Tubi Is Winning Hollywood’s War for YouTube Creators. How?

Nicole O’Rourke has spent the past several years making soapy dramas about high-school crushes and teenage vampires for YouTube, where she posts weekly for an audience of 5 million subscribers to her family-friendly channel Rock Squad. But last year, as she readied the release of an ambitious new series that would explore the origin story of two fan-favorite characters, she tried a different strategy. She debuted Bloodsuckers: Origins first on Tubi, the Fox-owned ad-supported platform where some of Rock Squad’s videos already were streaming nonexclusively.

The show, billed as a Tubi Exclusive, quickly found an audience on the streamer (and also eventually on YouTube, where the first episode has racked up more than 1 million views). Now, one year later, Rock Squad has debuted four additional projects exclusively on Tubi, including sci-fi thriller Creepers — and in all, Rock Squad’s programming on the service has generated 6.8 million hours of viewing time in the past 13 months.

“They understand our storytelling and our relationship with our audience,” O’Rourke says of Tubi. “I met them a year ago and we’re going to have, by next June, 10 original series on their platform.”

Demand for creator content is at an all-time high as Netflix and YouTube battle for top talent, Disney ramps up its investment and even Instagram gets in on the action. And then there’s Tubi, which in the past 18 months has added programming from some 700 creators to complement its library of 40,000 on-demand films and TV shows.

It’s a powerful prong in parent company Fox’s bid to shore up young audiences through podcast network Red Seat Ventures and IP incubator Fox Creator Studios. One that just got even more heft with the closing of Fox’s $22 billion Roku acquisition — with all these assets and verticals now brought together under a new Fox Digital Platforms division (with Tubi led by Mike Bidgoli following the departure of CEO Anjali Sud).

“We want to be a real strategic partner that helps creators take the next step in their careers and creative journeys,” says Rich Bloom, general manager of creator programs at Tubi. Lately, that’s meant investing more deeply in original projects from digital-first talent. Tubi has released more than 70 exclusives and originals from creators including KevOnstage, Deestroying and CelinaSpookyBoo, plus inked a partnership with TikTok to make 10 new long-form series with TikTokers including Yasmine Sahid and Marc Sebastian. And the most recent example, which I reported exclusively earlier today over at Like & Subscribe on Substack, is queer dating series Don’t Date Alone from longtime vlogger and podcaster Trisha Paytas, where each contestant’s best friend will choose who they should take on a date. She’s calling the half-hour show a sexy and campy look at contestants’ “raw and real” journeys to find love.

Today I’m looking at how Tubi is distinguishing its creator strategy from the pack. At a moment when creators have all the leverage, there are some clear lessons from my interviews with Tubi’s Bloom and creators like O’Rourke and KevOnStage about how to earn their trust. And this won’t be the last you’ll be hearing from O’Rourke this week. I also interviewed her Monday night in Miami ahead of Adobe MAX for Ankler Media’s first-ever Creator Thesis salon where — alongside Adobe’s Leah Walker and Reggie Washington (the husband and business partner of Kinigra Deon, who’s also worked with Tubi) — O’Rourke broke down how she’s scaled her business into a full-fledged studio. You’ll hear more about that exclusive soiree on Thursday!

Now, on to my Tubi update, where I’ve got:

• The numbers: how many hours of creator programming the platform is adding and how much audience consumption of it has grown
• The strategy: three key ways Tubi works with creators, and the big names it has on board
• The proof of concept: how creators are seeing their reach grow on Tubi and beyond
• The next stage: the backing Tubi offers to creators who want to make their first TV show