Meta Has a Reddit Problem. YouTube Has a Netflix-Spotify Problem.

0:00Jasmine Enberg: Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy. I'm Kaya Yurieff. And I'm Jasmine Enberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters. Meta just launched a Reddit competitor, and AI is the real play. The streaming wars just escalated. Spotify and Netflix are teaming up against YouTube. And more creator horror films are winning at the box office. Plus, we're joined by HubSpot's Vice President of Media and Content, Jonathan Hunt. The software company has been acquiring creator-founded media companies.

0:31He explains why.

0:37Jasmine Enberg: Hi, Jasmine. Hey, Kaya. And hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to our weekly show about the creator economy. There has been so much creator economy news over the past week or so. So today, we're going to dive deeper into the top stories that really got us thinking. Today's headlines center around meta, including what's behind its new Reddit competitor and its subscription push and the streaming wars including a very unusual deal between spotify and netflix to take on youtube and finally the latest creator movie that people cannot stop talking about is yet another horror film i mean i have to say kaya we were ahead of the curve on this one yes you called it out when we were talking to reese feldman who is a film focused creator at the can film festival that it feels like every creator movie is horror so we'll talk about why later on later in the show we're also joined by jonathan hunt who is the vice president of media and content at HubSpot.

1:28Jasmine Enberg: The software company was acquiring creator media companies well before OpenAI made headlines for acquiring tech podcast TBPN. We talked to him about the company's recent deal of an AI educational YouTube channel and get his pulse on where media is headed. We're also introducing a new fun segment today, aptly named One Fun Thing. We pay a ton of attention to trends, culture, and other moments that are happening online, and these things often end up shaping the business side too. So Kaya, let's start with you. What is your thing today? Okay, so I was scrolling reels recently, as I do, and I have become obsessed with a very sweet viral moment posted by a creator named Francesca Rieti.

2:05Jasmine Enberg: And she's teaching her grandparents who are 102 and 89 how to order on Uber Eats. Very sweet. Let's play a clip from it. Welcome to Uber. Uber Eats 101. Uber.com. when you want to click uber eats it'll bring you sure george you see that oh i can't uber eats it's up on top okay so this video got more than 41 million views 4 million likes and 700 000 shares which is insane obviously it's so wholesome and relatable but besides that what struck me about it is i love how she's now trying to parlay this kind of beyond a viral moment i mean so often And we see creators, you know, get one or two videos that do well, but then they're not able to kind of bring viewers in further.

2:56Jasmine Enberg: She has about 24 ,000 followers now. And it's working. I'm deep in her universe now. She has been working before the spiral moment. She's been working on launching her own product, which is a luxury toilet fragrance. What? I was not expecting that. Think like a luxury potpourri, right? And then she's been showing the process, including getting the packaging for the first time. So I'm very curious to see if she's able to kind of sustain this longer term momentum. Of course, she's done follow up videos of her grandparents. They've been getting a ton of attention. They've been getting PR packages.

3:28Jasmine Enberg: But let's see what she can do with this without, you know, having to turn her whole channel into a channel about her grandparents. I mean, that doesn't sound terrible. It's kind of what the people want right now. I know. But, you know, longer term on the business side. There's only so far you can take that. No, it's true. But I think it's a good example of a rail finding me and then me wanting to go deeper rather than scrolling past. I know. It is so cute. It's so wholesome. I need to know how Uber Eats responded to this. I mean, I saw that they were a collaborator on the post that we just played.

3:59But what an amazing opportunity for some like additional free marketing and also just goodwill among people.

4:06Jasmine Enberg: No, totally. And they were they were trying to order from Morton Steakhouse. So they were also in the comments saying that they were going to send some steak. So we'll see what happens. I mean, it would make so much sense to do a longer term partnership with Uber Eats and her. I mean, but so far, it seems like everything's been paid. OK, what's yours? Yeah, I mean, so many business opportunities for Uber Eats and also for all those restaurants. So it's kind of amazing. But OK, mine is a post from Tinks. Like any millennial girl, I was obsessed with Tinks. Then as the algorithm likes to do, my feed was oversaturated with Tinks content.

4:36It kind of got old. She fell off my radar until you, Kaya, actually sent me this reel a couple of days ago. It has a very fitting hook of stop demonizing fun. Take a listen. Stephen Bartlett, the Diary of a CEO podcast guy, he just came out and said that a few glasses of wine ruined his life for a few days. First of all, Stephen, I dread to think what you would be like after going drinking with me and my friends. Second of all, on a more serious note, I think it's really critical that we analyze what these thought leaders are saying, even in passing. and my belief is that the optimization culture has gotten out of control it has robbed an entire generation of joy okay so two things here tinks one you are so back i am so sorry i ever doubted you and two i could not have said this better myself i mean everything now just feels so over optimized i mean even our feeds are so curated they're so tailored to our interests that it can almost feel boring.

5:34Like very little online feels new anymore. And everything feels like a competition. Like I literally now take my aura ring off if I've had a drink or if I'm traveling because I just don't want it to mess up my sleep score. I do have a very good sleep score. So that kind of helps to explain that.

5:49Jasmine Enberg: Well, yeah, because you're cheating. Well, yes. But I also like actually worry about what this means and what the ramifications are We need to be exposed to stuff we don't like and also that we don't agree with, or we're going to end up being more polarized, more angry, and more siloed than we already are. And we also need to be exposed to imperfection. Life is not perfect, and we need to make mistakes. And this is especially true for younger generations. How are they going to react when something doesn't live up to their expectations in the real world because they've seen something perfect online?

6:24Or worse, what if they don't live up to their own expectations? And this actually came up on the LinkedIn Live we did with Megan Adar last week as she was explaining how her assistant was recently spiraling because she wasn't using Claude to automate everything in her life the way that she had seen on her social feed. It's like, that's crazy.

6:43Jasmine Enberg: Well, first of all, this is why I don't have an aura ring because I just don't want to know. I don't need it to be gamified for me. But I also, Tink similarly, fell off of my feed. And then she's been coming back lately. So I'm excited to see her back. But I was talking to friends about this, you know, whole tank situation. When you're in your 30s, whether you have kids or not, you are not partying or drinking or doing the same activities you are doing. But I think everyone still felt strongly about the fact in my friend group. Okay, but the problem, Kaya, is that people in their 20s aren't drinking or partying the way that we were in our 20s.

7:14Jasmine Enberg: Like, that's the bigger issue to me. It's true. But regardless of what age you are, you need to have balance in life. And all of the over-optimization stuff is just going too far. And I think the internet is a big reason for why people in their 20s are not doing that, because also, one, they're constantly comparing themselves to other people. But also, they're nervous to make a mistake, because what if they're caught on camera? What if that goes viral? What if they can't get a job, right? Like, there's all these factors. So this could be a whole other conversation. But like Tink said, stop demonizing fun.

7:42Jasmine Enberg: We all need to have more fun. But before we get into the rest of the show, a quick message from our sponsor. So much is happening at Cannes Lions this year, which is why the International Festival of Creativity is introducing Cannes Lions Wrap-Up Live. They call it the ultimate cheat sheet to the festival. The 90-minute session will distill an entire week of talks, insights, trends, and award winners into a take-home guide for attendees. The Wrap-Up Live takes place on Friday, June 26th at 2 p.m. in the Palais, unpacking the biggest themes, winners, and learnings from the week. We hope to see you in the south of France.

8:12We will be there all week. Okay, let's kick things off with Meta because it has had a busy week, including releasing a standalone app for Facebook groups called Forum. Basically, Forum puts all of your group conversations from Facebook into one place. And the idea is that users can ask for opinions, they can ask for advice and recommendations just the same way they do on Reddit. And you also log in with your Facebook credentials.

8:37Jasmine Enberg: My initial read on this is that it's straight out of the clear Meta playbook. I mean, in some cases, we see a feature get popular, and then they try to see if they can spit it out into their own app. For example, Meta did this with Messenger, which initially actually caused so much backlash. Do you remember that back in the day? I do. I remember. It was also not a very good business decision in the end, and Meta ended up folding it back into the core Facebook app in 2023. And part of the reason for that was that more activity on Facebook and social media more generally was shifting toward DMs, and Meta realized that it needed Messenger in the Facebook app in order to capture and retain that engagement.

9:14Jasmine Enberg: Meta has also used standalone apps to test out products. Last, it was a great example. That was the precursor to Reels, which it tested in some markets before actually launching Reels as a feature within Instagram and Facebook. I reported last year when I was at The Information that Meta was even considering spinning Reels into its own app. This was during the TikTok ban turmoil. It was also during the Meta antitrust trial, which it won. So who knows if this will still happen? I I mean, it feels a lot less necessary now than it did at the time. But you had such a smart take on the forum app that I haven't seen elsewhere, which is why I'm making you talk about it on the podcast today.

9:46We're going to talk about the AI of it all, because on the surface, making a standalone groups app makes zero sense for Meta because they've tried this before. Like, I don't know if you remember, but they used to have a separate app for groups called Groups, and they shut that down in 2017. But anyway, the reason why this doesn't make any sense on the surface is because, again, and groups generates a ton of engagement for Facebook, just the way that Messenger does. Groups, as well as Marketplace, are also two of the only real reasons that Gen Z uses Facebook. And so sending people elsewhere to use groups can threaten engagement on Facebook, which is where Meta makes most of its money.

10:24Plus, Reddit is teeny tiny when you compare it to Meta. It's been growing really fast, both in terms of users and especially revenue, but it's really not a threat to Meta's core ad business the way that TikTok was, which prompted Lasso and that obviously then became real as you mentioned, Kaya. So according to Reddit's latest earnings report, it had roughly 127 million daily active users. Now, to be fair, Meta has stopped reporting Facebook users in order to hide the slowing growth there. But even with that slowdown or potentially even a decline, it had over 2 billion daily active users at the end of 2023 on Facebook.

11:01So that is about 16 times bigger than Reddit's user base as of Q1 this year. And then on the money side of things, Reddit also made just about 1 % of the amount of revenue that Meta made in Q1.

11:13Jasmine Enberg: Stating the obvious here, but Meta is enormous. I mean, Reddit's Q1 revenue was$663 million compared to Meta's Q1 revenue, which was more than 56 billion. Right. But the one big edge that Reddit does have on meta is that it's one of the top most cited sources by LLMs, along with YouTube, Wikipedia, and LinkedIn. The actual number one source varies on the study you look at. It also varies on the chatbot, which I found really interesting. But no matter how you look at it, Reddit really does have massive outsized influence on responses and answers in LLMs. So there was this Evertune study, for example, from February, which showed that one in five or 20 % of perplexity responses came from Reddit.

11:55And that's what Meta really wants here, which explains why it's so focused on getting people to ask questions in forum. It needs a place where there are real human answers, including from experts, so that it can then use that data and those answers to improve its own AI tools and so that it can become a more credible, trusted source for LLMs overall. Anyway, Reddit stock fell after the news broke. That means that investors definitely think forum is a threat. But I'm still not convinced that people are actually going to switch over from Reddit to forum. I mean, Kaia, what do you think?

12:29Jasmine Enberg: I'm not sure. I mean, I see Reddit responses come up for me a lot in Google searches. So I think if Meta can capture some of that with forum, maybe that could move the needle. But I think these are at the end of the day, two different products. I mean, like you said, Facebook groups have stood the test of time, they've always been popular, but they still serve like such a different purpose. I mean, for me, at least on Reddit, it feels like you're going to read reactions or go deep on different topics. Facebook groups typically center around specific communities, which I think is a notable difference.

12:57Jasmine Enberg: So let me give you a few examples to illustrate this. I need to preface this by saying that the reason I've been part of these groups over the years is mainly for reporting purposes. You'll see in a moment. So no, listen, okay. Parenting in a tech world, I'm not a parent, but it has huge, and I'm also not an Airbnb host or an Instacart driver, but I'm in all of these groups because I was reporting on on all of these kind of topics. But for example, the parenting in a tech world, people are there for very specific advice around obviously technology and parenting. So often they're asking for advice about a very specific situation.

13:28Jasmine Enberg: Should I let my 17 year old join Snapchat so he can be part of a group with a soccer team, right? And then people are weighing in. Or, you know, Instacart drivers are talking about payment issues or Airbnb hosts are kind of trading advice and connecting. So besides the fact that Facebook just feels more boomer, and like very functional to me, although these groups can obviously certainly get messy and get into their own drama. I think Reddit is different, right? These are the reasons I may go to Reddit to investigate internet drama, to get information about different products, to try to get a feel on what people are really thinking or the different takes on a situation.

14:01Jasmine Enberg: So like, while you can argue both of these obviously are communities, I think of Meta as more of like a community how-to space where Reddit is more like interest information or opinion driven. And I think a big part of the difference could be the anonymity factor, right? Facebook, you have real names, though. Facebook just a few months ago said that you can now use nicknames and groups, so maybe this changes over time. But I think the anonymity factor also just gives Reddit a different feel. And look, I know people use social media and the internet in many different ways, so people may disagree with me and say there's a huge community on Reddit, which is fair.

14:34Jasmine Enberg: I mean, I think it's similar to comparing the community on Twitch with TikTok, right? Like, it's just different flavors of it. But my broader point is that I think these two products serve different use cases. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I'm going to be one of those people who disagrees with you on the community factor. And I think a lot of hardcore Reddit users would also say that there is a massive and important community on Reddit, including in more enclosed spaces like subreddits, right? That said, I agree with your larger point. And I specifically agree with the anonymity part of it all.

15:02Like you can use nicknames and forum to your point, but it's not foolproof. And it doesn't feel totally anonymous, especially when you're logging into the app with your Facebook credentials. And so much of what happens on social media is really about, you know, the perception or the feeling versus the reality. But to the question of whether or not Reddit users are actually going to move over to forum, hardcore Reddit users and fans are never going to switch over to forum. So we can pretty much just take them out of the equation. That leaves, you know, groups users. I don't know how much overlap there is with Reddit.

15:36I imagine there is some, but I could imagine, you know, hardcore groups users, especially those who are in a lot of groups downloading forum and starting to use that more than they use Reddit, especially because they're probably looking for a more centralized, organized experience. And then you have the casual Reddit users who probably aren't logged in. They're stumbling across Reddit threads through Google searches. That's me and you, Kaya. And that seems to be where the biggest threat is. But I still don't think a meaningful number of those people are going to switch over either because one, casual users, again, are probably going to Reddit through Google.

16:11And unless Forum manages to push above Reddit results, which it can't do without some sort of partnership with Google, Reddit is probably still going to capture a lot of those Google search results just because of the placement. I mean, if you don't know, Reddit has a data licensing partnership with Google on this front. The flip side of that, though, of course, is one of Reddit's big weak spots is its reliance on Google. Reddit is also such a strong brand name. Like, I'm a casual Reddit user, again, meaning I don't have an account, so I'm not logged in. But I go there for everything from women's health advice to product reviews.

16:45And I trust those reviews and recommendations. I don't feel the same way about Facebook users. Like, you can't necessarily just swap one in for another. And then third, like, I just don't want to log in, partially because it's annoying. I also don't remember my Facebook credentials. I'm already logged in on my phone, and that's the only way I use it. But also because I just kind of like the anonymity. I like being logged out. I like kind of just going in and reading people's comments and reviews on Reddit. And forum makes you log in. And that, you know, to me is a big roadblock.

17:18Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, and I think to the point, too, like, we are more casual Reddit users. So maybe we don't feel like that connection. But I think there's something about the closed groups versus open groups. Like there's just a different kind of feel to it. And TikTok and Instagram also used to be more open, right? Like if I'm on desktop and trying to look at an Instagram post and I'm not logged in, like I can't go deep into people's profiles. I have to be logged in. And same thing with TikTok. So maybe Reddit will go that route, although I don't know if that messes up their Google deal. But anyway, speaking of copying, Meta is also shamelessly ripping off Snapchat once again, this time with a new feature and again separate app called instance that lets you send disappearing photos to friends i mean come on this concept is also very not new people have been sending disappearing photos on snapchat for more than a decade and you can also already send disappearing photos within instagram already but you know like you mentioned earlier and like meta and the rest of the industry has been talking about in recent years social media is no longer very social and conversations with friends have been moving deeper and deeper into private spaces like instagram dms or iMessage or WhatsApp.

18:20Jasmine Enberg: And this is another tactic that Meta can use, especially for young people to offer ways to communicate more privately in ways that they have already been doing for years. So again, no new user behavior there. I mean, this isn't gonna be around for long, but it does make sense for Meta to be trying out new apps that are specifically geared for teens and for young people, given all of the heat and the attention on them right now. I mean, they were just found liable in a landmark social media addiction case, which said that they knowingly designed their apps, mainly Instagram to be harmful to kids.

18:51Obviously, Meta and other social platforms are still protected by Section 230, which says that they're not responsible for the content on their platforms. But clearly, Meta isn't immune to legal challenges, especially when it comes to child and youth safety and security. And rolling out new apps that come with less baggage than Instagram and Facebook is one way to make sure that they stay relevant, or at least try to make sure that they stay relevant and part of the social media landscape as we move forward.

19:20Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, we dove deeper into Meta's recent legal issues and the landmark social media addiction lawsuit in a previous episode. So go check that out if you want more. But back to Instance, I mean, I personally have not used it. It also just looks so bad in the inbox of the DM. I mean, Instagram always historically has prided itself on simplicity, aesthetics, but some of its recent feature rollouts like this one have been very clunky. And you know how Adam Masseri, the head of Instagram has weekly ask me anything's on his Instagram account. Yes, I kind of love them. Okay, so someone asked him if there's a way to get rid of instance.

19:56Jasmine Enberg: And he gave instructions for how to swipe it away while also giving the future a plug. But I was very grateful for the instructions because it was an eyesore and I immediately went to get rid of it. Okay, well, I will need those instructions. Because for me, it's not just an eyesore, I keep accidentally clicking on it, which is so annoying. I would say just as annoying as the TikTok live button. Has this ever happened to you? Oh my God, all the time. I'm always in the weirdest TikTok live of my life. And I'm like, how do I get out? They're always so random. And then I cannot get out of them either.

20:27I mean, whoever designed TikTok live to continue playing audio in the background, even after you've closed the app by default is really an evil genius.

20:36Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I mean, I don't think any of these product placements are an accident because I was also clicking on Instance by accident. But moving on to the last meta headline, Meta is rolling out subscription plans globally for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. The company has priced these plans really low. I mean, they cost$3 or$4 per month, depending on the plan. And they offer access to bonus features like ways for users to customize their profiles. The company is also testing new subscriptions for businesses, creators, and meta AI. I mean, part of me is like, I cannot believe we're still talking about and testing new social media subscriptions like three or four years after all the craziness with Twitter Blue, which now, of course, is X Premium.

21:16I mean, they just have not proven to be lucrative for any social platform except for Snapchat. Then again, you cannot blame Meta for trying to squeeze whatever it can out of its users, especially given that it's estimated to spend up to$145 billion on AI this year. I mean, again, that is two thirds, more than two thirds of the revenue that it generated in 2025. Either way, the subscriptions that I'm actually the most interested in and see the most potential for here are the creator subscriptions and Meta AI, because it's really, really hard to get people to pay for things that they're already used to accessing for free.

21:53And I'm not sure that the additional perks or the bonus features that Meta is offering for the Facebook or Instagram or WhatsApp subscription are just going to be enough. Although, you know, under$50 a year sounds much more palatable than MetaVerified, which I think was like$15 a month. And much more in line, actually, with what Snapchat charges for Snapchat Plus. Either way, though, again, I do think that people will be more willing to pay for the exclusive creator content that they might be able to get through a creator subscription. I mean, Snapchat recently made this bet, too. It rolled out creator subscriptions in February.

22:26It hasn't released any data on how that has been going yet. I've been keeping an eye out. I'm very keen to see how that all develops.

22:33Jasmine Enberg: So Snapchat also clearly didn't want to be forgotten in this meta subscription news cycle. We got an email pitch from Snapchat PR soon after the meta news broke. Two individual email pitches, one to you and one to me. And they were reminding us of how successful Snapchat has been in subscriptions and that it was an innovator here, launching subscriptions nearly four years ago, which, wow, time flies. And obviously the pitch worked because we're talking about them. But in seriousness, we would have talked about them anyway, because just to put some numbers around this, they have become a very meaningful growth driver for Snap, which in January said that its direct revenue business, which includes Snapchat Plus, now has a billion dollar revenue run rate.

23:11Jasmine Enberg: And its subscription business really grew quickly from the start. I mean, it launched at the end of June 2022 and reached a million subs by August of that same year. And most recently, Snap said that its subscriptions have more than 25 million subscribers. Yeah. And in Q1 of this year, Snap's other revenue, which includes subscriptions, actually grew by 87 % and overall made up about 25 % of Snap's ad revenue for the quarter. That is enormous. Although I have to say, I think that says more about the state of Snap's ad business, which only grew by 3 % last year. I mean, if you look at that compared to Meta, which is so much bigger already, it grew by 33%.

23:50So you can see the discrepancy happening there. But to talk a little bit about the meta AI subscriptions as well, I mean, the reason I see so much potential here is that the monetization model for AI is still being developed. Like you have some chatbots that are going down the ad route. ChatGPT is pushing hard into advertising. I do imagine that meta AI will also move into the ad space because advertising is, of course, meta's bread and butter. But I think because it's different and it's new and people don't have the same expectation that it's all supposed to be free with AI the way that they do with social media, there may be more people who are willing to pay for meta AI, especially if there's a really good value exchange of thinking things like personalized agents or, you know, shopping and all of the things that meta is now, you know, planning and rolling out in AI.

24:41Jasmine Enberg: I mean, 100%. I pay for a chat GBT plan because I think the paid features are worth it. But it would take a lot for me to pay for a social media plan for exactly the reason above. I mean, I'm used to it being free. So you're not going to subscribe to Facebook. I mean, no. And I also am not going to subscribe to Snapchat. I don't think I'm quite in the demo of the people. But to their credit, they have found ways to get people to subscribe to things, you know, which, again, out of the demo, Gen Z is loving a lot of these features. But anyway, on to our next big topic that's been generating headlines recently, the streaming wars.

25:12Jasmine Enberg: So let's kick off with a very unusual deal. So Netflix and Spotify are partnering together to take on YouTube. So here's what happened. The two companies are joining forces to bring Jay Shetty's podcast on purpose to both services. Video episodes are going to be available starting July 13th on both platforms, and they will no longer be offered on YouTube. The agreement is worth as much as$100 million over multiple years, according to Bloomberg. And Spotify is going to be handling the ad sales. I mean, to me, this shows just how much competition with YouTube is heating up. What's your reaction to this, Jasmine?

25:43I mean, yeah, I totally agree. I also think that if this keeps happening, YouTube is going to have to step up its game with creators. I mean, its whole positioning is that it's the home for creators. It's the best place for them to build businesses. I mean, obviously, for most creators, that is the case, and it's not going to change much. But when you do have somebody like Jay Shetty, who has nearly 6 million YouTube subscribers willing to give that up, it doesn't really send a good message not to creators and also not to advertisers who YouTube has simultaneously been trying to convince that it is the new TV.

26:18It's also more evidence for Netflix and Spotify and others that some creators are willing to jump ship from YouTube, at least for specific shows. Problem, of course, is that it doesn't come cheap. So it's unclear how replicable all of this is.

26:33Jasmine Enberg: YouTube and Netflix in different ways have been trying to reinvent TV. Netflix has been slowly expanding into live programming, including more recently into its first daily live show. It had already gotten a deal for iHeartRadio's The Breakfast Club podcast, which is co-hosted by Charlemagne Tha God. But now the show will be live streaming every week on Netflix, as well as on radio and the iHeartMedia app. And besides this, I mean, Netflix has shown sports live, including WWE wrestling, boxing, and comedy specials like The Roast of Kevin Hart. Yeah, and YouTube has also leaned into live sports, but its most recent TV push has been through exclusive creator shows, which we talked about in detail in a previous episode.

27:10When YouTube unveiled these shows at Brandcast, I mean, we took a victory lap because we predicted that something like this would happen. But now, again, you know, with the Jay Shetty deal, it is really hard not to question whether it's going to be enough. Like, I think, yes, from the TV advertiser standpoint, it is going to be enough to start convincing them to spend more on YouTube. But if I was a creator, I would be wondering, you know, is this really the best deal that I can get? And we don't have a ton of insight into the specifics or the details of these deals. But we do know that YouTube isn't providing funding the way that they did for YouTube originals.

27:47But these creators are getting promotion and what looks like ad sales. They also, of course, get the revenue share from AdSense, which is the best in the industry. But is that going to be enough? Like, I would argue that it might not be if you also have a Netflix and a Spotify knocking at your door with hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as an ad sales deal. Like, obviously, again, this isn't going to hurt YouTube at scale, but it does put some cracks in the image and ultimately could make them think about what kinds of deals they're offering to creators.

28:20Jasmine Enberg: Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about what Twitch CEO Dan Clancy said at our Scalable Summit about exclusive deals. And if you remember, if we go way back, YouTube and Twitch were locked in an exclusivity war for a while. And it extended beyond the two platforms, too. I mean, Ninja, one of the biggest streamers at the time, signed a$50 million exclusivity deal with Microsoft's now defunct Mixer platform back in 2019. I don't even remember that. Oh, my God. It was like huge news. I was at CNN and it was like headlines everywhere. And then a year later, he went back to Twitch because they shut down Mixer.

28:51Jasmine Enberg: So anyway, there was lots of deals like this. And it was mostly between Twitch and YouTube. But I asked Clancy about all of that on stage. And he said they ultimately moved away from that. And he didn't think it was ultimately good for the industry. I mean, for live streaming in particular, he thinks it actually limited live streaming more broadly and, you know, potentially make individual creators less relevant by cutting them off from audiences. But when it comes to Netflix, he had a different take. I mean, he said they're obviously doing it to grow their business and to get people to watch podcasts on Netflix, which is not a behavior people are used to.

29:20Jasmine Enberg: And they probably eventually will stop doing these deals and lose money on them. But as for the creators, he said, quote, I feel like sometimes you might want to cash in and say, I'll take the money for a little while. But I think if you're a creator, you want to be everywhere. And that's very much in line how we've seen the industry shift, right? Like Alex Cooper initially did the Spotify exclusive deal and cashed in then, but then went to Sirius after and she's able to be on YouTube and all these other platforms. So I mean, I think Jay Shetty is definitely taking advantage of the money right now.

29:49Jasmine Enberg: But it's really against the grain of kind of what we've been seeing creators generally want to be everywhere. You know, they're on Tubi and Samsung TV Plus and YouTube and so on. But again, some of these big ticket deals are hard to turn down. Yeah. And that's kind of my point here about the YouTube exclusive shows to like, is it going to be enough? But the other thing that I've been thinking about is something that Ian Schaefer from Ensemble said during the summit. And he said, quote, there is probably more money to be made as a creator by owning your own digital footprint and distribution than by selling the occasional project to a streamer.

30:21And ultimately, I agree with that. It's very hard to argue against.

30:25Jasmine Enberg: Yeah. But on the flip side, selling an occasional project is different than selling your weekly podcast that you do in perpetuity. So there's a lot of nuance always with these things. But okay, last quick segment before we get into our interview with HubSpot's Jonathan Hunt. More creator horror movie successes. Get us up to speed, Jasmine. Two movies from YouTubers had big box office successes this past weekend. What do they have in common? They are both horror films. So over the weekend, Back Rooms grossed$81 million in North America. That is the biggest opening in the history of A24. The movie was directed by a 20-year-old YouTuber named Kane Parsons.

31:06Then there's Obsession, which was directed by YouTuber Curry Barker. That surpassed$100 million. But it wasn't its opening, total. The two movies are actually proving more popular with young viewers than Disney's Star Wars spinoff, The Mandalorian and Grogu. Also, Kaya, have you ever watched Star Wars? I have never seen Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. Okay, I love Lord of the Rings. I've seen that. I've never watched either. the books too, but I've never seen Star Wars. I don't understand it. But anyway, the spinoff, we saw a whopping 69 % drop in its second weekend. And also another fun, interesting data point, about 86 % of ticket buyers for Obsession were under 35.

31:47Now, all of this is ruffling some feathers in Hollywood for several different reasons, including the low production budgets of these movies. So Obsession had a$750 ,000 production budget, according to the Wall Street Journal. Backrooms had a larger budget of about$10 million that is still very low for Hollywood standards. I mean, if you think about franchises, they can cost upwards of$200 million to make. And of course, then there's the fact that these films follow the success of Marketplier's Iron Lung, another horror sci-fi film that grossed over$50 million worldwide. It was self-funded, self-directed, and starred the YouTuber himself.

32:29Jasmine Enberg: If you want to be ahead of the curve, you gotta tune into this Calvul podcast regularly because we so called this Shameless Plug. But we discussed that basically all of the success stories of movies from creators have been horror films. If you want to go deeper on why horror is such a popular genre and how the film industry is converging with the creator economy. We talked about this at length in our May 21st episode about the Cannes Film Festival. And if you're watching on YouTube, we're flashing it on screen, making it easy for you to find it. And a little spoiler alert, a big takeaway as to why the horror genre works for creators, it is more accessible and a more low lift genre in terms of both content and budget.

33:07That is no shade to horror movies and their creators. There are some really excellent horror films that have even won Oscars and other awards that includes The Exorcist and Silence of the Lambs. But generally speaking, it is cheaper and easier to produce a horror movie than it is an epic like Star Wars. And hey, you got to get your foot in the door somehow.

33:28Jasmine Enberg: Yes, that episode is really worth checking out also because we got the thoughts of Reese Feldman, who is a film-focused creator who was on the red carpet at the film festival this year. And he also wants to create a horror film one day. And he gives his take as to why he thinks the horror genre is such a popular one for creators too. Now we have our interview with HubSpot's Jonathan Hunt. Hi, Jonathan. Welcome to Scalable. We're so excited to have you. I'm excited to be here too. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks so much for being here. You have worked at media companies, including Vox, Vice, Nat Geo.

33:58Jasmine Enberg: So you've really had a front row seat to how media has changed. Now you're in what I would say it's quite an unusual role for a marketing software company, media and content. I'd love to start with what you've taken from your previous roles in media to this job. You know, HubSpot, like any company, whether it's a media company or not, is ultimately trying to reach someone and trying to convince them to take some sort of action. And so, you know, historically at media companies, that action might be watch an ad, engage with branding content, subscribe to my newsletter. It's actually not too dissimilar for us, too, in that we're ultimately trying to get people to engage with our content.

34:35But then one day down the road, make the decision to maybe become a HubSpot customer. And so a lot of what I've learned across Vice, Vox, Snapgeo, et cetera, actually is pretty transferable in that one, it's about creating content that provides a lot of value and is unmistakably new. And so everything that we do at HubSpot Media Network is editorially independent. And what we're just trying to do ultimately is create really great, high production, high value content within marketing, sales, business building, AI that, you know, whether it's HubSpot or a B2C media company, you would want to watch and ultimately subscribe to.

35:13We monetize a little bit differently. So in traditional media companies, as you know, it's either a paid sub or it's advertising based. And ultimately what you're trying to do is generate as many impressions as possible so that you can monetize those at a certain CPM. And what we're ultimately trying to do is just generate as much high quality scale that allows us to then take that attention and then hopefully convert someone into a customer of HubSpot. So I wanted to dive in a little bit deeper into your strategy there because OpenAI acquiring TBPN really shocked the industry, but HubSpot has been making similar deals for years.

35:51I mean, since 2021, you've acquired The Hustle, My First Million, now most recently Futurpedia. So tell us a little bit more about the specifics of those deals and the strategy behind it. The Hustle was an impetus for us to be able to reach more business builders at the time whenever they were choosing their tech staff and making a decision about what CRM they wanted to use. The same thing with Starter Story, which was our most recent acquisition, or actually our second most recent acquisition, is really focused on solopreneurs. So that one to five employee business where they are just starting out and trying to figure out, what does my tech stack look like and what CRM am I going to use and ultimately grow into?

36:31Futurepedia was somewhat similar in that we speak to a lot of AI practitioners, but up until very recently did not have a really great distribution pipeline to reach those folks. And so it's always led with the customer first. Like, do we have a vertical where we just see a lot more potential leverage? And so buying rather than building allows us to accelerate that strategy or are there categories where we still have a lot of footholds? In which case, you know, we could build that, but that might take a couple of years in the AI era a couple of years, might as well be a couple of decades. And so you better be off buying as opposed to building that property.

37:12So we've got to talk a little bit more about AI. This is obviously a very big question, but how do you think AI is going to change the media industry in say the next five years? And then the second part of that is how should publishers and creators be preparing for this new environment or reality? Yeah, I think there's a positive answer to that a negative answer to that. I think the negative answer is probably some of the headlines that you all have seen across a lot of unfortunate media cuts that in some cases have been precipitated by AI. But I also think what that's done is create even more of a need for journalists and creators that have a unique point of view and have a really valuable story to tell to find homes of non-traditional media models like ours or starting their own businesses, whether it's through Beehive or Substack or through YouTube.

38:06And so I think in some parts it's commodified content, but I think it's also raised the bar for what people actually want to see more of. You know, it's easy for anyone to go to Claude and prompt it and to get a piece of kind of derivative vanilla content to publish that, but what value does that actually bring? You know, And I think a lot of people have kind of almost tuned that out and are really looking for a lot of, you know, what Scalable does or what like Homespot Media does or what any like independent creators and capital J journalists do, which is hard to imitate using AI. And so I almost think it's like caused a pendulum to swing back in the direction of creators and journalists.

38:45Content they produce mattering more than ever. I mean, I hope you're right, because we had a really scary conversation last week with someone who told us that all journalists should just be feeding and selling their reporting to LLMs, and that should be that. I think it's a dumb thing to say, but there are some, you know, economic upsides to doing that. But only if you're like a really large player, like People, Inc. or whoever that cuts really big checks by doing that. Whenever you're a small independent creator, you get nothing out of that. at all. And so I think that piece of advice should not be heeded.

39:21But I also think what has been helpful too is that, you know, there's just things that are annoying to do whenever you're creating content. Like on the post-production side, the clipping side, it was always really painful. Like you'd have to go in there, watch it down, find the time codes, have like someone that actually knew how to use Premiere to like go and do it. And so there's multiple handoffs and it took a lot of time now like you jasmine or kaya myself can just go in there and do it ourselves and use taste to be able to punch up a clip or say you know what that hook isn't the right hook you know i think it's democratized a lot um for creators um and folks that maybe not as technical it's also helped with like internationalization for example historically you probably would have had to like have the script have it translated shipped off to a different market have them reproduce that content or maybe it would have just been like text on screen but in a matter of hours you can now auto dub and have like a really great piece of localized content so i'm hearing positives for the media industry from you jonathan well i'm always glass half full i'm always very optimistic about these things um you know again i think there are some negatives out there but i think what i'm seeing at least is that there is um far more positivity around what's possible using ai so long as it's used in the right way.

40:40And like I said, like, I think it's caused a lot of audiences to actively seek out high quality content and high value content and kind of tune out the stuff that is just like derivative AI noise in the slop. And so I'm feeling pretty positive about it.

40:56Jasmine Enberg: You've talked about a lot of the benefits and kind of reasons why HubSpot wants to go into the media businesses. But what are some of the drawbacks? We had OpenAI at our scalable summit and they said, we are not getting into the media business. TBPN is kind of a one-off thing. Some of the drawbacks are that it is a slower burn. A lot of B2B businesses kind of get hooked on direct response advertising because it's pretty predictable. Like you know that you're going to spend$25. If that's$25, you're going to get X in return. And the CPMs may increase, but you kind of adjust your conversion rate logic and you can kind of predict it.

41:34That said, it is harder to sustain that long term. You only have so much money to spend. The great thing about media is that you spend$25 into something and it could continue to compound in growth and value for you over time. Media always has been a slower burn unless you're a breakout success. Another thing too is that unlike paid media, earned media and owned media can be more difficult to measure from a bottom of the funnel perspective. There's ways to measure it and track it. But the further you get down the funnel from view or open or read or listen to lead to qualified lead to customer, it becomes a little bit murmer here and harder to measure.

42:19So that is another drawback. What is your measurement strategy? I was going to ask you that next. I mean, obviously, there's the media outcomes that are easier to understand. But how do you sort of prove that it's helping your business overall? Yeah, so we see a media ROI in sort of three buckets. The first is demand generation. So we know that on a given month, we're able to convert 10s of 1000s of people into new leads for HubSpot, which then ultimately go down a sort of nurturing path to potentially becoming a customer of HubSpot. So we can track that pretty, pretty meticulously down to a new customer and what kind of lifetime value they bring to HubSpot.

42:59And so there's this sort of immediate down funnel value. There's the top of the funnel value as well, which is, you know, you could spend that money on brand marketing plays or traditional advertising, or you could own it and continue to reap the benefits of that investment in perpetuity and reach new audiences and become top of mind for them from like a brand play, right? And so the thing about software is that oftentimes you're not going to market to buy a CRM. You know, you are probably market 5 % of the year, but you can't only be in people's feeds 5 % of the year. You have to be in people's feeds 100 % of the year.

43:37And so it's very complementary to all of our other marketing strategies, whether it's experiential, brand marketing, direct response, and that. This allows us to stay in people's IG feeds, other LinkedIn feeds, or YouTube feeds consistently throughout the entire year. And then there's the equivalent value metric, which is, you know, you could have bought all that media on the open market, but instead you invested in it. And so what is the value of that that you effectively save as a result of not having to go out and buy that from another podcast or another newsletter or another YouTube channel?

44:09And so we sort of think about it in that kind of like three phased approach. But a lot of what guides our strategy is more of let it down with the law metrics. Like how can we create again something that's so valuable that you want to press pause on that video and take an action like coming to leave for HubSpot. How does HubSpot show up in the content? I mean, I think that's kind of, you know, as you're thinking about staying top of mind and making sure you're not just on people's feeds 5 % of the year, how are you thinking about showing up across these different properties? I think the traditional approach is like a logo slap or you hand a creator a kind of scripted live read and they kind of read it.

44:45It feels very inauthentic and not in their voice and ultimately doesn't work. And so for our owned media, we have a logo lockup in the title sequence. There's a watermark in the top right within 20 percent of every video, which is what we oftentimes see is the sweet spot for getting people to engage. there'll be um like a 30 second um lead magnet that the host delivers and how we construct those lead magnets are how to create a piece of content or an ai agent or a web app or something that just provides you a lot of immediate utility so as opposed to the traditional approach of like you know a state of marketing report or a really long pdf that no one wants to read and so we try to create as much value in that content as possible.

45:33So HubSpot shows up there as well. It's in the channel art, it's in the description, but not in a way that comes across as though it is branded content because it's not. Where the branded content aspect comes in is through monetization of the content itself. With creators, it's very collaborative in that whenever we acquire a media business or work with a creator or a media business, you're oftentimes working with them for their audience and the trust that they've been able to develop with that audience over time because oftentimes it's a collaboration between us and the creator where we come up with a brief we co-create content together or like a lead magnet together that is really appealing to their audience and is something that the creator themselves is actually entrusted in and then they have the ability to kind of like script it and craft it in terms of their delivery as they see fit and what we found is that just by giving full editorial control to our partners, nine times out of 10, it converts a lot better.

46:31Jasmine Enberg: We'll talk a little bit more about the editorial control aspect in a minute. But is the ultimate goal to have like a large network of YouTube channels, newsletters, these creator media companies? Or do you want to keep this to kind of a handful of strategic deals? Yeah, I think for now, we are happy with where we are. You know, today, we're 17 YouTube channels and six newsletters and about 150 creator partnerships. And it's a pretty big footprint, You can always be bigger, but as you continue to expand, you just run the risk of maybe diluting your core products. And so, you know, I personally feel like there's just so much more upside in continuing to invest in our existing acquisitions and the creators we work with and our built media brands where we maybe haven't necessarily fully realized the full potential of those properties.

47:16We're always opportunistic, though. And so if there is a really great media partnership or creative partnership or acquisition opportunity, we'll always explore it.

47:25Jasmine Enberg: What is the business model? I mean, obviously, you have AdSense and stuff like this, but is it paid subscriptions? Is it sponsorships? Is it live events? What do these businesses look like? The monetization model for HubSpot Media is purely lead generation at the moment. That's the primary monetization model. You mentioned AdSense. Like we do have ads since turned on for a couple of our channels, but especially on YouTube. The big reason being is that that's just like another signal for YouTube to prioritize you in terms of distribution because they're also making money off of that. And so while it's like a decent amount of revenue, it's not necessarily the monetization strategy.

48:04So going back to the OpenAI-TPPN deal, you wrote in Fortune that, quote, much of the public conversation has focused on the conflict of interest. It's a valid concern, but it misses the deeper shift. What did you mean by that? The knee-jerk reaction, I think, for a lot of these non-traditional media models and acquisitions where a company like HubSpot or OpenAI acquires a beloved creator or media company is that it's just going to become some corporate mouthpiece for OpenAI or HubSpot where all the content becomes a biased product and there's going to be editorial oversight and just the product gets ruined.

48:43And that's the exact opposite way that we approach it for all the reasons we talked about a little earlier in terms of preserving trust and the audience that you ultimately acquired. But I think what it was ultimately for me is like a signal validation that like the economics of creator driven businesses is very lucrative, both for creators, but also for software businesses like OpenAI. I think part of the problem was, is that people are equating editorial independence with neutrality, and they're not necessarily the same thing, especially in the case of TVPN. Like, everybody knew that they were bought into AI.

49:19That was part of the reason why they were able to build such a strong and loyal audience. I also think they may have made a little bit of a mistake in, you know, going out so strong, talking about how they're maintaining their editorial independence, because that ultimately just led to more questions and more concerns. You know, it wasn't really something that I immediately thought of until I was like, huh, okay, they're, you know, they're stressing this point, but it is still a very valid conversation to have. So talk a little bit more about how you approach editorial independence. Like, for example, if a creator you're working with wants to talk about a competitor or one of your properties is featuring a competitor, like, how do you approach that?

49:58Well, I mean, the creators are free to talk about whatever they want. Like you might work with a creator to identify what's an upcoming marketing adjacent episode you're working on, we'd love to partner with you on that. Beyond that, it's up to them, whatever they want to do. We don't want to, nor should we ever be in a position where we're directing any of their own editorial strategy. And we approach it very similarly for our own properties where obviously we use insights from Tubular Labs or Google or YouTube Studio to inform the types of content we create because we know that we can reach more of the right audience if we create things that you see really work for them historically.

50:39But beyond that, like, there's never a situation where, with the same example, like Marketing Hub, like we're saying, okay, well, here's where you got to start talking about Marketing Hub. You just want to create really great educational content that people want to watch and ultimately, hopefully, convert around.

50:55Jasmine Enberg: And like you wrote in the Fortune piece, I mean, no one blinks an eye, right? When a media company buys another media company, whether it's tech companies or other software companies, Why haven't more of them come into the space? And post-OpenAI and TBPN, do you think that changes? I think it changes. I think it's a great signal. And you are starting to at least like privately hear rumblings of like other software companies starting to spin up their own media companies. And so like I think you probably will start to see a lot of larger tech companies start to do this. And I think it takes more of these kinds of deals and more of these kinds of strategies to continue to validate the actual model itself.

51:30and also talking about the ROI of it. And so that's what we're trying to do more of is like, how can we continue to talk about the actual impact of these investments and these acquisitions?

51:41Jasmine Enberg: Great note to end on. Well, thank you so much, Jonathan, for joining us today. Of course. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you back here next Thursday.