When it’s inbound marketing, it’s hard to keep Sudipto Ghosh away from discussing with HubSpot. Today’s MarTech Top Voice is HubSpot’s VP of Media Jonathan Hunt.
In this MarTech Top Voice Interview, Intent Amplify’s Head of Global Marketing puts forth pertinent questions related to “The 2025 State of Marketing Report” by HubSpot. In this conversation between Sudipto and Jonathan, we tried to navigate the rapidly changing landscape of digital marketing and advertising trends, powered by AI. Jonathan shared valuable insights on what’s fueling growth in digital marketing and advertising, and what strategies are no longer as effective as they once were.
Join us as we dive into Jonathan Hunt’s journey, his vision for the future of media, and how HubSpot continues to innovate and redefine content, audience development, and monetization strategies in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
MarTech Insights (MTI): Hi Jonathan, welcome to the MarTech Top voice interview series. Tell us about your journey in marketing and how you started at HubSpot.
Jonathan: Thanks for having me! I’ve spent over 15 years at the intersection of content and marketing. I’ve been fortunate to work with some amazing, culture-defining brands: Vice Media, National Geographic, Complex, and Vox Media.
Now, at HubSpot, I lead content, audience development, and monetization growth for our media network; which includes The Hustle and dozens of other YouTube channels, newsletters, podcasts, and creator partnerships.
What’s exciting is that we’re currently reaching over 70 million customers and generating tens of thousands of leads each month through our various media assets while, at the same time, building a new type of sustainable media model.
MTI: What makes HubSpot of 2025 different from its previous avatars? What does your media plan look like for 2025?
Jonathan: 2025 is all about continuing to expand our media strategy around the channels where we’re seeing the greatest audience, monetization, and distribution opportunities which are increasingly video, creator partnerships and newsletters.
This is also the year where some of the AI bets we placed in 2024 are starting to pay off in terms of time saved and opportunities unlocked – which just creates more creative and strategy space for our content, monetization, and audience development teams.
A few specific areas where we’re expanding:
Video: it’s becoming our largest and fastest-growing content format. In 2024, we grew views and leads by 80% year over year, hitting 134 million video views across long-form and short-form content.
For 2025, we’re scaling that significantly: launching new channels for more ICPs, increasing output, greater format experimentation, more emphasis on internationalization and streamlining our post-production process, deepening our bench of talent and so much more.
We’re also completely reinventing our strategy for video offers and conversion rate optimization.
While we’ve already created strong lead magnets, we’re getting much more sophisticated with AI-driven personalization. We’re also 5X’ing the number of custom offers we’re producing over last year, which is no easy feat, but there’s a method to the madness… The goal is to improve our output of 1:1 content and offer matching across channels that are increasingly becoming bigger anchors for our media strategy such as YouTube, newsletters, and creators.
Creator Partnerships: each year this strategy grows, and this year is no exception. Not only are we reaching net-new audiences through trusted voices with strong product alignment, it’s an incredibly cost-efficient source of acquisition that allows us to go deeper with some of the smartest voices in their fields.
Today, HubSpot’s media network collaborates with over 100 creators — mostly across YouTube and newsletters — in categories like marketing, sales, AI, and entrepreneurship. In some scenarios, we’re the sponsor. In others, like My First Million or The Next Wave, we’re co-developing strategic relationships that produce original series and new brands. And some, like The Hustle or Mindstream, we acquire.
I could keep going, but I don’t want to give away the full plan. The key difference in 2025 is we’re really focused on hedging against media disruption by doubling down on channels where we’re seeing strong momentum, while constantly innovating our approach to stay ahead of the market.
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MTI: For modern CMOs, what does an ideal marketing technology stack look like?
Jonathan: We’re seeing that integration is absolutely critical.
The reality is, if your data isn’t flowing seamlessly between your teams, you’re going to have blind spots in your customer insights. At HubSpot we’re seeing this firsthand with our Marketing Analytics solution – which offers built-in reports and dashboards to measure campaign performance – and our embedded AI, Breeze.
When everything’s connected, you can actually do something meaningful with all that data, like automate workflows or personalize campaigns. In fact, in our recently published State of Marketing 2025 report, we found that 87% of marketers using an integrated approach felt their strategies were hitting the mark in 2024.
MTI: 2025 is projected as the year of AI search-driven digital advertising. What kind of preparation should a media company have to succeed with AI and search in 2025?
Jonathan: At the end of the day, your business will always need a home base — a place that’s yours, where you have absolute editorial, experiential, and monetary control. But we’re no longer in the halcyon days of bottomless social and search traffic. And websites aren’t where audiences or advertisers are increasingly investing their time or budgets. The patterns in traffic and ad dollars say as much.
It comes down to expanding relevant, high-intent attention rather than traffic. This has been a big focus of our media strategy over the last few years.
And when it comes to AI search/LLMO, the playbook is being written now in real-time and can’t be ignored. You need to actively prioritize how your content shows up in AI-powered search products like ChatGPT and Perplexity–where media companies including HubSpot Media network are starting to see big month-over-month relative gains. We’re seeing this shift especially with younger audiences: about 31% of Gen Z is already using AI tools to find information.
MTI: Your take on the current state of AI/LLM-powered inbound marketing solutions for MadTech users:
Jonathan: We need to be really pragmatic about where AI is actually adding value right now. We’re seeing it’s helpful as an accelerant; it’s not replacing core functions, but it is helping teams work faster and more efficiently in specific areas.
Take content production: AI is probably at a C+ to B- level in terms of quality.
For really utilitarian or transactional content, sure, it helps speed things up. But not when it comes to some of the less glamorous aspects of pre and post-production like writing content briefs or punching up copy. But for something like deeply researched, opinionated content, or to turn insights into what you see on YouTube or even what’s increasingly being prioritized by Google – that requires human creativity and perspective. And I don’t expect that to change anytime soon. If anything, we expect it to empower our teams to be able to work more efficiently and creatively.
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MTI: HubSpot’s State of Marketing report highlights the role of social media marketing as a critical growth channel. Could you elaborate on the best HubSpot campaigns that show the power of social media marketing?
Jonathan: On a macro level, we’re seeing massive growth when it comes to video on LinkedIn. For our Media Network, in the last 90 days alone, we’ve seen over 50m impressions and 6.5 Million video views generated by The Hustle. If you’re a marketer, LinkedIn, and video – as a strategic combination – will be essential to successful growth in 2025+.
MTI: How do you create an agile marketing team in 2025?
Jonathan: The biggest thing we’re seeing is the need to invest in AI education and upskilling. There’s this interesting dynamic where marketers know they need to use AI – it has become essential for staying competitive – but about 54% feel overwhelmed by implementing these tools into their daily workflow. So rather than just throwing tools at people, we’re really focused on strengthening teams from the inside out by developing better systems and use cases to fit into their workflows. Enablement is important but sometimes you need an aha moment to truly understand how AI can make your work easier, faster and more impactful.
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Thank you so much, Jonathan Hunt for sharing your insights with our audience. We look forward to having you again with us.
For media inquiries, you can write to our MarTech Newsroom at news@intentamplify.com
About Jonathan
Jonathan Hunt is the VP of media at HubSpot and head of The Hustle, where he leads content, audience and monetization growth for HubSpot Media Network’s ecosystem of media brands, channels, content and creator partnerships — engaging over 70 million consumers each month. Previously, he led the audience and media growth for National Geographic, VICE, Vox Media and Complex. Jonathan has led campaigns that received Silver and Bronze Cannes Lions and was named one of Variety’s New Digital Leaders of Hollywood.
About HubSpot
HubSpot is the customer platform that helps businesses grow better. HubSpot delivers seamless connection for customer-facing teams with an AI-powered platform that includes engagement hubs, a Smart CRM, and a connected ecosystem with over 1,700 App Marketplace integrations, a community network, and educational content.
