The Digiday Podcast

Instacart is on a mission to make every surface shoppable, pitching that to advertisers at this year’s Cannes Lions festival. Notably, there’s been an increased presence of retail and commerce media networks on the ground with brands like Chase and United having a presence here at Cannes on the heels of launching their own networks. “This last year has been about moving off-platform. So now, we’re making our data available on an aggregated, anonymized basis to other media platforms,” said Instacart CMO Laura Jones. As things begin to close down today, Jones joins this episode of the Digiday Podcast at Cannes to talk about Instacart’s beefed-up retail media offering, presence at Cannes, and more.

We’ve made it to the halfway point of Cannes Lions, where Lee Brown, global head of ads business and platform at Spotify joins this episode of the Digiday at Cannes Podcast. The audio streaming platform has spread its wings a bit, taking a swing at visual content, like music videos and lyrics to follow along with music content. In expanding its content offerings, it has also expanded its opportunity to take in more ad dollars. Keeping pace with the AI boom, Spotify recently announced the launch of its first AI ad format, where marketers can leverage AI for voice ads. For the last 10 years, Spotify Beach has been a Cannes Lions staple, most notably for its concerts on the beach, featuring big-name performers like Dua Lipa or Foo Fighters. For this episode of the Digiday at Cannes Podcast, Brown talks about Spotify’s Cannes anniversary, its play for more ad dollars and becoming a main line item in advertisers’ budgets.

We’re on day three of Cannes, joined by Megan Ramm, global director and head of CPG partnerships at Uber, for this episode of the Digiday at Cannes podcast. This is Uber Ads second year in business and simultaneously, second year at Cannes. Just a few days ago, the company announced that it was expanding its programmatic ad business to include partnerships with demand-side platforms like The Trade Desk, Yahoo's DSP and Google’s Display & Video 360. As of late, programmatic has had a rough go with shrinking ad budgets, uproar around made-for-advertising sites and more. As Uber Ads continues to grow its business, Ramm stopped by the Digiday Podcast at Cannes to talk about Uber's approach to challenges in programmatic, the rise of artificial intelligence and the company’s trajectory. Recorded in Spotify’s studio on the beach at Cannes Lions, tune into the conversation with Ramm.

On day one of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the Digiday Podcast is joined by Dow Jones CMO Sherry Weiss live from the Wall Street Journal’s new location — WSJ has relocated from on the pier to its new location next to the famous Carlton Hotel. Thus far, it's been the usual wheeling and dealing of Cannes Lions with dinner parties and happy hours. Much of the conversation at Cannes has been dominated by the topic of artificial intelligence, a focal point for Weiss. On the ground here at Cannes, Weiss said she's looking to chat with partners about leveraging AI tools for the creative process, something that's become mainstream amongst marketers at this point. But as the AI hype cycle continues, data privacy, safety, and return on investment become bigger talking points. "Honestly, that's going to be a lot of what I'm gonna be doing this week," Weiss said, "is talking with some of our tech partners to figure out how we can start using some of their technology." In the second episode of the Digiday at Cannes podcast, Weiss talks about AI tools in marketing, data privacy within AI and WSJ’s new ad campaign to boost readership.

Bonjour from day one of the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and the kick-off of the Digiday Cannes podcast. Ahead of this year’s rosé-induced festivities, Hilton CMO Mark Weinstein, a Cannes Lions veteran attendee, joins us for the first episode of Digiday’s week-long podcast series. Last year’s generative artificial intelligence hype cycle hasn’t quite fizzled out yet It's expected not only to show up this year, says Weinstein, but drown out other conversations. No doubt, marketers have found uses for gen AI beyond social copy and internal content creation, but it’s yet to be said if AI will reach an inflection point for brand at this year’s Lions. “Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation will be just blustering and hot air,” Weinstein said. “We're not yet at a point where any of us know, including the people building the capabilities by the way, where this ends.” Tune in to hear how Hilton is using AI internally and how Weinstein says the industry should be talking about AI at this year’s Cannes Lions on the Digiday Podcast at Cannes. And Make sure to tune in tomorrow for the next Digiday podcast at Cannes.

Molly Burke and Tyler Oakley joined YouTube more than a decade ago and built their respective online followings by advocating for the causes and communities of people that were important to them — even if it wasn’t always the easiest way to rapidly grow given the platform’s algorithm. Since then, Burke and Oakley both expanded to additional platforms, like Patreon and Twitch, to continue garnering meaningful relationships with their followers. While Burke said she’s been able to learn a lot about her viewers personally through Patreon, Oakley said that two-way direct communication on Twitch has been instrumental in how he creates content in the moment. In the fourth and final episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Burke and Oakley discuss why advocacy and speaking from the heart has always been central to their strategies as long-form video content creators, and why that’s helped grow their audiences and businesses.

In a world where video has become the predominant medium for content creators, Substack offers a reprieve in the form of the written word. The subscription-based newsletter platform received a surge of interest during the pandemic, garnering hundreds of new creators — including Hunter Harris and Caroline Chambers — who were interested in monetizing their ideas without always needing to jump in front of a camera. And less than four years later, the platform has enabled these creators to monetize their content via thousands of paid and unpaid subscribers — not to mention advertiser sponsorship, affiliate links or even book deals. In the third episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Harris and Chambers discuss how they’ve transitioned their Substack subscriber bases into communities that ultimately help them feed the funnel of audience engagement.

What started as a part-time, pandemic-induced pregnancy journey vlog has turned into a family business for social media creators Ben and Lazara Martin, and their three boys. Since 2020, the couple has racked up nearly 8 million followers across social media, boasting family-friendly content to strike deals with brands like Huggies, Flexcar and Applebee's. But even as the influencer and content creator landscape continues to grow, changes in platform algorithms, the looming TikTok ban and more put pressure on creators. In the second episode of the Digiday Podcast creator series, the Martin family talks being full time content creators, navigating said ban and more.

As a platform, X (formerly Twitter) has seen better days. After Elon Musk took over back in 2022, the platform has fallen from grace with advertisers and creators alike, due to the reinstatement of previously banned accounts, an increase in bots and simultaneous decrease in brand safety. However, X hasn’t managed to scare away everyone. In fact, Jessica Davis, a part-time creator who focuses on career content, has managed to build out a following of more than 40,000 people since starting her account in 2021. Since then, she's been able to convince subscribers and brands to shell out for her tweets, pulling in revenue from monthly subscriptions and funds from the platform's ad revenue sharing program, which launched last summer. In the first episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Davis talks about being a text-based content creator in the short-form video era, navigating brand safety on X and the future of content creation in the ever changing landscape of social media.

Formed in 2020 after TPG bought Goal.com from DAZN, FootballCo has been steadily growing an international audience of soccer fans across its portfolio of nine brands. But this year, FootballCo is making a concerted effort to appeal to the burgeoning fandom of U.S.-based soccer enthusiasts under the leadership of Jason Wagenheim, CEO, North America. Wagenheim, previously the CRO of Bustle Digital Group, joined FootballCo having never before worked in sports media, but that’s what he said his bosses were interested in. Having led the advertising businesses for many lifestyle media companies in his career, Wagenheim said his goal is to convert “soccer curious” advertisers into active spenders by blending lifestyle and sports content into a video-dominant mix that appeals to non-sports native brands. And with many global soccer sporting events coming up in North America over the next couple of years, culminating in the men’s World Cup in 2026, Wagenheim is hitting the ground running, using these tentpole moments to appeal to advertisers and audiences alike in this market.

Like other companies, Canva has been in growth mode recently, looking to scoop up new audiences to grow the Australian design platform’s user base. Notably, headlines from The Information and Barron's dance around Canva possibly going public in the coming years, but no concrete timeline has been announced. In the meantime, the focus is expanding the Australian-based company to other markets around the world, like India, Germany, Japan and Europe, according to Zach Kitschke, CMO at Canva. “We've made some huge strides there over the past few years, but 170 million [Canva users] is just a drop in the ocean of the total population around the world,” he said. Canva has also been prioritizing its artificial intelligence capabilities, which has become the industry’s latest obsession. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Kitschke to talk about Canva’s marketing strategy, global growth initiative and plans for AI.

In the era of so-called subscription fatigue, subscription clothing rental service Nuuly has managed to not only increase its number of subscribers, but also turn a profit while its competitors are scrambling for profitability. Nuuly, which is owned by Urban Outfitters, hit its first growth spurt in Q3 of last year. Nuuly's net sales came in about $65.5 million last October, up from $35.2 million in that same quarter the year prior, marking a nearly 86% increase, according to the company's earnings report. The clothing rental company also amassed nearly 200,000 subscribers as of last December, according to a spokesperson. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Kim Gallagher, executive director of marketing at Nuuly to talk about the company's growth plans through 2024 and beyond. “This is not the sexy answer, but we feel like we are in this unique spot of we’ve had a lot of growth, we’ve just achieved our first profitable quarter and we still feel like we have a lot of work to do to make our service as good as it can possibly be,” Gallagher said on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “It’s been a couple of years of chasing growth, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, you know what? Let’s just focus on the core for a minute.”

A presidential election year has the potential to be a boon for news and politics publishers when it comes to drawing in and monetizing audiences. But even though 2024 is a lot like 2020 on paper, platform performance issues and an unreliable ad market may make this election cycle less lucrative than hoped. For Newsweek’s global chief commercial and growth officer Kevin Gentzel, this means testing out new audience growth strategies and revenue streams to get back to growth this year. “We did end the year with some growth, which was great, [but we] didn't achieve what we set out to accomplish in [2023]. But I feel like we strategically started to sow seeds throughout the year that we knew were going to strategically benefit the business, our readers, brand partners, and start to develop other core commercial aspects of the company that we're beginning to see in 2024 and beyond,” said Gentzel. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Gentzel discusses how his team is generating referral traffic from alternative platforms, why political advertising dollars are hard to compete for and how Newsweek is looking to monetize readers with new subscription offerings.

Digiday Media's WorkLife is proud to present season three of The Return, a podcast about the modern workforce, with this season focused on middle management. Last season, we heard what it’s like for Gen Z to enter the workforce for the first time in a post-pandemic world. We highlighted themes like why values are so important to Gen Zers, whether or not they are loyal to their employers, how they use TikTok for career advice, what it means to be a young professional who is a boss to older workers, and so much more. This time, we’re hearing from the population of workers that some argue is the backbone of a successfully-run organization: middle management. They are the ones who are navigating those RTO mandates, welcoming a new generation of workers that have a different approach than those who came before them, the rise of artificial intelligence – the list goes on. In season three of The Return, we speak to middle managers themselves to hear beyond their everyday stresses of the job, but what they need to guarantee everyone they manage has what they need to be the best at what they do. C-suite, listen up because they need your help too. We dive into how middle management stress is a decades-long issue (there are New York Times headlines dating back to 1971), how the wrong people are being chosen to be managers which is leading to the rise of “accidental managers,” what it’s like to have hard conversations and having to be a therapist at times, where people are finding support as a middle manager, and how AI is impacting the job of a middle manager. With a Q+A format, you will hear in-depth conversations with folks including Colette Stallbaumer, Microsoft’s general manager of Microsoft 365 and Future of Work Marketing, Rob Pierre, former CEO of advertising services platform Jellyfish, and Emily Field, partner at McKinsey & Company who co-authored “Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work,” to name a few. Season three of The Return is hosted by Cloey Callahan, senior reporter at Digiday Media’s WorkLife, and produced by Digiday Media’s audio producer Sara Patterson. Subscribe to the WorkLife podcast now on Apple Podcasts – or wherever you get your podcasts – to hear the first episode on Tuesday, April 23.

The 25-year-old fashion, entertainment and culture publication Nylon went digital-only in 2017, but owner BDG is officially reviving the print magazine this year – albeit biannually. Debuting with a limited 50,000-issue run, the magazine will be distributed on newsstands, in the lobbies of high end boutiques, hotels and airport lounges and at Nylon House events, vs. being available via subscriptions, according to Emma Rosenblum, chief content officer at BDG. But that number and distribution model could change based on the reception from readers and advertisers alike, she added. And so far, the advertiser reception has been better than expected, with the premier issue featuring several ad pages. Rosenblum said that she was willing to put out the first relaunched issue of Nylon without any advertisers signing on, just to get a proof of concept in order. But with the sales team already up to snuff on selling a print product thanks to six-times-per year W magazine, securing ad revenue was possible before the first issue went to print. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Rosenblum discusses the highs and lows of making a print product and why Nylon was the first brand within her remit to have a physical iteration.

The creator economy is bursting at the seams as brands tap into social media stars, both big and small, hoping to recreate word of mouth-style marketing online. In fact, agency clients and brands invested more in influencer marketing in 2023 than they did in 2022, according to Digiday+ research. In Q1 of 2022, 69% of agency professionals said their clients spent at least a very small portion of their marketing budgets on influencers. By Q1 of 2023, that figure jumped to 76%. Goldman Sachs predicts that the creator economy could approach half of a trillion dollars by 2027. As more money flows into the creator economy, creators are looking for two things: their fair share of that money and more sovereignty over their online presences. And Linktree, a link-in-bio tool, is positioning itself to be an intermediary, facilitating the growth, per Lara Cohen, vp of partners and business development at Linktree. “There's a shift happening right now and I think the financial shift has really yet to catch up directionally [with] where the market is right now, in some ways,” Cohen said on the most recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “The real shift that we haven't seen yet that we're really advocating for on the front lines of Linktree is that these creators should be paid more.” On this episode, we caught up with Cohen to talk about the growing creator economy, monetization at Linktree and what maturation looks like in this space.

Prebiotic soda brand Olipop is in growth mode, coming off $200 million in annual sales and its first national campaign with pop star Camila Cabello last year. A lot of the six-year-old brand’s initial popularity tracks back to TikTok. However, the last year has been transformational for Olipop, positioning itself as a true competitor to the likes of legacy brands like Pepsi or Coca Cola. “We’re such a different company today than we were 12 months ago largely because of that growth,” said Chad Wilson, head of marketing for Olipop, on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “From a marketing perspective, we have seen huge success in social and influencers. We jumped on social early on in the company’s growth and it was like rocket fuel almost.” On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Wilson to talk about maintain Olipop’s momentum, its in-house agency and what testing and learning looks like on TikTok.

Earlier this year, Janice Min, CEO of The Ankler, said that she’s expecting to hit $10 million in annual revenue in 2025. During a podcast recording with Digiday, Min revised that statement to say, “We have a shot of getting to that number this year.” To do that, Min’s team is taking a three-pronged, straightforward approach: Make good content to attract audiences, quality audiences that are attractive to advertisers, and combine those things in-person through events. “I wish we had some AI-generated something that was going to be the thing that rains down millions of dollars on us, but it's really boring,” said Min. “Boring” — or not, it's notable that a media company that launched in January 2022 and covers Hollywood is charting revenue growth at all amid two major film industry strikes as well as a tumultuous period for advertising revenue. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Min shares how “tune-in” advertising and “for your consideration” advertising have persisted despite the strikes and how The Ankler, born on Substack, has expanded across platforms to become a full-fledged digital media outlet. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

Coming off of SXSW where Vox Media hosted the conference’s three-day-long podcast stage, the company’s recently appointed CRO Geoff Schiller is going all-in on these types of in-person selling opportunities to generate ad deals for the publisher’s portfolio of digital and audio assets.Centering the Vox Media sales pitch on talent, franchises and tent poles, Schiller said on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast that this is the formula he and his sales team are following to differentiate the digital media company in the market. It’s a similar play to other publishers that are focusing on “going niche” versus competing for scale plays against platforms this year.In this week’s episode Schiller talks about the state of the digital advertising market and how he’s showcasing vertical expertise to clients in various ways, from taking insights on a roadshow to showcases at industry events.

For the last few months, marketers and advertisers have finally had to reckon with the fallout of Google’s crumbling third-party cookie amid an increasingly fragmented media landscape. Meaning, targeting and measurement are getting harder to do. However, it’s something Liz Mella, director of marketing for Farmer’s Fridge, has been tasked with working through as the food vending company is without an e-commerce point of sale. With more than 1,000 locations nationwide in airports, hospitals, office buildings, universities and more, Mella said Farmer’s Fridge's business model has required non-traditional marketing strategies. “We are looking into doing things, like we’re buying media at the exact point of purchase,” she said in a recent interview with Digiday. “But there's no easy, silver bullet approach to this. It's really doing a lot of small things to build the amplifier effect of media.” On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Mella to talk about Farmer’s Fridge’s non-traditional approach to marketing, measurement and media. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

Zola isn’t just a website for weddings anymore. Late last year, the e-commerce company went from a one-stop destination for all things wedding to include a new baby registry service, Zola Baby. Typically, a new service comes with renewed customer acquisition efforts. But this latest endeavor has revolved around word-of-mouth as opposed to shelling out ad dollars to find new shoppers, according to Zola CMO Victoria Vaynberg. The company has experimented with out-of-home advertising in the past and currently has an active TikTok presence to help boost brand awareness. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Vaynberg to talk about Zola’s TikTok strategy, growth in a new category and navigating today’s ever-changing digital landscape. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

While the recent advertising slowdown has also impacted the amount of money allocated to marketing to media companies created for non-white audiences, Parker Morse, CEO and founder of My Code said that it hasn’t stopped marketers from realizing the value in reaching multicultural audiences. In fact, while the industry standard is 5% of advertiser budgets earmarked for multicultural marketing, that figure has turned into a floor, not a ceiling, over the past few years, he said, adding that the expectation is that 2024 will see a return to growth in this sector. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Morse talks about how My Code is iterating on the go-to-market strategy this year to ensure marketers are aware of the value in reaching multicultural and historically underrepresented audiences, both from a buying power perspective, but also from a sheer volume perspective. Morse also discusses how My Code has spent the past three years building out the portfolio of Hispanic audience-focused publications to build a more holistic representation of Latinx consumers in the United States. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

Following an on-stage conversation at the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit in December, Kerel Cooper, president of advertising at Group Black, joined Digiday once again on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast to dive further into his continued efforts to shed light on the legacy programmatic media buying practices that often disadvantage Black-owned media companies. Working with ad verification firm Double Verify, Group Black pulled together research that illustrates just how much ad inventory on Black-owned media companies is cut from media budgets when rudimentary tools like keyword blocklists and domain-level categorization are implemented in media buys. Now, Cooper is working with his partners at DV to raise awareness of these findings to educate the buy-side as well as work with trade organizations to create standards for not eliminating large swaths of Black-owned media from programmatic spending. In this conversation, Cooper talks about the results of the research with DV as well as how the deprecation of the third-party cookie is changing the way advertisers are up-ending their programmatic buying practices this year. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

Magic Spoon, the cereal company that launched entirely online back in 2019, has since expanded its footprint to more than 16,000 national retailers to meet shoppers where they are, whether that’s online or in-store. Historically, the cereal company built its millennial and Gen Z following via short-form social media videos, podcasts alongside other direct-to-consumer brands. But as its retail footprint expands, so does its ad strategy, to include things like in-store aisle displays. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Gabi Lewis, co-founder at Magic Spoon, to talk about the brand’s expanded retail footprint, standing out in a crowded category and of course, the measurement woes plaguing marketers. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

Last year, PepsiCo Beverages was taking a test-and-learn approach to a fragmented video landscape. This year, with more ad-supported streaming platforms, most recently including Amazon Prime, the continued creator economy boom and more, there are more places than ever to advertise. That fact is one of the things that keeps Katie Haniffy, senior director of media strategy and investment for PepsiCo Beverages, up at night, she said. “The process has changed,” Haniffy said on the most recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “Really, there’s probably three things that are going, ultimately, to impact our process.” That’s the booming creator economy, the rise of CTV and retail media. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Haniffy to talk about changes in the media landscape, how PepsiCo Beverages is keeping up with them and, of course, what measurement looks like in a fractured marketplace. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

Adam Baidawi stepped into the role of British GQ’s head of editorial content in November 2021 at a time when the legacy men’s fashion and lifestyle title was facing a crucial pivot point in its identity. Not only was Condé Nast reimagining its editorial and business strategy to be internationally structured, but the very idea of men’s fashion and luxury was evolving from a singular ideal image to embracing individuality. Baidawi, who had been a lifelong fan of the title, was also serving as the deputy global editorial director of GQ, and helped lead the refresh of the brand, focusing first and foremost on new luxury and community. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Baidawi shared how he applied the “new luxury” mentality to the publication’s social strategy, events business and video production, as well as how the shift to international operations strengthened the storytelling ability of GQ across the globe. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

Digital media companies have to be willing to change with the times if they want to make 2024 a growth year. For Gallery Media Group, publisher of PureWow and ONE37pm as well as over 70 social media-first brands like @Recipes and @Cocktails, this means testing out new social offerings like TikTok Shop, creating social campaigns for clients that will still work despite rapidly changing algorithms and modifying its experiential business to improve the ROI for sponsors. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, GMG’s CRO Chris Anthony shares how the new ad products and event offerings launched in 2023 are contributing to his sales team’s go-to-market strategy in 2024. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

Between Google’s third-party cookie phase out (finally) and the generative AI boom, there are many changes facing the marketing and advertising industry this year. It’s a lot for any marketer to keep up with, let alone the chief marketing officer at a 117-year-old legacy company like Xerox, an office equipment brand. But it’s exactly what CMO Deena LaMarque Piquion has on her to-do list this year, in addition to boosting brand awareness with the next generation of employees and entrepreneurs. “My personal resolution in regard to marketing is to incorporate more AI and personalization into what we do,” she said on the most recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. It's only within the past year that Xerox has ramped up its advertising efforts, in line with America’s return to the office. And as 2024 gets underway, the office equipment brand must grapple with the post-pandemic, new work normal, generative AI and more. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Piquion to learn more about Xerox’s AI strategy, marketing to the next generation of employees and entrepreneurs, and what it means to keep a 100-plus-year-old brand relevant. Get more from Digiday with the daily newsletter, sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.com/newsletters to sign up.

Bloomberg Media made some changes to its sales operations last year in an effort to stay on top of the tumultuous ad market, including hiring Christine Cook as its new global chief revenue officer. Under Cook’s leadership, the events business hired a new head of event sales to put more intentional focus on that revenue stream, a client council was created to produce a more effective feedback loop from advertisers and more original video content turned into an opportunity to sell new audiences. Coming up on her one year anniversary at Bloomberg Media, Cook is hopeful that the changes that were made in 2023 will carry the media brand through what remains an unpredictable time in the ad market. “I’m a little weary … about the volatility. Maybe I’m past worry, I just maybe I’m just expecting it now,” Cook said on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “[But] we’re geared and aligned to be prepared if that carries on. I feel really good about what we’re doing. Don’t take any client for granted. Be very thoughtful and listen. Bring more to bear.”

Social media is in its so-called unhinged era, where social media managers are breaking the digital fourth wall and speaking the language of the internet from branded accounts. At the helm of the unhinged social media movement is a big green owl, Duo, brand mascot for the language learning app Duolingo. Duo has made a name for itself on TikTok with funny skits as the social media team behind the owl works to humanize the brand. But sometimes, like Icarus, Duo sometimes found itself flying too close to the sun. Last year, the brand came under fire for a comment on a TikTok about Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial. It’s been a lesson in toeing the line, learning what works and what doesn’t. Experimentation may be the cornerstone of Duolingo’s social media strategy, but Duo’s unhinged personality is here to stay for now with the company planning to explore other character personalities from the Duolingo universe in the future, said Katherine Chan, head of global social and influencer strategy at Duolingo. “We have a running rule that we have no rules,” Chan said on the most recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “We basically have a set of guardrails in terms of absolute no's for the brand. But outside of that, there’s a lot of freedom and empowerment to try to draw the shortest line from ideation to post.”

This year was another one for the advertising and media history books, but not for the ways that marketers and media execs hoped for at the start of 2023. Brands’ advertising budgets never quite found their footing and the competition for ad revenue only got steeper. On top of that, the platforms are no longer reliable places to drive traffic or revenue but competing with their scale is a losing game. Plus generative AI is quickly finding its way into virtually every facet of the industry — for worse or better. In this final episode of the year of the Digiday Podcast, senior marketing editor Kristina Monllos and senior media editor Tim Peterson join co-hosts Kimeko McCoy and Kayleigh Barber to discuss some of the top trends from the past year and which challenges and opportunities are expected to continue in 2024.

The final episode of Digiday’s History of ad tech discusses how the digital media industry has moved faster than those charged to keep it in check, with Ana Milicevic of Sparrow Advisers sharing her insights. In this episode, she discusses how the blurred lines between data management platforms, customer data platforms, and now, data clean rooms have only served to confuse matters. Now that legislation such as GDPR and CPRA have come into force, privacy is a top-line matter. Digiday’s History of Ad Tech charts its development. In this episode, she discusses: How data management and ad tech started to blur How the creeping tide of privacy legislation influenced investment in ad tech Big Tech’s role in the future of the space

Semafor is about to close the book on its first full calendar year, having launched in October 2022 as a media and events company. And despite launching during a tumultuous time for any media organization, Semafor’s co-founder and CEO Justin Smith said that his team had profitable months this fall, even coming close to breaking even in the fourth quarter of 2023. This accomplishment was made possible thanks, in part, to a combination of designating events as a core segment of the business as well as keeping the team as lean as possible for as long as possible, Smith said on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. And in the coming year, a continued focus on events, expanding the brand to additional international markets and investing in the website are all central to Semafor’s second year growth strategy.

Joanna O’Connell is one of the most recognizable names in ad tech, a fame she built over the course of three decades as an industry analyst, and marketer, among other roles. O’Connell is now evp of innovation at R3. In this episode of Digiday’s Oral History of Ad Tech, she speaks with Seb Joseph about her role in helping to build one of the media industry’s first agency trading desks at Publicis Groupe during her role at Razorfish in the mid-to-late 2000s. In this discussion, she covers The desire to illuminate the black box of programmatic advertising Holding companies’ desire to use ad tech as a means of carving out new revenue in austere times How the ‘agency-friendly’ model of ad tech prevailed In the coming weeks, Digiday’s History of Ad Tech, produced by Digiday Media’s audio producer Sara Patterson, lifts the lid on some of the key undercurrents in ad tech over the last 20 years with Seb Joseph, senior news editor, and Ronan Shields, senior reporter, advertising technology, in conversation with some of the key players during that time.

In the wake of measurement woes and data privacy initiatives muddying digital targeting capabilities, a number of companies have pivoted to become less reliant on targeting customers via third-party cookies to generate quick sales via performance marketing. Instead, they've become more focused on boosting brand awareness to re-familiarize customers with their brand. Airbnb is one of those companies that has made that pivot, moving up the marketing funnel to more brand awareness tactics to bring new customers to Airbnb, said Hiroki Asai, global head of marketing at Airbnb. Notably, the company has recently been grappling with local government efforts to squash short term rentals and consumer backlash over increased pricing. In the midst of those things, the company is looking to carve out its own share of voice and better own its brand narrative. “We have a lot of messages that we want to put out there that are our messages,” Asai said on the most recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “When you’re over reliant on those performance channels, you end up either reacting to other people’s messages, or in that vacuum, other people will just create stories and messages about you that you can't control."

There are few better placed to critique and narrate the history of the digital media landscape, never mind the sub-sector of ad tech, than Ari Paparo. The serial entrepreneur and ‘first influencer of ad tech’ – sorry @AdtechGod – now helps to demystify and humanize the often dry milieu of digital media PR in his missives over at Marketecture. This week, he speaks with Digiday reporter Ronan Shields in the second installment of Digiday’s Oral History Of Ad Tech in a conversation that focuses on the state of the industry during the opening decade of the 21st Century. His insights include: The hustle that was ad tech in the 1990s Paparo’s input to DoubleClick’s turnaround, and eventual sale to Google The incredible business model of ad networks in the 2000s How the rise of the ad exchange became the fall of the ad network And just who invented what in ad tech In the coming weeks, Digiday’s History of Ad Tech, produced by Digiday Media’s audio producer Sara Patterson, lifts the lid on some of the key undercurrents in ad tech over the last 20 years with Seb Joseph, senior news editor, and Ronan Shields, senior reporter, advertising technology, in conversation with some of the key players during that time.

Big advertisers are seemingly ready to abandon X (formerly Twitter) for good this time thanks to owner Elon Musk’s latest antics and an uptick in anti-semitic posts on the platform. In X’s absence, advertisers may once again find themselves looking for the social media’s next town square after failing to be wooed by X alternatives like Mastodon and Bluesky earlier this year. Enter Spill. It’s been just over a year since the iOS social media platform with a ‘meme-forward’ aesthetic launched with former Twitter employees Alphonzo "Phonz" Terrell and DeVaris Brown at the helm. It’s not that the duo are trying to re-create Twitter. In fact, Terrell says Spill is an online safe space for LGBTQIA+, POC and other historically marginalized communities. The two have spent the last year on product developments for users as well offerings for advertisers in hopes to mark Spill’s territory in a rapidly changing social media landscape. “There's been some very organic integrations and opportunities for brands to plug in and put some shine on what the [Spill] community is already doing,” Terrell said on the most recent episode of the Digiday Podcast, “and also create some new opportunities to just have really rich, fun conversations.”

One of the Godfathers of ad tech on creating an industry, competing with Big Tech, and exactly why he didn’t join AT&T, plus much more Few would argue Brian O’Kelley’s right to claim the title of being one of the Godfathers of ad tech, for what is still one of the nascent spaces of the media industry, his tenure in the sector dates back three decades. During this time, O’Kelley has helped build two of the most notable independent ad tech companies that later sold to the biggest names in telecoms and internet history, and now at the helm of Scope3, he aims to decarbonize digital media. However, in the first episode of Digiday’s four-part history of ad tech podcast, hear his first-hand, candid account of some of the most crucial industry developments. These include how O’Kelley: – helped build the first ad exchange at Right Media, only to feel the burn after its $680 million sale to Yahoo, and then later built one ad tech’s most iconic companies – brushed shoulders with (as well as ruffled the feathers of) Madison Avenue titans in AppNexus’ toe-to-toe battle with Google in the ad tech power game – walked away from AT&T, after its $1.6 billion purchase of his company, over concerns on the telco’s strategic misalignment In the coming weeks, Digiday’s History of Ad Tech, produced by Digiday Media’s audio producer Sara Patterson, lifts the lid on some of the key undercurrents in ad tech over the last 20 years with Seb Joseph and Ronan Shields in conversation with some of the key players during that time. Subscribe to the WorkLife podcast now on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Between the Department of Justice’s antitrust suit against Google and the impending self-imposed deadline for removing third-party cookies from its Chrome browser, there is a lot on the technology megacorp’s plate. But Dan Taylor, the company’s vp of global advertising, is confident that nothing will change the timeline that Google has set for cookie depreciation: “Cookies will be phased out completely from Chrome at the end of 2024.” On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Taylor discusses how he and his team are continuing to get the third-party cookie alternative solutions off the ground and testing their efficacy ahead of the end of year 2024 deadline. He also speaks on why he’s confident that the ad business will remain intact despite the DOJ lawsuit addressing its dominance in ad tech infrastructure. “We disagree with the DOJ’s claims. We have no intention of selling or divesting this business. In fact, we’re focused more than ever on helping our publisher partners and our advertiser partners deliver great ROI and great monetization, especially in a time of economic and geopolitical and many other types of uncertainty that we’re all living in today,” said Taylor.

The podcasting advertising industry looks a lot different today than it did even two years ago thanks to programmatic audio ads. While the bread and butter host-read ad format still packs a punch when it comes to driving listener engagement and conversions, those ads aren’t scalable, said Lizzie Widhelm, svp and head of ad innovation and B2B marketing at SiriusXM Media. And in 2023’s slow ad market, the ability to target large swaths of audiences based on their demographics and interests rather than a specific show is what helped SXM Media maintain positive revenue momentum in 2023. As of November, SXM Media has “already exceeded our [revenue] goal in podcasting,” said Widhelm. “We’re doing more revenue now – dramatically more – than last year. We have almost a 90% increase in programmatic revenue specific to podcasting … So it’s exciting to be where we are at today, but there is still road to go.” In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Widhelm chats about the advantages of selling audio ads programmatically and what the next stages are for improving audience targeting capabilities in the medium, as well as how generative AI can be used to automate the programmatic audio ad sales process even further.

At this point, TikTok has gone from an experimental digital channel to a must-have in most marketing strategies. Ad spend on TikTok is expected to grow in the coming year — as much as 25% over this year — as the short-form video app looks to bridge the gap between its cultural impact and ad revenue. While TikTok has become a staple within the culture of social media, agencies and brands are still figuring out what to make of the platform’s marketing and advertising potential. Spend on the platform has yet to reach Meta or Google levels. But one of the brands making a bet on TikTok and shelling out ad dollars there is Thrive Market, a membership-based online grocer. Doubling down on the last two years of organic growth, Thrive Market scaled its TikTok spend across influencer marketing and paid ad units by more than 250% this year versus last year, according to Amina Pasha, Thrive Market's CMO. (She did not disclose further specifics.) In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Pasha talks about how TikTok spurred membership growth for the grocer, plans for ad spend on the platform next year and testing into connected television.

Augmented and virtual reality are well on their way to becoming a mainstream marketing tactic as technology democratizes the space, making it a QR code away for brands and consumers alike. At this point, the industry has gone well beyond flower crown and dog-eared Snapchat filters with Meta, Apple and other tech giants rolling out wearable augmented and virtual reality headsets. (Find a look into Snapchat’s recent AR efforts — and why they’re still a work in progress as far as marketers are concerned — here.) Now, Chobani is looking to get in on the growth, hoping to break through in a crowded digital landscape and get in front of a younger audience. At the helm of these efforts is Chobani’s new CMO, Thomas Ranese, who brings with him a background in tech, having previously served in marketing leadership roles at Uber and Google. In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Ranese talks through his new role, plans to drive product awareness beyond the yogurt section of the grocery store and balancing brand purpose with profits.

The New York Times tapped Joy Robins as its global chief advertising officer this past spring and six months later, Robins is leading her team through a number of industry-wide changes. Previously chief revenue officer of the Washington Post, Robins is not unfamiliar with the challenges that news publications are facing when it comes to brand safety concerns and monetizing news coverage. And at the Times, she and her team are working to incorporate attention metrics as KPIs for client campaigns and pitching new clients thoughtfully in order to stay on top of the volatile ad market. What’s more, this month, Insider reported that the Times reversed its decision to remove open programmatic advertising from its app earlier this year, which Robins said was due to the fact that audiences say those ads were not disruptive after all. In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Robins chats about how she’s leading her team to incorporate new attention metrics and how reopening the open programmatic revenue valve can only stand to benefit the Times’ business.

Sports media was built on live coverage of games, but younger generations are increasingly less interested in watching sporting events as they happen. That doesn’t mean that the live video format isn’t still appealing to this demographic, though. At least that’s what Bleacher Report’s general manager, Bennett Spector, is finding. Spector’s team spent this past year investing heavily in building a roster of live video content creators ranging from sports enthusiasts to athletes, as well as a wide slate of livestream programming that includes creators’ musings on upcoming trades and their thoughts on teams’ performances for the season. The monetary appeal is that live video still commands an audience and, therefore, sponsors, Spector argued. But the fact that Bleacher Report’s livestreams are filmed and managed by the creators themselves also saves a lot of money from a production standpoint. “You can make more money from [longer form video] advertising, but we were challenged with production budgets, because to make video on the internet, you still have to spend a lot of money,” Spector said on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. And to make live video a lower production lift, B/R built an in-house streaming tech stack to further eliminate the need for control rooms and technical operations common in broadcast productions. Now that the technology is in place and the revenue potential is there, Spector talks about how he and his team are actively looking to grow the number of creators in B/R’s network.

The industry’s stalled DE&I progress has been a point of critique. Despite the promises, media companies are still mostly hiring white people as of this year. In 2022, 90% of agency leaders identified as white, up from 73% in 2021, according to the 4A’s 2023 Diversity in Agencies Survey Report. Meanwhile, DE&I positions are drying up after a surge in hiring, with those positions facing the brunt of budget cuts in times of economic crisis, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. In response, DE&I execs in the ad industry say it's a work in progress. The year 2020 and the murder of George Floyd were inflection points for marketers, advertisers and the industry at large. But with no set way to measure DE&I success and no alignment on how to tackle challenges within the space, lasting change is easier said than done, according to Channing Martin, IPG's global chief diversity and social impact officer. “A lot of people knew, but there are centuries of systemic racism, exclusion, prejudice that is built into every system that we live and operate in in this country,” Martin said on this episode of the Digiday Podcast. “Part of the problem is that we’re focused on trying to solve for everything.”

Digiday Media and WorkLife is proud to present season two of The Return, a podcast about what it’s like for Gen Z to enter the workforce for the first time in a post-pandemic world. In season one, The Return followed an Atlanta-based advertising agency as the company returned to the office after a two-year pandemic hiatus. There were clear challenges among this population of workers who knew what a “normal” office used to look like. But what about a generation that is entering the workforce post-pandemic and has nothing to compare it to? That’s what we uncover across eight episodes in season two of The Return. We see headlines repeatedly accusing this generation of being lazy, unmotivated, quiet quitters. But what's the real story behind this generation's attitude about work? In season two of The Return, we speak with Gen Zers across the country to lift the lid on what motivates and inspires this young generation of workers, and how they’re not as work-shy as they’re often depicted. We also speak with seasoned workplace experts who can put the changing expectations of these young professionals into context. We dive into why values are so important to Gen Zers, whether or not they are loyal to their employers, how they use TikTok for career advice, what it means to be a young professional who is a boss to older workers, and so much more. Season two of The Return is hosted by Cloey Callahan, a Gen Zer and senior reporter at Digiday Media’s WorkLife, and produced by Digiday Media's audio producer Sara Patterson. Subscribe to the WorkLife podcast now on Apple Podcasts – or wherever you get your podcasts – to hear the first episode on Wednesday, Oct. 18.

Today’s social media landscape is an increasingly fragmented one, where legacy platforms are faltering, giving way to challengers. Within that landscape, social media advertisers and professionals are tasked with experimenting and potentially building audiences as they go. Enter the fediverse. The fediverse is best described as a group of social media networks that are independent but still able to communicate with one another. Theoretically, brands wouldn’t be under the thumb of today’s monolithic social media platforms, and could instead have more control over their communities. Back in July, Meta’s Threads announced a fediverse integration, potentially bridging the gap between advertisers and the fediverse. While advertisers are still scratching the surface of the next iteration of social media, Martin Pagh Ludvigsen, director of creative technology and AI at Goodby, Silverstein and Partners is ready to pitch the innovation to clients, hopeful for innovation in the space. “I’d love to conduct some experiments in the fediverse with some of the brands that we have in house,” he said. “But in order [for clients] to give us permission to do that, they need to find out what the benefits could be for them.”

The autumn season is ushering in some change to the Digiday Podcast. As of this week, Digiday’s senior media editor Tim Peterson will step down from his role as co-host of the podcast after nearly three years at the helm. Kimeko McCoy, Digiday’s senior marketing reporter, will succeed Peterson and serve as the new co-host of the Digiday Podcast alongside media editor Kayleigh Barber. With this change comes an expansion of coverage within the podcast. McCoy brings her expertise around how leading marketers and brands approach everything from social media platforms and influencer marketing to holistic media buying and digital marketing strategy. Listeners can expect to hear interviews with top CMOs, marketing strategists, platform execs and many other industry professionals to cover macro trends in digital ad dollars as well as learn about the professionals themselves. During this week’s episode, Peterson and Barber chat with McCoy about her reporting coverage area and what topics she’s eager to explore on the podcast. Early subjects she will cover in her episodes include the fediverse, fourth quarter marketing trends, the role of diversity, equity and inclusion in the ad industry and much more.

Advertisers’ aversion to the news seems to be a neverending issue for news publishers. Tales of advertisers’ overly broad keyword blocks continue to pop up, as they did during a live recording of the Digiday Podcast at the September 2023 Digiday Publishing Summit. “Another one we just saw was around the U.S. Open, actually, when Coco [Gauff] won and we had advertisers blocking [articles containing the word] ‘shot.’ But it’s a tennis shot, not a bullet shot,” said Blair Tapper svp for the U.S. at The Independent. Joining Tapper on stage was Josef Najm, director of programmatic and partnerships at Thomson Reuters, who shared a similar story. Climate change-related catastrophes have dominated recent news cycles, and advertisers have created new brand-safety segments to block their ads from running against news publishers’ climate change coverage. “It’s kind of the inverse of how advertisers are also talking about sustainability and their efforts with it. So there’s almost a little bit of hypocrisy that’s taking place there, where they’re trying to say, ‘Hey, we’re supporting something, but at the same time, we don’t want to be surrounded around the news that’s really affecting them,’” said Najm. This issue is likely to become a bigger problem over the next year ahead of the U.S. presidential election. To get ahead of it, Tapper and Najm are trying to have more conversations with advertisers and agencies about their brand-safety efforts, such as ensuring that their keyword blocklists are updated and that ad buyers are acknowledging the nuances between news cycles and brand safety concerns. “To sort of go back to just saying, ‘Block all this, block all that’ — it’s really sort of rudimentary when so much else has evolved so quickly, and there’s been so much more development, and it seems like this bit has stalled,” said Tapper.

Plenty can change in a year, particularly in the publishing industry. A year after the media business slipped into a downturn, the upswing seems to have started, at least for Hearst Magazines. “We’re actually seeing more [requests for proposals from advertisers] for 2024 than we had seen at this time last year,” Hearst Magazines evp and global chief revenue officer Lisa Howard said on the latest Digiday Podcast episode. In another positive sign, the publisher is also seeing more interest in upper-funnel, brand awareness options for advertisers after a year-plus of brands prioritizing lower-funnel, performance-oriented tactics. “I am hearing from brands that they, in some cases, do feel like they over-rotated to that lower-funnel, more just juicing sales strategy because everybody was — we were all fearful of a recession,” said Howard. For its part, Hearst Magazines made a similar shift toward lower-funnel, performance-oriented sales. After Howard joined Hearst from The New York Times in October 2022, the publisher decided to cut back on “big, complex, long-lead content programs” in favor of a “maniacal focus ... on digital media that works and can work quickly for our advertisers,” she said. While Hearst has continued to sell those long-lead content campaigns, it has seen fewer requests from advertisers for those opportunities compared to standard ad buys with shorter lead and flight times. That’s not to say that Hearst Magazines is pulling the plug on the big content deals, such as a program sponsored by Cartier for Harper’s Bazaar that launched this month and plans for an upcoming franchise tied to Women’s Health and timed to next year’s Olympic Games. Those deals are “not our primary focus, but where the need calls for it, we’re building programs,” said Howard.