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 YouTube channel with more than 7.5 million subscribers, numerous product lines (including hot sauces, tea...
May 04, 2021•55 min
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 a million [followers] like every week or two weeks,” Gomez said in the latest episode of the Digiday...
Apr 27, 2021•44 min
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 month. "I definitely did not have the idea beforehand. I was at the place in my job at the time where I ...
Apr 20, 2021•49 min
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. “Being entrepreneurs or the businesswomen we are today was never the goal or the mindset. It kind of j...
Apr 13, 2021•43 min
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 of that trust is a three-year deal that TikTok has signed with IPG Mediabrands. The deal marks t...
Apr 06, 2021•39 min
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 return of interest from advertisers. Beyond that, Shah said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podca...
Mar 30, 2021•40 min
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, with particular growth in programmatic business since the beginning of TMB’s fiscal year July 1, Kin...
Mar 23, 2021•42 min
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 February alone, The Weather Channel's website and app reached 430 million active users, according to S...
Mar 16, 2021•46 min
The digital advertising industry is in the midst of an identity crisis. Between the third-party cookie’s impending demise and Apple’s mobile app tracking crackdown, advertisers and agencies are having to figure the future of identity in digital advertising. Fortunately, that future has been a long time coming. “For better or worse, the crystal ball has been decently clear that this is the direction we’re going from regulatory pressures, from a consolidation in terms of who is owning and controll...
Mar 09, 2021•38 min
Harper's Bazaar is a 153-year-old legacy magazine using social media platforms to help it become a modern, digital fashion authority. The brand's digital presence not only helps amplify its print stories, but diversify revenue through e-commerce and advertising — turning fans of the magazine into digital consumers of luxury fashion and beauty. And three months ago, Nikki Ogunnaike rejoined the magazine as its new digital director to help strategize ways it can grow and monetize its audience, inc...
Mar 02, 2021•40 min
The ways in which publishers solved their 2020 problems vary, but Bustle Digital Group's approach included reestablishing longterm relationships with advertisers in a variety of categories and leaning on retail partners like Amazon to bring in incremental commerce revenue. During the first quarter of 2020, Bustle Digital Group was projected to be up 40% in revenue over 2019 by the end of the year, according to Jason Wagenheim, BDG's president and chief revenue officer. But by March, reality of w...
Feb 23, 2021•41 min
News outlets experienced a surge in traffic and viewership during Donald Trump’s presidency right through to when he left office in January. In fact, between the inauguration of President Joe Biden and the attack on the U.S. Capitol, CBS News Digital received more readers to its site and attracted more viewers to its video programming in January than in any previous month in its history, according to CBS News Digital evp and gm Christy Tanner. But now that Trump is out of office — and hopefully ...
Feb 16, 2021•44 min
Last year proved to be one of the most challenging years on record for the media industry with ad revenue drying up in the second quarter, but for Group Nine, it was magnified by its entry into its first full year following the merger with PopSugar. In the first few weeks of the merger, the company’s chief revenue officer Geoff Schiller came onto the Digiday Podcast to talk about the vertical sales strategy he implemented at the beginning of 2020 that required sellers to have a deep endemic focu...
Feb 09, 2021•38 min
By March 16, theater doors around the country shut their doors. The Pop-Up Magazine touring production, which had just completed its first (and only) national tour of 2020, had to figure out where to go from there. The publisher, known for its on-stage renditions of original magazine stories that rethought the performance of storytelling, had not previously filmed its shows. But the pandemic forced the publisher to experiment with a virtual format like many others and in true Pop-Up form, it cam...
Feb 02, 2021•39 min
Ben Smith has an enviable view of the current media landscape. Before The New York Times announced in January 2020 that the publication had hired Smith to be its media columnist, he had eight years as the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, a period during which the meme publisher matured into a media company that retained its social savvy while also operating a news business. And before BuzzFeed, Smith had covered politics as a reporter and blogger at Politico. That experience helped Smith to see the ...
Jan 26, 2021•36 min
The Week Jr. was set to debut in the U.S. last spring but the day that the first run of the children's magazine went to the printer, much of the country went into lockdown. That threw a wrench not only in the magazine's editorial plans, but also in the marketing strategy for how the U.K.-based, Dennis Publishing-owned title was meant to enter the western hemisphere. Despite the initial hiccups, Andrea Barbalich, editor-in-chief of The Week Jr. U.S. and Kerin O'Connor, chief executive of The Week...
Jan 19, 2021•43 min
For years, gaming has been categorized as a niche form of entertainment. But that’s been changing over the better part of the past decade, including within the realm of gaming journalism. In addition to longstanding gaming publications like Kotaku and IGN, mainstream outlets have invested in covering gaming and esports, as The Washington Post did in debuting Launcher in October 2019. And their coverage extends beyond console reviews and game play tips. As Launcher editor Mike Hume explained on t...
Jan 12, 2021•39 min
While 2020 was a year of struggle and strife for many publishers, London-based Future PLC ended its 2020 fiscal year up 65% in total revenue from last year, bringing in a total of just under £340 million (approximately $459 million), according to the company’s 2020 annual report. As a special interest-based publisher, Future PLC has the advantage of having niche, passionate audiences that trust the publications they read. But with over 130 titles, the company also has the scale of a mass media c...
Jan 05, 2021•34 min
In this week’s episode of the Digiday Podcast, our editorial team takes a look ahead at what 2021 may have in store for the publishing and marketing industries, from what Zoom fatigue means for the virtual conference to why perks aren't what they used to be.
Dec 22, 2020•1 hr 9 min
It's a new era for Vox Media. The company is a year into its merger with New York Magazine, and in recent weeks has seen some of its leading journalists and founders leave for such legacy companies as The New York Times as well as upstart destination Substack. "I think it's a sign of success," Vox Media publisher Melissa Bell said on the Digiday Podcast. "I see it as a benefit that folks can come to Vox and work with Vox Media or Vox and add a really big gold star to their resume." Beyond the ta...
Dec 15, 2020•42 min
As Google continues to partner with newsrooms to help boost their traffic and revenue, the company's Amy Adams Harding has one recurring piece of advice: "making sure that you're employing e-commerce-like tactics." "Even though you're a news publisher and your journalism is core to what you do, you are, at the end of the day, selling that journalism," said Adams Harding, Google's director of analytics and revenue optimization for news and publishing, on the Digiday Podcast. Those tactics include...
Dec 08, 2020•44 min
Despite the name, CollegeHumor isn't a spring chicken anymore. Founded in 1999, the comedy site was acquired by IAC in 2006 and grew into one of the most successful video publishers on YouTube. It also went premium with shows for TV like Adam Ruins Everything, and launched a subscription streaming service called Dropout. But whereas CollegeHumor succeeded in terms content side, business has been another story. In January, IAC decided it was no longer willing to finance CollegeHumor and laid off ...
Dec 01, 2020•1 hr 7 min
Two of digital media's biggest players are merging into one, with the announcement last week that BuzzFeed will be acquiring HuffPost in an all-stock deal. This episode of the Digiday Podcast hears from both sides of the transaction. First, senior reporter Kayleigh Barber interviews BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, who will be leading both companies as they remain separate but share resources on fronts including advertising and content syndication. Senior media editor Tim Peterson then follow with an...
Nov 24, 2020•1 hr 16 min
With a Biden administration set to take over in January, one arena for policy whiplash is the environment. The president-elect has promised to rejoin the Paris Agreement against global warming on the day he's sworn in, and campaigned on the existential threat that is climate change. What does that mean for Grist, a news non-profit focused on environmental issues, and which has experienced a "Trump bump" just like many news organizations covering the White House over the past four years. "I think...
Nov 17, 2020•42 min
Whatever else can be said about the year 2020, it has at least led to a renewed focus on issues of mental well-being for those open to discussing it. "Even in 2019 there wasn't this spotlight on mental and emotional health," said Marah Lidey, co-founder of wellness-focused company Shine, on the Digiday Podcast. "The pandemic is helping to destigmatize conversations around mental health," her co-founder Naomi Hirabayashi added. Founded in 2016, Shine offers guided exercises and community around m...
Nov 10, 2020•40 min
If there was one mode of international competition that wasn't to be disrupted much by the global coronavirus pandemic, it's esports. "One of the unique things about gaming is that our players don't have to be in the same place," Activision Blizzard Esports VP Jack Harari said on the Digiday Podcast. Still, elite video game competition benefits from the same trappings that established league sports do, from pre-game pageantry to fan cams and a real sense that competitors are squaring off against...
Nov 04, 2020•37 min
For the 74's publisher, nothing has been hit as hard by the pandemic as education: "Overnight, kids were basically told 'everything changes," said Jim Roberts, publisher of The 74, on this week's edition of the Digiday Podcast. Launched in 2015, The 74 — short for the estimated 74 million children in the United States — is a nonprofit covering education and now, the extent it has been disrupted and transformed by the coronavirus crisis. One of The 74's central focuses before the pandemic was the...
Oct 27, 2020•37 min
Bob Cohn joined The Economist Group in February after more than a decade at The Atlantic, where he served on both sides of the fence -- as its digital editor and later as its president. As president and managing director, his stated remit was to grow The Economist's global readership and open up new commercial opportunities in North America. Of course, merely six weeks into the job, the coronavirus pandemic hit. With it came a surge of subscribers as readers looked to the Economist to unpick the...
Oct 20, 2020•41 min
Brand Advance, the three-year-old media network that helps marketers reach diverse audiences, has marked a sharp uptick in business in 2020, according to its CEO and cofounder Chris Kenna. Advertisers spending through Brand Advance's network increased 400% between mid-March through June. "If Brand Advance was to be formed now everybody would say 'that is the most timely company,'" Kenna said. "The need wouldn't be questioned. Back then, it was questioned. It took a global pandemic for people to ...
Oct 13, 2020•36 min
For Axios CEO Jim VandeHei, the unquenchable firehose of outrageous news from the Trump White House — and the 2020 presidential election in general — is a distraction. "My hope is we do very little coverage or analysis after the next debate if there's nothing substantive to say," VandeHei said on the Digiday Podcast (a few days before the president's coronavirus diagnosis would put future debates into question). He added that Axios won't be "made or broken by whether Trump wins or loses" in Nove...
Oct 06, 2020•45 min
