The Digiday Podcast

In the age of social media, algorithms and viral content, social media users are increasingly looking for ways to stretch the concept of “15 minutes of fame” into full time careers as content creators, influencers and media personalities.

Recently, thanks to TikTok, that arc has played out with viral trends like Jools Lebron, the creator behind the “very demure, very mindful” trend, or Haliey Welch’s “Hawk Tuah” viral moment. Both Lebron and Welch join a long list of names who are working to take bursts of notoriety into sustainable careers.

Notably, Lauren Speed-Hamilton and Cameron Hamilton have had a five-year go at this since first appearing on the hit Netflix show “Love Is Blind” back in 2020. Since then, the couple has sketched out somewhat of a playbook for capitalizing on virality and turning it into a viable career path. Last month, the couple launched The Love Seat podcast with sponsorship opportunities for brands.

“I remember Lauren saying that we don't know how big the buzz of this show is going to be, how long it's going to sustain itself. That was something we both understood early on,” said Cameron Hamilton, on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “So we said, let's hit the ground running and create as much content as we physically can.”

Since the U.S. presidential election was called, the advertising industry has been parsing through the tea leaves, trying to understand exactly what a Trump presidency means for business. That picture is starting to come into clearer focus as Trump continues to announce cabinet picks and assemble the incoming administration. For example, last week, Trump picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has called for pharmaceutical ads to be banned, to potentially be named Secretary of Health and Human Services.

On this week’s episode of the Digiday Podcast, executive editor, video, audio, Tim Peterson and senior marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy are joined by senior marketing editor Kristina Monllos and senior media reporter Sara Guaglione to talk about the incoming administration’s ripple effects on publishing, marketing and media.

It’s been roughly a week since Donald Trump was voted into his second presidential term and already, his return to the White House is expected to send ripple effects throughout the advertising world.

Publishers are considering what a second Trump presidency looks like in regards to traffic spikes and subscription revenue, otherwise known as the Trump Bump. The brand safety playbook regarding where an advertiser shows up in media may soon need to be reconsidered as more brands look to avoid backlash in the so-called culture wars.

All said, it won’t be until January’s inauguration that the full picture of Trump’s presidency comes into focus. But until then, executive editor of news Seb Joseph joins the Digiday Podcast alongside executive editor, video, audio Tim Peterson and senior marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy to discuss what a Trump presidency means for publishers on the heels of the Digiday Publishing Summit in Europe (DPSE). Also in this episode, a recap of Google’s antitrust case and what happens next with the incoming administration.

If generative AI is meant to be more tool than threat to media companies, publishers will need to come up with systems governing their use of the technology. For Dow Jones, that responsibility falls to the company’s AI steering committee.

“The function of this cross-functional steering committee is really to ensure that whatever we do with gen AI fits with our core principles,” said Ingrid Verschuren, evp of data and AI and gm of Europe, Middle East and Africa at Dow Jones, in a live recording of the Digiday Podcast during Digiday Publishing Summit Europe in Barcelona, Spain, on Oct. 30.

Formed roughly 18 months ago, the steering committee comprises 10 members from across Dow Jones’s organization, with representatives from the editorial and the commercial sides as well as its legal and technology teams. The committee members meet every two weeks to evaluate internal as well as external use cases for generative AI. Those use cases can range from how its own publications’ newsrooms implement the technology into their journalism to how AI companies may ingest that content into their large language models.

“We want to be absolutely sure that we get fairly compensated for the content. We want also to be sure that it’s very transparent both to use [in] how our content is being used and similarly to the users [so] that they know where the content is coming from,” said Verschuren.

The retail media network space is booming to say the least. An there is a seemingly endless supply of retailers making everything an ad network, all competing for the same ad budgets.

To sell its retail media network to advertisers, Walmart Connect placed its bet on Rich Lehrfeld, svp and general manager of Walmart Connect. He’s got a background in media buying, switching to selling media after a 25-year-run and giving him experience on both sides of the aisle. Lehrfeld joined Walmart as svp of brand marketing, creative and media back in 2019 before moving to Walmart Connect in October 2020, according to LinkedIn.

“How do I work within a big retail company? And I feel very lucky because the leadership got it and understood if we do it the right way, we do it in a customer-centric way, it can really add value,” Lehfeld said, explaining how his background helps Walmart’s sales strategy.

“Community” is one of those words that has been co-opted by businesses and euthanized into a euphemism for “audiences,” “subscribers,” “customers,” etc. But Oprah Daily has created an actual community. Seriously, it’s called The Oprah Insider Community.

The platform – which costs $55 a year to access – mixes aspects of YouTube, Facebook, Slack and Reddit. Oprah Daily posts videos of live audience recordings featuring Oprah Winfrey discussing topics like the teen mental health crisis, longevity and menopause with experts. And people can comment on the videos, pose their own questions in threads for other members to respond to and send private messages to one another.

“Everything that you can do on the internet, we can embed in this platform,” said Oprah Daily editorial director Pilar Guzmán in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.

Of course, there’s plenty of things people can do on the internet that the Hearst-owned publication or its tens of thousands of paying subscribers may not want embedded in the platform. Having only officially launched The Oprah Insider Community in September after testing it over the summer, Oprah Daily is still sorting out its content moderation strategy. At the moment, the publication’s staffers are taking shifts – including working weekends – monitoring the platform. But Guzmán acknowledged that eventually the platform will need a more formal oversight operation.

“Check in with me in six months, and I’ll tell you. But it’s definitely something that’s on the horizon and that we’ve been earmarking in terms of our org,” she said.

After a string of somewhat monumental upfront cycles since 2020, this year’s annual haggle between TV and streaming ad buyers and sellers was hard-pressed to prove its significance. And yet it did.

“The biggest shift or change this year is it was really a reset year from a digital video standpoint in terms of pricing,” UM Worldwide’s chief investment officer Marcy Greenberger said on the latest Digiday Podcast.

Disney and Netflix were among the more notable sellers to drop their streaming ad rates in this year’s upfront cycle. But they weren’t alone. In fact, given the ramp-up in streaming ad inventory this year with Amazon Prime Video’s entry into the market, seemingly all sellers were more focused on overall spending commitments than specific pricing thresholds.

“There’s just so much more supply that finally convinced the suppliers or the publishers to rethink what the pricing is there often in exchange for volume, but really saw a reset that benefitted advertisers tremendously,” Greenberger said.

And that reset is likely to have a legacy that could outlast these latest upfront deals. In some cases, streaming ad sellers dropped their rates by 30% to 40%, according to Greenberger. “I don’t know that I see another massive reset [in streaming ad pricing in the future] like we saw this year,” she said.

CMOs are once again grappling with the age old question of their role in the C-suite. The job has gotten more difficult in today’s business landscape as marketers face increasing pressure to tie marketing to business results (all while being asked to do more with less money). In some cases over the last few months, companies like Hyundai and Starbucks, have eliminated the CMO role entirely.

The role with all of its changes can be challenging, but Jackie Jantos, CMO of Hinge dating app, says it’s a challenge she welcomes, pushing back on short-term metrics in favor of long-term brand building.

“But ultimately, if your goal as a CMO is to build a sustainable long-term business, then you need to be shooting the arrow sort of 10 years out,” Jantos said on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast, “and better understanding how your product will navigate that and how your brand will stay relevant along that way.”

The Walt Disney Company plans to automate 75% of its advertising business by 2027. And the company took a further step toward that end in this year’s annual TV and streaming advertising upfront market.

“Of the streaming dollars that came in, of those billions of dollars, more than half of them are transacted programmatically,” Disney’s svp of addressable sales Jamie Power said on stage during the Digiday Publishing Summit in a session that served as a live recording for the Digiday Podcast.

A catalyst to the growth of Disney’s automation efforts this year was the parity that the company has created in making the breadth of its streaming inventory available for purchase programmatically. That includes, more recently, its interactive ad formats.

“Once we finally were able to enable them, within six weeks the spend was eight times the spend than the year before,” Power said.

WNBA's New York Liberty is having a moment. It just finished the regular season last Thursday with the best record in the league, defeating top teams like the Las Vegas Aces and the Connecticut Sun. Meanwhile, the team’s mascot Ellie the Elephant has become a celebrity in her own right, known for her dance moves and fashion.

But it hasn’t always been that way. Five years ago, the team was struggling, playing in Westchester County Center, a smaller court far away from home. But then things started looking up. Joe Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba and owner of NBA's the Brooklyn Nets, purchased the Liberty and paved the path for the eventual move to the team's current home at the Barclays Center. Then in 2021, Shana Stephenson started as the team’s full-time chief brand officer.

In this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Stephenson talks about what it was like building the team’s brand, how Liberty is tapping into the women’s sports hype and, of course, Ellie the Elephant’s viral videos.