

The video-first world is already here. Have you been watching?

Why newsrooms need to understand creators, video-first strategy, hooks, audience behaviour and YouTube optimisation.

The video-first world is already here.

The following post is based on a presentation on YouTube Optimisation I gave at Ness 2025.

PRESS PLAY

Let me hit you with a stat. According to Goldman Sachs there are currently 67 million people out there that identify as creators. By 2030, that number is going to increase to 107. With the tsunami of video that’s about to erupt, how do you expect audiences to have time for your precious news articles or even your brand?

Well, let’s get one thing straight, it’s not by pivoting your entire operation to Reddit.

But there IS another way.

In the beginning there was PopBuzz

Back in 2014 I worked with a team to launch a pop culture brand called PopBuzz. It was so successful that we followed up with a YouTube/Creator focused brand called We The Unicorns. One of the reasons we were successful was that we hired actual creators on the team - it’s content strategy 101 right?

Want to attract an audience? Then HIRE the audience.

PopBuzz was popular because we had some very clever people who understood BOTH the audience and the algorithm.

The Rise of the News Creators

If we assume that video consumption is on the rise then it stands to reason that audiences are reading less. It then becomes paramount that newsrooms invest in video with personalities who understand the audience and the algorithm.

Many creators who cover the news actually left newsrooms to spin up their own social video channels. They all loosely use the following magic formula.

Hook First, Content Second

News creators have been able to crack the algorithm precisely because they take no risks with their content. They know how to keep their audience locked in with a hook-first, content-second approach:

This is the topic I’m going to talk about
Let’s be clear I’m not talking about this or this so there’s no need to swipe away
You need to know about this because X
I, or the person I am interviewing, am the perfect person to tell you about this because X

There’s a lot more going on - like visual identity and tone - but put together it’s not hard to see why their videos are addictive.

Future Shock

What makes 2026 such an exciting year is that newsrooms can either invite creators to be part of their news teams OR push to make video stars from their own staff. Or maybe it’s both.

It’s pretty clear that at some point, LLMs are going to able to feature videos in their AI search results. That should be incentive enough to make sure your brand or newsroom is featured in those results.

PRESS STOP.