The Digiday Podcast

Digiday

The Digiday Podcast is a weekly show on the big stories and issues that matter to brands, agencies and publishers as they transition to the digital age.

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504 episodes
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Sep 13, 2022 · 32 min
The season of change: Digiday's editors recap summer 2022's top trends in media
The summer can be a slow period for many companies, however the economic downturn, supply chain issues, rising inflation rates and world events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine didn’t take time off when the rest of us did. Now heading into the fall, a lot of media execs are trying to strategize for a business environment that doesn’t reflect how it used to look even six months ago. At Digiday, we spent the summer following these subtle – and not so subtle – changes to the industries we cover and narrowed down key trends that either emerged or expanded during the past few months. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, my co-host Tim Peterson and I unpacked the biggest takeaways from that time period as well as chatted through what this could mean for media companies’ fourth quarter and the start of 2023.
Sep 6, 2022 · 51 min
How CBS News’ co-presidents Neeraj Khemlani and Wendy McMahon are stepping up their streaming news outlet
CBS News is adding more traditional TV talent to its streaming outlet. After rebranding its streamer as CBS News Streaming Network in January and adding a show hosted by “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell, the Paramount-owned news organization is now updating its streaming service’s primetime lineup by having former “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson anchor CBS News Streaming Network’s 7 p.m. slot. In the latest Digiday Podcast, CBS News and Stations co-presidents and co-heads Neeraj Khemlani and Wendy McMahon discussed the new nightly primetime news program and the streamer’s development since its November 2014 debut. “We’re now lapping a year working together across CBS News and Stations, and the momentum’s been awesome,” said Khemlani. After accumulating more than 1 billion streams in 2021, CBS News Streaming Network is averaging more than 80 million streams per month — the number of times people have started streaming a video on the service — with viewers spending 1.4 billion minutes, on average, in aggregate per month watching the service’s programming, according to a CBS News spokesperson. CBS News is also plying the streaming service with more programming from its local news stations. At the start of this year, the news organization set the goal of increasing its live local coverage on CBS News Streaming Network by 15,000 hours to 45,000 hours by the end of 2022. But it has updated the amount, coinciding with the upcoming launch of CBS News Detroit in November, which will mark its fourteenth local channel on CBS News Streaming Network. “It’s quite the expansion effort, not only through the lens of more channels but also through the lens of the number of hours we’re producing live now across those channels. Nearly 46,000 hours annually of live coverage on those 14 streams by the end of the year,” McMahon said.
Aug 30, 2022 · 41 min
Dentsu Media’s Mark Prince is pushing advertisers to diversify their media mixes to support minority-owned publishers
There has been plenty of talk among advertisers and agencies about the need for brands to move ad dollars to minority-owned publishers to ensure they are reaching as many potential customers as possible. As svp and head of economic empowerment at Dentsu Media, Mark Prince is charged with turning that talk into action. “We’re guiding our internal investment and strategy teams to make sure that we have the framework that really fosters the inclusion of our diverse-owned outlets, working hard to remove the barriers that have long existed depending on the type of media that we’re working with in this space and also making sure that our diversity vendors are heard,” Prince said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. An important aspect of Dentsu’s economic empowerment team is that it doesn’t sit in a silo but is part of the media agency’s investment group. “It was really important that we have a seat at the table where the dollars are being allocated,” Prince said. The economic empowerment team’s involvement in Dentsu clients’ investment strategies will play a role in ensuring that the agency group is able to meet its goal of 15% of its annual budget across media, creative and customer experience management to be spent with diverse-owned suppliers by 2025.
Aug 23, 2022 · 52 min
How BuzzFeed Inc.’s Edgar Hernandez is preparing for a recession while seeing signs of recovery
BuzzFeed Inc. chief revenue officer Edgar Hernandez and his team have been preparing for a potential recession since May. “We did some recession planning and presented that to senior leadership back in June. And so we’ve been playing the game as if we are in a recession,” he said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. That recession planning boils down to two focuses with respect to BuzzFeed’s advertising business: “efficiency and innovation,” said Hernandez, who was CRO of Complex Networks before BuzzFeed acquired the media company last year as the latter company went public. “Efficiency” effectively means making it easy for advertisers to spend money with BuzzFeed and to see returns on that investment. “Innovation” means pitching them ad opportunities -- such as a new video programming slate that BuzzFeed’s sales team started pitching advertisers on in recent weeks -- that will help brands to stand out and capture audiences’ attention at a time when consumer confidence has ebbed. While BuzzFeed has seen the economic downturn’s impacts, as evinced by its most recent quarterly earnings report, the media company is also starting to see signs of an advertising recovery. The volume of pitch requests -- or RFPs -- for fourth-quarter ad opportunities that BuzzFeed is currently receiving is comparable to last year. That includes RFPs from advertiser categories such as consumer electronics and retail that have been soft throughout 2022. “There is a good signal in market right now that there’s increased opportunity going into Q4 and that especially some challenged categories like consumer electronics are being more active than they’ve been the other three quarters,” Hernandez said.
Aug 16, 2022 · 48 min
How The Washington Post's Joy Robins is using lessons from 2020 to handle the current economic slowdown
The Washington Post is starting to feel the squeeze on its advertising business but CRO Joy Robins is relying on lessons learned from the 2020 revenue slump to mitigate its impact on the business this time around. Similar to the previous guests of The Evolving CRO series on the Digiday Podcast this month, Robins said her role as revenue chief at the Post has changed tremendously, even in just the past year. This January, Robins added subscription revenue to her purview to develop how the revenue category could interact with advertising to gather more first-party data to produce more leads of paid readers. Ad clients are expecting faster turnaround times in their campaigns once their marketing budgets are released, according to Robins. And while certain categories are spending less now than they were in previous months, ignoring those clients is a critical error, she said on the latest episode of the podcast.
Aug 9, 2022 · 47 min
Vox Media's Ryan Pauley explains how expanding the CRO role beyond ad sales improves ad sales
In March, Vox Media expanded the purview of Ryan Pauley's role as chief revenue officer beyond ad sales to also encompass consumer revenue, affiliate and commerce businesses. Rather than diluting the role of ad sales, the broadening was designed to give the media company's advertising business a boost by connecting it more directly with Vox Media's other revenue streams. "There was a historical expectation that diversifying revenue meant the business lines were in competition with one another. In fact, what I'm realizing and what many companies are realizing is that they can really benefit from one another on the advertising side," Pauley said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. By overseeing Vox Media's various revenue streams, Pauley said he feels more informed on how the revenue sources relate, which in turn helps him connect with the brand CMOs that Vox Media sells to. "I feel much more informed now when I go talk to a CMO about marketing strategies. We have a large paid acquisition team and budget, and we have the same challenges on how much do we prioritize brand versus performance and how do you bridge the attribution gap between the two," he said. That insight may help Vox Media as, like every other media company, it contends with the economic downturn and its impact on advertising. Pauley acknowledged that Vox Media has not been immune from that advertising drawdown, but he said the company is seeing ad dollars move to programmatically sold inventory, which is more performance-oriented for advertisers. "We're definitely seeing the lean towards more performance," he said.
Aug 2, 2022 · 45 min
'It takes ingenuity to survive': How The Daily Beast's Mia Libby is bracing for an economic slowdown
The job description for a chief revenue officer at a media company doesn’t resemble what it used to a decade ago. “There was a time where the lion's share of my job was just going out on sales calls,” said Mia Libby, revenue chief of The Daily Beast, who’s held that position for nearly five years. That was back when she considered the CRO title as more of the head of ad sales given the fact that advertising was the primary source of revenue for the company. Now, about half of her time is spent in internal meetings with the product, editorial, audience and subscription teams, in addition to sales, to find a healthy balance of how advertising, subscriptions, licensing and commerce all work together, Libby said on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. Heading into 2022, The Daily Beast wanted to find a more efficient method of monetizing the site’s users, from one-time visitors to paid subscribers. This meant creating more of a pipeline for converting readers to subscribers, but also by finding ways to collect first-party data in the process. With an economic slowdown creeping up on the horizon, however, Libby said that strategy is being looked to as the way of withstanding the potential headwinds, which could last a lot longer than the pandemic-induced recession of 2020. This episode marks the first of a four-part series on the Digiday Podcast, which explores how media CROs are leading their companies through turbulent times and are taking on new responsibilities as companies batten down the hatches with new revenue streams.
Jul 26, 2022 · 43 min
How Slate's Charlie Krammerer is prioritizing frequency to boost podcast revenue
Slate has been in the podcast business for nearly two decades, but refreshed its strategy this year to increase the frequency of its most popular shows. “Slowburn,” “Decoder Ring” and “One Year” are all narrative podcast series at Slate that will move from one season per year to two or three, to increase listenership as well as give advertisers the opportunity to advertise in those products at different points of the year. Meanwhile, some of the publisher’s weekly series will increase to a biweekly schedule to achieve the same goal of having more sellable inventory. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Slate’s CRO and president Charlie Krammerer discussed why his team has prioritized the frequency of existing shows instead of chasing scale like other podcast networks, as well as how his team of sellers is prioritizing a specific mix of custom content ads while investing in the host-read model. Making up about half of the company’s revenue, the podcast business is primarily advertising-dependent, although there has been a trend of podcast listeners turning into paid subscribers with Slate putting certain episodes of its most popular series behind its paywall.
Jul 19, 2022 · 48 min
A 2022 privacy regulation primer with Mayer Brown’s Dominique Shelton Leipzig
Don’t sleep on privacy regulation. So far 2022 may be lacking 2018’s one-two punch of the General Data Protection taking effect in Europe and the California Consumer Protection Act being passed in the U.S., but a spate of recent regulatory jabs could be setting up for a right hook. Consider the privacy regulation moves of the past couple months. The recently introduced American Data Privacy and Protection Act is the latest congressional bill proposing a federal privacy law in the U.S. The California Privacy Protection Agency released a draft of proposed regulations for enforcing California’s privacy law. Europe has passed the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, each of which covers targeted advertising and data management. And GDPR enforcement is picking up. “The canary in the coal mine of what is triggering all this attention is the digital advertising ecosystem,” said Dominique Shelton Leipzig, a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown where she serves as the lead for global data innovation as well as ad tech privacy and data management. In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Shelton Leipzig surveyed the current privacy regulation landscape and interpreted what it portends for the digital ad industry. Her verdict? “With all the regulation, there’s a minefield for companies approaching the space,” Shelton Leipzig said.
Jul 12, 2022 · 2 min
Introducing The Return
Digiday is proud to present The Return, a podcast about what the return to the office can look like as corporate America adapts to the new, not quite post-pandemic normal. The Return follows the staff at one Atlanta-based advertising agency through Covid outbreaks, as well as the highs and lows of transitioning to hybrid work after two years of pandemic lockdown and working remotely. While the future of work is still under construction, employees across the country are forging their own paths to determine what that future looks like amidst parenthood, corporate mandates, long commutes and an ever-looming pandemic. The Return is hosted by Kimeko McCoy, senior marketing reporter at Digiday, and produced by Digiday audio producer Sara Patterson. Listen to The Return on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Jul 12, 2022 · 54 min
Why The Wall Street Journal is centering personal finance on its new commerce site Buy Side
The Wall Street Journal is finally entering the commerce space after spending a year figuring out what that business will look like for Dow Jones. Launched last month, Buy Side from WSJ is a standalone site whose newsroom operates separately from the Journal, but has the same focus of helping people make financial decisions -- a shared mission for Dow Jones’ other properties including MarketWatch and Barron's, according to the company's chief revenue officer Josh Stinchcomb. The timing of Buy Side's launch -- which is likely taking place right before a recession -- could be a unique challenge for most commerce publishers, with audiences starting to pinch their pennies and brands reconsidering their affiliate marketing budgets. But Leslie Yazel, head of content for Buy Side, believes that these circumstances could benefit her team's editorial strategy, thanks to the personal finance focus featured in each article. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Stinchcomb and Yazel discuss how Buy Side is balancing consumer product recommendations with detailed budgeting breakdowns to help readers make purchase decisions through the lens of value, as well as setting sights on striking up affiliate partnerships with financial institutions.
Jul 5, 2022 · 40 min
GroupM’s Bharad Ramesh explains why TV advertising’s measurement shift is only getting started
Heading into this year’s annual TV advertising upfront negotiations, the big story was whether TV ad buyers and sellers would move en masse away from using Nielsen’s measurements as the currency for their upfront deals. They didn’t. However, that doesn’t mean the measurement makeover wave has ebbed, GroupM executive director of research and investment analytics Bharad Ramesh said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “I don’t know if things have quieted down. They may be quiet publicly, but we know internally — and I know speaking for some of our other agency peers — internally there’s a lot of work going on in terms of lining up tests or talking to networks about shadowing currencies or even, in the case of another agency, piloting for the upfront with an alternative currency,” said Ramesh. Much of the industry’s measurement work currently revolves around testing the various measurement providers in order to assess their pros and cons. For example, GroupM has been running tests with more than a dozen of its largest clients to evaluate measurement providers — including iSpot.tv and Comscore as well as Nielsen’s upcoming revamped measurement system Nielsen One — so that in the first quarter of 2023, WPP’s ad buying arm and its clients can decide on which to use as currencies in next year’s upfront market. “Essentially we’re taking a campaign that’s scheduled to run in Q2 and Q3 of this year, and we want to be able to capture the campaign with the alternate providers where possible,” said Ramesh. However, he added, “the goal is not to compare and contrast as much as to understand where each of these currencies are in terms of their readiness.”
Jun 28, 2022 · 51 min
Bustle’s Charlotte Owen is on a mission to turn around Elite Daily
BDG has been on a mission to revamp the brands in its lifestyle division for the past few years, by increasing the exclusivity in its events business, acquiring new luxury-focused fashion brands and adding shoppable elements to its content. But editorially, BDG’s namesake brands Bustle and Bustle UK have been undergoing a content transformation too, led by editor-in-chief Charlotte Owen. Taking a page from the tried-and-true playbook of magazines in the industry, Owen’s team has started going after a higher caliber set of celebrity interviews in the form of monthly digital covers, only her strategy for interviewing goes against the standard formula she sees practiced by other publications. Owen, who helped launch Bustle UK in May 2018, was promoted to lead both the U.S. and U.K. editions of the site in January 2020, and two years later in April 2022, was tapped as the editor-in-chief of BDG’s Gen Z-focused media brand Elite Daily as well. Elite Daily, which was acquired by BDG in April 2017, after its former parent company Daily Mail General Trust deemed it all but worthless at the end of 2016, has been on a steep uphill climb to regain the authority it once had over 18-24-year-olds. The site had achieved profitability one year after its launch in 2012, leading it to be bought for over $40 million in January 2015 by DMGT, but like many digital publications of the time, fell victim to Facebook’s algorithm changes shortly thereafter. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Owen discusses how she is applying the leadership lessons and editorial strategy that’s worked at Bustle to Elite Daily in hopes of restoring the brand’s authority within the college-aged demographic once again.
Jun 23, 2022 · 16 min
From Cannes: Jellyfish CEO Rob Pierre believes in prioritizing platform partners as much as clients
In the final installment of the Digiday Podcast from the 2022 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, I was joined by Rob Pierre, the irrepressible CEO and co-founder of Jellyfish, a network of agencies and marketing services that specialize in digital work and transformation. Pierre distinguishes Jellyfish's operating philosophy from the agency holding companies on a two key levels. For one, Jellyfish operates off one single P&L — no regions, no divisions — and for another, the network prioritizes the major platforms as importantly as it does its clients. "It sort of started with us thinking that we would love our clients to treat us like partners, not vendors. And, of course, if that's what we would like for us, you know, we can't treat our vendors any differently," said Pierre, who started Jellyfish in 2005. "And then it became apparent that if they're both partners, why would you treat them any differently? ... So yeah, I actually think our business turned around when we decided, as an example, to treat Google like our best client." New forms of connecting with consumers have gotten Pierre's, and consequently Jellyfish's, attention, and he said he wants to be sure to put in the work to figure out how and when to reach them. "If advertising is the monetization of attention .. it's much harder to grab someone's attention because it's so disparate," he said. "It's on so many different platforms on different devices for very short periods of time. So, but where are people going to spend? Where are the eyeballs going to be in the future? [W]e're thinking the metaverse is one of them."
Jun 22, 2022 · 30 min
From Cannes: IPG's data chief Arun Kumar wishes there was a Hippocratic oath for marketers
The Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity is well underway, as the crowds along the Croisette clearly indicate. But a lot of the action, and heady conversations, are also taking place in the suites and conference rooms of the big hotels that dot the main boulevard of Cannes -- not to mention in the yachts parked in the Vielle Port alongside the Palais where Cannes content and awards are taking place. I was fortunate to have one of those conversations with Arun Kumar, chief data & marketing technology officer for IPG, who's also CEO of IPG's marketing intelligence engine Kinesso, who was my guest on the latest installment of the Digiday Podcast. He's essentially the principal data architect for the entire holding company. Kumar is an outspoken defender of marketers' right to gather data on consumers in ethical ways, and is a big believer that now is the moment for marketers, agencies and ad-tech companies to speak up before further privacy legislation is crafted that could limit or hamper the ability to understand consumer patterns. His concern is that, without input from the industry, legislators will craft rules promoted mostly by privacy advocates. "As an industry we've let ourselves down by not being present at the table," said Kumar, who thinks there should be national standards for privacy rules. "What the marketing industry has done is stood up, and basically put its head over the parapet, got itself shot at, and not done anything to disabuse anyone of those notions [of abuse of data] ... We've now conflated cookies with privacy." If only the marketing world had devised some sort of Hippocratic oath at the outset of the digital era, the industry wouldn't have come under the degree of scrutiny it is getting from legislators. He looked to the medical world as an example to be emulated, where all doctors are held to the fundamental ethical base of do no harm, which influences all their actions. "One of the places we should look forward to is medicine," said Kumar. "No matter where you go in medicine, no matter what you discover, there are certain ethics surrounding it, which come from the principles [the Hippocratic oath]. We as an industry ... have not aligned on what those principles are, we're asking ill-prepared legislators and bureaucrats to solve the problem, and the reality is when you step into the metaverse or other places ... there is going to be more data exhaust that comes out of that."
Jun 21, 2022 · 12 min
From Cannes: Forrester's Joanna O'Connell on fraud, data, walled gardens and networking again
The Digiday podcast this week is coming to you live from the Cannes Lions, where the media, marketing, ad tech and creative worlds have come together for the first time in person in two years. The guest for today's podcast is Joanna O'Connell, vp and principal analyst with Forrester Research, who offered an unvarnished view of the ills of the industry while crediting some corners of ad tech for trying to make things better. "In the 25 years of digital advertising, innovation has outpaced thoughtful, methodical, careful assessment of what could be done versus what should be done," said O'Connell, sitting in the lobby of the famed Martinez hotel at the far end of the Croisette, the main boulevard that links all major hotels to the Palais (where Cannes-Lions-sanctioned content is held). "There's a lot happening that's shining a light on what we do that gives us a moment, or should give us a moment, of pause," added O'Connell. "And I say this to the biggest brands and to the biggest media platforms in the world because it is their responsibility, ultimately, to be shepherds of great experiences for consumers." O'Connell also address the flood of new tech innovations that create "a lot of noise," the causes of continued fraud in the industry, what the walled gardens may face from brands, and why the idea of consumers ultimately owning data is a much more nuanced issue than it appears.
Jun 20, 2022 · 24 min
From Cannes: PHD's Philippa Brown on transforming the media agency to serve clients more effectively
Welcome to the Cannes Lions, which is meeting in-person for the first time since 2019. This week is going to be equal parts exhausting and exhilirating. Although the Lions celebrate all of advertising, the media agency world has taken more of a center-stage position in recent years. "Rather than just talking about servicing our clients and understanding our clients' business, what we're really doing more about and talking more about now is how we can help them in their journey of transformation, and I think that has been the thing that I've really seen the language shift over the years," said Brown, a 15-year veteran of Omnicom. Brown addressed the realities of dealing with scope creep from clients, citing the need to be straightforward and honest when having those discussions. "We need to be paid fairly ... More and more clients today realize they're asking a lot of us, and realize that we're not a charity -- that we do need to pay our people fairly and also have a return for our shareholders like they have to have a return for their shareholders." Brown has had to adjust to a new boss in Florian Adamski, who took over less than a year ago from Daryl Simm as global CEO of Omnicom Media Group. Flo, as he's known in the company, "is very much in the detail .. and very much a roll-up-sleeves executive, which I appreciate," said Brown. "He's also incredibly future facing, which again is really important, and sets a very clear vision for us moving forward." The digital industry's focus on performance marketing that comes so easily with a lot of newer innovations can be a dangerous path to go down if one overlooks the importance of brand, Brown explained. "A couple of the watch-outs are that you move too far into performance marketing and you forget about the brand, the strength of the brand," she said. "And that's what you'll see coming through in Cannes, I hope. The brand hasn't gone anywhere -- it still needs to have great ideas behind it, [and] it needs to capture the imagination of consumers and cut through. Sometimes I do worry that over the years we've gone too lower-funnel, performance, and we've forgotten about the brand." What does she hope to get out of Cannes Lions most of all? Connecting with people in-person again. "The number one thing for me is to see people," Brown explained. "There are some clients who are going to be there that I've only seen ever on a screen because they started their jobs during the pandemic ... so for me, that's one of the most exciting parts of the festival." Check out other upcoming podcasts from Cannes with agency leaders and analysts this week.
Jun 14, 2022 · 47 min
Magnet’s Danielle Johnsen Karr explains why Team Whistle’s social content agency is not a branded content studio
In February, digital video publisher Team Whistle unveiled Magnet. The Eleven-owned media company billed Magnet as a social content agency rather than the more typical branded content studio label that publishers have opted for in the past. In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Magnet lead Danielle Johnsen Karr explained that the company felt the studio label could constrain the roughly 35-person agency’s prospective client base. Magnet provides a lot of the same services as the typical publisher branded content studio, such as short-form video production and editing down clients’ long-form content, Johnsen Karr acknowledged. But the social content agency also provides influencer marketing and channel management services and is looking to secure longer-term relationships with advertisers that extend beyond the scope of a given campaign. “We felt like if we landed in that studio space, while we do all have those offerings, it might just sort of limit us in where we were going to reach some prospective clients, especially when we wanted to get into those longer-term remits with certain opportunities,” said Johnsen Karr. If Magnet does not fashion itself a branded content studio and describes itself as a social content agency, does that put it in the realm of traditional creative agencies? That designation would fit Johnsen Karr’s background, having come from the agency world and worked for agencies including McCann NY, Deutsch NY and 360i. “Good question. We’re probably not seeing ourselves as your typical creative agency. We do offer a lot of the services. What we don’t want to be doing is more of that day-to-day management,” Johnsen Karr said. Social content agency it is.
Jun 7, 2022 · 47 min
Google’s David Temkin sheds light on the company’s preparations for disabling third-party cookies
Google is keeping to its end-of-2023 deadline for disabling the use of third-party cookies in its Chrome browser, the company’s senior director of product management, ads privacy and user trust David Temkin said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. Of course, that timeline could still change, as it has before. But part of Google’s decision to extend its previous deadline was to give the company time for testing and tweaking, said Temkin. “We’ve got a pretty good line of sight to the endpoint. We’ve got a good plan to get there, and we’re making rapid progress,” he said. Much of that plan centers on Google’s Privacy Sandbox, which spans the company’s collection of cookie-replacing technologies. That includes contextual targeting proposal Topics and retargeting tool FLEDGE. And technically, Google has two Privacy Sandboxes: the web-oriented Privacy Sandbox for Chrome and the recently introduced mobile-minded Privacy Sandbox for Android. Considering the development of the connected TV advertising ecosystem and CTV’s reliance on the cookie-like IP address, CTV would seem ripe to eventually receive its own Privacy Sandbox — a possibility that the Google executive entertained. “At some point in time, could solutions be delivered on CTV that would deliver the same kind of relevant advertising that you can see on these other identifier-free platforms? Yes,” said Temkin.
May 31, 2022 · 45 min
How Front Office Sports is leveling up its branded content business through educational courses
Born out of a college class project in 2017, Front Office Sports is entering its fifth year with an eye on growth. Earlier this year in February, FOS got a round of funding from Crain Communications, which bought a 20% stake in the company on a $25 million valuation. Founder and CEO Adam White said that the company is on a path to profitability this year between the investment and the success it's seen in revenue streams like its year-old learning business. In total, FOS is projected to earn eight-figures of revenue this year. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, White talked about using the influx of revenue and investment to grow the FOS team, which is now at 40 full-time employees, including the recent hire of Lisa Granatstein as its chief content officer from Adweek where she served in the same role. Earning 99% of its revenue from advertising still, Granatstein will be responsible for finding more sponsorship opportunities on editorial projects, as well as growing the Pro subscription product that’s still in its beta phase.