Ad Dollar Duel! MrBeast, Top Creators Take Aim at TV $ Through This Startup
I talk to the president of Spotter, whose Thursday showcase is a first-of-its-kind Upfront for the likes of Dude Perfect and Kinigra Deon and their libraries
Tomorrow a group of top YouTube creators including MrBeast, Dude Perfect, Ryan Trahan and Kinigra Deon will convene in New York to unveil their programming for an invite-only crowd of top brand CMOs and advertising agency execs. The goal: to siphon off more of the money that has historically flowed into TV ad budgets.
Creators have done this song and dance before, typically as part of YouTube’s glitzy Brandcast presentation, which the streamer announced today will be back May 14 as part of an Upfront week that includes presentations from Netflix and top legacy players NBCUniversal, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery. But as far as I’m aware, Thursday’s event is the first time disparate creators are coming together in this way to showcase their schedules for potential advertisers.
Here's what I'm telling people about my reporting on Spotter this week 👇🏼
The showcase is happening thanks to Spotter, a company that cuts creators big checks to license their back catalogs of old videos. “Creators have really become the networks of today, delivering the hit TV shows,” Spotter president Nic Paul tells me. “We need to educate the advertising ecosystem [about the] kind of opportunities that exist and how we can allow them to work with creators from a branded integration perspective and from a media perspective.”
I’ve been interested in Spotter for a while. Founded by Machinima and StyleHaul veteran Aaron DeBevoise in 2019, it quickly made a splash licensing videos from big creators like MrBeast. A 2022 investment from Softbank valued the company at $1.7 billion, and it also counts Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries as an investor.
Like its peers in the space, Spotter has faced some growing pains. After announcing last fall the launch of a new AI-driven service, Spotter Studio, and then forming a strategic partnership with Amazon, Spotter laid off a handful of employees, citing the need to evolve its business. Yet Spotter has endured thanks in large part to its unofficial role as a key strategic partner for many creators.
“They advocate for creators to the wider entertainment industry,” YouTube creators Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry (known together as Colin and Samir), who work with Spotter and are co-producing the company’s advertising showcase, told me together over email. “For bigger deals to happen in the world of the creator economy, brands and corporations are going to need inside guidance on how to make these deals happen.”
For this week’s newsletter, I heard from Paul, Chaudry, Rosenblum and other industry experts about how the ambitious startup has embedded itself into the creator community. Read on to find out:
How Spotter connected MrBeast with Amazon
Spotter’s inadvertent strategy to become a consigliere for creators’ relationships with Hollywood
How creators earn eight-figure checks from Spotter in a pretty basic model (the creator economy version of nine-figure music catalog rights deals)
How the company’s de facto think tank builds community and incubates business expansions
Spotter’s challenges in continuing to scale its original licensing model
Why the company had late-2024 layoffs and its view for 2025
How it’s leaning into AI tools to help creators and diversify its own business
Why advertising needs to “catch up” to audiences who are increasingly abandoning linear TV for YouTube
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