5 Substack Newsletter Advertising Examples

If you’ve been thinking about advertising on Substack, you’re not alone.

Brands are discovering the power of advertising in newsletters with loyal, niche audiences, and many Substack publications are now opening their inboxes to sponsors.

What does that look like in practice?

For this article, I dug into Reletter’s database—covering newsletters on Substack, LinkedIn and Ghost—to bring you five Substack advertising examples in action.

How newsletter ads work on Substack

The Substack platform is all about encouraging direct relationships between creators and readers who support writers by paying for their subscriptions. That's why they don’t really encourage conventional email marketing, nor do they provide tools like dynamic ads.

That said, there’s nothing to stop you publishing sponsored content or creating your own ads and inserting them manually into your posts.

You're welcome to host sponsored content and we don't have any policies in place that prohibit publishers from doing so.

Substack FAQ advertising guidelines

That FAQ also recommends you double-check your advertising intentions by reading the Content Guidelines and your Publisher Agreement.

We already published a step-by-step guide on How to Advertise on Substack, so this article focuses on  recent examples of how more brands and creators are advertising on Substack today.

Substack advertising examples

1. The Trust Insights ad in 'Almost Timely News'

Almost Timely News is written by Trust Insights co-founder, Christopher Penn. This Substack promises unique content containing strategy, tactics, and deep dives into what’s happening in the world of artificial intelligence.

Substack audience

This weekly newsletter attracts busy founders, marketers and executives interested in understanding the latest in AI, data science, analytics, and marketing, promising them "a break from the noise" of other platforms to let them "focus on one thing."

The brand and its ad

Trust Insights is a marketing analytics consulting company helping other businesses understand and use their data, analytics, and AI to make better decisions, achieve measurable results and exceed their performance goals.

Their LinkedIn Algorithm guide is likely to appeal to this Substack audience of busy professionals who are likely to be present on LinkedIn and want to use it more effectively.

What made me choose this ad?

This is a good example of a newsletter writer promoting a business they're involved with. In this case, the writer is a co-founder of Trust Insights, and the LinkedIn Algorithm Guide is a Trust Insights lead magnet.

Substack creators should always let their readers know if a piece of content is an ad (it's actually a legal requirement in most countries) so you'll usually see headlines like "Brought to you by..." or "Sponsored Content."

But I love the quirky "Big Plug" heading Christopher's used here, and the simple, no-nonsense CTA below it. Both aspects speak to the target audience of busy professionals with phrases like newly updated and as of last week and give off a 'straight-to-business' vibe they're likely to appreciate.

2. The Bland ad in 'Not Boring by Packy McCormick'

Packy McCormick is an angel investor and the founder of Not Boring Capital, a venture fund that invests in early-stage startups. In his Not Boring Substack, Packy sends in-depth analyzes of the tech and startup landscape, telling "the stories of the most ambitious and complex startups as clearly as possible to give readers a glimpse into the future they’re working to build."

Substack audience

The Not Boring newsletter speaks to an audience of over 200k subscribers including founders and others interested in technology, business models and markets.

The brand and its ad

Bland.ai is a platform that builds AI-powered phone, chat and SMS agents. It targets enterprise-level companies, promising to automate their inbound and outbound calls using a conversational AI that understands speech and responds in a human-sounding voice.

What made me choose this ad?

There's a lot to like about this ad because it works well on several levels:

#1. The Bland platform is a good fit for Packy's audience because some of his subscribers will already need their agents, while others aspire to be at that level one day.

#2. It's a good example of ad copy informing the target audience by answering their questions or objections before they're even formed. Like this:

Objection: Could it handle a business as big as ours?—Reassuring phrases: Fortune 500s; Enterprises using it to handle millions of calls.

Objection: We don't want our answerphone to sound like a robot—Reassuring phrase: build agents with any voice and personality.

Objection: It might be difficult or time consuming to set up—Reassuring phrases: with a single click; from a single dashboard; while slashing costs.

Objection: Do we have time for the training and maintenance?—Reassuring phrase: self improve, and scale infinitely

#3. It gives two incentives to act: a) it offers a demo—pretty wild eh? give it a call yourself—and b) has an incentive linked to the newsletter: Not Boring subscribers get exclusive access to a more advanced version.

3. The 80,000 Hours ad in 'Fix the News'

Fix the News is an independent news Substack by Angus Hervey and Amy Rose. It focuses on reporting stories of environmental, social and scientific progress from around the world. Supported by free and paid subscriptions, Fix the News also accepts ads from like-minded brands.

Substack audience

This weekly newsletter goes out to 62,000+ people of all ages, described by the team as "smart, forward-thinking and optimistic professionals, researchers and active citizens in 195 countries."

The brand and its ad

80,000 Hours is a nonprofit funded by philanthropic donations. Named for the estimated 80,000 hours of your working life, the team provides research and support to help talented people move into careers that tackle the world’s most pressing problems.

It's a company that's likely to appeal to an audience already interested in people  and organizations who are  helping solve the world's big problems.

What made me choose this ad?

I think this ad is a great example of using a headline that aligns with the newsletter culture.

Their headline "Do you want to do work that actually makes a difference?" gets right to the heart of what Fix the News subscribers love about the newsletter (stories of people and organizations making a big difference in the world.)

4. The DynamoDB Book ad in The Cloud Handbook'

Kisan Tamang is a Cloud Engineer who shares what he's learned over his years as an AWS Solution Architect on his Substack site, The Cloud Handbook.

Substack audience

The newsletter’s target audience includes tech professionals, developers, architects and builders and curious newcomers, and offers “valuable insights to keep up to date on the cloud, DevOps, system design and technologies around it.”

The brand and its ad

Alex DeBrie, of DeBrie Advisory, describes himself as an "AWS Hero providing training and consulting with expertise in DynamoDB, serverless applications, and cloud-native technologies."

DynamoDB—in case you’re interested—is a database service run by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It stores data flexibly and is built to be super fast and to easily grow as needed.

What made me choose this ad?

This ad is the newsletter equivalent of podcasting's host-read ads. These ads work by capitalizing on the trust and familiarity the creator has built with their audience over time.

In this case, the phrase “to make this even better I’ve partnered with Alex,“ implies that the author knows the advertiser and that he recommends the book as being worthwhile for subscribers who are interested in using DynamoDB.

The CTA offers a good discount: Use code TOWARDSAWS at checkout and get 35% OFF today and I think the tone fits in with the newsletter's overall tone and style.

5. The TypeThink AI ad in Micro SaaS Idea'

Micro SaaS, as the name suggests, refers to a small-scale software-as-a-service businesses, usually built and run by one person or a very small team.

This Substack is the newsletter for MicroSaaS HQ, a company that offers both tech and non-tech founders access to more than 1000 micro SaaS business concepts and an active community where members post Q&As and build traction and support for their launches.

Substack audience

The newsletter serves "techies and marketers looking for their next profitable Micro SaaS idea" who want to identify early trends, see updates on other founders and learn which products and concepts are currently gaining traction in the market.

The brand and its ad

TypeThinkAI is an “all-in-one” AI platform that aggregates access to many different AI models under a single interface. Rather than subscribing separately to, say, GPT, Claude, or other models, TypeThinkAI lets you interact with multiple models from one place.

It's a business that might well appeal to founders interested in developing small-scale software solutions, and their marketers.

What made me choose this ad?

As I said up top, standard sponsored content alerts tend to be quite boring and, well, standardized. So I love to highlight examples where these alerts reflect the creator's own Substack style, as these guys do with ❤️❤️ Cool Product.

But I also think this ad is an example of link "overkill."  In fact, almost every line has an underlined link and they all go to exactly the same web page. (Perhaps I wouldn't have felt so annoyed if they'd linked to different pages or sections?)

Personally, I think the ad would portray a cleaner, more professional look, and be more effective with a single CTA & link.

Final thoughts

Curious to dig deeper? Read our full piece on Substack advertising to explore how sponsorships fit into the bigger picture.
Then, get started with Reletter to discover Substack newsletters that align with your brand and audience.

Find, pitch and get featured in email newsletters on Reletter for free.