All roads lead to ads...
Substack’s shift toward sponsorships, social features, and platform growth isn’t surprising—it’s familiar. What happens when every creative tool eventually becomes a media company?
Remember when Substack proudly claimed it would never become another ad-riddled social media machine? That the future of the internet was intimate, writer-led, and reader-supported? Yeah, that is likely no longer true…
A few days ago, Substack raised a fresh $100 million in Series C funding, bringing its valuation to a cool $1.1 billion. For most startups, that kind of money is a victory lap. But for Substack, it also marks a philosophical U-turn. Ads, social features, algorithmic discovery—all the things it once criticized—are now central to its roadmap.
I’ve been mulling over what this means, not just for the platform, but for the broader ecosystem of independent publishing. Substack wasn’t just a newsletter platform. It was a signal. A declaration that we didn’t need the old internet anymore. That the direct relationship between writer and reader could be sacred, sustainable—and maybe even revolutionary.
So why the pivot?
Let’s unpack this.
The Original Promise
When I first started paying attention to Substack, what hooked me wasn’t just the format—it was the philosophy. No ads. No algorithms. No clickbait. Just a clean, writer-owned publishing tool with email at its core. You knew your audience. They knew you. No middleman nudging you to optimize for rage or attention.
It felt like a throwback to the blog era, (yes I used to have one) but with a business model that actually worked.
Substack’s pitch was simple: if you write something people love, some of them will pay you for it. Not because they have to—but because they want to support you.
In a world dominated by the dopamine loop of social media, this was oxygen.
When the Math don’t Math
Of course, oxygen doesn’t pay server bills. And $100 million in venture capital doesn’t come without strings—especially when your entire business depends on convincing a subset of people to pay for newsletters. Substack takes a 10% cut of paid subscriptions. It’s a great model for writers who scale, but it doesn’t scale easily for Substack itself.
At some point, the math stops working. That’s the crux of it: subscription fatigue is real. The top 1% of Substack writers are thriving, but the long tail? Not so much. Most newsletters plateau after an initial growth spurt. You might have a few hundred free readers, a few dozen paid subs. Enough to feel gratifying, but not enough for substack to build a unicorn.
Our little experiment here is 44 subscriber strong right now and nudging upwards each week.
So what do you do when you're sitting on a $1B valuation and need to 10x your revenue?
You reach for the growth playbook: engagement loops, social graphs, advertising, creator bundles, sponsorship tooling. You stop being a publishing tool and start being a media platform
From Publishing Tool to Platform
If you've been watching Substack closely over the past year, the signs were there. First came “Substack Notes”—a short-form social feed that looked suspiciously like Twitter. Then came podcasting and video. Then cross-promotions, paid bundles, and recommendations.
And now? Ads.
Well, “sponsorship bundles” and “monetization tools,” if you want to use the sanitized language. But functionally, it’s a shift away from the pure subscription model toward a hybrid one. One where creators can sell sponsorship slots, accept brand deals, or bundle content in ad-supported ways.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, many writers I know want those tools. Especially those trying to grow beyond the confines of a niche paid audience.
But let’s not pretend this isn’t a departure from the original pitch.
How Does This Compare to Medium?
Funnily enough, the new Substack is starting to look more like Medium every day.
Medium was always about reach. A place where your work could find readers, even if they didn’t know you. You write, it gets picked up by the algorithm, and boom—you’re in front of thousands of eyeballs. Monetization came through the Partner Program, which paid you based on how much time members spent reading your work.
Substack was supposed to be the anti-Medium. Instead of writing for algorithms, you wrote for people who chose to subscribe. You could own your list, own your brand, and build something durable over time.
But as Medium struggled with identity—was it a platform, a publisher, or a social network?—Substack saw an opportunity to stay focused.
Now, ironically, it’s Medium that feels more like a publishing tool again, while Substack flirts with being a social platform.
The Tradeoffs
I get why Substack is doing this. Most creators want growth and monetization. They want tools to reach new audiences. They want flexibility beyond paid newsletters. But here’s the tension:
The more Substack behaves like a social network, the more it invites the same dynamics that broke the last generation of social media.
The more it leans into advertising and brand sponsorships, the more it risks diluting the writer-reader relationship it was built on.
And the more it tries to be everything—newsletter, social feed, podcast host, discovery engine—the harder it will be to do any one thing really well.
This isn’t a purity test. I’m not here to say ads are evil or growth is bad. But platforms shape behavior. If the incentives change, the content changes. If discovery becomes algorithmic, creators optimize for it. If reach is tied to engagement metrics, you’ll see more provocation, more noise, and yes—more sponsored content.
As the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out, Substack's new ad model is already turning some writers into part-time sales reps. The platform offers basic sponsorship tools, but no matchmaking or dedicated ad-sales support. Creators are left to pitch brands, close deals, and deliver campaigns themselves. Some love the independence. Others find it exhausting.
When Everything Converges Toward Ads
This moment doesn’t mark a dramatic shift so much as a familiar rhythm. Substack is responding to what many of its writers want: scalable income, better discovery, and ways to sustain their work without relying solely on paid subscriptions. These are real, legitimate needs.
But what we’re witnessing is a broader pattern—one that repeats across nearly every creative platform. A platform starts off pure, focused, even idealistic. And slowly, as it grows, it bends toward the well-worn path of engagement and monetization.
Attention is the easiest thing to price.
It’s not a betrayal. It’s not even surprising. It just feels inevitable. Like gravity. Every digital platform that scales seems to drift in the same direction—toward growth, toward frictionless revenue, toward ads.
All roads may lead to ads, the journey is still be yours to design.
Substack’s evolution reflects a deeper question for all of us: how do we stay grounded as the tools around us shift?
We don’t need to resist every new feature or romanticize an older, simpler web. But we can choose how we respond—what we adopt, what we ignore, what we double down on.
For some, this means leaning into discovery and sponsorships. For others, it’s a return to basics: writing for a small, loyal audience without the pressure to scale.
No judgment either way. Just an invitation to pause and be intentional.
What do you think?
Do these new directions excite you? Or make you pause? Are we adapting to new realities—or slowly rebuilding the internet we once tried to leave behind?
I’d love to hear your take. Let’s talk in the comments.
There are still fundamental differences between Substack and Medium (authors own their audience and subscriptions on Substack) and between Substack and social media (ad deals are picked by creators, not by the platform). I don't see these fundamentals changing.