Marketing · channel analysis

Marketing Against the Grain - what's actually working, and what isn't

Marketing · 23-min uploads · 97K subscribers · started 2016 · ~3.4/week
Est. ad revenue$152–$609/morough estimate from recent upload pace at $1.5-6 RPM

Most stats sites hand you a subscriber count and an earnings guess. Neither answers the question that matters: which titles win on this channel, which flop, and what a creator should copy. Here is that read, from its 181 most recent of 841 long-form uploads. One of the marketing YouTube channels we track. Visit Marketing Against the Grain on YouTube →

In Marketing Against the Grain's own words
Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot's CMO) and Kieran Flanagan (Hubspot's SVP of Marketing), lead you down the rabbit hole of marketing trends, growth tactics and innovation. On the way you'll pick up undiscovered strategies to give you that slight edge for success. These are not your typical twitter thread...Based in US

What are Marketing Against the Grain's average views?

This channel runs on hits: its top 10% of videos pull 42% of all views and its biggest is 23.3× the median, so the median upload (7K views) is the floor and the big numbers are the exception.

7K
median views
23.3×
top vs median
28%
hit rate (2×+)
42%
views from top 10%

What is Marketing Against the Grain's most popular video?

Its biggest hit is "How I Run A 0-Employee Marketing Agency With AI Tools" at 161K views - 23.3× the channel median. The other top performers:

Video titleViews
How I Run A 0-Employee Marketing Agency With AI Tools161K
We Used AI to Build the World's Best Landing Page-in Minutes89K
Claude Cowork Runs My Social Media (And Built a 2M Audience)73K

Which titles work best for Marketing Against the Grain - and which flop?

Same channel, same audience. The gap between these two lists is the title doing the work. Its strongest titles:

Video titleViews
How I Run A 0-Employee Marketing Agency With AI Tools161K
We Used AI to Build the World's Best Landing Page-in Minutes89K
Claude Cowork Runs My Social Media (And Built a 2M Audience)73K
GPT-4o Just Replaced Your Creative Team (For Free)65K
From Nowhere to #1? How Qwen 2.5 Just Beat Top AI Models64K
How to do 10 hours of research in 20 minutes with Ai (Gemini + NotebookLM)53K
Perplexity Comet: Testing the NEW AI Web Browser52K
How To Use Claude As Your Executive Assistant (10-min to setup)45K
Claude Cowork Just Did 7 Days of Work in 15 Minutes44K
This AI Is 96% CHEAPER Than GPT & Works Better (DeepSeek-R1)41K

And the uploads that underperformed for this channel:

Video titleViews
OpenClaw is Replacing the Human Internet. Yes, Really3K
The Growth Secrets You'll Never Hear in Public3K
How to Create LinkedIn, Instagram & Google Ads with AI3K
Build a Full AI Team Inside Your Inbox (Mail Manus Review)3K
What Will Happen to Marketing Teams in the Age of AI?3K
I Gave Perplexity Computer One Prompt. It Built Me a Full Creator Outreach Tool in 30 Minutes.3K
How Do You Integrate AI Into the Workplace? | Kraken CMO3K
OpenAI's O3 Mini: 9x Cheaper, 4x Faster - The Ultimate AI Showdown! (Bonus)3K
AI content all sounds the same. Here's a Claude Code skill to fix it.3K
This Video Proves AI Generated Images are Dying3K

Which title patterns actually move the needle

Not a guess - the real view lift of each pattern across 181 uploads: median views with it versus without. This isolates the title from the topic, so you copy what works here and skip what does not - something no other tracker breaks down per channel.

View lift by title pattern - Marketing Against the Grain
Includes a year7% of videos
+94%
Has a number61% of videos
+46%
Asks a question5% of videos
-37%
Uses (brackets)34% of videos
+29%
Starts How / Why / What20% of videos
-26%
An ALL-CAPS word24% of videos
+25%
The title formula for Marketing Against the Grain

Lean on includes a year and has a number - they lift views the most on this channel. Go easy on asks a question.

Surprise: asks a question costs this channel 37% here - the opposite of the usual "always do it" advice.

What keywords does Marketing Against the Grain rank on?

Weighted by views, the topics this channel actually pulls traffic on are: claude cowork, landing page, built audience, build world, manus demo, use prompt, google gemini, claude code. These are the lanes it owns - and the ones a similar channel competes against.

How often does Marketing Against the Grain post, and when?

Marketing Against the Grain publishes about 3.4 videos a week, most often on Sat.

Views by day of week
Sun
11
Mon
19
Tue
9
Wed
16
Thu
8
Fri
14
Sat
104

How long are Marketing Against the Grain's videos?

Typical uploads run about 23 minutes. Broken down by length, its 20 min+ videos perform best (8K median views) - the format worth leaning into on this channel.

Median views by video length
20 min+
8K
5-10 min
7K
10-20 min
6K

How does Marketing Against the Grain compare to other marketing channels?

At 7K median views, Marketing Against the Grain sits below the typical marketing channel we track (7K) - there is headroom.

How much money does Marketing Against the Grain make on YouTube?

Nobody outside the channel sees the real figure, and ad revenue is only part of it - sponsorships and merch often dwarf it. But from public view counts, Marketing Against the Grain pulls roughly 101K long-form views a month from recent uploads, which at a typical $1-4 RPM works out to an estimated $101-$404 a month in ad revenue (about $1,211-$4,842 a year). Treat it as a ballpark, not a payslip - real creator income varies wildly, and this ignores the back catalogue.

What should a channel like Marketing Against the Grain make next?

Copy what already works here, not generic advice: lean on the 20 min+ format, ship on Sat. The median is the bar - the goal of every upload is to clear 7K views.

Marketing Against the Grain stats at a glance

Subscribers97K
Total views14M
Videos published841
Avg views (of 181 analyzed)13K
Engagement rate7.8%
Uploads per week3.4
Typical length23 min
On YouTube since2016 (10 yrs)

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Public YouTube data for Marketing Against the Grain, analyzed by TubeHunter. We show the read, not a guarantee - titles are one lever, not magic.

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