David Tintner is building a business around a deliberate bet: that high-quality, long-form YouTube content can remain both economically viable and broadly accessible, if advertising works differently.

David is the co-founder and CEO of ThoughtLeaders, a fully bootstrapped company focused exclusively on YouTube sponsorships. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Tel Aviv, ThoughtLeaders operates across software, media buying, and creator representation, with a stated mission “to incentivize and encourage high-quality, long-form content for all.”

The company’s scope is intentionally narrow, but operationally deep. ThoughtLeaders reports facilitating more than $55 million in sponsorship deals, working with hundreds of brands annually, and exclusively representing more than 100 YouTube channels for sponsorship sales. Rather than positioning itself as a generic influencer marketplace, the company has built a YouTube-specific sponsorship platform paired with managed services for both brands and creators.

David’s conviction is rooted in both his firsthand experience as a creator and in what he views as a structural flaw in how digital advertising has changed.

From Creator Frustration to a Sponsorship-First Thesis

Before ThoughtLeaders, David was already embedded in online publishing. Starting in 2012, he ran a design and development-focused blog, newsletter, podcast, and educational content business. The audience was relatively small by mass-media standards, but highly influential: focusing decision-makers at companies like Google and Apple who subscribe to in-depth, business-oriented content.

The problem, he recalls, was not reach – but monetization.

“We would get paid maybe two and a half cents for an impression,” David says, despite knowing that a single article or episode could influence enterprise software purchases worth tens of thousands of dollars over time. Banner ads and impression-based models, optimized for scale, failed to reflect the value of niche, high-intent audiences.

What emerged instead was a more direct approach. David began contacting the tools and services he already used and writing about them in exchange for payment – what the industry now broadly calls sponsorships.

“If you can’t make money from the work you’re doing, at some point you can’t do the work anymore,” he says. “It becomes a hobby.”

That realization would become the foundation of ThoughtLeaders: not simply to help creators earn more, but to ensure that certain kinds of content remain economically sustainable.

Why Sponsorships (and Not Traditional Ads) Anchor the Model

David is careful not to frame sponsorships as a rejection of existing ad systems. Instead, he argues they solve a different problem.

Traditional digital advertising, he says, is largely built on behavioral targeting, tracking users across the web, and serving ads disconnected from what they are actively consuming. Sponsorships, by contrast, are contextual by design.

“When an ad is part of the content and actually makes sense there, it’s a win for the brand, the creator, and the audience,” David explains. “The creator wants to work on the ad, the audience isn’t annoyed, and the brand gets better performance.”

This framing is central to ThoughtLeaders’ positioning. Sponsorships are not meant to replace AdSense or other monetization streams, but to sit alongside them, expanding the creator’s overall revenue mix rather than reallocating it.

“I don’t want to make the pie smaller and just move money around,” David says. “I want the pie to get bigger.”

Bootstrapping as a Strategic Choice

ThoughtLeaders’ operating philosophy is shaped by David’s earlier startup experience. Before founding the company, he co-founded TapDog, a competitive intelligence platform later acquired by SimilarWeb. That business followed a more traditional venture-backed path, one David says he was not eager to repeat.

With ThoughtLeaders, bootstrapping was a deliberate decision.

“Everything we do has to be funded by customers willing to pay for it,” he says. “That’s the only proof that it’s actually valuable.”

Rather than building software in isolation, the company launched first as a media agency, placing account managers alongside engineers so that product development was directly informed by day-to-day sponsorship execution. A talent agency followed, representing creators while also acting as a power user of the same internal tools.

The structure persists today. ThoughtLeaders operates across three tightly connected pillars: a YouTube sponsorship software platform, a media agency service for brands, and a talent agency representing creators.

All three feed data and operational insight back into the same system.

A Focus on YouTube and Nothing Else

While many creator economy companies pursue multi-platform expansion, ThoughtLeaders has moved in the opposite direction, narrowing its scope to YouTube sponsorships alone.

“That sounds small to people,” David says. “But YouTube is gigantic.”

He points to YouTube’s role as the world’s largest podcast platform, a dominant force in news, sports, education, and entertainment, and a rare example of a platform that consistently rewards long-form content financially.

A key differentiator, in his view, is YouTube’s revenue share model. Through the YouTube Partner Program, creators receive 55% of ad revenue, a structure David believes directly incentivizes quality and consistency.

“They built a system where the way to get people to make content is to pay them for it,” he says.

That emphasis, however, is not something he takes for granted. David remains cautious about YouTube’s push into Shorts and the platform’s growing reliance on short-form revenue, warning that any erosion of long-form incentives could undermine what makes YouTube distinct.

How ThoughtLeaders Works for Brands

On the brand side, ThoughtLeaders positions its value around two core problems.

The first is access. According to David, brands often struggle to generate enough inbound sponsorship proposals to meaningfully compare options. Without volume, budgets get allocated by default, rather than by strategy.

The second is vetting. David notes that even with proposals in hand, brands lack standardized ways to evaluate pricing, audience fit, or expected performance.

ThoughtLeaders addresses this through a data platform built specifically for sponsorship buying, including metrics such as projected 30-day views for upcoming videos and detailed sponsorship histories that reveal whether brands return to the same channels repeatedly.

“The only proof that matters is whether they come back and buy again,” David says.

The platform is paired with managed services, with account managers embedded into brand teams. Crucially, ThoughtLeaders operates with what it describes as radical transparency: clients see the same data the company sees, and fees are clearly disclosed to both brands and creators.

Professionalizing Sponsorships for Creators

For creators, ThoughtLeaders runs what it calls the ThoughtLeaders Partner Program, a curated network of channels that meet operational and pricing standards.

To participate, creators must demonstrate professionalism, such as meeting deadlines, providing drafts for review, disclosing sponsorships properly, and agree to pricing that aligns with what ThoughtLeaders defines as a fair appraisal value.

“The market is the Wild West,” David says. “Pricing is all over the place and, operationally, a lot goes wrong.”

The goal, he adds, is not to commoditize creators, but to reduce friction that prevents long-term brand relationships from forming. In mature sponsorship ecosystems, David argues, repeat partnerships matter more than one-off deals.

Measuring Success Beyond Views

While impressions and views remain relevant, ThoughtLeaders’ clients overwhelmingly prioritize performance. Most campaigns are structured around measurable outcomes such as installs, sign-ups, or purchases.

To support attribution, campaigns incorporate multiple mechanisms: QR codes for TV viewers, vanity URLs, creator-specific discount codes, pinned comments, and post-purchase surveys that ask customers where they heard about a product.

Still, David acknowledges attribution remains imperfect, especially for brands selling through retail channels, but argues that clearer processes and creator endorsement significantly improve outcomes.

“When a creator explains to their audience why using their code matters, people understand,” he says. “They know it helps the creator and makes the partnership sustainable.”

Maturity as the Next Phase of the Creator Economy

When it comes to what the next phase of the creator economy will look like, David emphasizes operations over tools. Software alone, he points out, cannot fix misaligned expectations between brands and creators.

Maturity means creators understanding corporate review processes, timelines, and compliance requirements, and brands recognizing when they are working with professional partners rather than treating all creators as interchangeable.

“There’s a real business happening here,” David says. “When it works, it’s in everyone’s interest.”

As ThoughtLeaders enters 2026, the focus shifts from platform expansion to execution. The company plans to significantly scale sponsorship sales (internally targeting a doubling of 2025 revenue) while continuing to deepen brand relationships, carefully grow its creator roster, and remain exclusively focused on YouTube.

Perhaps most notably, David does not frame competing agencies or platforms as the primary threat. “Our competition isn’t other YouTube sponsorship companies,” he says. “It’s brands deciding YouTube doesn’t work and moving their budget somewhere else.”

For David, ensuring that YouTube sponsorships deliver consistent, repeatable value is not just a business objective. It is central to preserving the economic conditions that enable long-form content to exist.

“I want to live in a world where people are making high-quality, long-form content that’s educational and accessible,” he says. “Advertising, done the right way, is how we get there.”