The Powder Shelf Has Three Brands And They Share Almost Nobody

How many brands actually pay creators on this shelf

Three functional powder brands have paid 402 creators for 1,424 videos, and only 6 of those creators have worked with two of them.

Create, we analyzed our database of 700,000+ sponsored YouTube videos to map the functional powder shelf and find which niches are over-sponsored and under-sponsored.

We measured three of the brands sitting next to you.

Beam, Liquid I.V. and Ghost Lifestyle.

402 sponsored creators and 1,424 sponsored videos since July 2021.

Three brands is the whole shelf we can measure, and that thinness is the finding rather than a hole in the counting. Other powder and hydration companies exist, some of them much larger businesses, but they have almost nothing trackable on YouTube, so what is countable runs from 16 July 2021 to 11 July 2026 and stops at three names.

Beam is 48.9 percent of the shelf, Liquid I.V. is 29.6 percent, and Ghost Lifestyle is 21.4 percent of it from a roster of 26 people. Across all three, the average creator has been paid 3.5 times.

Who says so: our own count of recorded paid YouTube deals for the three brands, pulled 12 August 2026, affiliate only attribution rows excluded.

What did each one buy

They sell the same shape of product and bought it in three ways that barely resemble each other.

The repeat rate runs in exactly the opposite order to roster size, so the smallest roster here is the stickiest by a distance.

Ghost goes first, because it is the one that looks least like the other two.

Ghost Lifestyle took health and fitness

Ghost Lifestyle took health and fitness. 42% of its deals, nearly three times the category average. Only 26 creators for 305 videos, 11.7 bookings each, and the top ten of those creators carry 80% of everything it has ever run.

Underneath that, 88 percent of the 26 came back for another video, 10 of them have passed ten videos each, and only 3 were paid once and never again.

Ghost does not get a chart here, and the reason is worth saying out loud. 26 creators is under the 100 a pyramid needs to fill, so drawing one would give you a picture that is mostly empty canvas pretending to be a finding.

Ghost Lifestyle has 26 creators on record and 305 paid videos from them, which is 21.4 percent of every video on this shelf.

One caveat sits under the 42%, and it is a fair thing for anyone to push back on. That share rests on 9 creators, so a single extra booking moves it. The shape of the strategy is solid, the exact percentage is not something to build a plan around.

Who says so: our own count of recorded paid YouTube deals for ghostlifestyle.com, pulled 12 August 2026. His 42% groups health and fitness channels together, which our own channel classifier splits as 107 health deals and 21 fitness deals out of 305.

Liquid I.V. took comedy and entertainment

Liquid I.V. took comedy and entertainment. 41% of its deals, double the average. Health and fitness is 1.7%. It is a hydration brand that almost never books a fitness channel.

131 creators and 422 videos at 3.2 bookings each. Half of its creators came back for a second video, which is the best repeat rate of the two brands wide enough to chart. Fashion is a small pocket at 25 deals and heavily favoured, 3.1 times the rate anyone else here buys it.

The 1.7% is the number to sit with. A company selling hydration sticks has put 7 of its 422 videos in front of health and fitness audiences, and it has 10 creators past ten videos anyway.

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Beam took the long tail

Beam took the long tail. 251 creators, the widest of the three, but 141 of them were paid once and never again. Its real lean is news and true crime, at nearly twice the average.

697 videos at 2.8 bookings per creator, and only 12 of the 251 ever reached ten. News and true crime is 29 of its deals, small in size and 1.9 times the rate the rest of the shelf buys that audience at. Political channels are the other pocket nobody else goes near, 38 deals, 5 percent of everything Beam has run.

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Look at the shape of that chart rather than the labels. The base is enormous and the top is a sliver.

Now put the three of them side by side. Beam has 12 creators past ten videos, Liquid I.V. has 10, Ghost has 10. All three ended up leaning on about a dozen people, and two of them paid to meet a few hundred strangers first.

Who says so: our own count of recorded paid YouTube deals for shopbeam.com, pulled 12 August 2026, anchored to the full domain so two other companies with beam in the name stay out of the count.

Do the three share any creators at all

Six, out of four hundred and two.

These three sell the same shape of product and they share almost nobody. Out of 402 creators, 6 have been paid by two of the three. Not one has been paid by all three.

That is not a crowded auction. That is three brands buying in three different rooms.

Here is the whole shared list. Every other creator on this shelf belongs to exactly one brand.

Six names is short enough to watch every channel yourself in an afternoon, and you should, because they are the only proof on this shelf that one creator can carry two powder brands without either side minding. It also puts this category a long way from the wellness drink shelf, where most of the brands have never bought a creator video at all.

Who says so: our own count of recorded paid YouTube deals, pulled 12 August 2026, counting distinct brands per creator.

What does a young programme on this shelf look like

One name carrying more than half of it, which is the usual shape and the usual risk.

Create, the brand this shelf was mapped for, has 65 recorded videos across 18 creators. 36 of those 65 are Thomas DeLauer, so more than half the programme rests on one person, and 14 of the 18 were booked once.

60% of those deals sit in health and fitness, which is the most worked niche on this shelf.

Two things to hold beside that. The 65 deals are only what we captured from video descriptions, so the programme is probably bigger than 18 creators and this is a floor rather than a ceiling. The Thomas DeLauer concentration is the part we would defend hardest, because 36 recorded videos on one channel is not a rounding error however the rest of the count moves.

Who says so: our own count of recorded paid YouTube deals for trycreate.co, re-pulled 16 August 2026. The version of this that went out on LinkedIn said 13 of the 18 were booked once, the count is 14.

Which niches are worn out, and which are untested

Health and fitness is worn out, and everything cheap is untested rather than proven.

Health and fitness is the worst. Only 33 creators carry 211 videos, 6.4 each, nearly double every other niche, and all three brands are already there.

Lifestyle and food is next, 29% of every deal on the shelf.

The difference between those two matters when you are the one buying. Lifestyle and food spreads its 413 videos across 119 creators, so it is busy but there is room in it. Health and fitness puts 211 videos through 33 people, which means the channel you are about to email has already read a powder script six times, for somebody who is not you. Comedy and entertainment is between them, 87 creators and 302 videos.

That is where the price problem starts. You are not buying a fresh audience there, you are buying the seventh mention, and you pay a premium for it. Working out which of those 33 people are already carrying a competitor code, whose exclusivity clause has lapsed and whose has not, means going back through two years of video descriptions one at a time. It is slow and it is dull and it is a lot of what we take on for a brand arriving late on a shelf like this one. It also keeps the disclosures clean, because a channel running a competing supplement code in the same month as yours is a problem you want found before your legal team finds it.

Now the other end. Education and mindset, 7 creators, 18 videos. Sports, 10 creators, 28 videos. News and true crime, 12 creators, 31 videos, with only two of the three brands in it.

Who says so: our own count of recorded paid YouTube deals across all three brands, pulled 12 August 2026, with channels grouped into niches by our own classifier.

What the numbers do not show

On a shelf this small, empty and untested look identical and are not the same thing.

On a bigger shelf an under-sponsored niche means plenty of creators and very few deals, which is a proven opening. Here it means almost nothing has been tried, so there is no evidence in either direction. Those three pockets are small because the whole shelf is small, and that is worth stating rather than dressing up.

The niche grouping has a genuine limit too. The ungrouped other bucket is 22.8% of shelf deals, so roughly a fifth of the shelf is not in any of the niches named above.

And this is recorded paid YouTube only. Hydration and powder brands buy a lot of Instagram, TikTok and retail media that never appears in a video description, so every count here is a floor. A brand missing from this page is a brand we cannot see, not a brand doing nothing.

Untested is a better position than it sounds, because untested is cheap to enter.

It looks a lot like the gut health drink aisle, where 21 brands have produced 93 sponsored videos in total. The first brand to book six education channels properly on this shelf will find out something none of its rivals know.

What should you do about it

Copy the depth, not the width.

1. Copy Ghost's depth, not Beam's width. 26 creators booked 11.7 times each beats 251 creators booked 2.8 times each.

Both ended up with about ten heavy creators. Ghost found them inside a roster of 26, Beam paid 251 people to get there and 141 of those never came back. If your budget is the smaller one, depth is the cheaper way to learn who works.

2. Stop opening with health and fitness. You are paying a premium for an audience that has been sold this six times already.

It is the one niche on the shelf where all three of them are already standing.

3. The cheapest entries are education and mindset, sports, and news. Nobody on this shelf has planted a solid position there, which means you would not be bidding against the others.

Budget those as tests with a clear read on each, then put the depth behind whichever one answers.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you would like a targeted list of creators that would work well in this niche :D

That is the part we take on for brands landing on a shelf like this. We find the creators, check who has already paid them and what they are still tied to, handle the negotiating and the paperwork so the same person is not quoted two different numbers by two different people, and keep the disclosures clean while it runs. If you sell a powder and you are looking at a shelf with three names on it and wondering where you fit, come and talk it through with us.

Keep reading

• The bigger picture. The brands paying YouTube creators most in 2026
• The shelf where everyone shares. Thirteen supplement brands and the 58 creators between them
• Before you brief a health claim. What the rules ask of you and of them