2 Substack Updates (July 2025)

Two updates you should know about

Hi, hope you’re having a great July,

Just a quick note to let you know about two Substack features that are out now or coming soon: customisations for personal profiles and built-in adverts.

1. Personal profile customizations

What it is

Substack has just released a feature that allows creators to add branding to their personal profiles. You can now add a cover image in addition to your usual profile picture (think LinkedIn banner).

What you need to do

Nothing. Seriously, no one’s gonna care if you have a fancy banner or not.

By default, your new profile cover image is already populated with an image of your publication’s logo, if you have one, so it probably looks fine right now.

Reminder: To find your personal profile, click on your picture in the top right of your screen (web), then click your name in the menu that appears. You can edit your profile from here.

« https://substack.com/@yourname »

If you do want to upload a new cover image, it should be wide and not very tall.

Ratio: 3:1. Suggested size: 1200 x 400 pixels

My new cover image proves I’m a writer not a designer! I used a picture of my book in Amazon gift wrapping.

2. Substack adverts

There’s chatter amongst the Substack gurus about the imminent introduction of native ads on Substack. I haven’t heard this directly from Substack and am treating it as an unverified rumour.

People who claim to be wise about such things say native adverts are imminent because of a big funding deal closed by Substack earlier this month.

What it is

Native adverts are built-in ways for brands and businesses to sponsor content produced by people like you and me. They would provide a new way for content creators to monetize their work without direct subscriptions.

At this point, we don’t know what they would look like or how they would work, or even if they will ever be introduced.

What you need to do

Don’t freak out. I seriously doubt that advertising features are imminent for Substack, if only because the IT infrastructure would take significant time to build and roll out.

I’m also sceptical that the current founders, Chris and Hamish, would be on board with this idea, having said repeatedly over the years that advertising was never intended to be a core feature of Substack.

If it does get introduced, I’ll be jumping in to test out how it works (not in this publication, don’t worry!) so I can break it down for you guys. Right now, you don’t need to do anything.

Final thoughts

I’ve just shared info about two (possible) updates that you might have heard about on the Substack grapevine.

There’s nothing you need to do about either of them, I shared the info so you don’t get FOMO or start worrying about the future of Substack. Keep on doing what you’re doing already, being brilliant and enjoying the ride.

That’s it for this week, thanks for having me in your inbox,

Karen