Exclusive: Substack hires Dan Robbins as head of brand sponsorships

Exclusive: Substack hires Dan Robbins as head of brand sponsorships

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."