The Digiday Podcast

The media industry is heading into 2023 faced with a lot of uncertainty, thanks to a less than stellar 2022. But based on the conversations Digiday Podcast co-hosts Tim Peterson and Kayleigh Barber have had with media executives and brand-side leaders, the murky waters could be tricky to cross without taking on collateral damage. Hear from the editors on Digiday's media beat about the top trends t...

This year ended up looking quite different from what was predicted by Digiday’s editors at the beginning of 2022, but it made for a fascinating saga to follow. In this final episode of the year of the Digiday Podcast, hear from some of our reporters and editors on the media and media buying beats chat about their top takeaways and trends from 2022, ranging from the struggling advertising market to...

Group Black launched in June 2021 with the goal of getting advertisers to deploy $500 million in ad dollars to Black-owned media businesses by the end of 2022. And the media company has further indicated its ambitions with multiple reports this year that it’s looking to buy either BDG, Vice Media Group or Vox Media. “We hired J.P. Morgan [Chase] and Lazard to help us in our efforts a couple months...

The Interactive Advertising Bureau provides a set of standard terms and conditions governing digital advertising deals. And starting next year, those standards will be in the process of being updated for the first time since 2010. “It’s time for a refresh,” said IAB CEO David Cohen in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “We started this year with a survey to the industry [asking] what are t...

Wikipedia for all things fictional, fantasy and entertaining, Fandom has unique insight into how passionate internet users are about different shows, movies and video games. But the data doesn’t stop at the behavioral data around those curiosities. Fandom’s plethora of user generated content and community boards have also lended itself to the company’s first-party data collection. And after 18 yea...

For Apartment Therapy, it just makes sense to bridge its events business with commerce. Not because the expectation is to make $10 million from affiliate commissions, according to the company’s president Riva Syrop, but because it’s only fair to give attendees every opportunity to make a purchase as possible – the struggle she often faced when attending industry trade shows. So during this year’s...

To anyone hoping that California’s updated privacy law would help to simplify privacy compliance in the U.S., sorry. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead, the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which takes effect on Jan. 1, seems set to muddy the privacy landscape even more. “CPRA is this unique kind of beast that has complicated privacy significantly for organizations in the U.S.,” said S...

In recent years, data clean rooms have grown in importance to media and advertising companies' businesses. But this year has been "a step-change year where clean rooms became more sophisticated," Therran Oliphant, svp of data and technology at Essence Global, said during the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. The (supposedly) impending demise of the third-party cookie and increasing scrutiny f...

Condé Nast's third quarter was seemingly better than what other media companies have reported, at least according to Craig Kostelic, the company's global chief business officer. In August, Axios reported that Condé Nast is on track to surpass 2021 revenues, equating to more than $2 billion, which is inclusive of both advertising and consumer revenue. Kostelic confirmed this report on the latest ep...

Semafor launched on Oct. 18 with a business model that’s entirely reliant on direct-sold advertising and event sponsorship revenue – a risky business in some eyes during the current economic climate. But the company’s founding CRO Rachel Oppenheim is confident that her team’s client-centric approach, which prioritizes “innovative” branded content and running ads against “experimental” editorial pr...

Let’s be clear: The advertising market has hit a rough patch amid the broader economic downturn. But that hit has not necessarily been a full-on body blow. “We’re seeing some shifts [in advertisers’ spending] but not necessarily dramatic cuts,” said UM Worldwide’s U.S. chief marketplace officer Stacey Stewart in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. To be clear, she added, “Don’t get me wrong...

More than a decade ago, Dan Roth left the world of traditional journalism to join LinkedIn as the business-centric social platform’s executive editor. Eleven-plus years later, the former managing editor of Fortune.com and now editor-in-chief and vp at LinkedIn has built up the platform’s news operation into one that bears some of the hallmarks of a traditional outlet. “I had a lot of belief in wha...

Unionization has been on the rise at media companies over the last nearly three years after the pandemic upended the way publishers work. But it seems that the list of concerns shared amongst journalists, editors and other media employees is only growing and few resolutions have been met during that time. It's all created a need for more communication, community rallying and strategic training, to...

It’s been nearly a year since German-based Axel Springer acquired Politico for over $1 billion, which included both the U.S. and EU iterations of the brand, in addition to the almost 3-year-old technology-focused title Protocol. Since that acquisition, the Politico brand has started undergoing a merger of sorts internally as well. Despite sharing a brand name and founder — Robert Allbritton — Poli...

Publishers’ commerce businesses can take many forms nowadays, from earning small commissions with in-article affiliate links to creating an entire direct-to-consumer (DTC) product line that turns a publisher into a retailer. But given commerce revenue is down this year for some media companies and the economic slowdown has put restraints on shoppers’ wallets, publishers may need to rethink their c...

Advertising is taking a hit from the economic slowdown. For some advertisers with podcast and audio budgets, they want to reach more listeners efficiently rather than invest in expensive custom branded content. For Wonder Media Network, however, programmatic advertising isn't part of its inventory. There are certain instances where programmatic advertising in audio makes sense, according to Shira...

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,...

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...

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 h...

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 BuzzFee...

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...

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 ex...

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 a...

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 dif...

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 Pr...