This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.
Late last year, Netflix signed a deal to bring more than a dozen popular podcasts to its platform on one condition: They had to stop distributing their shows on YouTube.
At South by Southwest, when I asked a handful of media executives if they would have agreed to such a stipulation, they all had the same two-part answer. First, “no.” And second, “I wonder how YouTube is going to respond.”
Their curiosity was understandable. Since its launch two decades ago, YouTube has developed a reputation as perhaps the single most powerful incubator for creators on the planet. The combination of its powerful algorithm, intuitive monetization, and universally accessible price point has helped launch the careers of everyone from Justin Bieber to Marques Brownlee.
But like all incubators, it has a retention problem. In many instances, creators see the platform as something they graduate from, a farm league for streaming platforms, Hollywood studios, and record labels to scout and periodically pilfer.
Until recently, YouTube has largely met this indignity with a shrug. In some ways, its lack of response was only a further testament to its dominance, so confident was the platform that a new crop of superstars would simply emerge in due time to replace the recently poached.
But the streaming landscape has lately begun yet another paradigm shift. The transformation of podcasts into television shows has placed YouTube into direct competition with traditional streaming platforms, and the recasting of creators into founders has reshaped the platform into a hothouse for media startups.
As the boundaries between YouTube, Spotify, Netflix, and Disney further blur into oblivion, YouTube no longer has the luxury of staying neutral.
In that vein, the company last month unveiled a newly reimagined product, Creator Partnerships, that aims to address this problem in the best way YouTube knows how: through brand sponsorships. The product, an upgraded version of an initiative previously known as BrandConnect, entails both a clearly defined ad-buying framework, as well as a far more abstract set of benefits that YouTube now offers its most coveted creators.
For example, on Tuesday night the company invited a handful of press to mingle with several members of its executive team and a chosen group of top talent, including Trevor Noah, Adam Faze, Cleo Abram, Julian Shapiro-Barnum, Johnny Harris, and Kareem Rahma.
The timing was illustrative, as that very morning a wave of coverage centered on Rahma, the host of SubwayTakes and Keep the Meter Running, had just broken. On my feed alone, articles from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Deadline, Cultured Mag, and Feed Me plugged the affable host, whose viral series have featured guests ranging from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas.
Compelling as Rahma is, such a coordinated campaign suggested the involvement of a more sophisticated PR apparatus. Google, as Faze conceded to me over cocktails, had lent a hand in securing the coverage.
That the YouTube parent company saw fit to involve itself in the promotion of a lone creator marks a noteworthy inflection point. YouTube does not fund or finance any of these creators’ projects, Harris and Abram told me, but it tries to help in just about any other way that it can.
The most apparent instance of this support comes through its brand matchmaking. YouTube will not pay its creators directly, but it is more than happy to connect them with advertisers who will. Such efforts have been integral in helping these creators tap into budgets far more substantial than the meager returns they see from Google AdSense.
But such matchmaking is just the beginning. The company is on hand to help its top creators navigate any issue they might have, providing a kind of white glove support that the average YouTuber could only dream of. Press, marketing, and technical support are just the outward signs of this favor—the backing of Google is powerful in ways that go beyond the balance sheet.
The goal, one might extrapolate, is to keep its top creators content enough to remain on the platform, even as other offers tempt them away. And those offers are coming: Streamers from Netflix to Tubi to Roku are all working to reshape their platforms to more closely resemble YouTube, signing deals with creators to create original programming or sometimes simply to license their content.
YouTube has no objection to its creators signing these kinds of distribution deals, Abram told me. In fact, having its top creators’ content reach new audiences on other platforms will ultimately only funnel those viewers back to YouTube.
But as the talent wars for creators mature, the language of Hollywood contracts—with their carve-outs, windows, and non-competes—will likely find its way into these negotiations. Creators might enjoy freedom of movement between the various platforms now, but in the near future they will likely come to resemble showrunners, with the rights and restrictions thereof.
At the moment though, top creators on YouTube value the platform most for its breadth of reach and fullness of creative freedom. None of the talent I spoke with would give up those benefits in exchange for a payment guarantee and a Hollywood studio.
But as other platforms come to more closely resemble YouTube, that calculus could shift, and when it does, YouTube will have new questions to answer. How committed is it to allowing its top talent complete freedom, for instance, and would it ever consider paywalling some of its most premium programming?
Until then, YouTube can keep doing what it has always done best: build the careers that everyone else wants to buy.
Talking Heds
Byron’s BuzzFeed: Digital media marked the end of an era on Monday, not with a bang but an acquisition. BuzzFeed, the vaunted millennial publishing brand that turned down a $650 million offer from Disney in 2013, sold to budding media magnate Byron Allen earlier this week for $120 million, only $20 million of which was due in cash on signing. As part of the transition, Allen will replace founder Jonah Peretti as CEO. Under its new ownership, BuzzFeed will set its sights on the latest theater of war in the battle for your attention: the living room. Allen plans to prioritize video and transform BuzzFeed, which has a sizable YouTube following, into a new entrant into the streaming wars. The tactic means sizable layoffs are on the horizon for the company, but the pivot might be just what the iconic brand needs in order to secure its second chapter.
Morse’s Coda: In November, when ADWEEK hosted its annual Brandweek event in Atlanta, I took the opportunity to meet Andrew Morse, the new president of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Morse had joined AJC following leadership stints at blue-chip outfits like CNN and ABC, and had convinced the owners of the AJC, Cox Enterprises, to pony up $150 million to turn the news brand into a regional powerhouse. Morse sunset AJC’s print product to grow digital subscribers to 500,000. But just three years into his tenure, that number has barely topped 100,000. On Monday, Morse stepped down. In an industry thin on moxie, I appreciated that Morse swung for the fences. And as a native Texan, I agree that there is room for a regional news brand to better reflect the concerns of the South. But the AJC is not immune to the headwinds buffeting the media industry, which now appear to have stalled, if not scuttled outright, the grand ambitions of the outlet.
Mark’s Marketecture: Last week, I joined the fine folks at Marketecture on their podcast, which you can watch in full here. In conversation with Ari Paparo and guest host Paul Knegten, we discussed why Ziff Davis is still buying digital media brands, the Vox Media bake-off, and the rise of dark social.
Taste’s Takes: After speaking with Taste co-founder Matt Rodbard last week, I went a bit deeper on its business, which is nearing a seven-figure revenue as a one-man operation. Although Matt does not consider himself a creator, the brand he has built at Taste epitomizes the way new media companies are increasingly born out of creator enterprises. He also, controversially, does not post full videos of his podcasts, an increasingly contrarian take that I was keen to dive into.
Pulled Quotes
“So last year I told our teams, ‘Assume there’s no search.’ You have to have your businesses planned as if search is zero.”
Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch, talking to TBPN about Google Zero
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“This is a TV screen, but right now, no one’s making television for it.”
YouTube creator Kareem Rahma, referring to cell phones
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“The email was said to be from ‘Kevin AKA Boss Man.’ It was sent by Hart’s assistant.”
Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, on the implosion of Kevin Hart’s production company
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“We noticed three or four videos in a row, when Forrest was showing turtles, the viewers were just kind of disengaged, and they were leaving.”
YouTube consultant Paddy Galloway, one of a growing cohort of creator whisperers
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Quote/Unquote
Andrew Perlman is the CEO of Recurrent Ventures, a private equity-backed media roll-up I covered extensively two years ago. Now, following a series of commercial and editorial shifts, the company is profitable, growing, and focusing its efforts on creators, video, and events.
Last week, Recurrent Ventures sold the home division of its portfolio—Dwell, Domino, and Business of Home, along with PopSci—to Ziff Davis for an undisclosed sum, whose value one source estimated at below $20 million. Following the spin-off, Recurrent is positioned to focus on its two strongest verticals, auto and military, and has a slate of new programming set to premiere across streaming platforms throughout the year.
This interview has been edited.
Mark Stenberg: The Ziff Davis deal closed earlier this month. What does it unlock for Recurrent, and how would you characterize the company today versus a couple of years ago?
Andrew Perlman: We get time and focus. The home assets are amazing and I love that team, but we almost had two separate businesses within Recurrent. Those home assets and PopSci are a different demographic than auto and military, and the themes we’ve been pushing—events, video, the connective tissue between them—we didn’t have across both groups. The portfolio now is really male-focused, with a clear throughline in the way the sites are publishing and in our advertiser base. Most of our sites are publishing between 10 and 20 articles per day, and all of them are publishing on the open web but also in video.
Mark: You’ve said expertise matters more than scale in media right now. What does that change about how you operate?
Andrew: We see it in our military vertical, which is growing like crazy. It used to be only endemics, but non-endemics like BMW and Starbucks know that if they want to reach that audience, they have to reach it through authentic channels. If you’re in media, you can’t run a website business like you used to. As search goes down, loyalty matters and you have to look at multiple points of monetization. Our four points are video, licensing, experiential, and AI. We focus on those as opposed to broad programmatic scale.
Mark: Declining traffic has been another body blow to publishers’ affiliate businesses, which used to be a core part of your business but is less so now. What changed?
Andrew: It’s not just traffic patterns. Amazon halved the affiliate rates across the publisher ecosystem between six and eight weeks ago, which we saw coming. There’s also been a move away from search. Look at the layout of the Google homepage. Now you get AI overlays, Google Shopping results, sponsored results, and then the organic results. The business of converting organic search to affiliate has gotten super challenging. We’ve instead focused on people who are literally coming to our URL, producing great content, getting in their inboxes.
Mark: Video has become a major line item for Recurrent. What does that business look like, and why did you choose to invest in it?
Andrew: On the video front, we’re at different levels of maturity across the brands. Donut, which started on YouTube, is at an inflection point where it’s now big enough to go beyond the platform. It has a FAST channel on Samsung TV+, and we’re co-producing exclusive content for three separate streaming platforms this year. Video is where the audience is now, and it creates a different kind of connection than text-based content, one that lets you move audiences to engage in live events.
Mark: How are you thinking about M&A from here?
Andrew: We are looking at it, but we’re not going to branch outside the verticals where we have a right to win. The things that pique our interest are smaller-scale events that we can use our audience to scale, and things in the creator universe. We would never buy an individual creator channel. Donut was unique in that it had a cast, so we don’t want to be too reliant on any one face. We might also look to acquire things to scale our production ability.
