How Do Microinfluencers (Like Haxman) Land Brand Deals on YouTube?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Next in Media – "How Do Microinfluencers (Like Hacksman) Land Brand Deals on YouTube?"

Introduction

In the March 27, 2025 episode of Next in Media, host Mike Shields delves into the evolving landscape of YouTube influencer marketing. This episode features insightful discussions with Josh Stanley and Myra Dallas of Coaxial Collective, alongside Adam Vandegrift, a seasoned YouTube creator known as Hacksman. The conversation centers on how microinfluencers secure brand partnerships, navigate challenges, and maintain authenticity in an ever-changing digital ecosystem.

Meet Coaxial Collective and Their Mission

Josh Stanley introduces Coaxial Collective, highlighting its focus on supporting YouTube creators in the home improvement, DIY, and professional construction niches. With a decade-long background in influencer marketing, Josh explains how Coaxial identifies and fills market gaps by assisting creators with partnerships, data analytics, and media plan integration.

"Coaxial is really about helping our YouTube creators with burdensome tasks and finding the right brand partnerships."
— Josh Stanley [01:53]

Myra Dallas elaborates on Coaxial’s unique approach, emphasizing the importance of placing creators at the center of their operations. She discusses the common disconnect between brands and creators, noting the lack of mutual understanding regarding each party’s motivations and needs.

"We're putting creators at the center and helping brands understand what truly matters to them."
— Myra Dallas [04:57]

Adam Vandegrift’s Journey as Hacksman

Adam Vandegrift shares his decade-long experience on YouTube, focusing on his transition into brand collaborations. Initially working with smaller brands, Adam describes the pitfalls of early partnerships, such as valuing free products over genuine fit, which can harm channel authenticity and audience trust.

"Early brand deals often hurt the channel because they didn't align with my audience."
— Adam Vandegrift [06:05]

Challenges for Microinfluencers

Adam highlights the difficulties microinfluencers face in negotiating with brands, including low-ball offers and the lack of responsive communication from larger brands. He credits Coaxial Collective for educating him on effective brand interactions and the importance of understanding performance metrics.

"Coaxial educated me on how to navigate brand deals and understand the metrics that matter."
— Adam Vandegrift [07:21]

The State of Influencer Marketing: YouTube vs. Instagram and TikTok

The discussion shifts to the competitive landscape of influencer marketing. Myra Dallas points out that YouTube lags behind Instagram and TikTok in performance marketing strength, primarily due to the more transactional nature of these platforms. However, recent trends indicate a shift as YouTube grows in viewership, particularly on connected TVs and living rooms.

"YouTube is now the number one way content is consumed on connected TVs, which changes the game for influencer marketing."
— Myra Dallas [10:34]

"Long-form content on YouTube fosters deeper relationships and trust with viewers, unlike the fleeting interactions on shorter platforms."
— Myra Dallas [12:27]

Authentic Brand Partnerships

The conversation emphasizes the necessity for authenticity in brand partnerships. Adam explains his preference for collaborations that allow genuine expression rather than scripted promotions. He shares positive experiences with brands like Element, which value his honest endorsement over rigid advertising scripts.

"Element understands that I should naturally incorporate their product, allowing for a more authentic connection with my audience."
— Adam Vandegrift [23:11]

Josh Stanley and Myra Dallas echo the sentiment, stressing that brands must align with creators’ authentic voices to build lasting relationships and avoid alienating audiences.

"Authentic partnerships are crucial. If brands don't align with the creator's voice, it merely becomes another paid sponsorship without genuine impact."
— Josh Stanley [25:13]

The Impact of YouTube TV Growth

The rise of YouTube on connected TVs introduces both opportunities and challenges. Adam Vandegrift notes that while long-form content thrives on TVs, maintaining engagement without being boring is crucial, as viewers have little patience for uninteresting content.

"On YouTube, you cannot afford to be boring. The platform demands engaging content to keep viewers hooked."
— Adam Vandegrift [20:14]

Myra Dallas highlights that YouTube’s dual advantage of being akin to traditional TV while retaining social media’s relational strengths positions it uniquely for brands seeking deeper audience connections.

"YouTube combines the best of social and TV, allowing for both relationship building and broad reach."
— Myra Dallas [26:59]

Future Directions and Insights

Looking ahead, Coaxial Collective plans to expand into adjacent categories like outdoor recreation, leveraging their expertise in specific niches to offer unparalleled depth and understanding to brands. Myra emphasizes the importance of specialized knowledge in driving effective influencer partnerships.

"Vertically focused groups like Coaxial are essential for providing the depth and expertise needed in specific categories."
— Myra Dallas [26:59]

Josh Stanley concludes by acknowledging the ongoing evolution of influencer marketing and the critical role of authentic, long-term partnerships in driving meaningful brand and creator success.

Conclusion

This episode of Next in Media provides a comprehensive exploration of the microinfluencer brand deal landscape on YouTube. Through the experiences of Adam Vandegrift and the strategic insights from Coaxial Collective, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities in fostering authentic brand partnerships. The discussion underscores the importance of trust, authenticity, and specialized expertise in navigating the dynamic world of influencer marketing on YouTube.

Notable Quotes:

• Josh Stanley [01:53]: "Coaxial is really about helping our YouTube creators with burdensome tasks and finding the right brand partnerships."

• Myra Dallas [04:57]: "We're putting creators at the center and helping brands understand what truly matters to them."

• Adam Vandegrift [06:05]: "Early brand deals often hurt the channel because they didn't align with my audience."

• Myra Dallas [10:34]: "YouTube is now the number one way content is consumed on connected TVs, which changes the game for influencer marketing."

• Adam Vandegrift [23:11]: "Element understands that I should naturally incorporate their product, allowing for a more authentic connection with my audience."

• Josh Stanley [25:13]: "Authentic partnerships are crucial. If brands don't align with the creator's voice, it merely becomes another paid sponsorship without genuine impact."

• Myra Dallas [26:59]: "YouTube combines the best of social and TV, allowing for both relationship building and broad reach."

• Adam Vandegrift [20:14]: "On YouTube, you cannot afford to be boring. The platform demands engaging content to keep viewers hooked."

Transcript

[Mike Shields]

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[Josh Stanley]

Beast. Let's get started. Hi everybody. Welcome to Next Media. I'm Mike Shields. I've got multiple guests this week. We've got Josh Stanley and Myra Dallas of the Coaxial Collective and Adam Vandegrift, who is a YouTube creator better known as Hacksman. Hi everybody. Thanks for being here.

[Myra Dallas]

Hello.

[Adam Vandegrift]

Thanks for having me.

[Myra Dallas]

Yeah, thanks. Appreciate you, Mike.

[Mike Shields]

I'm going to jump around a bit.

[Josh Stanley]

But please feel free to, to, to jump in and interject. But I don't. Maybe Myra, we could start with you. Tell us who you are and what, what this company's about and I don't want to get into the sector a little bit.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And first, thanks for having us. So, yes, Myra Dallas, I am the CEO and co founder of Coaxial Collective. We are really into space. My background is influencer marketing. I had an agency that I ran for over almost a decade and really identified some gaps in the market that needed to be filled. And so Coaxial is really about how we go to helping our YouTube creators in the various burdensome tasks that they experience as well as helping them find partnerships, help brands connect with them it is a niche space. So we are focused in the home improvement, DIY and professional construction YouTube space right now.

Okay. So there have been lots of attempts, as the creator of Marketplace has evolved over the years, attempts at building the backend organization that they might need, whether that's a straight up ad network to some kind of influencer database, to some kind of hybrid production slash execution company. Let's say, what have you seen over time and maybe how has that evolved to where you see it opening right now for something new?

[Myra Dallas]

Yeah, I could jump in here. Yeah. I would even add MCNS to the mix there too. Right. You've had a number of agencies into your point solutions that are trying to address maybe disparate needs inside of the creator economy. And we're really focused on YouTube. And so when we say creator, we tend to mean YouTube, where, you know, there's the whole other side of the influencer marketing with Instagram, TikTok, et cetera. But yeah, I think. I think what's unique about Coaxial is this idea of really putting the creator at the center and asking ourselves, what is it that matters most to them that allows them to reduce pain? And we're kind of learning as we go, working with folks like Adam and AKA Hacksman, and like, seeing where there's gaps in the market around understanding. And even just when I say that, I mean, like, how brands view creators and how creators view brands, there's a lack of, like, clarity around what each of them care about and what motivates them. And when you get kind of behind both veils and you understand, oh, yeah, when you have someone like Amira, who's been in influencer marketing and has worked with hundreds of brands and tens of thousands of influencers through Acorn Influence, like, she has a depth of understanding of what that world looks like, and she can help translate that to someone like an Adam or our other creators to help them see, like, oh, these are the things that matter to these brands. I think that's been missing a lot of what we're also adding into the mix, like video editing optimization, thumbnail optimization, et cetera. Like all these services, we're not creating anything brand new out of thin air. Like, this is all. This has been done before in some form or fashion, but I think it hasn't been done with the right intent. And that is putting creators at the center and yes, also saying, how can we service brands in the right way with the right understanding of their needs?

[Josh Stanley]

All right, so Adam, let's bring you into the conversation. Give People a little bit of your history as a creator and then maybe like, when did you first start working with brands and where have you felt the pain that maybe you needed to get more organized, get some help, the space.

[Adam Vandegrift]

So I've been doing YouTube now for, for 10 years this year, actually over multiple different channels that, that we've had over the years, you know, probably about eight years ago is when we first started interacting with brands and I'm sorry.

[Josh Stanley]

Give people a gist of your channel and what you're about for it. Before we got that problem, I should have asked that.

[Adam Vandegrift]

Okay, so my channel now, which was started, I think I actually started this channel five years ago. So it's kind of a DIY project, channel, home projects. I kind of take a, an angle at it. Instead of it being a straight up educational, I try to, you know, I try to be funny. I don't know that I always achieve that, but, you know, I try to look at it as edutainment. I want it to be, I want people to come because they want to be entertained, number one. And then if I can offer some advice or give tips, if they can learn something from it, that's a side benefit.

[Josh Stanley]

Gotcha. And then you said you started working with brands like pretty early on, but what. I'm sure that's evolved quite a bit over the years. What has that been like?

[Adam Vandegrift]

Oh, yeah. So as every creator finds, you know, the first brands that you work with are the probably like Amazon sellers who just want to send you free products, you know, and when you're a small channel, wow, you're excited because you got this free battery or whatever, you know, and, and you end up actually getting taken advantage of in, in some cases. And for most creators, you really have no idea where you should be. You don't know what the value is. You don't know.

[Josh Stanley]

Right. You don't know what the, what your prices should be or shouldn't be.

[Adam Vandegrift]

Yeah. So you're just, and especially if you're new, you're just like, wow, this is amazing. And a lot of times it can actually hurt your channel because you're just like, well, I can get this. That's cool. I'll do a video about that. And I see a lot of people do this where they don't understand that. And I can see on their channel, and it's like that video, you did that because you got that product and it has nothing to do with your audience really. And it actually ends up hurting the channel. And so we worked with a few, we Shared a kids channel to begin with and we worked with like Elmer's glue. That was, that was a pretty big deal that we did. That was my biggest deal that I ever did. That one was probably about six years ago, actually, just before I started this channel. And then once I started this channel, you kind of start the whole process over again because it's a new channel. You're going through all the same motions again. But as a creator, you just don't have those connections, you know, to the people.

[Josh Stanley]

I hope someone calls me. Do you start calling up all these big agencies, brands, and who do I get in touch with or what is it? What does it look like for you?

[Adam Vandegrift]

I would get some offers from some fairly big brands every now and then or from agents. And a lot of those honestly are low ball offers. And I would try to reach out to some of the bigger brands, but you know, just cold, cold calling or whatever, those brands usually falls on deaf ears. You generally don't even get a response back from that. So it's pretty, it's pretty difficult, at least it was for me to navigate as just a creator. That's not what I do, you know, and that's one thing that working with Coaxial, they've educated me on a lot of this stuff that's, you know, it's kind of blown my mind as they explain this stuff. And a lot of it's actually encouraging. You know, I'll talk with Myra and I'll say, well, you know, she'll explain these stats. I'm like, wow, I didn't even know that. That's, that's encouraging for me, you know.

[Josh Stanley]

So Myra, Josh, anybody who wants to jump in, but where it's, it's surprising me. I can understand the needs in the market, certainly, but I guess it's, I would be a little surprised that you still find this lack of understanding of the mindset of both parties because you think by now the brands would be there and you know, the, and the companies would, this would be so established. But it's, I guess it's ever evolving. And the role of creators, call them influencers, creators, where they fit is probably always changing too. So where, what are the, what are the big things that both sides miss here?

I mean, Michael, if you think about. Yes, should we be further along potentially. But 2016 was really about the time that influencer marketing became to be accepted. And if you think about that, we're not even a decade into the space. And so the opportunity for this to continue to evolve and you know, two years later the creator economy became in 2018 was really when it started to be evolving and accepted and it was broader than just you know, Facebook and meta and you know, owned properties. So YouTube has been around for a very long time. But as the accepted, you know, channels and spaces brands are still operating under the traditional marketing, you know, terminology and metrics. Some of them have have you know, continue to push forward in accepting the digital, you know, in attribution metrics. Some have not. Similarly, you think about, you know, the creators while they're evolving and they understand and Adam certainly understands so much. There's nuances to this space and having been on both sides we believe we are able to bridge that gap and we'll continue to bridge that gap helping everybody understand and levelize and normalize what we're talking about from a metrics the authentic, you know, voice and really that it's not just a transactional but it is a relationship based consideration. Those are things that while we all think, you know we can snap our fingers and be in on all level we're certainly not yet and I think that it's going to continue to be, you know, advocacy for for our creators and relationship based explanations that will get us there.

[Myra Dallas]

I would add like YouTube is lagging to Instagram and TikTok and influencer marketing like it is lags like period. So that's.

[Josh Stanley]

That would surprise me because not a drug. I why because YouTube is supposedly they're the guys that still pay and they have. You're seeing their own encroach on television. But you. But in terms of influencer marketing they're behind the other guys.

[Myra Dallas]

They're behind because they don't have that same performance marketing strength that Instagram and TikTok has. Right. I can be on my phone, I can see a 30 second something sponsored by an influencer, click a button and boom, I'm transacting. That isn't what YouTube is and I think as there's there's multiple tailwinds happening right now and you just hit it a minute ago with a brief statement of yeah the gauge report coming out back in May and saying that YouTube is now the number one way content's consumed on connected TVs and living rooms was a big deal even though brands had they seen it coming. It's not like it like you know, went from last to first overnight. But the fact that it is now number one the fact that it does continue to grow in share viewership share every every report you almost have at the same time this like the Nike backlash, the. Oh yeah. Like we can't just pour everything we have into performance marketing. Reach and awareness does matter from a marketing standpoint. So I think it's like this convergence of all these tailwinds kind of pointing people at YouTube now and realizing, yeah, you can have conversion on YouTube and more importantly, you're not going to create a relationship with a viewer in 30 seconds long form content. Like what you do with this channel, like how your personality comes out with your content. How Adam presents his whole self, his whole authentic self and his content, his entertaining side, his charismatic side. And our other creators do similar things. Like that's where trust is built. That's where parasocial relationships are formed. Where as a viewer or listener, I become connected with. I consumed a lot of Adam's content before we ever talked on the phone and I felt like I knew him when we first chatted. Like, dude, I know that's not the.

[Josh Stanley]

Same as a bunch of 30 second executions with influencers that might sell stuff temporarily but don't build anything.

[Myra Dallas]

Exactly. You can't build a brand there. Like, and you maybe have done this. I know I've done this. I bought a vest from some random brand or I, my wife buys random stuff on Instagram, but I will never buy from that brand again. Like, there's no loyalty, there's 100% churn happening versus like when someone I trust, whether it's in YouTube or podcast format, I think long form is where this happens. Like when someone I trust recommends something, like I consider it and I think about it and I'm, when I buy it, I'm like, they like this and this is what they said they like about it. What do I like about it? There's like an introspection happening that doesn't, it just doesn't exist in these like fast hit 30 second videos that make me want to buy something right now.

[Josh Stanley]

Adam, have you been, You've been on YouTube for a while. Have you been tempted or feel. Feeling pressure to do the I got to be in every single platform and do every sort of 30 second hit kind of thing. And then I'm also curious if things have changed with YouTube on TV becoming a bigger play.

[Adam Vandegrift]

Yeah, it's one of those things that I've thought about over the years because obviously tons of people have a lot of success on the short form content, but it is such a different strateg strategy and the way you approach it in every way, the way you edit it, everything and it's just too much, you know, I'm a one man show, so it's just been too much for me to wrap my head around. I love YouTube. Now YouTube obviously has their shorts now, but the long form content like, like y'all were speaking about. YouTube allows you better than any other platform for long form to connect with the viewers on like an emotional level where they hopefully will care about you, not just, you know, just blindly scrolling and well, okay, so I, you know, I subscribe to this person so YouTube will show me their videos all the time. They, they want to come back and see you so you can have that connection. So hopefully, you know, the theory would be that that would add more weight for an advertiser with the channel because it's not just, oh, and by the way, here's this random thing I'm putting in here. It means something because it's hopefully it's kind of like your friend promoting it or telling you something they would recommend.

[Josh Stanley]

Has it changed this? Because I imagine you probably you are this category that it lends itself to a lot of people doing like service content. How do I fix my dishwasher right now? Versus the entertaining stuff you're talking about? Has that changed your approach that you people are doing longer sessions and watching on a big screen? Or is it, is your mix maybe different than a typical creator, if there is one?

[Adam Vandegrift]

No, it's definitely the. I've actually, my videos used to be around 10 to 15 minutes long. Now I try to keep them and not drag them out. I still try to keep them entertaining, but I just try to do more in the video. I try to have like around a 22 minute long video now because I think 54% of my viewers are actually watching on TV. So mine has moved to mostly TV and that kind of changes your approach to how you do your titles and how you do your thumbnails. It used to be everything you did and I still think about this. You know, you want to make it really small and see how does that look and everything. And even when you're filming, you know, if everything's a wide shot and somebody's watching it on their phone, everything's tiny. They can't see what's going on. So knowing that it's, you know, most of the audience is on TV now, it does absolutely influence the way you think about every aspect of it.

[Josh Stanley]

Why for the quacks of folks, why focus on this category? Is it just, is this underserved? Do you feel like, you know, this is just, you want to start here and expand beyond like what's the thinking behind this home improvement slash work kind of category. I guess if you go look at.

[Myra Dallas]

The top 100 creator brands. So if you go look at the creators that have had success launching their own brands, which is a bit of a deviation from what we've been talking about.

[Josh Stanley]

You mean like a feastables or the candy brand, whatever, stuff like that.

[Myra Dallas]

Yeah, Outlier being feastables. Right. Like someone who's, you know, did 250 million at Walmart last year, who doesn't know, who didn't know anything about confectionaries and had no right to win in confectionery. Right?

Maybe, yeah.

[Josh Stanley]

What's. Mr. B is probably his own universe.

[Myra Dallas]

Probably he's his own universe. But There's a top 100 list out there of creator brands, like creator launch brands and like where they. Among the top categories is actually home and garden and food and beverage. And we really like the analogy of looking at YouTube as a replacement for mass media conglomerates. So thinking about it like this, like, okay, Food Network. We looked at, we talked to Food Network, Food Network analogy, like creators. Let's just assume we talked to some other categories like that when we reached the HGTV analogy, when we started talking to people like Adam. I will say this. The, the, the down to earth nature, the humbleness, the thing we call our secret sauce is really focusing in on people who are good at creating an emotional connection. People who again, express themselves authentically through their videos. Like we're not talking about channels where you're just like watching somebody built something for an hour and a half and you never really hear the person talk. Or maybe if they do, they're just describing what they're doing. It's like that's not it. That's not what connects. You don't connect with that. You may find that entertainment or it may have some like ASMR kind of, you know, effects for you, but like you're not connecting with the content. So we focus on that and just it felt like the perfect space. All the creators we were talking to had a different approach. They were easier to work with. And that really helped sink this in for us. Of like, hey, the data is pointing in this direction and so are the creators themselves are easier to work with. That mattered to us. And if we're going to create a collective of similar types, we might expand. Myra's already thinking about expanding out into Otto or what we keep calling Russian, Greece or even outdoor rec, like where there's adjacent audiences. It's relatively speaking the same demographic and in some ways, there's some crossover and psychographic, but allows you to truly expand audience. Like, it's not the same viewer. There are, realistically, there are viewers that watch Adam that also watch other creators in our. In our network. So with that in mind, like, how do you expand your total size, your total audience? Like, you might have to look at these adjacent audiences or adjacent categories. So all of that's up in the air, and we will get there over time. But, yeah, starting with this HGTV like approach just clicked on all cylinders, and the data's there. And I think it's fascinating to even just think about channels like this grouping of channels that have existed for decades and seeing how YouTube creators have reinvented those worlds. Like, there isn't anybody like fixer, Fixer, upper on YouTube. Nobody does that format. I think that's actually a good thing. I think the way Adam approaches what he does and the way other creators we have approach their own way of creating content is so unique and different and so niche. It's like, it's. It's a better way to think about home. Home and Garden or Home Improvement.

[Josh Stanley]

Thematically, they're. They're sisters, but their. Their formats really are made for the platform in a way that makes sense.

[Myra Dallas]

Yeah, you. You learn. And I love the way Adam talked about this. You know, education meets entertainment. Like, it's. Yeah, it's. It's escapism with. I'm picking up little nuggets of knowledge along the way because Adam's building something, and he's done woodworking for 20 years. He's doing something, and he's sharing some quick little tip that probably for. For him is like, yeah, I've been doing that for the last two decades of my life. But for me, I'm like, oh, that's why that thing exists on that tool. And I never knew that. And I had that tool in my garage. Like, those little moments are fun. It's like discovery, too. Along the way, watching somebody who's talented, who understands how to build, building something in an entertaining way, like, hits you on, like, multiple. In multiple ways, gives value to you in multiple ways. It's really fun.

[Adam Vandegrift]

Well, you know what's funny? Just real quick, it's funny to me, people will watch a boring TV show, and they'll watch it. They'll watch the whole thing, and they'll get done with it, and they'll, you know, talk to their spouse or whatever, how boring that was, or a movie or whatever, but not on YouTube. You cannot be boring you know, because.

[Josh Stanley]

People standards are different.

[Adam Vandegrift]

Yeah. There's a million channels and they'll flip and they're, they're looking at their phone while you're, while they're watching your show. You know, so there is no room for boring at all or you'll, you'll fail.

[Josh Stanley]

Right. So that affects how you shoot things, I'm sure and how you try and grab people always thinking about that what's over. You've seen the, the models come and go in the space over time and Google's role has been interesting over the years where they were very active with the creator brand deals maybe less so where are things now? Like do you interact with them a whole lot? Are they let you do your thing? Do they need to play a different role?

So currently. And Adam, you can jump in here too a little bit and comment. But you know, to your point, Michael, they have tried to, to take on different roles and you can see, you know, all the way from Google+ way back in the day and that you know, their attempt did failed their attempt to do that when they acquired fam bit in 2016. They've sunsetted that, you know, and really changed a lot. Nothing seems to have really caught on and worked and for probably a variety of different reasons. And I think now. Right Adam, and you can, you can weigh in here. They have a new approach, if you will, that I think is maybe working. We don't interact with them. I certainly don't from a coaxial perspective. And Adam, I don't know what your take is on interactions.

[Adam Vandegrift]

No, I've never had any interaction with it. I mean I can go check the stats and everything and they will provide I guess where you can kind of have a stack to provide potential advertisers or to connect. But I've never found it useful, honestly.

[Josh Stanley]

Yeah. And I'll just add on really quickly. I think that is one of the things Adam and I have talked about is how to our perspective and our ability to help understand the stats. And that is something that probably we love. We understand it because of our relationships and expertise. But I don't know that any the.

Platform is helping because otherwise you're on your own. It sounds like Adam, quickly what is you met, you talked about how you didn't in the beginning you didn't know what you were doing with brands. You know what to ask for. There might be a state might not be a standard answer but what's a good brand deal these days? What's a good, what's a good brand.

[Adam Vandegrift]

Interaction for you, there's still some brands that, you know, they want to look at it as more of a TV commercial. You know, they want you to say these 50 things and get that in, in 30 seconds. I love working with some of these brands where they're, they have maybe three things. They want a 45 second to 60 second integration and they have maybe three specific things that are facts that they want said and the rest they just want it to be natural and you know, they want to be a company that you actually interact with. For instance, one that I work with several times is Element. So I use Element. It's a, you know, a drink that I like. I used it before I dealt with them and their super easy to work with as far as I just say how I feel about using this product. They get it and they get, they.

[Josh Stanley]

Get what you're trying to do.

[Adam Vandegrift]

Exactly. Yes. They understand that if, if they want to connect with the viewer, let the, let the creator have freedom to make this personal and realistic and not just spit out a bunch of jargon there.

[Josh Stanley]

This is kind of for anybody who wants to jump in. What, what's missing, what moves this for? You talked about how we made a lot of progress, but there's still some gaps. Do we need, is it the way that the brands are organized? Do we need better measurement? Do you need things execution? Like what moves the spending in this category a little faster?

[Myra Dallas]

I have one that I've been noodling on and that we talked to Adam about a lot or a reasonable amount at least. Channel partnerships. Like, I think channel partnerships when it's an endemic brand, like an endemic brand in home improvement is pretty easy to pick out, right? Like Little Giant ladders. Right. Adam uses a lot of ladders. Like Little Giant should be a channel sponsor to Adam and they need to be authentic. Like Adam needs to actually like the product and, and there needs to be just like with Element, he was using it beforehand. But like choosing brands that make sense for the work and the creat and the content that he's creating that have a natural alignment and it's like you can be a channel partner, a sponsor, not just doing mid rolls where Adam talks about your product for 60 seconds in the middle of the video. But actually like this product shows up in every video and you're just sponsoring like hey, if you're gonna have ladders in your video, I wanna make sure it's always this ladder and that that is typically a paid engagement as well. To be like kind of the main, the main product for for this kind of content throughout the year. But that's a, that's a stronger way to show up if you're a brand, in our opinion, in a lot of ways. Not to say that mid rolls don't have a place they do, but there, there is a real. When the perfect worlds collide, when it's like, hey, the kind of content you create and the types of tools you use or the types of resources you use, whatever it might be, make it very natural for our product to show up over and over again. Brands need to be thinking about channel sponsorships, channel partnerships like that, as opposed to just pure. Let me pay you X amount of dollars to do another 60 to 90 second mid roll.

[Josh Stanley]

I'll just add on to that really quickly because that's spot on, Josh. And I think it is helping everyone understand brands specifically the authenticity that, that matters. Right? So, and to Adam and his, his audience, if it was not authentic, it would, we would get backlash. So helping the brands understand that the creators are professionals, that they have earned the right to use their authentic voice to communicate, you know, the values of the product and not in a scripted way. I think is, is important. I think we still have a long way to go with, with that and helping everyone understand that there is this perfect opportunity, but it needs to be unique and authentic in how we're talking about it or you will just be, you know, another paid sponsorship. And that doesn't, that doesn't necessarily move the needle on either side, right. From a creator perspective or a brand. And then finally, I think it is helping understand and normalize how we view success in a true partnership and not transactional perspective. It is a journey, they call it the consumer journey for a reason. So I think we need to be taking into consideration as we measure success with a journey in mind, I guess.

Last question, and this is sort of related and anybody can jump in, but is it good or bad? You know, with the YouTube TV growth you got, you got TV advertisers coming in and giving this area a look, which is seemingly a good thing, more money, but then they're comparing you or they want you to fit into like a TV bucket and then similar numbers. Is that a good or bad thing or challenge for your category here?

[Myra Dallas]

So I think it actually is the best both worlds. So I think in many ways you can and should, and you guys have touched on it, start thinking of YouTube as TV, but it has the best of social as well. So the best of social is the fact that you can truly build this relationship and you can do so in a long form format. The way Joshua stated what it will do as more tv, more traditional, more sophisticated media buyers and planners are frankly doubling down on YouTube. You're going to start seeing them not only deploy more capital to the space, but you're going to start seeing them embrace social practices of everything Adam has stated. Hey, we want it to be real and authentic to you, not just a 30 second ad, but we also want to figure out how to do this in a long term way. Because a one off spot is not necessarily going to do the brand lift that being a partner to you for a year will do. Like those things will matter. I think vertically focused groups like Coaxial will be incredibly important. I think it's one of the things that space frankly needs. It's one of the reasons, I think what Myra, Josh and Adam are doing is frankly very exciting. They're going to be able to get more research about this DIY professional home construction space. They're going to have more benchmarks to that space than other people will versus trying to be everything to everybody. They will have more depth in a category than absolutely anyone. So if you're a Home Depot, Lowe's or any endemic brand or non endemic, frankly in the space looking to reach this audience, there really should be nobody else you look at because they're going to have more depth in that one category than anyone else will.

[Josh Stanley]

All right, well, fascinating stuff. Thank you. Very, very timely conversation. Thanks so much for all your insights and sharing some time here and let's, let's try to get down the road folks.

Absolutely. Thank you everybody.

[Myra Dallas]

Thanks man.

[Adam Vandegrift]

Take care.

[Myra Dallas]

See ya.

[Mike Shields]

A big thanks to my guests this week, the folks at Quaxo Collective and hacks man of YouTube and of course my partners at View Planner. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review.

[Josh Stanley]

We've lots more to bring you, so.

[Mike Shields]

Please hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next time for more on what's next in media.

[Josh Stanley]

Thanks for listening.