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Trending The Market
Alex Cooper’s Unwell Gets A Very Good $500 Million Valuation
Unwell, the media company co-founded by popular digital creator and influential podcast host of Call Her Daddy Alex Cooper, is now worth $500 million after receiving a fresh round of investment.
The Big Pitch: Individual creators now have enough cache to form large media companies and command sky-high valuations, demonstrating how digital fame and consistent content can form the foundation for a multi-pronged business.
The Fine Print: In three short years, Unwell — which was founded in 2023 by Cooper and her husband, film producer Matt Kaplan — is now a nine-figure media growth story.
Patrick Whitesell’s WTSL invested an undisclosed amount into the self-funded company, but enough to value it at $500 million.
The funds are meant to help Unwell expand its video and launch new consumer products businesses, per Bloomberg.
But the crux of the funding is all about her growing media empire. To that end, Cooper is shutting down her Unwell Hydration drink brand, which she launched in collaboration with Nestlé last year.
The flagship asset of Unwell is, of course, Call Her Daddy, which rakes in $30 million annually from a distribution and ad sales deal with Sirius XM alone. But, Cooper has proven herself to be a savvy businessperson across several ventures, including a series for YouTube, live programming for Peacock, and an ad agency with Google.
The Analysis: Cooper and her Unwell banner aren’t the only creators graduating from streams to the C-suite. Hank Green, Rhett & Link, MrBeast, Dhar Man, Emma Chamberlain, and Jay Shetty have all been growing their businesses in ways that compete with traditional media players.
There’s a reason for that surge. eMarketer estimates that US brands will spend at least $21 billion on creators this year — 2x the amount they spent in 2022. When the money is flowing, creators will leverage that investment to become brands in and of themselves.
We are entering an era where talent is the new suit. That could be a game changer in determining which ventures go viral.
Together with Consumable
Audio For The Outcomes Era
Most media plans treat audio as a few line items: a streaming buy, maybe a podcast sponsorship. But the audio ecosystem is far bigger than that… and much of it is going untouched.
Mobile apps, addressable podcast audiences, and creator-led content extended across platforms — these are spaces where attention is intentional and trust already exists.
Consumable opens up that ecosystem.
The tool helps you reach 210M+ Comscore-verified monthly users across formats and channels.
It’s powered by listener intelligence, precision targeting, and modern identity infrastructure.
Every audio impression is measurable, addressable, and tied to real outcomes.
Consumable lets brands reach audiences wherever they listen, with the same precision and accountability marketers expect from their best digital channels.
Through immersive ad experiences that combine audio, visuals, and interactivity, brands can finally turn listening into engagement and business impact.
Building The Stack
YouTube Tweaks Partner Program To Rely Less On Ad Revenue
YouTube announced that it’s both broadening its Partner Program and making it more exclusive. For those that relied on viral Shorts for revenue, YouTube is raising the bar — the metrics needed to qualify for monetization will now double to 8,000 hours of watch time over 365 days or 20 million Shorts views over 90 days. The move is meant to spotlight the other ways creators can now get paid on the platform, including Fan Funding, YouTube Shopping, brand deals, and more. In other words, it’s an opportunity for creators and brands to strike deeper partnerships.
Meta’s Partnership Ads Power More Clicks
AI-native ad platform Agentio released some fascinating insights about Meta’s new Partnership Ads — paid ads made by a creator on both Facebook and Instagram. After analyzing 65,000 Partnership Ads, the company found that they had a 19% better click-through rate than other formats, like licensed media or simply user-generated content. That’s because the ad is under the creator’s name, not the brands. In other words, customers trust the content more.
FilmHub Wants To Get Creators More Eyeballs
FilmHub, a global sales and content-distribution company, is making a major play into the brand-creator economy with a new deal with talent-management firm UnderCurrent. FilmHub will work with the firm’s talent to package and sell their digital content across the film and TV ecosystem, including FAST channels, ad-supported streamers like Tubi and Pluto, and more. It could further blur the line between digital content and mainstream TV… and give brands the opportunity to be behind those transmedia stories.
Are you looking to make sponsorship deals with creator-led companies?
Social Updates
Facebook debuted a standalone app for Creator Studio — a personalized, AI-powered platform to help creators optimize their content.
X if open-sourcing its For You feed to let users see for themselves how the platform’s recommendation engine works.
Twitch is doubling down on opting-in all its users for training Amazon’s large-language models.
YouTube’s AI chatbot, “Ask YouTube,” is officially coming to the company’s mobile app.
YouTube will start counting a “view” the moment a video begins playing.
Spotify announced that it will start putting a badge on artist profiles it suspects are AI avatars.
Wrapping Up
That's the week in the brand-creator economy. We'll be back in your inbox next Tuesday.
A reminder: Authentic, the Brand-Creator Summit, is coming to New York on November 18th… and it’s going to be an event you don’t want to miss.
A single day of curated conversations with decision-makers across brand marketing, creator platforms, talent, agencies, and investment — all in direct conversation about what's driving the future of the brand-creator economy.
This is the first time we're bringing the community this newsletter is built for into the same room, and we intend to make it the kind of gathering worth coming back to year after year.
If you want to be one of the first to know when tickets go on sale, request a notification at authentic.aivanta.io
— The Authentic Team