# 84% of B2B marketers pay to rent audiences they don't own, and Breaker says newsletters fix that By MarketScale Newsroom · Published 2026-08-12 · Updated 2026-09-03 · Marketing Tech on MarketScale Canonical: https://www.marketscale.com/industries/marketing-tech/84-of-b2b-marketers-pay-to-rent-audiences-they-dont-own-and-breaker-says-newsletters-fix-that > Breaker argues B2B brands spending on paid social and sponsored placements build no lasting channel. A newsletter changes that math. ## Key points - 84% of B2B marketers pay to reach audiences they do not own. - Newsletters offer a more sustainable and controlled marketing channel for B2B brands. - Rented audiences from paid social and sponsored placements do not build lasting connections. Eighty-four percent of B2B marketers use paid distribution channels to reach prospects, and 73% of that group specifically relies on social media advertising or promoted posts, according to 2025 benchmarking research from the Content Marketing Institute. Every one of those impressions expires when the spend stops. Austin-based newsletter platform Breaker is pressing that point publicly, arguing that most B2B marketing teams have built their reach on infrastructure they don't own and can't sustain without continuous payment. ## Paid reach has no memory The structural problem with paid social and sponsored placements is straightforward: the channel belongs to someone else. A brand can buy clicks, impressions, and temporary visibility, but the platform decides the targeting logic, the algorithm, and the terms. When the campaign ends, so does the access. Breaker founder and CEO Ben Billups frames it as a rental arrangement. Buying ads on a social platform or sponsoring another company's newsletter means paying repeatedly to reach an audience that never formally opted into a relationship with the advertiser. A branded newsletter inverts that dynamic because each subscriber has explicitly chosen to hear from the company directly. > In B2B, a list of 1,000 commercial real estate executives reading your newsletter beats a million unqualified impressions every time. The same logic is reshaping strategy at larger brands. Hershey's VP of consumer connection Vinny Rinaldi told AdExchanger in January 2026 that 'not everything is about paid media,' framing the company's evolving approach around the PESO Model®, which integrates Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned channels. The PESO Model® was created by Gini Dietrich of [Spin Sucks](https://spinsucks.com/ultimate-peso-model-guide/). The point isn't to abandon paid distribution but to ensure it feeds something durable. ## HubSpot's media network is the enterprise case study For companies with the budget, acquiring an established audience is faster than building one. HubSpot made exactly that bet in 2021 when it acquired The Hustle, a business newsletter that then reached more than 1.5 million daily readers. By 2026, HubSpot reports its broader media network, which encompasses The Hustle and subsequent acquisitions, generates more than 50 million engagements and tens of thousands of leads per month. Block Field The Hustle deal is instructive even for companies that can't replicate it at that scale. It illustrates that audience relationships carry compounding commercial value: the readership generates pipeline month after month without requiring a new campaign budget each cycle. Billups notes that smaller B2B companies can build toward the same outcome organically, shaping the editorial identity and subscriber base from the start rather than inheriting an existing one. ## Audience quality outranks audience size in B2B One of the more operationally relevant points Breaker raises involves how marketing and revenue teams should measure newsletter value. A newsletter reaching 100,000 generalist subscribers may produce fewer qualified conversations than one read by 1,000 procurement directors or CFOs in a specific vertical. In B2B, where deals are high-value and sales cycles are long, relevance of the reader matters more than raw delivery volume. That framing has direct implications for how teams should evaluate newsletter investments, whether building, buying, or sponsoring. The question is not how many people receive the email but whether the right decision-makers are on the list and whether they're engaging. According to the same Content Marketing Institute research, 71% of B2B marketers already distribute content via email newsletters. The gap Breaker is targeting isn't adoption. It's the shift from treating a newsletter as a content distribution tactic to treating it as a strategic media property with compounding audience equity. Block Field ## Long sales cycles demand a recurring presence The operational case for owned newsletters gets sharper in enterprise B2B contexts where purchase decisions take months or years. A brand visible to a prospect only during active campaigns goes dark between buying moments. A newsletter keeps the company present throughout the evaluation period, the budget cycle, and the organizational changes that delay or accelerate a deal. > The newsletter doesn't replace advertising or sales outreach. It gives those investments somewhere to land. Breaker positions its platform specifically around this dynamic, offering B2B targeting, AI-based subscriber enrichment, and deliverability infrastructure. The company says verified, sales-ready subscribers can be acquired through its platform for as little as $1.50 each, a figure that frames newsletter list growth as a cost-competitive alternative to repeated paid placements for the same prospects. The argument Breaker is making isn't that paid media doesn't work. It's that paid media should be building something permanent, not just buying temporary access over and over. For marketing operations and demand gen teams reviewing their channel mix heading into 2027 planning cycles, the question is whether each dollar of paid spend is expanding a durable audience asset or just keeping the lights on for another quarter. ## Sources - [B2B content marketing benchmarks, budgets, and trends: Outlook for 2025](https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/b2b-research/b2b-content-marketing-trends-research-2025) (Content Marketing Institute) - [Hershey's undergoes a brand update as it rethinks paid, earned and owned media](https://adexchanger.com/commerce/hersheys-undergoes-a-brand-update-as-it-rethinks-paid-earned-and-owned-media/) (AdExchanger) - [HubSpot signs agreement to acquire The Hustle](https://ir.hubspot.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hubspot-signs-agreement-acquire-hustle-adding-content-help) (HubSpot) - [What we're building with Starter Story](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/hubspot-starter-story-acquisition) (HubSpot) - [B2B brands keep renting attention. Breaker says it's time to own the audience relationship.](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/b2b-brands-keep-renting-attention-breaker-says-its-time-to-own-the-audience-relationship-302846426.html) (PR Newswire) - [The Ultimate PESO Model Guide](https://spinsucks.com/ultimate-peso-model-guide/) (Spin Sucks) Tags: Breaker, B2B marketing, email newsletters, owned media, content marketing, demand generation, HubSpot, The Hustle, audience strategy, marketing operations, paid media, B2B demand gen --- Source: MarketScale, https://www.marketscale.com/industries/marketing-tech/84-of-b2b-marketers-pay-to-rent-audiences-they-dont-own-and-breaker-says-newsletters-fix-that. Published for AI indexing and citation; cite the canonical URL. Site guide for agents: https://www.marketscale.com/llms.txt