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 ...
Jun 18, 2024•32 min
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 doub...
Jun 17, 2024•45 min
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 abou...
Jun 11, 2024•1 hr 11 min
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 ...
Jun 04, 2024•1 hr
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 pu...
May 28, 2024•31 min
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 acc...
May 21, 2024•39 min
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 boss...
May 14, 2024•53 min
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 ...
May 07, 2024•44 min
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 earni...
Apr 30, 2024•34 min
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...
Apr 23, 2024•53 min
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 worker...
Apr 21, 2024•3 min
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 mode...
Apr 16, 2024•50 min
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 predic...
Apr 09, 2024•36 min
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 W...
Apr 02, 2024•34 min
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-gene...
Mar 26, 2024•51 min
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 d...
Mar 19, 2024•54 min
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, offic...
Mar 12, 2024•33 min
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 an...
Mar 05, 2024•46 min
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 ex...
Feb 27, 2024•45 min
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 i...
Feb 20, 2024•49 min
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 epis...
Feb 13, 2024•43 min
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 episod...
Feb 06, 2024•41 min
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 ...
Jan 30, 2024•1 hr
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...
Jan 23, 2024•51 min
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. “M...
Jan 16, 2024•32 min
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. C...
Jan 09, 2024•50 min
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 cl...
Jan 02, 2024•37 min
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 ...
Dec 26, 2023•58 min
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...
Dec 22, 2023•45 min
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 wel...
Dec 19, 2023•57 min
