Eight gut brands, and the one that bought a different audience

The shelf in one line

Eight gut health and probiotic brands have paid 1,051 YouTube creators, and 899 of them have taken money from exactly one of the eight.

We measured the 8 brands competing for the same creator slot: Ritual, Seed, BIOptimizers, ARMRA, Just Thrive, Olipop, Pendulum and poppi. 1,051 sponsored creators and 3,394 sponsored videos since May 2021.

That averages 3.2 deals per creator, the lowest of any shelf we have mapped. One brand owns half of it, with Ritual on 51.1 percent of every recorded deal, and the remaining seven split the rest.

Who says so: our own count of recorded paid YouTube deals across the eight brands, pulled 19 August 2026.

Which of these brands actually pays creators

Two brands are buying at any scale, three more are buying carefully, and the last three barely register.

Roster size is the number everyone quotes and it is the least useful one here. What separates these eight is who they bought and how many times they went back.

The widest roster on this shelf is also the one that goes back least often, with Ritual rebooking 45 percent of 803 creators while BIOptimizers rebooks 80 percent of 70.

Only Seed clears the bar a pyramid chart needs, which is 100 creators and 2.2 average bookings together. Ritual has the people and misses on repeat rate. BIOptimizers and ARMRA both have the repeat rate and miss on headcount, BIOptimizers at 70 and ARMRA at 99, one creator short. We drew all three of the larger ones anyway, because the shapes disagree in a way the table cannot show. For how this compares with every other category this year, that is the brands paying YouTube creators most in 2026.

What each one took

Each brand picked a different audience, and one of them picked an audience nobody else in gut health has gone near.

BIOptimizers bought health and stayed there

BIOptimizers took health and almost nothing else. 70% of its deals, near three times the average, and it rebooks 80% of the people it pays. The deepest roster on the shelf.

Health took 290 of its 415 deals, entertainment took 40 at 2.1 times the average, and comedy took 20. Fifteen of its 70 creators were booked ten or more times, and only 14 were booked once. It gets no pyramid chart because 70 creators cannot fill one, which is the chart admitting the programme is small rather than saying it is weak.

Olipop bought a different audience entirely

Olipop is the one to read twice. It is the only drink in the category and it bought a completely different audience: entertainment at nine times the average, sports at twenty-one times. 27 creators, 73 videos.

Entertainment took 32 of those 73 deals at 9.4 times the shelf average, and sports took 17 at 21.4 times. Every other brand here is buying somebody who already talks about their digestion. Olipop went and bought people who talk about football. It is a small programme, 2.2 percent of the shelf, and it is the only genuinely different idea on it. We looked at that decision on its own in the gut health drink aisle and its 93 sponsored videos.

Just Thrive, Pendulum and poppi are preferences rather than programmes. Just Thrive put 118 of its 142 deals on health channels, 83 percent, the most concentrated mix on the shelf across just 30 creators. Pendulum has 15 creators and its mix is health again at 70 percent. poppi has two creators and two videos, both on beauty channels, from a five month window in 2023 and 2024.

How much do these rosters overlap

Almost not at all, and that changes what a shortlist is worth here.

Stack those 8 rosters and almost nothing overlaps. 899 of the 1,051 creators were paid by exactly one brand. Only 4 have been paid by four.

There is no roster to outbid here. There is one to build first.

Underneath that, 127 creators were paid by two brands and 21 by three. No creator on this shelf has taken money from five of the eight. Next door on the supplement shelf, 58 creators have been paid by four or more of thirteen brands, and one has been paid by six, which is what a mature category looks like from this angle.

Of the 1,051 creators on this shelf, 899 have been paid by exactly one of the eight brands, and only 4 have been paid by four.

A category with no shared shortlist has not told you who converts yet, so nobody can hand you the answer and everybody is still guessing.

The few names more than one brand has found

Look at the subscriber column, because it is the part people get wrong. Realfoodology has 28,400 subscribers and Nathalie Niddam has 23,000, and both have been booked by three or four separate brands. Size is not what put them on this list. Something about how they sell this particular product worked, and each brand paid separately to find that out.

Mark Hyman has taken 47 gut health deals from four of these brands. A creator carrying four rival codes quotes from all four, and a health creator making claims about what a probiotic does inside your body is also the placement most likely to bring a regulator into your week. Reading two years of a creator's descriptions for rival codes, and checking what they have promised on camera, is most of the work we do before a name reaches a client's shortlist, and it moves both the price and the script. On a shelf where the crowded room is a health room, that check is also what keeps a claim from turning into a letter.

Which pockets are worn out, and which are empty

Health is the most worn out room on this shelf, and home is the emptiest.

Health is the worst. 123 creators carry 858 videos, 7.0 each, and 7 of the 8 brands are already in there. Those people have run this exact ad seven times.

Lifestyle is next. Every spending brand uses it and it is 40% of all deals.

Lifestyle is broad rather than crowded, at 2.8 deals per creator across 488 people, and most of that is Ritual on its own. Health is the room where the same 123 names keep getting booked.

Now the other end.

Home, 21 creators, two brands. The least contested pocket on the map. Travel, 28 creators, three brands, 1.8 videos each. Beauty, 29 creators, four brands. Fashion, 45 creators, three brands.

The cost of a crowded room does not arrive as a higher invoice, it arrives as a placement that works like a reminder instead of an introduction.

What the numbers do not show

Every count here is a floor, and it is one platform only.

These are recorded paid YouTube deals. Instagram, TikTok and podcast placements bought elsewhere are not in this pull, so a brand spending its budget off YouTube looks quieter here than it is in the market. A zero means we have not recorded a deal, which is not the same as a brand never buying one. That matters more on this shelf than most, because two of the eight are sodas and sodas sell hardest on the platforms we are not counting.

The empty pockets are small because the whole shelf is small. Home's 65 deals are a rounding error against health's 858, so nobody should read the under-sponsored list as an untapped market. What it is worth is the price, because a home creator has almost certainly never been pitched a probiotic.

The low overlap is a finding rather than a gap in the data. On the supplement shelf the same method found 58 creators shared by four or more brands, so the method can see sharing when sharing is there. Here it is not there.

Category labels come from what a channel mostly makes, so a health channel that also cooks counts once.

A number this specific is only worth something if you also know what it cannot see.

What to do about it

Buy one empty lane repeatedly, rather than testing five crowded ones once.

1. Do not open with health creators. You would pay a premium for an audience already sold a gut product seven times, and you would be third in line behind BIOptimizers and Just Thrive.

Health runs at 7.0 deals per creator against 2.8 in lifestyle, and BIOptimizers spent three years earning its position in that room, so buying into it cold means paying that tuition again.

2. Pick one empty lane and buy it again and again instead of testing five. BIOptimizers gets 5.9 videos per creator out of 70 people. Ritual gets 2.2 out of 803. Copy the first number.

Ritual spent 51.1 percent of the shelf's deals to rebook 45 percent of its people. BIOptimizers holds 12.2 percent of the shelf with 70 names and rebooks 80 percent of them.

3. The cheap lanes are home, travel, beauty and fashion, and nobody in gut health has planted a flag in any of them. The bigger prize: the whole better-for-you soda format is open. Across seven brands we have 29 creators and 75 videos, and five of the seven have never been recorded buying one.

Two to call: Catherine Gregory and Endless RVing. Both sell for other categories, neither has taken money from this shelf.

That last step is the work we do. We pull the rival history on every name, cut the ones already carrying other codes, price the pocket nobody is bidding in, and write the briefs so the claims stay on the right side of the line. Tell us which shelf you are on and we will show you your own version of the picture above.

Keep reading

• The bigger picture. The brands paying YouTube creators most in 2026
• The shelf next door, and what a mature one looks like. Thirteen supplement brands and the niches nobody sponsors
• Before you brief a health creator. What the rules ask of you and of them