Why next gen media companies might be creator led—and how brands can be part of it

Andrew Rea, better known to his YouTube followers as Babish, has gone from creating cooking videos shot without showing his face to producing an entire content slate of nearly a dozen series hosted by several creators and personalities, soon to include the likes of celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern. Rea is just one of a growing community of creators who are transitioning from YouTube or TikTok stars into media entrepreneurs in their own right, and brands are already starting to leverage additional ad opportunities that are accompanying this shift. Like Rea, a growing number of creators are leveling up their content production capabilities and effectively building out their own media companies—either on social media channels such as YouTube, or, increasingly, by making the jump to streaming services. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Rea, who over the past seven years has amassed an audience of more than 10 million YouTube subscribers, has expanded his channel beyond cooking tutorials and recipes to include a lifestyle vlog show, “Being with Babish,” and an upcoming series called “Meal Missions,” where creators around the world will act as correspondents and participate in food-adjacent challenges, such as showing what a $100 trip to the grocery store looks like in their respective cities, Rea said. Ultimately, he aims to “be putting out an episode of something every day” by bringing on additional talent—many of them short-form creators from TikTok and Instagram, as well as traditional TV personalities. “The expansion with other personalities on the channel and into new shows that either lightly involve me or don’t involve me at all is to turn what was a one-man channel into a platform,” Rea told Ad Age. “That’s what we want to turn this into, because it’s become too big for just me. We’re trying to build a culinary universe, so to speak, where there are different personalities and different show styles that are all available on the same platform. And there was absolutely no way I could have seen this coming, but it's evolved naturally with the way that YouTube's evolved and we’ve evolved as a company.” That evolution of Rea’s channel has been underscored by him changing its name from “Binging with Babish,” the name of his first cooking show on the channel, to the “Babish Culinary Universe,” after viewers began comparing Rea’s increasing collaborations with other culinary creators and introduction of new content series to “Thanos putting Infinity Stones in the gauntlet” in the Marvel cinematic universe, Rea said. Zimmern, the chef who has hosted a number of TV series including the Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,” will launch a content series on the Babish Culinary Universe platform in the coming months, Rea said. And creators such as Patricia O’Connor and SenyaiGrubs, whose real name is Joe, are set to appear in the first few episodes of the upcoming “Meal Missions” series. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Binging With Babish (@bingingwithbabish) Rea pivoting his channel to function similarly to a media company has occurred alongside a shift in how many consumers are viewing content on YouTube. Nearly half (45%) of YouTube’s U.S. viewership now comes from TVs rather than phones, according to internal platform data revealed in May by The Information. And a May Nielsen report cited YouTube as the most-used streaming platform, comprising 8.1% of all viewership across streaming services. It even beat out streaming giant Netflix, which dropped from nearly 14% of streaming viewership to just 6.9% between 2022 and 2023. Brands such as Squarespace have eagerly embraced this shifting content strategy among Rea and other creators. The brand has sponsored various content series on Rea’s channel over the past six years, starting with “Binging with Babish” and more recently expanding its brand integrations into episodes of new shows such as “Kendall Combines” and “Pruébalo with Rick Martinez.” Jaclyn Kerames, Squarespace’s head of global creator strategy, views Rea’s Babish Culinary Universe as a creator-led version of traditional cable channels such as the Food Network. “It’s exciting when a partner really evolves their content strategy and we’re able to test these different content series with them,” she said. “We find our messaging is resonant across his channel no matter what content angle his work is taking. “I think, as we look ahead, a lot of these partners are creating the new media channels that are [similar to] what we think of as traditional media,” she added. Though the Babish Culinary Universe lives on YouTube, a surge of creators have recently made the jump from social platforms to streaming services. Dude Perfect, a creator group with nearly 60 million YouTube subscribers, earlier this month launched its own streaming service and accompanying app, bringing the group’s social media content—and partnerships with brands such as Chipotle, SoFi and Bass Pro Shops—to a new medium. Influencers including Serena Kerrigan have rolled out independent streaming platforms with exclusive paywalled content, while others have inked deals with streaming services, such as the Roku Channel, to create new streaming-oriented content series. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dude Perfect (@dudeperfect) Rea said he envisions the expansion of his YouTube channel as a way to introduce “new opportunities to create robust ad integrations” for brand partners. Those sponsorships remain an important income stream for Rea—even as he’s expanded his business to include cookbooks, a cookware line and an upcoming bed and breakfast—and will be especially crucial for new creators who join the channel and will receive a cut of the revenue generated from shows they make for the Babish Culinary Universe. Millions of brand impressions At Advertising Week New York, Rea spoke on a panel with Aislinn Murray, brand director at The Botanist Gin, a brand he’s partnered with for roughly three years. Rea and Murray shared an overview of their partnership, which has included 70 different pieces of video content ranging from integrations into recipes across his different content series, livestreams and pre-roll ads featuring Rea. When The Botanist Gin first began working with Rea, “I think that it was [about] that balance of, ‘OK, how do we balance the brand voice with [Andrew’s] voice?” Murray said during the panel. “And then I think we came to the realization of, as a brand, we want things to be in [his] voice, and that’s what’s relevant to [his] audience.” In its three years working with Rea, The Botanist Gin has been featured in videos that have amassed a collective 32 million views and has garnered more than 52 million total impressions across all of its sponsored content, including the pre-roll ads with Rea. Rea aims to bring more brands into the Babish Culinary Universe using that combination of custom pre-roll ads featuring him or other creators on the channel and brand integrations within the video, he said. “Because we’ve been doing this for three years, I think, to his audience, Botanist is almost like a character on his channel at this point and is very recognizable,” said Camie Cox, director of integrated production at creator media company Made In Network—which has worked with Rea to help grow his channel since 2016—during the panel. “And I think that even helps the brand resonate with his audience more.” Made In Network has overseen Rea’s transition from a one-man YouTube channel to a media company, managing some of his operational needs such as developing strategies and schedules for uploading his content to other social platforms such as Instagram and TikTok and assisting Rea and his growing talent roster in securing brand deals, said Kevin Grosch, Made in Network’s CEO. Since its founding in 2013, the company has focused on building out the infrastructure creators need to operate as media companies. “As people are watching YouTube and online video like it's television, we've just wanted to make shows and programming that feel like television but in the digital world,” Grosch said. “And I think more and more creators have aspirations to not just be influencers or just personalities, but to actually build real media businesses. And that means a lot of different things, but one of the things that it means is there’s only so much time in the day for an individual to be on-camera … and that’s when they need the infrastructure and the support to scale that business.” For brands, creators operating more like media companies means opportunities to integrate their messaging across the creators’ content in a “more holistic way than just a singular video integration,” Grosch said. “That might be developing creative around a campaign, producing assets they can run as media or distributing materials not just through an integration on YouTube but also through [the creator’s] other social posts.” “There’s been more opportunity for anyone to create content online, and the creator economy has exploded because of just the sheer volume of creators,” he added. “But, for advertisers, it’s often been a really hard thing to figure out how you navigate what’s really going to move the needle and who the big creators are. I believe that the next generation of large-scale media companies are going to be built by creators.” Follow us on social media X Bluesky Instagram LinkedIn YouTube

Why next gen media companies might be creator led—and how brands can be part of it

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