State of Brands as Media, 2026

What share of brand media channels are built rather than acquired?

Most brand media is built, not bought. Of the 37 channels in Owned Media Directory, 27 (73%) were built in-house from zero subscribers, 8 (22%) were acquired with an audience already attached, and 2 (5%) are founder-led, published under a founder's own name. Acquisitions cluster in B2B SaaS (3), Fintech (3), AI (1) and Marketing & Growth (1).

The three routes are not equally reversible. Built channels tend to end quietly: Stripe ran the print magazine Increment from 2017 to 2021, a16z closed Future, and Salesforce stopped The Marketing Cloudcast. Acquisitions can unwind outright: Stripe bought Indie Hackers in 2017 and sold it back to its founders in April 2023. All of them stay in the directory labelled Ended, 5 channels in total, because what stopped is part of the picture. Every deal is on the acquisitions timeline and every founder's channel on the founder-led table; the definitions are in the explainer.

Which industry has the most brands building owned media?

B2B SaaS has the most brands building owned media in Owned Media Directory: 7 brands owning 13 channels, 35% of the directory, including Gong, Salesforce, HubSpot and Intercom. The most common format in the group is the podcast. The other 8 industries tracked are Marketing & Growth (4 brands), Fintech (3 brands), Venture Capital (1 brand), AI (1 brand), E-commerce (1 brand), Productivity (1 brand), Recruiting & HR (1 brand) and Security & Compliance (1 brand).

The shape of the table says something on its own. B2B SaaS holds 35% of the channels; 6 of the 9 industries are a single brand. That is partly the directory's bias, since B2B software companies publish in English, in public, about their own marketing, and are easy to find. It is also real: a software company selling to marketers or sales teams has a natural editorial beat and a buyer who reads. The single-brand rows are the ones to watch, because a second entrant in an industry tends to arrive by copying the first.

How do B2B SaaS and AI brands use owned media to build authority?

B2B SaaS brands in Owned Media Directory build authority by running named publications with editorial distance from the product: 7 brands, 13 channels. HubSpot bought The Hustle and the My First Million podcast in 2021 rather than start from nothing. Salesforce built Salesforce+ in 2021 and runs the Blazing Trails podcast. Intercom's podcast The Ticket reports more than three million downloads. Gong publishes Gong Labs, The Edge and the Reveal podcast. AI is the youngest group, 1 brand and 1 channel, and its one move so far was a purchase: OpenAI acquired the daily show TBPN in April 2026.

The pattern across the B2B SaaS group is the same one the explainer uses as its test of a media company: a named property, a cadence, and distance from the product. The Hustle writes about business, not HubSpot. Gong Labs publishes what Gong sees in sales calls rather than what Gong sells. PostHog's Product for Engineers is about building products, not PostHog. Not every one held: Salesforce started The Marketing Cloudcast in 2015 and it has since ended, so it stays in the directory labelled Ended.

AI is the group to read with care. One brand is not a trend, and the brand in question did not build anything: OpenAI's first media move was to buy TBPN, a show with an audience already attached, on 2 April 2026 (OpenAI). Whether the next AI lab builds or buys is the question this table will answer over the coming year. AI as a subject is already spread across other rows: Gong's Reveal: The Revenue AI Podcast is filed under B2B SaaS, because the tag follows the owner, not the subject.

Which formats do brands choose?

Newsletters lead, in 16 of 37 channels, followed by podcasts in 14. The email list is the format a brand controls most completely and the podcast feed is the one that travels furthest, which is why the directory is heavy on both and light on social accounts. Print, events and communities appear where a brand has already earned an audience elsewhere.

An entry that spans several formats (Courier Media is print, a newsletter and a podcast) counts once in each row, so the shares add to more than 100%.

What moved in the last two years

Three moves set the tone for the period, and each one is a different route in.

• April 2026, acquired. OpenAI bought TBPN, the daily tech talk show, on 2 April 2026: the first purchase of a media company by an AI lab, terms undisclosed (OpenAI).
• October 2025, built. Shopify started In Stock on Substack, a newsletter launched from zero by a company that could have bought one.
• December 2023 to April 2024, both. Robinhood bought Chartr in December 2023 (Robinhood) and then built Sherwood News in April 2024 to house it alongside Snacks, the newsletter it had acquired in 2019. The acquisitions came first and the built newsroom followed, the order the directory sees most often.

Is there a resource that tracks brand-owned media initiatives by industry?

Yes. Owned Media Directory tags every brand with one of 9 industries (B2B SaaS, Marketing & Growth, Fintech, Venture Capital and AI and others) and every channel with its format and its origin (Built, Acquired or Founder-led), so the 37 channels can be filtered down to, say, acquired B2B SaaS podcasts. This page is the summary of those tags. The brands index groups the companies by industry, the acquisitions timeline lists every deal with its source, and the founder-led table pairs each founder's channel with the company it grew.

The directory is curated by hand, which keeps the bar high and the coverage incomplete. A brand that is missing is a brand nobody has sent through yet, not a judgement. To cite a figure from this page, quote it with the month you read it, because the counts will have moved by the time someone checks.