The Digiday Podcast

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...

The compensation gap is closing, albeit slowly and unevenly. In the effort to create balanced workplaces, LinkedIn occupies the position of potential catalyst. The Microsoft-owned business-centric social network not only provides a platform with tools through which hiring practices can be made more meritocratic but also offers an example of an equitable organization. It even has an executive charg...

Many media companies have set out to be the Disney of X. But Jubilee Media seems to have carved out a niche for itself by aiming to become the “Disney for empathy,” according to the media company’s founder and CEO Jason Y. Lee. Empathy is a pretty unusual content category, though, of which Jubilee Media is well aware. “A lot of people have trouble putting us into a particular category or box. And...

The media and marketing industries seem to be approaching another inflection point. The delta variant is beginning to put the brakes on the return to normal that had been underway since the start of the year. That makes mid-August — already a typically slower part of the year — an opportune time to catch up on the top trends of the ever-changing moment. In this week’s Digiday Podcast, co-hosts Kay...

Travel, to no surprise, was one of the largest industries impacted by the pandemic and publishers like Atlas Obscura that cover exploration, wanderlust and gastronomy had to quickly adapt and figure out both what content output and brand deals would like in this new reality. Luckily for Atlas Obscura, the concept of exploration meant more than its tourism and trip-planning business, which accounte...

Good Housekeeping set a standard at Hearst UK that the rest of the portfolio wants to replicate. For nearly 100 years, the homelife magazine has cultivated a following of readers who trust its product recommendations, reviews and seals of approval enough to spend their money on those tried and tested items. Now, the Good Housekeeping Institute has expanded into the Hearst Institute, enabling the r...

Yahoo is on a mission to drive brand affinity across its portfolio by turning casual readers into fanatics who are willing to spend money with the media company. That strategy has led the company to experiment with new mediums and types of content, as well as new innovative partnerships, said Joanna Lambert, head of consumer at Yahoo. In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, she said she want...

Many athletes have made moves into the media business, from Derek Jeter with The Players’ Tribune to LeBron James with Uninterrupted and SpringHill Entertainment to Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, Chloe Kim and Simone Manuel with TOGETHXR. That list also includes Kevin Durant. Through their company Thirty Five Ventures, the NBA star and his business partner Rich Kleiman have been building a media business...

Architectural Digest’s global editorial director Amy Astley does not want the 100-year-old magazine to feel stuck in a legacy mindset. While print subscriptions are still an increasing area of the business, she said, the brand’s digital presence and social media content have become significant ways for AD to grow a much younger and more diverse audience. Enter global digital director David Kaufman...

NBC News’s “Meet the Press” is the longest-running show on TV. For the program to remain relevant in the streaming era, it needs to appeal to people who are not tuning in to traditional TV. This notion is not lost on the show’s host Chuck Todd, who also anchors “Meet the Press Reports,” a streaming-only series that debuted on NBCUniversal’s Peacock in September. However, Todd also saw an opportuni...

The wave of media consolidation is cresting again. The latest example is BuzzFeed’s acquisition of Complex Networks. BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti and Complex Networks CEO Rich Antoniello joined the Digiday Podcast to talk about the deal. The conversation with Peretti and Antoniello ranged from how Complex Networks will fit inside BuzzFeed to how BuzzFeed’s brands could cross over into Complex’s prop...

As the chief data and technology officer at IPG, Arun Kumar has plenty on his plate at the moment. Apple is limiting tracking on iPhones and iPads. In less than a year, Google’s Chrome browser is supposed to cut off third-party cookies. And both Apple and Google are threatening the advertising industry’s adoption of the IP address as a cross-platform identifier. “’Stress’ is the middle name of my...

A decade ago, Cornell students Jordana Abraham, Aleen Dreksler and Samantha Sage created a satirical blog called Betches to share their observations of student life. Now in 2021, the blog has become a multi-platform media company for millennial women that reaches a monthly audience —they tout — of 43 million. The blog grew with its audience, said Dreksler on the latest episode of the Digiday Podca...

Vox Media has been on something of a shopping spree over the past two years. After acquiring Epic to boost its TV production business, New York Media to expand its publishing portfolio and Coral to add to its publishing technology, in April the media company picked up Cafe Studios — the podcast company co-founded by former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara — to round out its podcast network. However, fo...

The livestream shopping model is coming back around in the U.S. and is not limiting itself to the traditional television channels and "call-now" directives that QVC and HSN have done in past decades. NTWRK, a livestream shopping company aimed primarily at Gen Z and millennial audiences, launched in late 2018 and has accumulated 2 million consumers since then on its iOS and Android apps, which are...

Klarna -- the buy now, pay later fintech company -- is trying to build its user base by becoming part of the culture conversation. The Swedish-based platform already has a significant base of 90 million global shoppers with 18 million specifically in the U.S., which Klarna CMO David Sandström said is the company's fastest growing market. With access to that many consumers, the past year has been a...

When Hearst created its internet-inspired food brand Delish six years ago, its product strategy was entirely digital, which was unique within the publisher's portfolio of legacy magazines. And while Delish may not be one of the "Hearst titans," its playful nature has helped grow the brand's audience and hone a group of super fans who are willing to pay to be closer to the brand in more ways than o...

The Try Guys brand was formed in 2014 by four BuzzFeed producers who wanted to be funny on their company's YouTube channel. Within four years, the group — Ned Fulmer, Keith Habersburger, Zach Kornfeld and Eugene Lee Yang — realized the brand had enough of a fanbase to buy the rights from BuzzFeed and set out on their own. Now the Try Guys' company, 2nd Try, has a staff of nearly two dozen, a YouTu...

Sienna Mae Gomez is a definitive overnight sensation. In August, she posted a video to her secondary TikTok account that attracted hundreds of thousands of views within hours and led her to become one of the platform’s biggest stars. “I gained a million [views] like every three days. It was crazy. It was just going so fast. From the span of August to maybe October-November-December, I was gaining...

The allure of Substack has lured many journalists away from their traditional newsroom roles to a position of becoming their own editors, artists, marketers, accountants, and most importantly, bosses. Emily Atkin was one of the first to feel the draw, leaving her position as a staff writer at The New Republic in September 2019 to launch her climate change-focused newsletter, Heated, that same mont...

Alisha Marie and Remi Cruz have built their careers by posting videos to YouTube. But their businesses have grown beyond Google’s digital video platform. Since Marie launched her YouTube channel in 2008 and Cruz debuted hers in 2012, they have diversified to other platforms and revenue sources, including commerce and a joint podcast called “Pretty Basic” that the pair premiered in October 2018. “B...

TikTok has risen rapidly from being a new platform for marketers to kick the tires on to becoming a staple in some advertisers’ social budgets. “Curiosity, for sure, has exploded. We were a test partner, I would say, in 2020, and 2021 is the year that we want to be trusted,” said TikTok’s head of global agency & accounts Khartoon Weiss in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. The latest sign...

Turner Sports is using the recent return of sporting events to bolster new initiatives in both advertising and audience building. In the heat of March Madness, which has returned this year after taking a 2020 hiatus, Tina Shah, evp and general manager at Turner Sports, said her team has been integrating innovation in both production and content for the event’s ad campaigns after seeing a strong re...

A successful first-party data strategy incorporates data into every facet of the business — from advertising to affiliate to licensing. At least that’s how Trusted Media Brands’ CEO Bonnie Kintzer is approaching the company’s first-party data strategy. So far the company's notable revenue growth is proving this to be a good move. The company’s advertising revenues have been up 40% year over year,...

There is a reason why most conversations start by addressing the weather. It's a universal talking point that affects everyone, regardless of backgrounds and demographics, making it an easy icebreaker. Marketers love the topic too and publishers like The Weather Channel end up benefiting greatly because they attract large audiences that span whatever targets an advertiser is hoping to reach. In Fe...