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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Episodes504

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Jan 4, 2022 · 44 min
Minute Media’s Rich Routman explains how B2B tech is becoming a bigger part of the media company’s overall business
In its tenth year of being in business and after a string of publisher purchases — which have included The Players’ Tribune and FanSided — Minute Media made its first tech-centric acquisition in 2021 with the pickup of publishing tech platform Wazimo in November. The acquisition reflects how tech is becoming a bigger component of Minute Media’s overall business and how its B2B tech revenue is becoming interwoven with its advertising revenue “The B2B side of our business, it’ll end up [in 2021 having accounted for] 60-ish percent of our revenue. It’s a big part of that business. We’re as much of a tech company as we are a publishing business,” Minute Media president Rich Routman said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. The lines between Minute Media’s tech and publishing businesses are even blurrier than that. That percentage of overall revenue represented by B2B actually includes advertising revenue. While Minute Media does some deals in which it licenses its technology to companies for a fee, it also structures deals to include an advertising revenue-share component, which can also result in Minute Media selling ads for its tech clients. “As we become more flexible in our business model, the B2B revenues have grown significantly on the back of being B2B deals on a rev-share basis supported by advertising or B2B revenues on a license-fee basis. But the B2B business as a whole is larger than the [owned-and-operated] brands,” Routman said.
Dec 28, 2021 · 1 hr 8 min
Opportunity waits for publishers and marketers as cookie apocalypse looms: Digiday's top trends for 2022
This year was not a quiet one for the industries that Digiday covers and the reporters who have had their ears close to the ground joined the Digiday Podcast to talk about the challenges and trends that they’ve been covering on their beats as well as what we’ll continue to closely watch in 2022, including cookie apocalypse preparedness, mitigating platforms’ influence on media buying, and how the return to office is an ever looming presence.
Dec 21, 2021 · 43 min
BET’s Scott Mills shares plans for BET+ in 2022 and why the network has formed its own studio
BET actually entered the streaming wars before Disney and Apple. Two months before the debuts of Disney+ and Apple TV+, the ViacomCBS-owned TV network rolled out its own subscription-based streamer BET+. Now, as the current streaming era enters its third year, BET is preparing some updates to its streaming strategy in 2022, including testing an ad-supported tier and selling a subscription bundle with sibling streamer Paramount+. “We are very excited about the premium positioning that we’ve established with BET+, and so we’re working through what is the approach to a premium service with an ad-supported model. What I think our audience will see in 2022 is us kind of experimenting with different pricing models to see what their response is to those,” said BET CEO Scott Mills in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. Having overseen the launch of BET+ in 2019 while serving as president of BET, Mills was named CEO of the TV network owner in November 2019. But, as he explained in the interview, that was mainly a change in title and he had already been serving in the role stewarding BET, which like every other TV network is sorting out how to balance its business between traditional TV and streaming. “The offering we have in BET+ is not identical to our linear offering. There are some services where the offerings are identical. But the BET linear offering actually is different than the BET+ offering, and so we do position them as different offerings,” Mills said.
Dec 14, 2021 · 43 min
Why Yang Adija gamified NFTs to encourage Turner Sports’ audience to embrace the blockchain
Turner Sports has been one of the faster moving media companies in the blockchain space, having made its first concerted effort in launching an NFT project in 2018. For a sports media company, this made sense in a lot of ways. Sports fans have a fair amount of characteristics that would lend to them also being interested in cryptocurrencies, NFT collection and playing in the metaverse. For example, a large number of people participate in fantasy sports, while a number of others like to collect rare trading cards or signed baseballs, and many more will support their teams by buying season tickets or jerseys for decent chunks of money. All of these things can be translated to the blockchain, which gave Turner Sports a leg up when launching its Blockletes game, an online golf game that uses NFTs to add real world value. When Yang Adija, Turner Sports’ svp of digital league business operations, growth and innovation, started thinking about applying the blockchain to his company, he saw an opportunity to bridge the gap between gaming and collecting, thus launching Blockletes — or “Blockchain Athletes.” In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Adija discussed creating the NFT game, which is set to launch on mobile this month, and why gamifying a new and unknown concept like NFTs helps onboard non-crypto native audiences.
Dec 7, 2021 · 54 min
‘It’s too early to sell’: Why Axios is set on investing in internal growth, versus pursuing M&A in 2022
It’s been a busy and well-publicized year for Axios, which has made a ton of headlines given the newsletter publisher — known for its trademarked “Smart Brevity” style — is only five years old. In December 2020, the company acquired the Charlotte Agenda to get its local news arm into gear. In February, Axios launched its new software-as-a-service business, Axios HQ, which made over $1.5 million in under a year. And in the spring and summer of this year, rumors circulated the media space about whether Axios would merge with The Athletic or be acquired by Axel Springer. Those rumblings have since quieted down and Axios’s president and co-founder Roy Schwartz said that “It’s too early at this point to sell the business or to merge it with something that would be larger than we are.” But either thanks to or in spite of the headlines, Axios is set to hit $86 million in revenue this year, replicating the 40% year-over-year growth the company saw in the year prior — all while maintaining profitability for three years running.
Nov 30, 2021 · 49 min
'Becoming a direct-to-consumer company': How Condé Nast's Pamela Drucker Mann is focusing on innovation in 2022 after the best revenue year in a decade
For Condé Nast, 2021 was the best year the company has had in the past decade, according to global chief revenue officer Pamela Drucker Mann. And after a tumultuous 2020, that outcome was neither a guaranteed nor expected. As of mid November, the media company’s total global commercial revenue -- including print -- was up 20%, Drucker Mann said on the latest episode of the Digiday podcast. Specifically on the digital side of the business, revenue rose nearly 40% year over year, which she attributed much of to its new e-commerce business (up 46%), investing further into digital video, and shifting focus from audience targeting to contextual targeting in ad campaigns. And thanks to all of that growth this year, Condé Nast is using 2022 to invest in "legitimately becoming the best, most refined, most sophisticated, direct-to-consumer company -- not just an advertising company," Drucker Mann said. This includes getting experimental with new businesses and projects, including NFTs, hosting events in the metaverse, and diving deep into live shopping.
Nov 23, 2021 · 43 min
How 2021 taught Gallery Media to quickly adapt its TikTok playbook
TikTok has transformed the way that consumers and brands interact with each other online over the course of just a couple of years. But the past year in particular has given those brands, and the media companies they partner with, more confidence in their approach to creating content for the platform. The biggest helper in decoding the secrets to TikTok success from a brand perspective is having the scale and regular posting cadence to quickly identify hits, as well as learn when to change course. That’s at least been the case for Gallery Media, publisher of PureWow and One37pm. The digitally native media company, owned by Gary Vaynerchuk’s creative media agency VaynerX, has the unique advantage of having both its roster of 25 owned-and-operated editorial TikTok channels and the creative control of more than 10 brand partners’ channels to get a good sense of the type of content that organically thrives on this highly creative social media platform. So over the past year, regularly posting on those 35-plus pages has illuminated some of the bigger TikTok trends of the year for Gallery Media, which led to gaining views, followers and even dollars from brands looking to CEO Ryan Harwood’s team to implement those learnings into their own social media strategies. In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Harwood discusses creating a team of creatives who could quickly adapt the company’s playbook for the ever evolving platform, as well as how the editorial successes inform the brand campaigns posted to TikTok, and vice versa.
Nov 16, 2021 · 38 min
How Vice Media Group’s Daisy Auger-Dominguez has put DE&I plans into practice
Shortly after Daisy Auger-Dominguez joined Vice Media Group as its chief people officer in May 2020, the murder of George Floyd spurred companies across the media industry to pledge improvements to their organizations’ levels of diversity, equity and inclusion. VMG then took the further step of uploading its DE&I initiatives into a dashboard for all employees to see the company’s plans and track its progress. “Think of it as a project management app,” said Auger-Dominguez in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. VMG’s DE&I dashboard features an entry for each active DE&I project, including links to corresponding documents, updated information about its performance metrics and progress toward those goals as well as the name of the employee responsible for overseeing that project. “It not only creates transparency around accountability, but it also creates connectivity that can galvanize other employees that are interested in any of those particular projects [to see], ‘Oh, here’s the person I should be talking to,’” Auger-Dominguez said. In keeping with the dashboard’s purpose of keeping employees up to date on VMG’s DE&I efforts, the company removes completed projects and adds new projects as its overall efforts evolve. Heading into 2022, some of those newer projects will likely concern VMG’s return to the office and the part DE&I plays in an in-person workplace. However, Auger-Dominguez is cognizant of not categorizing every initiative under DE&I, which can have the effect of putting it in a silo. “I don’t want to start adding everything to DE&I, so everyone’s just like, ‘Oh, is that a DE&I initiative?’ No, actually it’s the other way around: Everything has a DE&I lens, but not everything is a DE&I initiative,” Auger-Dominguez said.
Nov 9, 2021 · 38 min
AMC Networks’ Kim Kelleher says the TV ad market is still speeding up
Everything has accelerated since the pandemic, including the historically slow-moving TV ad market. Not only did this year’s upfront cycle blow by, but early talks ahead of next year’s upfronts are already underway. “We’re having earlier conversations,” said Kim Kelleher, president of commercial revenue and partnerships at AMC Networks, in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “Maybe it’s because I come from digital media and publishing, which were always-on mediums, that television is starting to feel a lot more like the always-on world that I came from. We’re having conversations already about next year.” To be clear, Kelleher described those conversations as “preemptive” planning discussions. “Certainly not negotiating,” she said. Still, the fact that conversations about next’s upfronts are taking place a month after this year’s deals took effect indicates how the overall TV ad market is changing as the dividing line between linear and digital blurs and advertisers reevaluate their options for reaching audiences. “There’s a level of thoughtfulness that needs to go into the media mix and the distributions you’re going to choose to tell and market your stories with,” Kelleher said. “It’s never too soon to start.”
Nov 2, 2021 · 40 min
The Verge’s Nilay Patel talks about how Vox Media’s tech publication has and hasn’t changed after 10 years
Ten years after its debut, Vox Media’s technology news publication The Verge hasn’t necessarily changed all that much — at least not compared to its ambitions from the outset. Rather than changing course over the past decade, the outlet has followed through on its original trajectory. “The biggest difference between The Verge now and The Verge 10 years ago is that we have the staff and the capability to actually do all the things we wanted to do,” said The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. That being said, The Verge does seem to be in upgrade mode. Not only is the outlet preparing a site redesign for sometime in the next year, but within the past two months, it has opened up new product lines and revenue sources. In September, Vox Media acquired podcast newsletter Hot Pod, which has become part of The Verge and which operates a subscription business that has become the publication’s first paid product. A month later, The Verge debuted a connected TV app and hosted its first live event. The Verge hadn’t exactly planned to be making these leaps to coincide with its 10-year anniversary. “We thought 2020 would be our growth year,” Patel said. The pandemic postponed the publication’s plans by a year. “All of that energy was pent up, and it is all coming out at once because we’re turning 10. We’re excited. We want to take the next step of our evolution,” said Patel.
Oct 28, 2021 · 44 min
Kill Your Algorithm Episode Two: The Vault of Power
When the Biden administration named antitrust reform scholar Lina Khan as chair of the FTC, it didn't take long before Amazon and Facebook asked for her recusal in cases related to the two companies. But even as lawmakers call for regulators to rein in big tech algorithms, some have pushed against giving a Khan-led FTC any more money or power to help do it. And some who recall the 1980s-era episode that led congress to drastically diminish the FTC's authority warn against the risks of enacting rules or changing policy without consensus.
Oct 26, 2021 · 39 min
How Agnes Chu and Helen Estabrook are breaking Condé Nast Entertainment further into Hollywood
Condé Nast Entertainment is not a new player in the TV and film industry. Formed in 2011, the magazine publisher’s entertainment division has had a hand in adapting Condé Nast’s content into shows and movies, including an article by GQ that was made into Netflix documentary series “Last Chance U” and a short story from The New Yorker into Robert Redford-starring film “The Old Man and the Gun.” But now CNE is looking to play an even bigger role in Hollywood. “What we’re doing in film and television is a real, deliberate and intentional lean into our brands in a way that we haven’t done before,” said Agnes Chu, the former Disney+ executive who took the reins of CNE as president in September 2020. Under Chu, CNE has hired a roster of experienced Hollywood heads to help raise the magazine publisher’s profile in Tinseltown. That includes Helen Estabrook, an Oscar-nominated producer who joined CNE in March 2021 as global head of film and TV and joined Chu on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. Estabrook’s charge has been to have Condé Nast’s entertainment arm working more closely with its publications to identify articles, short stories as well as podcasts that can be developed and adapted into film and TV projects. “We’re creating new systems of working so that we can work with them in the ways that they have all individual systems for how they work, for how they find stories or how they tell those stories,” said Estabrook. “It is one great production company, but in some ways, it’s several different production companies because it’s GQ Studios and The New Yorker Studios and Vanity Fair Studios.”
Oct 21, 2021 · 36 min
Kill Your Algorithm Episode One: Shocking Data Stories
When the FTC alleged that period tracking app maker Flo Health shared people's private health information with Facebook and Google without permission, its settlement with the company required some changes in how it gathers and uses people's data. But some believed it was just another example of a feeble approach to enforcing the agency's authority. The settlement soon led to a controversial enforcement policy update that could affect countless health and fitness app makers. And that was just one sign that the FTC is getting tougher on tech firms. It's already forced two companies to destroy their algorithms.
Oct 19, 2021 · 38 min
NBCUniversal News Group’s Chris Berend explains how streaming has become the centerpiece of the organization’s video strategy
TV news networks are swarming streaming, and NBCUniversal News Group is no exception. The Comcast-owned news organization already operates three standalone news streaming outlets — NBC News Now, Today All Day and MSNBC’s The Choice — and is stepping up its streaming operations. NBCUniversal “is becoming a streaming company in large ways, in addition to parks and other things. And so streaming is clearly a priority for our company, with Peacock and the success that we’ve seen there. And by association with that, streaming is part of the competency that we’re building for the news group,” said Chris Berend, evp of digital for NBCUniversal News Group, in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. As part of building that streaming competency, NBCUniversal News Group’s digital organization has hired around 100 people in the past few months -- roughly doubling its headcount -- with the bulk of its new hires working on streaming, according to Berend. It is also adding more programming across its streaming properties, such as a nightly news show hosted by Tom Llamas that premiered on NBC News Now in September. “Right now what we’re investing in is our primetime lineup. We’ve got original hours in the morning and in the afternoon. We’re looking at prime now. We’ll be looking at weekends as well and seeing what the smart thing to do there is,” Berend said. In general, the smart thing to do seems to be plugging its streaming properties with more original programming. Viewers are spending, in aggregate, 20 million hours or more per month streaming NBC News Now, and that watch time grows in proportion to the programming. “We see the hours go up when we invest in original programming,” said Berend.
Oct 12, 2021 · 42 min
How Well+Good is using its newsroom's knowledge to steer its commerce business
Wellness and self care became two top categories for online shopping in 2020 — perhaps second only to online grocery and toilet paper — thanks to people managing stress levels and tending to personal care from their homes, rather than seeking out those services elsewhere. For Leaf Group’s digital wellness brand Well+Good, that surge in interest was a boon to its e-commerce business, something it’s been honing for the past four years. Year-to-date, commerce revenue has increased by 129% and gross transaction value has increased by 112% from 2020 to 2021. But the brand has been trying to move away from its reliance on traditional affiliate commerce content and launched its own online wellness marketplace last year that gave its readers a one-stop shop for editorially vetted and recommended products. The idea is that shoppers will remain on the Well+Good website and buy a variety of products from different brands all at one location.
Oct 5, 2021 · 39 min
HuffPost’s Danielle Belton sees the editor-in-chief role as being ‘newsroom therapist’
When Danielle Belton started as HuffPost’s editor-in-chief in April, she stepped into a newsroom that had spent a year in tumult. In addition to the trials of covering and living through the pandemic, the news outlet’s staff had gone through a sale from Verizon Media to BuzzFeed that eventually led to 70 HuffPost employees being laid off. And all the while, the newsroom had been without a leader. “They went so long without an editor-in-chief. The fact that there was going to be one put into place and that they were going to have their own leader independent of BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed News meant a lot. I felt like the reaction I got was actually more warm than anything else. And one of relief,” Belton said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, which was recorded live during the Digiday Publishing Summit on Sept. 27 in Miami. Of course, Belton’s appointment alone wouldn’t instantaneously alleviate all stress and anxiety among HuffPost’s staff. That’s why the former editor-in-chief of G/O Media’s The Root sees her role as being the outlet’s “newsroom therapist.” It’s a role she has found herself playing since she started working in journalism and spent time roaming newsrooms where she has worked to check in with other staffers. “I used to tell my bosses, ‘You guys should just pay me to be the newsroom therapist. I can just talk to everybody all day and listen to their problems and help them figure out how to solve them and help them with their stories. And that’s basically what I’m doing now. I’m the newsroom therapist,” Belton said. This episode is the final in a four-part series for the Digiday Podcast called “The Modern Newsroom Leader,” featuring editors-in-chief as they navigate new industry challenges including staffers dealing with burnout, unsteady financial businesses and prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring practices. Previous episodes featured The Cut's Lindsay Peoples Wagner and Vox's Swati Sharma, Houston Chronicle's Maria Reeve and Gawker's Leah Finnegan.
Sep 28, 2021 · 37 min
‘It’s not going to be nice’: Leah Finnegan is rebuilding Gawker with her editorial vision front and center
When the bankrupt Gawker shut its doors in 2016, it seemed unlikely that the site known for snarky opinions, celebrity gossip and haughty critiques would return. But rumblings of the site’s return — and its snippy attitude — came in July 2018 when BDG CEO Bryan Goldberg paid just under $1.5 million for the defunct website. Three years later, Gawker is back up and running (after an initial false start with a different cast of characters) under editor-in-chief Leah Finnegan. Her work is cut out for her: “[Gawker is] such a loaded place and the time I was there was so dramatic and tumultuous. It was an earlier iteration of the way digital media worked and I didn’t want to go back to that Gawker,” said Finnegan. This is the third episode of a four-part series called “The Modern Newsroom Leader,” which features newly appointed editors-in-chief as they navigate industry challenges including staffers dealing with burnout, unsteady financial businesses and prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring practices.
Sep 21, 2021 · 42 min
‘A perfect time for someone like me to be in this role’: Maria Reeve is breaking barriers at the Houston Chronicle
Maria Reeve didn’t set out to become the first person of color to oversee the newsroom of a major metropolis’s flagship news organization. For much of her career, the executive editor of the Houston Chronicle didn’t even have her eyes on editor roles altogether. “I really liked the process, the work of reporting in journalism. And as I became a manager, I really liked the process of helping people do their work and discover their own goals and desires in that. And just in the last few years did I begin to think about, What would that look like for me to lead a newsroom? What would I bring to this?” Reeve said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. Among the things that Reeve is bringing to the role since being named executive editor in July 2021 is a desire to build up the Houston Chronicle’s coverage of underrepresented groups. That includes the creation of a culture desk. It also involves finding ways to support the people of color in her newsroom as well as to find ways to bring in more people who are members of underrepresented communities. “When you say, ‘Oh, we have an executive editor who’s a person of color. What does that look like? What is different about that?’ I think what’s different about that is just the recognition that I bring -- having been in this industry for 25-plus years -- what I’ve seen and what I’ve experienced and how I might like to make change around those areas,” said Reeve. This episode is the second in a four-part series for the Digiday Podcast called “The Modern Newsroom Leader,” featuring editors-in-chief as they navigate new industry challenges including staffers dealing with burnout, unsteady financial businesses and prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring practices.
Sep 14, 2021 · 45 min
'Journalism can only be as good as our newsroom culture': Vox Media's new editors-in-chief are redefining the roles
The role of editor-in-chief looks a lot different than what it did 20 years ago — or even two years ago. For digital-first media companies, the nuances of what it takes to run a successful newsroom, particularly during a pandemic, are more complicated than ever before. For Vox Media, it meant having two new top editors for its brands Vox and The Cut, who have fresh perspectives on what the job means. At the beginning of this year, Swati Sharma and Lindsay Peoples Wagner took the reins of Vox and The Cut, respectively. Both are still early in their careers -- when they were appointed, Sharma was 34 and Peoples Wagner was 30 -- but they have already accomplished a goal that for many is the ultimate sign of success in the journalism career path. This is Sharma's first time leading a newsroom as the top editor Peoples Wagner previously was the editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue but is familiar with The Cut having previously been its fashion market editor from 2015 until 2018. Now both are leaning on those past experiences, and each other, to achieve success. This episode is the first in a four-part series for the Digiday Podcast called “The Modern Newsroom Leader" featuring editors-in-chief as they navigate new industry challenges including staffers dealing with burnout, unsteady financial businesses and prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring practices.
Sep 7, 2021 · 52 min
Women of Color Unite’s Cheryl L. Bedford is fighting ‘exclusion by familiarity’ in entertainment
In February 2018, Cheryl L. Bedford threw a party. The invite called for women of color to unite, and the event spawned Women of Color Unite, the nonprofit organization Bedford oversees that supports women of color in the entertainment industry. “We basically built Women of Color Unite on the idea of exclusion by familiarity and ending it,” Bedford said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast In the fight against people hiring people whose identities and experiences are most similar to their own, Women of Color Unite operates two programs that are aimed to help women of color get in the door and move up the Hollywood ranks. The JTC List is a database of 4,500 women of color that not only provides a free tool for companies to find cinematographers, line producers, screenwriters and others, but also provides Women of Color Unite a means of analyzing the issues underpinning the challenges for women of color in entertainment. Then there is #StartWith8. This program originated after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and gets established people in Hollywood to commit to giving their time and energy to support eight women of color apiece. For example, Win Rosenfeld — a writer/producer and president of Jordan Peele’s production company Monkeypaw Productions — committed to meet with eight women of color, read their scripts and provide them with notes. “That means a lot to somebody, to understand what people want in this industry, to understand what kind of things get green-lit,” said Bedford.