Want to upset a millennial-age journalist? Just say the words “pivot to video.”
Countless media companies have used that phrase to justify shifting from written content into short-form, social-focused video – and, in some cases, to rationalize layoffs, not unlike “AI first” rhetoric today.
Still, the strategy itself has merit, Uproxx Studios CEO Jarret Myer told AdExchanger.
“Whenever publishers successfully moved from text to video,” Myer said, “they were right.”
Take Uproxx itself. Starting with the debut of its first original web series, “Luminaries,” in 2015, the digital media company has spent the last decade quietly amassing a deep catalog of monetizable video content on YouTube.
Now, with the launch on Wednesday of its new TV arm called, fittingly, Uproxx TV, Myer wants his brand to take the same step forward that YouTube did by moving beyond mobile and desktop viewing and into the living room.
Uproxx’s upbringing
Uproxx, which Myer co-founded in 2008 (with fellow Rawkus Records label head and Audigent co-founder Brian Bater, by the way), is no stranger to media industry headwinds.
In 2014, Uproxx was bought by digital ad network Woven Digital, which rebranded to Uproxx Media Group in 2017. The following year, that business was sold to Warner Music Group, which, at the time (according to Myer, at least), wanted to have an in-house content division to support its advertising business.
Fast-forward to 2024, and Myer teamed up with Complex Founder Rich Antoniello and former Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am to buy the brand back, along with HipHopDX and Dime Magazine. The newly combined Uproxx Studios now owns the IP for all three publications and also still manages YouTube ad sales for Warner Music’s entire roster of artists.
It’s still early days, but Myer’s ambition is for Uproxx Studios to become known as “the future of music television” – a title arguably up for grabs, given that MTV recently shut down five of its UK-based TV channels and canceled the remarkably long-running “Ridiculousness.”
MTV isn’t Uproxx’s biggest competition at the moment, though; Vevo is. (More on that in a bit.) Still, MTV’s legacy strongly informs Uproxx’s strategy, both in terms of its approach to distribution and editorial content. Myers cited former “MTV News” correspondent Tabitha Soren as a guiding influence and refers to some Uproxx talent internally as “VJs.”
“It’s not the days of cable where you have one channel that’s cool and everyone watches it,” Myer said. “We have to think about where people are. We have to go there.”
Achieving YouTube dominance
Which begs the million-dollar question: If linear TV is no longer a winning strategy like it was for MTV back in the day, where are those big audiences now?
They’re everywhere – but especially YouTube, where Uproxx’s branded channels have over 6 million subscribers between them.
Uproxx reaches roughly 150 million digital video viewers monthly, according to Comscore. In September, it ranked second only to Universal Music Group in Comscore’s entertainment category, with over 50 million watching on connected TVs that month.
Unlike most YouTube content, all of Uproxx’s ad inventory (and all of Warner Music Group’s inventory, which Uproxx exclusively manages) is sold via direct orders or programmatic guaranteed (PG) deals.
PG deals transacted through Google’s DV360 also count toward any upfront programmatic commitments, which provides added incentive for advertisers, said Greg Osborne, who joined Uproxx Studios as VP of branded partnerships in August.
According to Osborne, this type of direct deal offers better brand safety and contextual alignment and is also easier to measure thanks to Uproxx’s close relationship with Comscore.
“On the open exchange, you’re not getting a lot of clear signal on what you’re even buying,” Osborne said. “Some clients are perfectly happy dropping media dollars against unknown and user-generated content across YouTube, and they’re not seeing a lot of great results.”
The best-kept secret in media?
Uproxx’s advertisers already span a wide range of categories, including pharmaceutical, QSR and CPG, reflecting the platform’s broad reach across young and old demographics, said Osborne.
But Uproxx still faces challenges in expanding its market share.
For example, many advertisers don’t include music as part of their larger entertainment strategy, instead focusing on TV, film and influencer content. That leaves a lot of money on the table, said Myer: “There’s no star of ‘Love Island’ that’s bigger than Cardi B.”
Secondly, advertisers that do seek out music content often don’t know how much of the market Uproxx captures, particularly when compared to Vevo.
According to Ziggy Prieto, SVP at media planning agency Mediahub, conventional wisdom dictates that “if you want music videos, you need to buy Vevo.” In recent conversations with Uproxx’s ad sales team, though, he was sold on the pitch that Vevo only delivers on half of the music video inventory that’s available on YouTube.
Comscore’s data suggests that Uproxx currently has a larger audience than Vevo does, with the latter reaching just under 93 million monthly viewers in September, compared to 136.8 million for Uproxx Studios.
But there’s a reason Vevo soaks up so much mindshare. It’s spent a long time aligning its brand identity with music videos, while Uproxx’s brand is still primarily associated with music culture and journalism.
“As soon as you hear Uproxx, you think of their website,” added Prieto. “So hearing that they had offerings outside of that was a surprise for me.”
Osborne put it another – slightly more optimistic – way: “This is, like, the best-kept secret in media.”
Putting the ‘future’ in ‘future of music television’
Ironically, Uproxx Studios is making many of the same moves that Vevo once did to attract advertisers – namely, building its business on YouTube and then expanding into CTV with FAST channels.
But Uproxx hasn’t decided if it’s going to go the FAST route yet – not in the short term, anyway. Although the company has been talking with FAST channel distributors and OEMs, including Pluto TV, Roku and Samsung, Myer told AdExchanger that he’s a bit “agnostic” about the idea.
“I’m just not convinced that the answer to everything has to be [developing] your own channel,” said Myer. “And if you’re going down that road, I don’t think it has to be one channel either. Maybe it’s 10 channels.”
With that in mind, Uproxx is exploring the possibility of licensing its original shows, including its new “Visionaries” series, to other CTV programmers.
“This content deserves to be right there next to some of the most premium shows across Apple TV and Hulu and Prime Video and Netflix,” said Osborne.
Although Uproxx still publishes written content – and still employs a few cultural critics, like Steven Hyden and Elliott Wilson – TV and video will be its main focus moving forward.
“I don’t think of ourselves as a publisher anymore,” said Myer. “When we roll this out and we’re successful, you will not say we are a publisher that pivoted to CTV. I’ve erased that from my mind.”
