In our current age of algorithm, creatives–from major studio executives to marketing campaign strategists to solo TikTokers filming entire microdramas in their bathrooms–tend to start their process by asking a question: If I make this, will it find an audience?
Chronicle Media says it can answer that question.
Co-founded by Aaron Sisto, Scott Greenberg, and Ollie Lewis, Chronicle describes itself as an AI-based, agentic “engine” that powers social media growth for video games, brands, animation, video podcasts, microdramas, global franchises, creators, studios, and more.
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Its core offering: audience simulation, where proprietary models run through “tens of thousands of niche audience segments to identify the largest fanbase possible” on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X, Chronicle says.
Once those audience segments are identified, it taps in AI “agents” to work with a creative and/or brand IP on campaign management and channel optimization, with the goal of reaching new viewers and keeping current ones engaged–all in the name of consumer and fandom growth.
Chronicle launched earlier this year, and has since partnered with digital studios like CC0 Studios, The Hive Studio, Simple Alien, and Wall of Entertainment. One of its top case studies so far is CC0 and The Hive’s YouTube-first teen comedy The Normal MFer, which Chronicle says “posted major audience growth” through its first 10-episode season.
With Chronicle’s audience identification and growth tools, The Normal MFer saw a 619% increase in organic reach (pushing to 994,000 people), an 1,804% increase in watch time (to 31K hours), and a 330% increase in new viewers (890K) throughout the season.
Chronicle says it accomplished all that growth by identifying and targeting “previously underserved audience segments” on YouTube that might be interested in The Normal MFer, including 13-34-year-old male audiences and viewers of animation, horror, and dark fantasy channels/IPs including Adult Swim, Solar Opposites, and Rick & Morty.
While its AI stack is the workhorse identifying these audience segments, Chronicle’s founding team brings human skill built from years of experience across both storytelling and tech. Greenberg is a former Starz and Film Roman exec who co-founded animation studio Bento Box Entertainment (the studio behind Bob’s Burgers and Hazbin Hotel), Sisto has a PhD in AI Simulation from Stanford University, and Lewis co-founded security company Rebellion Defense.
Their experiences are what brought them together, to the idea of a company that could find and target precise audiences from amid the vast number of people trawling for digital content every day.
“Even with our biggest shows on TV, the largest challenge was distribution,” Greenberg says. “We’d have great numbers on Fox and on Netflix or on Hulu, but YouTube was always complicated.”
When Bento Box brought in YouTube writer/animator Vivienne Medrano and her hit Hazbin Hotel, Greenberg got a firsthand look at the true power of digital fandom. “I saw that YouTube and social can be a first window,” he says. So he went into Chronicle with an interest in dissecting what makes an IP like Hazbin successful on YouTube versus one that doesn’t take off,
Without Chronicle, “You can put your content up on YouTube and it might work, but if it didn’t work, you don’t know if that was because the content didn’t resonate with an audience or a fandom, or because they just never saw it,” he says. “What Chronicle solves for, the best analogy we have is syndicated television. We can define who’s your audience, where they are, what they’re watching, and then we can place content in the feed of the audience member with the highest propensity of wanting to see it.”
That means “then the audience can see it, and the content will live or die by its own merit, not by the algorithm delivering it,” he says.
Greenberg was in the thick of Hazbin Hotel’s popularity, but across the industry pond, Sisto was also watching its rise.
“I think basically no one would disagree that discovery and audience growth are some of the biggest problems out there. What we’ve been really focused on is bringing AI firepower to the problem in a way that’s actually effective,” he says.
He adds that this approach is what makes Chronicle “really unique.”
“Our model is a frontier model where we allow you to go and drop in a piece of content, and the first thing that comes up is a full map of your audience segments across socials, and a TAM–a total addressable market across socials, with granular details on niche audiences,” he says. That data “lets us launch into very very highly efficient campaigns where we’re finding and acquiring these validated superfans who are just waiting out there to watch your content.”
All three co-founders chime in that they’re aware many creators are leery of generative AI, and that yet more are experiencing AI fatigue, overwhelmed by the number of new LLM-based tools being shoved into every platform and app they interact with.
The creative Chronicle works with can be “purely human,” as the company puts it. Chronicle doesn’t make or use generative creative tools, and no generative tool needs to touch its partners’ IPs.
Chronicle’s team says they know there’s anxiety around the thought that AI could replace human creatives, “but that’s not the business we’re in. We’re nowhere near that,” they say. “We’re talking about using machine intelligence and data to help creators understand how to get their content in front of somebody.”
And that’s exactly what they plan to continue doing. Following early success with projects like The Normal MFer, Chronicle foresees itself spending the next 12 months scaling.
“A year from now, we want to be the partner to help everyone from the independent creator to the big publisher, from the small launching consumer brand to a major brand going digital,” Lewis says. “We want to help creators own their audience and engage their audience, and we’ll really be the gold standard for that across platforms.”
Folks interested in connecting with Chronicle, its team, and its tools can reach out here.
Chronicle is a Tubefilter partner.
