The Digiday Podcast

Is there a difference between a creator and an influencer. If so, what’s the difference and why does it matter to marketers? On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Digiday staffers debate the topic.

Creators are no longer a media channel or transaction. It’s an entirely new marketing model, at least that’s what the infrastructure behind Unilever’s creator strategy indicates. In this episode, Digiday catches up with Selina Sykes, global vp of digital, social and Al transformation at Unilever’s Beauty and Wellbeing, to learn about its scale and automation.

At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this week, Meta announced a slew of even more automated marketing tools, further lowering the barrier to entry for advertisers to manage campaigns directly. Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s head of global business group, joins this episode of the Digiday podcast to talk about how that does and doesn't change the agency-platform relationship.

Spotify’s ad business is trying to evolve beyond audio. At this year's Cannes Lions, Digiday senior marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy catches up with Brian Berner, VP of advertising partnerships at Spotify, about automation, AI, video and Spotify’s push for bigger media budgets.

Digital twins are helping brands scale content and talent deals. Marketers are still navigating the tradeoffs. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, hosts Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson unpack the rise of digital twins, AI sprawl and authenticity.

The upfront marketplace has long been built on relationships and negotiation. Now, automation and AI are changing how deals get done.

OpenAI's ad pilot is plagued with reporting hiccups and under-delivery issues. It's testing marketer's patience, but the fear of missing out on AI's next big platforms seems to outweigh their frustrations.

Once valued in the billions, digital media giants like BuzzFeed and Vox Media are now selling assets and restructuring as the old traffic-driven publishing model breaks down. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Digiday senior media editor Jessica Davies and senior media reporter Sara Guaglione joins hosts Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson to unpack what the fall of billion-dollar valuations says a...

If shoppers start turning to AI assistants instead of retailer websites, the foundation of the retail media business could begin to crack. That’s the tension at the center of agentic commerce. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, hosts Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson explore how AI-powered shopping agents could reshape retail media networks, disrupt ad dollars and force retailers to rethink their...

The programmatic world seems split: is AI the future of media buying, or just a tool requiring heavy supervision? Duluth Trading Company lands somewhere in the middle by leveraging agents for high-speed bidding while keeping a firm human hand on brand storytelling, Duluth’s Director of Marketing Ellie Uberto joins Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson live from the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit on...

Is the era of performance-only marketing over? Performance returns are dropping. Brands are chasing AI visibility as LLMs take over search. All roads point to the return of 'brandformance.' Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson explain the brandformance to brand health metrics rebrand, and why marketers care about it again.

In this episode, Digiday senior marketing reporter Sam Bradley joins Digiday Podcast co-hosts Tim Peterson and Kimeko McCoy to break down Netflix's massive ad business glow up, and how the streaming giant is rewriting the streaming ad business playbook.

The AI ad race is heating up. OpenAI is staffing up and cutting deals to win brand budgets from Meta and Google. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Digiday senior platforms reporter Krystal Scanlon joins hosts Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson to breakdown the ad business playbook.

Major agencies are pulling back ad spend from The Trade Desk’s OpenPath platform, citing concerns of hidden fees and lack of transparency. Meanwhile, TTD is shifting its payment model for identity providers, like LiveRamp and Experian. All said, The Trade Desk is facing a new set of rising tensions with agencies over transparency — and more importantly, programmatic control.

Mondelez vp of global digital commerce, Andrew Lederman, joins the Digiday Podcast to talk through how the CPG giant is aggressively shifting its digital commerce strategy to optimize for AI, ensuring brands like Oreo dominate agentic search.

The Guardian didn’t want to build an AI chatbot. Not a reader-facing one anyway. Not at the risk of that chatbot misrepresenting the news publisher’s journalism and undermining readers’ trust. “We’re not going to die if we don’t build a chatbot tomorrow. We need to be really clear about what the threats are externally, but ultimately what we have is something that’s worth protecting,” said Chris M...

What does it take to sell an influencer agency right now? This week on the Digiday Podcast, Digital Voices founder Jennifer Quigley-Jones joins Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson to break down her agency’s sale to PMG. Plus, what it says about the booming creator economy M&A moment.

A decade after the ANA’s bombshell report, the WPP debacle has forced a new standard of clarity in media buying. This week, Digiday executive editor of news Seb Joseph and Michael Burgi, senior editor of media buying and planning, join the Digiday Podcast to discuss why agencies are leaning into principal trading, and why some brands are finally reining them in.

Since its legal woes have been resolved, and the U.S. app was spun out earlier this year, TikTok has taken a muted approach to business. Digiday senior platform reporter Krystal Scanlon joins this episode of the Digiday Podcast to discuss why what looks like business as usual on the surface is more likened to hushed plight for more ad dollars, creators and users.

Ads in ChatGPT have entered their trial run period. Instead of agency partners, it's brands like The Knot Worldwide that find themselves at the helms of OpenAI's ad push. Marketers like The Knot's CMO Jenny Lewis are navigating everything from performance metrics to infrastructure.

Hootsuite’s partnership with ICE sparked controversy earlier this year, leading creators to take a closer look at the companies they work with. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Tameka Bazile shares why she ended her deal with Hootsuite, how it prompted her to audit other brand partnerships, and what creators can learn about balancing ethics, audience expectations, and income.

The other shoe has finally dropped. After months of speculation, OpenAI officially began to test ads in ChatGPT in the U.S. Meanwhile, marketers are still trying to read the tea leaves around OpenAI's ad team, data insights and more as chatbot competition intensifies. Digiday's senior platforms reporter Krystan Scanlon joins the Digiday Podcast to make sense of it all.

Anthropic took a jab at OpenAI's ad product launch and T-Mobile and Coinbase used The Backstreet Boys top play up millennial nostalgia. Now that the dust has settled around the 60-plus Super Bowl ad spots rolled out this year, Tim Peterson and Kimeko McCoy are joined by Sunny Bonnell, co-founder and CEO of global brand strategy and design agency Motto, to reflect on the best and worst commercials...

Traditional TV — let alone a live NFL playoff game — might be the last ad inventory type you’d think to test trying out AI agents against. And yet that’s exactly what NBCUniversal did last month. The media conglomerate ran a test with ad agency RPA, marketing analytics firm Newton Research and Comcast-owned ad tech firm FreeWheel to have AI agents participate in buying an ad against a live NFL pla...

Is there a difference between a creator and an influencer. If so, what’s the difference and why does it matter to marketers? On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Digiday staffers debate the topic.