The Media Leader Podcast

This month, Stagwell announced it would transform its agency brand Assembly into Stagwell Media, a new global agency that will combine Assembly’s “performance heritage and ecosystem expertise” with an integrated model powered by Stagwell’s agentic operating system, The Machine.

The move comes amid a wider trend among agency groups that has seen them consolidate agency brands and use AI to automate more and more of the media planning and buying process.

Slavi Samardzija is the global chair of media and commerce at Stagwell. Before joining Stagwell last year, Samardzija also spent more than a decade as global CEO of Omnicom’s Annalect, where he spearheaded the creation of its AI-driven marketing platform, Omni.

He joined host Jack Benjamin to discuss the creation of Stagwell Media, how The Machine is being used by its media practitioners, and the degree to which agency groups are building comparable AI-driven products.

Highlights

3:52: The launch and positioning of Stagwell Media

16:56: Are agencies' AI platforms distinct from one another?

23:08: Could automation lead to a regression to the mean?

30:00: Opacity, margins, and principal media

Related articles

Stagwell transforms Assembly into global agency Stagwell Media

Mark Penn: ‘We’re it in terms of a fourth alternative’

Why your media plan might look the same as everyone else’s

Arcade, the management firm behind The Sidemen, is repositioning itself as a creator-first entertainment company, with ambitions to turn Europe's biggest online personalities into media brands.

Following a significant rebrand last month, an expanded roster of creators and its first upfront in London, Arcade is looking to build commercial opportunities around what CEO Matt Elek calls "primetime" creators - "the top 1% of the 1%".

The Sidemen, the British YouTube collective whose main channel has 23m subscribers, remain central to the business's story as it looks to continue building commercial opportunities beyond traditional talent management.

Elek, formerly EMEA CEO of Vice, was appointed CEO in July. He joins host Charli West on The Media Leader Podcast to discuss Arcade's next chapter, what brands stand to gain from investing in major creators, and what the company's evolution says about the creator economy's move towards the mainstream.

Elek argues companies like Arcade are helping bring “the rigour of traditional media” to the growing creator economy – even amid questions around the veracity of measurement and strength of viewership compared to TV, which he views as in “terminal” decline.

Highlights:

2:02: Arcade's new positioning and widening creator roster

6:15: Why young people — and brands — are turning to YouTube and its "primetime" creators

12:43: Bringing "the rigour of traditional media" to the creator economy

15:08: Measurement consistencies and inconsistencies

19:00: Different opportunities for advertisers

23:56: Approach to brand safety

29:08: Why the future of the creator economy is a "hits business"

Related articles:

‘We are platform agnostic’: The company betting on creators as media businesses

Don’t boost the BBC. Regulate the algorithm

Will YouTube’s new definition of a ‘view’ undermine its effort to tap into TV budgets?

Former IPA president and WPP Media veteran Josh Krichefski is one year into his work at independent media agency PMG.

Speaking on The Media Leader Podcast soon after he joined, Krichefski set out three goals for his first year: improving brand awareness of the agency, winning more enterprise clients, and growing EMEA revenue for a business that is largely US-based.

How has he done? Krichefski catches up with host Jack Benjamin to review his own performance and discuss the state of the global agency market.

Key to PMG's differentiation, Krichefski says, is the number of engineers it employs on staff, as well as its wholly transparent relationship with advertisers.

Krichefski is slated to speak at this year’s Future of Media London conference in November. He spoke to The Media Leader at PMG’s London offices.

Highlights:

1:26: Krichefski's first year: Imposter syndrome, getting close to client work, and hitting KPIs

10:34: What differentiates PMG from other challenger agencies

18:53: Are holding groups undermining trust by 'black box' bundling and proprietary media?

24:10: PMG's EMEA growth strategy

27:53: Maintaining a People First agenda

Related articles:

Josh Krichefski on why PMG is going big at this year’s Cannes Lions

Why Josh Krichefski joined an indie challenger

Rinse and repeat? How the new agency business model will accelerate client in-housing

This week, The Media Leader is running a week in focus centred on talent and leadership.

For years, industry leaders have warned media and marketing is facing a talent crisis. Mental health struggles and burn out was common especially during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, and rounds of consolidation and layoffs have taken a toll on everyone from senior leaders to junior hires.

Rachel Forde and Marco Bertozzi are co-founders of TheZoo.London, a talent solutions agency that operates a consultant collective and executive search function for individuals with strong experience in the industry seeking to offer their services in an independent or fractional capacity.

Both Forde and Bertozzi are veterans of the media industry themselves, with Forde previously working as CEO of Spark Foundry and later UM, and Bertozzi a former EMEA president at Whalar, former EMEA sales VP at Spotify, and former global CEO of performance marketing at Starcom.

The pair returned to The Media Leader Podcast to speak with host Jack Benjamin about how agency consolidation and AI has impacted talent this year and offer advice to leaders navigating job loss and uncertainty.

While they argued it's not "all doom and gloom" in the media industry right now, they acknowledged pickings are slim for junior talent while senior talent "are not being treated well by companies, by headhunters, by processes on LinkedIn."

Highlights:

5:21: Why Forde and Bertozzi founded TheZoo.London and how they manage self-employment

8:37: Agency restrctures, 'deep cuts', and AI efficiencies

14:03: Advice for senior leaders versus junior staff

21:26: How changing agency remuneration models will impact talent

28:24: Is the industry socialising enough? Advice for networking and meeting face-to-face 'with no agenda'

36:41: Takeaways from interviews with senior industry leaders

Related articles:

Strategic thinking is biggest skills gap in marketing, WFA-Mediasense report finds

The media industry needs to open doors, not just talk about inspiring talent

Why is marketing and media’s talent problem following us into the AI era?

Why talent needs mentors, not machines

Earlier this month at our Future of Media Manchester event, The Media Leader's content director, James Longhurst, sat down with four leading sports journalists to peek behind the scenes of covering this year's biggest shared cultural moment: the 2026 World Cup.

John Cross is the chief football writer for the Mirror. Nikhita Chulani is the executive producer for Sport at The Guardian. Dean Scoggins is head of sport at The Sun. And Henry Williams is a sports presenter at the Daily Mail.

As they explained, with the World Cup being truly "24-7" this year, publishers embraced a multi-platform, multimedia strategy in which volume was less important than engagement with audiences, be it on publisher websites or third-party platforms.

The group spoke about the tournament's controveries, celebrations and disappointments, and how journalism can bring a global community together around one moment.

Highlights:

3:16: Reminisces on this year's tournament

10:12: How to cover a 24-7 World Cup across all channels, digital and print

16:46: The mindset shift required to embrace platforms and move from volume to engagement

22:12: What worked this year and the importance of community

Related articles:

Culture is everywhere. So why is it rarely planned for?

Why mass cultural moments still matter (and the World Cup proved it)

‘The division between church and state isn’t sustainable’: Journalists weigh-up life as a creator

The scoop that stopped FIFA’s secret World Cup selloff

News brands: The beating heart of the FIFA World Cup

Open goals: how The Guardian brought the World Cup to life

This week on The Media Leader we will be taking a deep dive into the future of media planning and strategy.

So, what better way to start than with unpacking a new planning paradigm.

This summer, independent media agency Craft Media London launched a new planning “Cookbook”. Titled Anti-Ultra-Processed Planning, the book argues that “planning has become fast food; mass-produced, pre-packaged and dangerously addictive”.

Agencies, it continues, are increasingly outsourcing strategic thinking to automated platforms, producing similar plans and dull work.

It is time, the book reads, to stop microwaving briefs and start cooking again.

Sally Weavers and Jen Jones are co-founders of Craft Media London and co-authors of Anti-Ultra-Processed Planning. They joined host Jack Benjamin to discuss its arguments and takeaways, and why they believe good planning has become harder and harder to come by.

Highlights:

7:05: What is anti-ultra-processed planning?

11:34: How to incentivise better planning practices

18:20: People not audiences

23:14: Notice over reach: the importance of attention

29:37: How brands can 'get out of the middle lane' and become more distinctive

40:29: Planning through culture, not channels

46:15: Measuring what matters and moving beyond social media

Related articles:

Beyond the black box: The case for anti-ultra-processed planning

Media for planners who give a shit

Templatisation and automation: Is planning losing its edge?

One of the fastest moving parts of the marketing industry is GEO, or generative engine optimisation.

As AI search proliferates on Google, on ChatGPT, on Claude, brands are wanting to influence how results related to them are shown to users. For Google and ChatGPT, that could include through paid advertising, but the organic effort is seemingly just as important, much in the same way that search engine optimisation (SEO) has been.

GEO presents a unique challenge, however. There is currently a relative lack of data flowing from AI companies to brands and agencies; it’s not always clear why and how a large language model decides to reference or pull in information about brands; meanwhile, AI search has led to a decline in clickthrough rates not only to publishers, but also to brand websites, vastly changing the online consumer journey and making it harder to prove exactly how GEO is working.

Amy Banks was recently promoted at Havas Media Network UK to become head of both SEO and GEO.

She spoke to host Jack Benjamin about how she’s developing strategies in GEO for clients and whether or not consumers can really trust what they see in AI search if marketing teams are constantly trying to influence it.

Highlights:

4:02: The evolution of GEO and why data is a limiting factor

9:00: Who is winning the AI search market?

19:25: How GEO is linking with paid search, social and PR

21:38: The impact of declining referral traffic to brand websites

24:47: Does GEO undermine consumer trust in AI search?

Related articles:

AI search is reducing traffic to brand websites — but not sales

Who owns GEO? That’s the wrong question

GEO is an e-bike, not a spaceship

Publishers are not sitting idle as AI companies scrape their websites and cite their content in response to queries without permission. As their business models are turned upside down by sharply declining referral traffic from search, they are fighting back. That starts with understanding precisely how AI companies are scraping their content.

In February, a coalition of leading UK news publishers founded the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights, or SPUR, an effort to develop and formalize a way for AI companies to make use of journalism in a way that protects publishers’ intellectual property.

Dubbed “NATO for news” by FT CEO Jon Slade, the coalition has since rapidly expanded beyond its original founding members, and in June it released what’s known as a draft telemetry standard, an effort aimed at providing the technical foundation and shared language necessary to understand how AI systems use publisher content. With this knowledge, publishers can then start to create informed licensing deals with AI companies.

Alex Springer is the technical lead at the SPUR Coalition.

He spoke with The Media Leader about SPUR’s work, and whether publishers have finally developed the leverage needed to get AI companies to pay fair value for the work they’ve been allegedly stealing.

Highlights:

4:10: Redefining publisher value in the AI era

11:11: The SPUR Coalition: Goals, technical developments, and building co-equal relationships with AI companies

20:01: Can the long tail of the web be protected from AI copyright theft?

26:41: Is the publishing industry being incentivised to improve quality?

35:22: SPUR's draft telemetry standard: what it is and how it works

43:04: What a new marketplace between publishers and AI companies could look like

51:44: Government interventions and development timeline

Related articles:

Telemetry: the key to solving AI’s valuation and measurement crisis

‘The first tremors in an earthquake’: Digital publisher revenues decline 4.6% amid falling referral traffic

How publishers are fighting to protect their copyright from AI companies

Every year, The Media Leader and its parent Adwanted UK celebrate the best of UK media research at the Adwanted Media Research Awards (AMRAs).

Robust media research is an important industry resource. It helps inform and steer conversation and our understanding of marketing best practice – as well as the incentives that often get in the way of implementing it.

This year’s awards include 6 new categories and 22 in total, covering every element of media research. One notable new award is the Denise Turner Award for Best Use of Joint Industry Data in a Research Project, in honour of the late media researcher and friend of The Media Leader, who died last autumn.

This year’s awards will be open for entry beginning Tuesday the 1st of September, with an early bird deadline on Wednesday the 7th of October and a standard deadline on Wednesday the 14th of October.

Ahead of the opening, host Jack Benjamin sat down with this year’s judging panel co-chairs Dan Flynn and Graeme Griffiths.

Flynn and Griffiths are joint directors of media research for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). They jointly succeeded Turner in the role in February of this year.

Apart from leading the development of the IPA’s TouchPoints research and other industry benchmark surveys like the IPA Agency Census, they also represent the IPA on all of the major joint-industry currencies.

The pair spoke recently about what makes for exceptional media research, why research isn’t always put into practice, and what innovations JICs can and should be driving to better meet the needs of advertisers.

Highlights:

7:33: Judging the AMRAs: What makes for good media research?

10:23: Why doesn't research always lead to impact and behavioural change?

19:50: New AMRA awards and Denise Turner's legacy

24:49: How JICs need to evolve to meet advertiser demands

30:06: The Barb-YouTube relationship and agency demand for new JICs for platforms and podcasting

35:22: Is Origin the way to cross-media measurement nirvana?

42:29: The future of media research: AI, synthetic data, and in-housing research

Related articles:

AMRAs add six categories including Denise Turner award

Measurement can’t be an afterthought — with IPA’s Denise Turner

A round-up of some of the best research of the year

Podcasting needs its own JIC – Jack Davenport, Goalhanger CEO

Will YouTube’s new definition of a ‘view’ undermine its effort to tap into TV budgets?

Within the publishing market, one segment that has seen turbulence over the past few years has been freesheets. As the pandemic disrupted commuting, trains and tubes added Wi-Fi, and hybrid working became the norm, the number of people reading the paper on their daily commute dropped.

This had downstream effects on some of the UK’s oldest papers. The Evening Standard became The Standard, moving from a daily to a weekly paper and emphasizing its website. Metro, which remains the UK’s highest-circulation paper, has seen several restructures and moved in and out of profitability as it has also worked to invest in its digital and social products.

Now, facing declining clickthrough rates to websites because of Google’s changes to search, these news outlets are having to adapt again. As freesheets, they are entirely reliant on advertising as a business model, putting them at the coal face of changes in reader behaviour both offline and on.

Deborah Arthurs is editor-in-chief of Metro. Jo Mazenko is commercial director of Metro.

Last month, host Jack Benjamin joined them at Mail Metro Media’s offices in Kensington to discuss how the title has had to adapt to the changing publishing market.

"Metro was born around the commute, but the day doesn't stop when you get off the train," said Mazenko. "It's about finding new ways to connect to people [and] keep the conversation going throughout the day."

Highlights:

7:25: Metro's up-and-down journey since the pandemic and changed distribution strategy

15:13: How editorial and commercial can work together while maintaining church and state

21:17: Managing the road to Google Zero by prioritising quality over quantity

26:10: Selling print in 2026 and moving into live events

33:49: The importance of habit formation

38:01: How commuting has changed

Related articles:

‘Fresh team, fresh approach’: Mail Metro Media on becoming a ‘modern broadcast publisher’

Fewer ads drive more attention on websites, finds Lumen and Mail Metro Media

‘The first tremors in an earthquake’: Digital publisher revenues decline 4.6% amid falling referral traffic