Substack Pitches Brands on Long-Form Creator Trust as Ad Market Formalizes
The newsletter platform that helped spark the creator economy’s subscription wave is now chasing advertising dollars. Substack has begun building out a formal brand partnerships operation, betting that the trust and depth its writers command can deliver something social feeds cannot.
It is a calculated pivot at a moment when creator marketing is maturing from influencer stunts into a structured media-buying channel. IAB projects U.S. creator ad spend will reach $44 billion in 2026, nearly half of buyers now consider creators a “must buy,” and measurement standards are finally catching up to spending.
“For those marketers who think of Substack still as a newsletter, it’s actually much broader than that,” said Dan Robbins, GM of brand partnerships at Substack, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “It includes audio podcasts, live video, group chat, in-person events, notes in feed. And I think the takeaway is that it’s much more of a community than just an email newsletter.”
Why Substack is chasing ads now
The company’s advertising ambitions emerged from two directions:
- Creators already working with sponsors asked for infrastructure to simplify matchmaking, operations and measurement.
- Brands, meanwhile, told Substack they wanted alternatives to the algorithmic churn of social platforms.
“We’ve heard from brands that they want a place to go deep, to tell their story, to deliver trust,” Robbins said. “And that’s a little bit different than showing up in a feed or in a swipe or doing a paid boost or promotion.”
Substack announced the next phase of its native sponsorships program in June, with launch partners including Yahoo, Uber, T-Mobile and Balenciaga collectively investing millions of dollars into creator campaigns. The company also introduced Creator Kits, a tool that lets eligible publishers build media kits with subscriber counts, open rates, audience demographics and preferred sponsorship formats.
Three ways brands are buying in
Robbins outlined three primary models:
- Sponsorships trade on depth and credibility, leveraging the fact that more than 100,000 Substack publishers now earn money through paid subscriptions.
- Value-add campaigns let brands unlock paywalled posts, curate content or contribute editorial in ways that extend beyond standard ad copy. “It’s a way to tell your story beyond the copy-paste of just an ad,” Robbins said.
- Affiliate commerce has become a significant revenue stream. “We’ve heard from some platforms that we are the top-converting affiliate destination for them,” Robbins said, attributing the performance to long-form formats that let creators explain products rather than simply link to them.
Protecting the subscriber relationship
The obvious risk is that advertising erodes the trust that makes Substack valuable in the first place. Robbins argued the company’s approach is built around creator autonomy rather than platform-imposed ad loads.
“Every publisher on Substack has a choice whether they want to find a brand partner or a sponsor,” he said. “One thing that’s amazing about actually building a subscriber community is you have a really good sense of what’s going to work with your audience.”
The company is testing formats with major brands to find what Robbins called “the right drug-interaction model.” Early results, he said, have been encouraging, though he did not disclose specific performance metrics.
Building for durability
The broader pitch is that Substack offers something the creator economy has lacked: longevity. Social platforms reward virality over consistency, and many creator businesses flame out as algorithms shift. Substack’s subscription model, Robbins argued, creates more durable relationships.
“The two things that have been missing in creator marketing, first and foremost, it’s the ability to actually build something for the long term,” he said. “It’s actually finding people that have run successful subscription businesses and have some durability that you can build into.”
Whether brands buy the argument will depend on whether Substack can deliver measurement that satisfies enterprise marketers accustomed to the granular reporting of programmatic channels. For now, the company is betting that trust and depth are worth more than reach and frequency.
The newsletter platform that helped spark the creator economy’s subscription wave is now chasing advertising dollars. Substack has begun building out a formal brand partnerships operation, betting that the trust and depth its writers command can deliver something social feeds cannot.
It is a calculated pivot at a moment when creator marketing is maturing from influencer stunts into a structured media-buying channel. IAB projects U.S. creator ad spend will reach $44 billion in 2026, nearly half of buyers now consider creators a “must buy,” and measurement standards are finally catching up to spending.
“For those marketers who think of Substack still as a newsletter, it’s actually much broader than that,” said Dan Robbins, GM of brand partnerships at Substack, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “It includes audio podcasts, live video, group chat, in-person events, notes in feed. And I think the takeaway is that it’s much more of a community than just an email newsletter.”
Why Substack is chasing ads now
The company’s advertising ambitions emerged from two directions:
- Creators already working with sponsors asked for infrastructure to simplify matchmaking, operations and measurement.
- Brands, meanwhile, told Substack they wanted alternatives to the algorithmic churn of social platforms.
“We’ve heard from brands that they want a place to go deep, to tell their story, to deliver trust,” Robbins said. “And that’s a little bit different than showing up in a feed or in a swipe or doing a paid boost or promotion.”
Substack announced the next phase of its native sponsorships program in June, with launch partners including Yahoo, Uber, T-Mobile and Balenciaga collectively investing millions of dollars into creator campaigns. The company also introduced Creator Kits, a tool that lets eligible publishers build media kits with subscriber counts, open rates, audience demographics and preferred sponsorship formats.
Three ways brands are buying in
Robbins outlined three primary models:
- Sponsorships trade on depth and credibility, leveraging the fact that more than 100,000 Substack publishers now earn money through paid subscriptions.
- Value-add campaigns let brands unlock paywalled posts, curate content or contribute editorial in ways that extend beyond standard ad copy. “It’s a way to tell your story beyond the copy-paste of just an ad,” Robbins said.
- Affiliate commerce has become a significant revenue stream. “We’ve heard from some platforms that we are the top-converting affiliate destination for them,” Robbins said, attributing the performance to long-form formats that let creators explain products rather than simply link to them.
Protecting the subscriber relationship
The obvious risk is that advertising erodes the trust that makes Substack valuable in the first place. Robbins argued the company’s approach is built around creator autonomy rather than platform-imposed ad loads.
“Every publisher on Substack has a choice whether they want to find a brand partner or a sponsor,” he said. “One thing that’s amazing about actually building a subscriber community is you have a really good sense of what’s going to work with your audience.”
The company is testing formats with major brands to find what Robbins called “the right drug-interaction model.” Early results, he said, have been encouraging, though he did not disclose specific performance metrics.
Building for durability
The broader pitch is that Substack offers something the creator economy has lacked: longevity. Social platforms reward virality over consistency, and many creator businesses flame out as algorithms shift. Substack’s subscription model, Robbins argued, creates more durable relationships.
“The two things that have been missing in creator marketing, first and foremost, it’s the ability to actually build something for the long term,” he said. “It’s actually finding people that have run successful subscription businesses and have some durability that you can build into.”
Whether brands buy the argument will depend on whether Substack can deliver measurement that satisfies enterprise marketers accustomed to the granular reporting of programmatic channels. For now, the company is betting that trust and depth are worth more than reach and frequency.
