What is owned media?
Owned media is any channel a brand publishes and controls itself: a newsletter, podcast, YouTube show, blog, print title or community, with an audience that subscribes directly rather than one rented from an ad platform. The brand sets the editorial agenda, holds the subscriber relationship, and keeps the audience when spending stops. Owned Media Directory tracks 37 such channels from brands including Stripe, HubSpot, Robinhood and Salesforce.
This page sets out the terms the directory uses: what owned media is and is not, why so many companies are building it now, what it takes to count as a media company rather than a marketing department with a blog, and what the three origin tags on every card mean. Each definition is followed by entries from the directory, so you can see the idea and then click through to the thing itself.
How is owned media different from paid and earned media?
Paid media is attention a brand buys, such as search ads, sponsorships and social ads, and it stops the moment the budget does. Earned media is attention other people give the brand: press coverage, reviews, word of mouth. Owned media is attention the brand holds directly, through channels it publishes and an audience that opted in. Only owned media keeps compounding without a recurring bill.
| Owned | Paid | Earned | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who controls it | The brand | The ad platform or publisher | Journalists, reviewers, customers |
| What the brand pays for | People, production and tools | Each impression or click | Nothing directly; PR effort |
| Examples | Newsletter, podcast, YouTube show, print title, community | Search ads, social ads, sponsorships | Press coverage, reviews, word of mouth |
| When the budget stops | The audience stays | Reach drops to zero | Nothing changes, but nothing is guaranteed either |
The line is blurrier than the table makes it look. A brand's LinkedIn page is owned in name but rented in practice, because the platform decides who sees each post. An email list sits at the other end: the brand can reach every subscriber, every time, on its own schedule. Podcast feeds and YouTube channels fall in between. That spectrum is why the directory is heavy on newsletters and podcasts and light on social accounts.
Why are brands moving budget from ads into newsletters, podcasts and shows?
Brands are building media because paid attention keeps getting more expensive and less durable, while an owned audience is an asset the company keeps. A newsletter list or podcast feed can be reached again for close to nothing, gives the brand a direct read on what its market cares about, and cannot be switched off by a platform changing its prices or its algorithm.
That figure is old enough to be uncontroversial now. Every year since, more of the ad budget has bought less, and the brands in this directory responded by building something they could keep.
The directory shows the response taking several shapes. HubSpot bought The Hustle in 2021 rather than start a newsletter from nothing. Robinhood bought Chartr in December 2023 and launched Sherwood News in April 2024, a newsroom that covers markets rather than the Robinhood app. Shopify started In Stock on Substack in October 2025. Stripe has run a book imprint, Stripe Press, since 2018, and before that a print magazine, Increment, from 2017 to 2021.
Not all of it lasted. a16z's Future, Salesforce's Marketing Cloudcast and Mailchimp's Going Through It have all ended. They stay in the directory, labelled Ended, because a channel that ran for four years and stopped tells you as much about what owned media costs as one that is still going.
What does it mean for a brand to become a media company?
A brand becomes a media company when it publishes on a schedule, for an audience that would notice if it stopped, with editorial standards that hold even when a piece sells nothing. The test is not whether a company has a blog; it is whether people subscribe to it for its own sake. Stripe Press, Sherwood News and The Hustle pass that test.
A few markers separate the media companies from the content calendars, and they are the same markers the directory looks for before adding an entry:
- A named property.The Ticket, Sherwood News, Big Desk Energy. A masthead, not a "Resources" tab.
- A cadence people can rely on. Weekly, daily, quarterly; the point is that it arrives when it said it would.
- Distance from the product. Sherwood covers markets. Stripe Press publishes books on progress and technology. The Hustle writes about business, not HubSpot.
- Audience metrics, not lead metrics. Subscribers, downloads, readers in how many countries. The Ticket reports more than three million downloads; Courier Media reaches 100,000 readers in more than 26 countries.
How does Owned Media Directory classify a channel's origin?
Every channel card carries one of three origin tags: Built, Acquired or Founder-led. The tag answers a single question: how did this brand come to own this audience? Right now the directory holds 27 built, 8 acquired and 2 founder-led channels. Click any origin tag on a card to come back to the definition below.
What does Built mean in Owned Media Directory?
Built means the brand started the channel itself, from zero subscribers, under its own name. The company chose the format, assigned or hired the people, and grew the audience issue by issue. It is the slowest route and by far the most common: 27 of the 37 channels in Owned Media Directory were built, from Stripe Press to Shopify's In Stock newsletter to Intercom's podcast The Ticket.
Built examples from the directory
Stripe Press
Stripe's in-house book imprint publishing works on economic and technological progress, launched in 2018.
In Stock
Shopify's Substack newsletter of real stories from the front lines of entrepreneurship — founder Q&As, the 'Decoded' merchant-strategy series, and first-person essays. Launching it in October 2025 made Shopify the biggest company yet to start a Substack.
The Ticket
Intercom's customer service podcast, launched in 2015 as the Inside Intercom podcast and rebranded in 2024. Over 3M downloads.
What does Acquired mean in Owned Media Directory?
Acquired means the brand bought a media property that already had an audience, then kept publishing it. The buyer pays for years of trust it did not have to earn and usually leaves the editorial voice alone: HubSpot kept The Hustle's name and newsletter after buying it in 2021, and Zapier kept Makerpad running after its 2021 purchase. 8 channels in the directory carry this tag.
Acquisitions can also unwind. Stripe bought Indie Hackers in 2017 and sold it back to its founders in 2023, which is why the entry is still here but marked Ended. Robinhood went the other way: after buying MarketSnacks in 2019 it kept the Snacks newsletter and now publishes it under Sherwood Media, the newsroom it built itself. Every deal, with its date, reported value and source, is listed on the acquisitions timeline.
Acquired examples from the directory
What does Founder-led mean in Owned Media Directory?
Founder-led means the channel is published under the founder's own name and voice, and the company benefits by association. The person is the masthead: Tyler Denk's Big Desk Energy grows beehiiv, and Bill Kerr's Open Source CEO grows Athyna. A company show that happens to be hosted by a founder, like Stripe's Cheeky Pint with John Collison, is still tagged Built, because the brand publishes it. 2 channels are founder-led today.
The tag is deliberately narrow. Plenty of channels in the directory are fronted by founders: John Collison hosts Cheeky Pint for Stripe, Akshay Kothari hosts First Block for Notion, Christina Cacioppo hosts Frameworks for Growth for Vanta. All three are tagged Built, because the company is the publisher and would keep the show if the host stepped back. Founder-led is reserved for channels where the founder's name is the brand on the masthead.
Founder-led examples from the directory
Big Desk Energy
beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk's newsletter on building the company. Startup insights, stories, and strategy, read by founders, operators, and investors at top startups and funds.
Open Source CEO
Athyna founder-CEO Bill Kerr's newsletter on how the best companies are built. Deep dives on founders, leadership, and go-to-market.
Should a brand build or acquire a media property?
Build when the brand has a point of view, patience, and someone who can write or talk on a schedule. Acquire when it needs an audience this year and can afford to leave the property alone once it owns it. Building is cheap and slow. Acquiring is fast, expensive, and reversible in the wrong way: Stripe bought Indie Hackers in 2017 and sold it back to its founders in 2023.
| Build | Acquire | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to a real audience | Years. The Ticket launched in 2015 and rebranded in 2024. | Day one. The audience comes with the deal. |
| Upfront cost | Salaries and production; low cash, high patience | A purchase price, then salaries and production |
| Editorial control | Total, from the first issue | Limited by design; the voice is what you paid for |
| Main risk | Quietly stopping before it compounds | The audience leaves when the founders do |
| In the directory | 27 channels | 8 channels |
The two are not exclusive. Robinhood acquired Snacks and Chartr, then built Sherwood News to house them. HubSpot acquired The Hustle and with it the podcast My First Million. The pattern in the directory is that acquisitions tend to happen once a brand already has a built channel and knows what it is buying.
Common questions
Is a company blog owned media?
Yes. A blog sits on a domain the brand controls, so it is owned media by definition. Owned Media Directory only lists a blog when it works as a publication in its own right, with a name, a cadence and readers who come back for it, such as Gong Labs or PostHog's Product for Engineers. A resources tab full of gated PDFs does not qualify.
Which channels does Owned Media Directory track?
Owned Media Directory tracks 37 brand-owned channels across newsletters, podcasts, YouTube shows, blogs, communities, print and events. Each entry records the owning brand, the format, the origin (Built, Acquired or Founder-led), when it launched and whether it is still publishing. Ended channels stay in the directory, labelled as such, because what stopped is as instructive as what kept going.
Who maintains Owned Media Directory?
Owned Media Directory is curated by Isaac Peiris, who writes the Brand Chemistry newsletter about how brands connect with their audiences. Entries are added and checked by hand rather than scraped, which keeps the bar high and the coverage incomplete. Anyone can suggest a channel that is missing through the form linked from every page.
See the 37 channels
Browse every entry, filter by format, or start from the brands and work down to what each one owns. If you know of a channel that belongs here, suggest it.
Is social media owned media?
Partly. A brand owns its profile and its posts, but the platform owns the distribution and can change reach, pricing or rules at any time, so social is better described as rented. Owned Media Directory treats social as a format only where it carries a real show with its own name and audience, such as TBPN, rather than listing company accounts.