7 charts that show why you should advertise on Understanding AI
The newsletter will remain ad-free for paying readers.
Over the last year, this newsletter has grown by nearly 200,000 readers — from 78,000 in June 2025 to 273,000 today. Our paid readership has also grown, but not nearly as fast. Today, fewer than 1% of you are paying subscribers. So in the coming months, I plan to begin showing ads to free readers (paid subscribers will continue to enjoy an ad-free experience).
For ethical reasons, I won’t accept ads for companies we are likely to cover. That means you won’t see ads for name-brand companies like Anthropic, Waymo, or Microsoft. Advertisers won’t be able to buy favorable coverage, and we’ll always make it clear what’s an ad and what is independent editorial content. I’ll post details more about this before we do our first ad-supported post.
I’ve never done this before, so I’m looking for experienced people who can give me advice — and perhaps help me sell the ads as well. If that’s you, please email me: tim@understandingai.org.
If you represent a company that would like to advertise on Understanding AI, please contact me at the same address.
Back in March, I surveyed readers to better understand our audience. At the time, we had around 190,000 readers, and more than 1,000 of you responded. Thanks to all who participated!
The main takeaway from the survey is that advertising on Understanding AI is a great way to reach influential and tech-savvy readers:
25% of respondents were engineers, scientists, researchers, IT professionals, or others doing technical work.
Another 15% are founders, executives, or managers.
19% of respondents say they have control over technology budgets at their companies, while another 25% say they recommend or evaluate technology for their companies.
Some respondents control or influence substantial budgets: 3% say they control or influence budgets larger than $5 million, while another 4% control or influence budgets between $1 million and $5 million.
Read on for detailed results from the March survey.
1. A lot of readers found us via Substack
How do people find Understanding AI? Nearly half of respondents say they found us thanks to a recommendation from Substack itself. Other Substack-based newsletters — including Nate Silver, Derek Thompson, Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Naryanan, Noah Smith, Matt Yglesias, and Joey Politano — have each driven thousands of signups. An interview with Ben Thompson (who isn’t on Substack) drove hundreds of signups in 2024. My former employer, Ars Technica, accounts for about 4% of respondents.
Two social media sites — Twitter and LinkedIn — accounted for 15% of our respondents. Search engines, word of mouth, and a long tail of other sources round out the list.
2. Readers care about LLMs, technology deep dives, and AI infrastructure
What do readers want to read about? This chart shows the topics readers say are most likely to hold their attention. Unsurprisingly, LLMs top the list, with technical deep dives, industry analysis, and AI infrastructure close behind. Readers are also interested in “softer” topics such as AI policy and the impact of AI on the labor market.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, readers continue to have fairly low interest in self-driving cars, robotics, and the semiconductor industry. I’ll be honest — we’re not going to give too much weight to reader preferences here. Not only is self-driving an important industry in its own right, I believe studying it can provide insights into the problems facing frontier model developers today. And we hope our forthcoming series on robots will convince readers that robotics is an interesting topic.
3. Our readers are technically sophisticated
A wide range of people read Understanding AI, from students to retirees to doctors and lawyers. But I was particularly happy to see strong representation from engineers, entrepreneurs, and corporate executives. In the chart, I’ve colored engineers and scientists red, while manager and executive are blue.
These red and blue bars represent the folks actually building AI technology. I love having these folks as readers because these are the folks who will complain if we get the technical details wrong. I think they will be also be appealing to advertisers, since they often hold the purse strings of corporate IT spending.
4. At least 27% work in technology, research, or academia
We have readers from a diverse range of industries. Some work directly on AI, either as academic researchers or at companies building AI products. But we also have a lot of readers in other industries, including education, health care, and the investment world.
5. 27% are actively involved in AI-related research or development
A significant minority of respondents — 27% — say they are actively involved in developing and deploying AI systems.
6. Readers have a lot of influence over corporate IT spending
Our readers exercise a lot of influence over technology spending at their companies. Nearly 20% of respondents say they have final authority to approve technology purchases. Another 25% are involved in recommending or evaluating technology products.
7. Readers control budgets as high as $5 million
About 7% of respondents say they control or influence more than $1 million in spending each year — including 4% who say they control or influence more than $5 million in spending. Another 15% influence budgets between $50,000 and $1 million.
Conclusion
So if you represent a company interested in advertising on Understanding AI, please get in touch by emailing tim@understandingai.org. I’d also love to hear people who are interested in helping me sell ads.
thought this might be of interest to you...
https://www.beehiiv.com/blog/the-state-of-paid-newsletters-2026
With roughly 1% of 273,000 readers paying $79/year, that would appear to generate around $215,000 annually before payment processing fees. That isn't a bad number and I am certain that this isn't your only income earning endeavor.
So will this new policy mean that no posts will be hidden behind a paywall?
Advertising is a better solution than applying a paywall, which is one of the unintended consequences of a platform built around converting readers into paying subscribers. When an author's income depends on recruiting and retaining subscribers, there is constant pressure to produce a steady stream of content, to justify the recurring subscription cost. But too often, quantity wins out over quality out of fear of losing subscriber eyeballs. "Hey, don't forget me! I'm delivering content!".
Substack authors generally fail (refuse?) to understand that most people can't afford to pay for 5, 10 or more subscriptions. IF someone subscribes, I suspect that the majority hold only 1 to 3 subscriptions. You should not feel unloved because more people don't buy a paid subscription.
It's sad that the Substack incentive structure often leads to frustrating reader experiences, such as articles that abruptly stop with the remainder behind a paywall, prompts to subscribe appearing throughout a piece, restricted commenting and/or comments that are visible only to paying members.
Over time, too many Substack authors end up placing more and more of their work behind subscriber-only walls, attempting to pressure readers into paying for something that they can't afford or don't see the value that the author imagines exists.
This results in a closed ecosystem in which the same small core group of paying subscribers read, comment, and reinforce each other's views
This is the definition of an “echo chamber”.
Whether intentional or not, the result is reduced exposure to outside perspectives and the creation of an environment that encourages repetitive thinking among both readers and authors.
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Update (6/29/26) - I made some stylistic and flow changes but the original thoughts remain the same.