Good morning. A new data analysis projected that Cristiano Ronaldo, who’s grown to 66 million YouTube subscribers since joining the platform in July, is going to pass MrBeast in subs by 2026. 

Ronaldo has shared his ambitions to take the crown publicly as he nears the end of his storied soccer career. “Subscribers and records...you have to put these things into perspective, but I want to beat them,” he told reporters in September. In other words: the race is on.   

— Hannah Doyle & Nate Graber-Lipperman

How Reductress Built a Resilient Creator Business

Women's satire media brand Reductress is more than punchy Instagram memes with headlines like “Wow! Woman Concedes Gracefully Without Siccing Violent Mob on Nation’s Capitol.”

Over the last 11 years, they’ve grown to over one million followers and built a steady business that has expanded to include workshops, events, merch, and a branded content studio. 

Reductress co-founder Sarah Pappalardo shared the key to their longevity with us →

Focusing on voice. Reductress started in 2013 with a lean team of two, and operated with $15,000 from a Kickstarter fundraiser.

• "We didn’t have the money to dive into every media trend," Pappalardo said, noting that avoiding the industry-wide "pivot to [Facebook] video" in the mid-2010s allowed them to stay true to their strengths in writing and monetize display ads on their site. 

Strategic diversification. Comedy writing classes and merchandise now generate 60% of their revenue, which doubled from 2021 to 2022. 

• “We taught workshops out of necessity. We genuinely needed more people knowing how to do what we do so we could have writers,” Pappalardo said. “And suddenly we had a global demand for them as soon as we switched over to Zoom live workshops.”

Big picture: Reductress continues to function as a small team, with under 10 full-time employees and a large roster of contributors. In 2022, Pappalardo and her co-founder Beth Newell sold Reductress, but Pappalardo still helps oversee Reductress in other mediums like TikTok.

“Over a decade-plus we’ve developed a language and a world that can now be sustained without my direct influence, which was always the goal, and I’m proud of my incredibly talented staff to maintain that,” Pappalardo said.

Hershey Acquires a Fitness Creator’s Candy Brand

On Friday, fitness creator Maxx Chewning announced that he sold his candy brand, Sour Strips, to The Hershey Company. “Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that one of the largest players in the space would see my vision,” Chewning wrote in an Instagram post.

Context: Chewning, who has 383,000 YouTube subscribers, documented the story of launching Sour Strips on his channel in 2019.

• According to the company’s website, the brand sold 20,000 units within its first hour of launching.

• Chewning shared that Sour Strips generated over $24 million in revenue in 2023.

The secret sauce? Chewning isn’t just another fitness creator cashing in on a brand—he’s a candy fanatic who intimately understands what fellow candy lovers want, down to the sourness level and packaging.

This deep product knowledge (combined with Chewning’s ability to market through his YouTube channel) has helped Sour Strips stand out, and the brand has over 400,000 followers across social media.

Big picture: Unlike other creator-led businesses including MrBeast’s Feastables or Emma Chamberlain’s Chamberlain Coffee, Chewning’s audience isn’t in the millions—and his content mainly centers around fitness tips, not candy. Yet Sour Strips’ success shows that creator-driven brands can thrive beyond their founders’ fanbases and result in acquisitions.

Google’s Ad Market Share is Slipping

For the first time in over a decade, Google’s share of the search advertising market could slip below 50%, according to projections from marketing research company eMarketer.

Zoom in: It’s not just TikTok competing with Google. Users are turning to AI tools like Perplexity AI and OpenAI’s ChatGPT to answer their questions. Perplexity, which serves 100 million search queries a week, says it plans to place advertisements on conversation-like follow-up questions in the near future.

FYI: News publishers including The New York Times and Dow Jones have accused OpenAI and Perplexity of copyright infringement and “content kleptocracy.”

Zoom out: Last week, we wrote about how independent publishers—such as entertainment publication Giant Freakin Robot (GFR)—are ditching blogging for YouTube, as decreasing referral traffic from Google has made their businesses unsustainable.

Google itself has made it clear that the company is prioritizing monetizable, AI-powered search results and overviews in order to keep its competitors at bay.

📽️ From The Studio

Thanks to everyone who came out for Colin and Samir’s Coffee with Creators event yesterday in Venice. We had great conversation, learned from other creators, and even sold a few Boardies. Hope to see you at the next one ✌️ 

👀 Creator Moves

• MegaBuilds is looking for a thumbnail designer to work across three YouTube channels.

• TBNR is hiring an associate producer with at least two years of YouTube production experience.

• 100 Thieves is looking for an account executive to manage partnerships and sales.

Looking to bring on new team members? You can post opportunities on our (free) job board here.

🔥 Press Worthy

• Australia is proposing legislation to ban social media for children under 16.

• Kelly Wakasa kicks off a road trip video series.

• Expand your creator industry knowledge—subscribe to Passionfruit for free.*

• The 2025 Sidemen Charity Match will be held at Wembley Stadium, which has a 90,000 seating capacity.

• PBS is launching a Twitch channel.

• Spotify is adding a TikTok and Instagram integration.

_{*This is sponsored advertising content.}