Exclusive: Substack hires Dan Robbins as head of brand sponsorships
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Photo: Courtesy of Dan Robbins
Substack has hired former Roku and PayPal executive Dan Robbins as its first head of brand sponsorships, he exclusively tells Axios.
Why it matters: The hire is part of a notable strategy shift at Substack, which started its business championing subscriptions over advertising but is now embracing sponsorships as a complementary revenue stream.
What he's saying: "Subscriptions remain the foundation of creator businesses on Substack," Robbins says. "These are first steps towards a broader brand partnership platform, but the ambition is very much just in line with Substack's ethos of independence, of ownership, of direct relationships."
- "The goal of this is just to help creators make money doing work they believe in," he adds.
By the numbers: More than 100,000 publishers make money through subscriptions on Substack, CEO Chris Best wrote in a Monday blog post about the "next phase" of the company's native sponsorships program.
- The top 10 collectively generate more than $100 million annually, per Best.
Zoom in: Robbins joins Substack after senior roles at PayPal, Roku and Nielsen, where he helped build advertising and commerce businesses.
- He says the common thread throughout his career has been building monetization businesses "without bruising what made [the companies] special in the first place."
- "The algorithm-driven world is so noisy and ephemeral, and it's very hard for brands to establish themselves as a lasting authority," Robbins says. "When a brand partners with a creator on Substack, there's a potential to build on and build into that trust."
- Robbins is a longtime Substack fan. He says he has been reading and paying for Substack newsletters for nearly a decade, dating back to one of its earliest hits, Bill Bishop's Sinocism.
Between the lines: Ads aren't new to Substack. But creators have been sourcing, negotiating and managing those relationships themselves.
- Substack is now formalizing and scaling sponsorships. In December, the company started a pilot program for native ads, as Emily Sundberg's Feed Me first shared.
- The move helps Substack better compete with rivals like Beehiiv, which operates an ad network.
What's next: Substack announced its expanded sponsorship program Monday with inaugural partners including Uber, Whatnot, Granola, Balenciaga, T-Mobile, Polymarket and Yahoo Scout.
- The company is introducing Creator Kits, a tool that helps publishers share their interest in sponsorship opportunities.
- Robbins says the effort will be intentionally hands-on as Substack learns what a sponsorship business that is "uniquely Substack" should look like.
The bottom line: "I'm excited to work with [Substack] and learn from a team that's created this new economic engine for culture," Robbins says. "We won't copy and paste the models of the past era of the internet."
