Substack Expands Newsletter Sponsorships With Yahoo Scout and Uber

Substack’s newsletter business added a new sponsorship stage on Monday, giving individual creators a direct way to partner with advertisers such as Yahoo Scout, Whatnot, Granola, Balenciaga, T-Mobile, Polymarket, and Uber. For creators already making money through subscriptions, the new program adds a second commercial lane without forcing them to hand over editorial control.

Chris Best Sets the Terms

Chris Best, Substack’s CEO and founder, said the brands will be “building with, and investing millions of dollars in, the creators who choose to participate.” He also said the deals are “direct partnerships between brands and publishers who have already built robust audience-first businesses.”

Best said creators choose who they work with, set the creative direction, and keep full editorial independence. He said Substack’s role is “the matchmaking, the infrastructure, the logistics –so they can stay focused on the work.”

100,000 Publishers Already Monetize

Substack said more than 100,000 publishers make money on the platform through subscriptions, and that the top ten creators make more than $100 million a year. The company also said it has tens of millions of subscribers, which helps explain why advertiser partnerships are moving from an experiment into a bigger business line.

That scale does not answer the harder question of deal quality. Substack did not reveal the specific terms of the sponsorship agreements, so creators can see the advertiser list but not the economics behind each match.

Creator Kits and Creator Control

Substack also launched Creator Kits on Monday, a tool that lets publishers build a media kit from the details they want to share about their publication. That gives creators a faster way to package their audience and pitch themselves, while leaving the sponsorship matchmaking to Substack.

The timing fits a pattern the company already sees on its platform. Emily Sundberg did a sponsored letter with Hinge, and Lenny Rachitsky bundled complementary product access and trials as a perk for certain subscriber tiers, showing that creators have already been assembling sponsorship-style offers on their own.

The open question is pricing. Substack named the advertisers and the creator controls, but it did not say how much each brand will pay, or how the new sponsorship stage will compare with the creator-led deals it is now trying to organize.