The Digiday Podcast

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Hearst Magazines’ Lisa Howard says advertiser requests for 2024 are on the upswing Sep 19, 2023

Show notes

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.

Georgia-Pacific’s Laura Knebusch breaks down CPG giant’s spending shift away from traditional TV Sep 12, 2023

Show notes

A few years ago, at least two-thirds of Georgia-Pacific’s ad dollars went to traditional TV. Now the channel accounts for less than 50% of the CPG giant’s spending.

“That has been a pretty big shift out of linear TV into more digital channels over the last few years,” said Laura Knebusch, vp of marketing at the parent company of brands including Angel Soft, Brawny and Dixie, said on the latest Digiday Podcast.

As Georgia-Pacific’s traditional TV spending has decreased, its investment in digital channels — specifically video, social and audio — has increased. And the marketer’s approach to those channels mimics TV with a digital twist. Video, social and audio “are three areas that we’ve continued to be able to deliver a broader reach but do it even in a more targeted way against our consumer target,” she said.

That being said, Knebusch noted that Georgia-Pacific is still spending more money on traditional TV than on streaming specifically. One inhibitor to its brands’ spending more money on streaming is the fact that there are “still a lot of challenges when you look at cost and quality and making sure you can get the right reach and frequency,” she said.

Reuters' CRO discusses the role of political advertising and AI within the news organization Sep 05, 2023

Show notes

Several publisher CROs are optimistic that ad revenue is coming back in a positive way in the back half of 2023 and Reuters CRO Eric Danetz is no exception.

Beyond rebounds in ad categories like finance, as well as growing strength in auto and travel, 2024 presidential election campaigns are starting to kick off and as a result, political advertising revenue is flooding back into the digital media ad market. Wanting to take advantage of that revenue influx but also needing to maintain an unbiased position as a news organization, Danetz said his team has to carefully consider where and how campaign ads are placed.

On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Dantez discusses how the ad market is performing within his large news media organization and burgeoning technology, like generative AI, can play a role both in the newsroom and on the business side of Reuters.

Digiday editors discuss the top trends from summer 2023 Aug 29, 2023

Show notes

It was the summer of acronyms based on the major trends that Digiday reported on over the past four months:

MFAs (made-for-advertising sites) became a pain point in programmatic advertising circles.

Publishers and marketers started experimenting with generative AI technology and debating over its uses.

The SAG-AFTRA (actors’ union) and WGA (writers’ union) went on strike.

Many publishers started prioritizing ARPU (average revenue per user) in their subscription businesses.

Altogether, those letters spelled a busy summer for publishers and marketers alike. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, editors Kayleigh Barber and Tim Peterson recap the happenings from the summer and how those trends are likely going to impact the back half of 2023.

Ad agency Pereira O’Dell budgets for contingencies in clients' 2024 campaign strategies Aug 22, 2023

Show notes

Rather than relying on the continual quarter-by-quarter or even month-by-month sales cycle trends to guide their 2024 campaign strategies, the clients of ad agency Pereira O’Dell are already thinking ahead to 2024, almost six months ahead of time.

But in order to accurately plan in an otherwise murky ad market, factoring contingency plans into their 2024 budgets will be a critical step, according to the agency’s president Natalie Nymark. Lately, her job has been centered around adding flexibility to clients’ long term campaign plans in order to keep those initiatives on track, even if the economy has other plans.

“This is going to consume me for the next couple of months,” Nymark said on the most recent episode of the Digiday Podcast, adding that 2024 planning began as early as July this year.

Digitas North America’s Ariel Sims assesses the Threads and X era of the social ad market Aug 15, 2023

Show notes

For all the attention being paid to X (née Twitter) these days, Ariel Sims is keeping a closer eye on Meta’s Threads at the moment. Between the two text-based social platforms, the latter is the one that the svp and head of paid social at Digitas North America said she’s spending more time talking with clients about and thinking about.

“We’re having more conversation around [Threads]. But because my remit is typically in paid [advertising and] there’s no paid advertising on Threads, it’s more of a POV around what are you seeing, what’s the usage looking like, how do we play in that space,” Sims said on the latest Digiday Podcast episode.

Threads usage appears to have gone down significantly since its launch in early July. According to Sensor Tower, daily usage was down 82% in less than a month. Nonetheless, Sims sees Threads staying in the conversation for “at least the next six, eight months.” At which time Meta may finally introduce ads on Threads after playing coy on its ad plans with ad buyers so far.

“All we know is that it’s not this year [when Meta will introduce ads to Threads]. That’s the only thing that we’ve heard,” Sims said.

Privacy expert Raashee Gupta Erry educated the FTC on advertising Aug 08, 2023

Show notes

In 2020, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission put out a call for advertising experts to advise the regulatory body on advertising and privacy. Raashee Gupta Erry, then a director at GroupM’s Essence, answered that call.

Gupta Erry initially took an interest in the privacy side of the ad industry in 2018 when working with clients to prepare for Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation privacy law. Joining the FTC offered an opportunity for her to get a U.S. perspective on privacy regulation from the inside — and for the government regulator to get a peek under the hood of the ad industry from an insider whose experienced spanned brand side at Volkswagen and Samsung, agency side at Essence and Digitas and ad tech side at Neustar.

“The FTC wanted to have somebody from the industry who understands all the sides of the ecosystem, who understands how the players operate, what are the sort of systems [and] processes [and] workflows. So it was an opportunity for me to help them, educate them and strengthen their work as well as learn about the privacy world,” Gupta Erry said on the latest Digiday Podcast episode.

Gupta Erry’s initial task at the FTC was mapping out the mechanics of the advertising ecosystem. Eventually her remit broadened to involve her in the organization’s investigation and enforcement efforts that related to advertising and privacy. “[I] got to dig into some of the topics that we all in the industry grapple with, like [Google’s] Privacy Sandbox or [Apple’s anti-tracking feature] ATT, algorithmic harm, AI bias,” she said.

Having left the FTC last fall, she is now back to working with advertising companies on their privacy practices through her consultancy Uplevel Digital. And given the flurry of privacy laws taking effect in the U.S. this year, there’s no shortage of work that companies need to do to keep in compliance, especially as enforcement efforts by regulators including the FTC ramp up.

“We’re looking at 11 or 12 [state-level privacy laws] at this point. So as more of them come into place, there’s going to be more regulators, state regulators, looking at these companies,” said Gupta Erry.

How BDG is threading together communities on its social media platforms Aug 01, 2023

Show notes

A lot has changed in the social media ecosystem over the last couple of weeks: Meta launched its Twitter competitor, Threads, Twitter was rebranded to X and TikTok announced its new e-commerce endeavor designed to compete with Shein and Temu. Understanding how these changes impact creators on those platforms, like publishers, can help shed some light on what the larger media and marketing industries will face in the fallout of these shifts.

Enter BDG’s Wesley Bonner, svp of social and audience development, who has overseen the social strategy for the publisher’s portfolio of brands, including Bustle, Inverse, Romper and W, for the past six years. The launch of a new major social media platform has kept his team busy the past few weeks, but has also represented a new opportunity to connect with audiences in a more conversational way.

On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Bonner talks about how his team is approaching posting on Threads to build engagement before monetizing, as well as how this new platform plays into the company’s larger strategy of creating original social media content both on set with celebrities and through its creator network.

How Wirecutter’s social strategy led to increased Prime Day affiliate revenue Jul 25, 2023

Show notes

This year’s Amazon Prime Day was a boon for many commerce publishers’ affiliate revenue streams.

Take Wirecutter, for instance, which saw order revenue and overall earnings for Prime Day sales increase by “high double-digits” year over year, according to Leilani Han, executive director of commerce at The New York Times’s Wirecutter, on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. While Han declined to share exact growth rates or revenue figures, she did say that this surpassed expectations for the two-day shopping event that took place July 11-12.

Growth this year can be partially credited to the quality of deals that were available during the sale. “We were actually able to be even pickier than we already are with what we were going to choose to feature because the pricing was really that great,” said Han. Publishers, like Wirecutter, also focused on audiences who come from platforms other than search.

Han said these shoppers, coming from social media platforms and on-site traffic coming funneled through The New York Times’s website, were particularly impactful to increase pageviews of commerce content. In addition to this, Han’s team leaned into a content franchise called Odes, which is “a short love letter to Wirecutter picks that have been beloved over time,” she said. When featured on Instagram Stories, these product spotlights were also particularly impactful in driving both traffic and sales.

Ray Chao explains how Vox Media is building up a podcast subscription business Jul 18, 2023

Show notes

Two years after Vox Media entered the podcast subscription business through the Cafe Studios acquisition, the publisher has “tens of thousands of active paying podcast subscribers,” said Vox Media svp and gm of audio and digital video Ray Chao on the latest Digiday Podcast.

“We acquired Cafe a little over two years ago, and we’ve learned a ton from just operating that business over the last two-plus years,” Chao said.

Vox Media’s broader subscription business continues to grow as it adds more podcast subscription options. In June, the publisher introduced a subscription program for narrative crime podcast “Criminal Plus.” And it followed with a subscription-based tier for “Where Should We Begin? With Esther Perel.”

Vox Media is prioritizing acquiring subscribers directly but has been exploring third-party subscriber acquisition sources. For example, “Where Should We Begin?” sells subscriptions through Apple Podcasts at $4.99 per month or $41.99 per year. Chao said that third-party subscription sellers like Apple provide a means of capturing “lower propensity subscribers,” i.e. people who may be unwilling to go through the full direct sign-up funnel.

Looking ahead, Chao has an eye on how Vox Media may differentiate the subscriptions it offers directly from those offered through third parties as a way to incentivize subscribers to sign up directly, such as by offering access to email newsletters and events, but still have a compelling pitch to those lower propensity subscribers, such as by providing access to exclusive audio content that is also available to direct subscribers. Vox Media has already implemented the dual-subscription option with Cafe Studios’ podcasts.

“An early learning for us is how do we work with both [subscriber acquisition] paths and maximize our consumer revenue business and engage more of our subscribers,” Chao said.

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