The Digiday Podcast

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.

Business
Marketing
351
Hearst’s Mike Smith explains WTF is programmati...
Programmatic advertising is playing a larger role in the future of publishing. Recent Digiday research found that over half of publishers now generate more revenue from programmatic advertising than any other channel. On this episode of the Digiday...
42 min
352
Group Nine’s Christa Carone: Consolidation has ...
The pivot to paid is not on the cards for Group Nine, the holding company founded in 2016 that houses brands including The Dodo, NowThis and Thrillist. The goal for the media company: Use advertising, including branded content and entertainment,...
39 min
353
IMGN Media’s Barak Shragai: You can build media...
IMGN Media, the digital media company that owns Daquan, the meme account with 12.3 million Instagram followers, is focused on creating content for teens and young adults primarily on Instagram and Snapchat. Barak Shragai, co-founder and CEO of the...
30 min
354
Conde Nast CRO Pamela Drucker Mann: Not all bra...
2018 was a year of organizational restructuring at Condé Nast, followed by a decision to offset the decline in print business by focusing on the growth areas, including on longform video and of course, implementing a paywall at all of the publisher's...
34 min
355
Columbia University's Emily Bell: Platforms nee...
Local journalism is in crisis. Emily Bell, director of Tow Center at Columbia University, sees hope in policy and regulation to provide a solution. Sign up for the three-month Digiday+ subscription plan. Use code INTRO. Offer available for a limited...
35 min
356
Dina Srinivasan: Facebook is a monopoly, but br...
Whether big tech platforms need to be broken up in order to rein them in is now a matter of public debate -- and will be a big topic during the U.S. presidential election next year. Dina Srinivasan is an academic, who went from being an ad tech...
26 min
357
NewsGuard’s Steven Brill: A journalistic approa...
One-year-old startup NewsGuard is trying to turn the problem of unreliable and fake news into a real business. The company, which raised $6 million in an initial funding round, creates "nutrition labels" for news organizations, rating them red if they...
22 min
358
USA Today Network’s Michael Kuntz: In this indu...
In the era of deep connections with passionate audiences, being in the middle is rough. That's why USA Today is focused on scale. USA Today makes 75% of its revenue from digital advertising and 25% from print advertising. On this episode, COO Michael...
38 min
359
New York Media's Pam Wasserstein: We have to di...
Diversification is on most publishers' minds as they work to build sustainable businesses that can withstand massive shifts. Pam Wasserstein, CEO of New York Media, is intimately familiar with the process of revenue diversification, from paywalls...
37 min
360
Vox Media's Melissa Bell: The industry has give...
Digital media is going through a tumultuous period. Layoffs at publishers such as Buzzfeed, Gannett and Vice in recent weeks have become the latest example in what appears to be a coming reckoning for new media companies. At the same time, successes...
35 min
361
The Washington Post's Aram Zucker-Scharff: You ...
For many, digital media's ills are down to the broken advertising technology that acts as the plumbing for the industry. Adam Zucker-Scharff, director of ad tech at the Washington Post, says it's more complicated than that: Advertisers are going to...
40 min
362
The Atlantic's Taylor Lorenz: Facebook is irrel...
Gen-Z is the latest object of marketer fascination. The teenage demographic has its own language and very different traits when it comes to the Internet and social media consumption -- just witness the Instagram egg. Taylor Lorenz, staff...
34 min
363
Action Network’s Patrick Keane: I want to turn ...
If you’re in sports media, you’re likely familiar with the world of sports betting. Action Network, a subscription-based media company that covers sports betting and helps bettors make informed bets, is on a mission to turn all sports fans into...
26 min
364
Inside the Washington Post’s podcast strategy
Publisher interest in podcasts is at an all-time high. But figuring out exactly what kind of storytelling model is ideal for audiences, as well as metrics for success, still remains difficult. On this bonus episode of the Digiday Podcast, we took an...
30 min
365
Conde Nast International’s Wolfgang Blau: 'Payw...
This week, it was reported that Conde Nast is going to put all its titles behind a paywall in the U.S. by the end of the year. Internationally, however, the magazine publisher is taking smaller, more cautious steps towards reader revenue. Wolfgang...
40 min
366
Bonus: Inside The Wall Street Journal's subscri...
For most publishers, the pivot to paid has meant a whole new way of working. But the Wall Street Journal has had a paywall since 1997 and they have developed and refined this muscle over years. Today, the Journal has just under 2.5 million...
41 min
367
The Hill’s Jimmy Finkelstein: Our priority is h...
At a time when subscriptions are the big topic in the media industry, The Hill is going big on video. Jimmy Finkelstein, chairman of The Hill, discusses the publication's non-partisan coverage, its video ambitions and diversifying its traffic sources.
24 min
368
Bonus: How to build great digital products
As publishers focus on digital products -- from their sites to apps to newsletters to podcasts -- it's getting hard to operationalize the process. They face everything from broken workflows, a lack of a seamless functionality and a lack of efficiency....
28 min
369
New York Times' David Rubin: Marketing has to w...
With The New York Times's shift to focus on audience revenue, it's also put more of an emphasis on brand building. David Rubin, the first-ever chief marketing officer for the Times, is leading that charge. Rubin discusses the role of marketing in...
26 min
370
Bonus: How The Atlantic built its events business
On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, as part of five-episode series where we invite guests to dive deep into the mechanics of making products that make money, we took an in-the-weeds look at what makes a successful events business. We talk to...
33 min
371
Bonus episode: Inside Quartz's email newsletter...
With publishers refocusing on direct connections with their audience, email newsletters are critical. Quartz has bet on email from its earliest days. On this limited edition episode of the Digiday Podcast, where we invite guests to dive deep into the...
42 min
372
Pivoting from platforms to paid: The best of th...
On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we recap the big themes that emerged for publishers this year, from pivoting to a reader revenue strategy to a new approach to relationships with platforms.
15 min
373
Vertical Networks’ Jesus Chavez on Snapchat: ‘I...
Most publishers see Snapchat as a nice-to-have but not a must-have platform. But Vertical Networks, a digital content company founded by Elisabeth Murdoch, is betting on Snapchat as showing the way to the future of mobile programming. Jesus Chavez,...
30 min
374
Quartz's Jay Lauf: Being completely ad-dependen...
Quartz is onto its next big move to diversify reader revenue. The publisher, which originally launched as an ad-supported model, launched a membership program in November. Lauf discusses the subscriptions business, why Quartz remained valuable as a...
28 min
375
CNN's Andrew Morse: A paywall isn't the answer ...
The pivot to paid models is on. Next up: CNN, who is focusing its strategy on creating a variety of paid products for specific subsets of the CNN audience. Andrew Morse, evp at CNN U.S. and general manager of CNN Digital Worldwide, also discussed...
30 min