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I see the same few sponsorships constantly: Skillshare, Brilliant, Nebula, Hello Fresh, BetterHelp, Raid: Shadow Legends. I like to guess which one it's going to be when the creator starts telling a made-up story that leads into the sponsorship segment. The fact that it's the same ones, over and over again, across a wide spectrum of channels, makes me think that sponsorship is not yet a proven reliable source of income in the long term. A seemingly small number of companies are trying it out and it seems like they could easily pull out at any time. Patreon may be harder but it feels like a more dependable source of income than sponsorships.

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Also PCBWay (mostly for "maker" videos) and VPN providers.

Paradox Interactive's relationship with the comedy sketch group Door Monster is also pretty nice to see. It seems clear that's not strictly a business relationship, but also someone at Paradox being genuine fans.

I think there's actually a bit of a sliding scale between personal patronage and corporate patronage. Local businesses sponsoring local plays, concerts or sports events is another example of sponsorship which isn't likely income-generating.

Nebula is bit weird on that list as my understanding is that it is somehow creator owned and controlled, but rest yeah... I also wonder how long this model will operate, the advertising spend on these products must be significant and I wonder if it is sustainable in long run. Specially with these interest rates or in possible recession...

I don't exactly know how it works but creators tend to call it "my streaming platform" and that feels a little bit like a marketing angle. For the longest time I thought Adam Neely had literally funded and built Nebula.

It is a marketing angle, Wendover Productions is the actual creator of the service and has a video about how they bootstrapped the service and got it to the size it is currently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alqt6RCEWdM

One in that list is not like the others. Nebula sponsorships are for creators that are already a part of their network trying to move viewers to their platform.

That's not a diss on Nebula. I think, among all the others, nebula is the most likely to be sustainable. It is creator owned and operated and the pricing model model seems like it is able to make decent money for the people on it.

No affiliation to Nebula, just a happy, paying customer.

Its a two sided marketplace and companies only care about the conversion they get from different channels. If demand dries up, it will be reflected in more attractive pricing - I don’t think it’s likely that the entire market pulls out.

FWIW - it seems like the campaigns are working. You seem to be familiar with the brands and someone below chimed in on how one particular brand is great. Multiply that by the viewership - that’s definitely a win.

Some quick (unverified) research tells me that YouTuber marketing pays somewhere in the range of 30-70 CPM. You can pretty easily calculate that against google AdWords with reasonable conversion assumptions to decide if it’s worth it.

My point is that in a healthy market, we'd expect a large number of sponsors and a large number of creators. What we seem to have in reality is a tiny number of sponsors and a large number of creators. Where are all the sponsors? Nearly my whole YouTube subscriptions list lives at the whim of basically three sponsors. If, indeed, they decide to cut their spend, the creators will all essentially have to accept it because there aren't a lot of other sponsors to choose from. It doesn't have to be a full withdrawal from sponsorships for it to be devastating for creators.

It really depends. My niche is in software and lots of brands allocate budget towards advertisements towards influencers. You might be right, long term it might dry up, but it’s been 2 years for me now and hasn’t slowed down

It's quite informative to look/listen to old videos and podcasts, and see who the sponsors are.

So many of them are now-dead VC-backed startups, but here and there you find a sponsor that still exists (Squarespace, for example).

The food related ones are always the most amusing because you know it's all fake bullshit and the host doesn't actually use the product, because nobody does.

Heh, I recently saw a video which started by an over the top promotional sketch, and then in the middle of the video they openly made fun of it (again) by deliberately slowing down the pace of the video while using a 150 years older competitor...

I love the oversimplified segments when they have some emperor’s message being intercepted and then someone suggests “you should have used nordvpn!”

You forgot Factor frozen meals which I see all the time, but mainly on tools/building/woodworking channels.

I think sponsorships work better for more niche products on niche podcasts / YT channels. One great example I can think of are the sponsorships on the Syntax Podcast[1]. IIRC LogRocket was a sponsor a few years ago, I gave it a try based off their ad and I've been a happy customer ever since. Other products they rep are things like Sentry and Sanity and I think those companies are definitely seeing an ROI because they keep coming back.

The problem with the sponsorships you mentioned is they are all broad scale B2C where "everyone" is a potential customer. So you end up with channels that have nothing to do with the product promoting the product and it just comes up as disingenuous. When the hosts of Syntax are telling me that I should try out Sentry, Sanity or any other product in the web dev space, I'm much more confident that it's a legit endorsement based on experience rather than just reading the script.

[1]: https://syntax.fm/

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