The Digiday Podcast

Digiday

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The Digiday Podcast Podcast

The Digiday Podcast is a weekly show on the big stories and issues that matter to brands, agencies and publishers as they transition to the digital age.

3 DAYS AGO

How long-form production company Long Lead is investing in the art of journalism

In the age of disrupted digital audiences, media companies are incentivized to constantly be counting clicks, pageviews and engagement — all while optimizing for how those metrics can be best monetized. But Long Lead, a long-form journalism production company, wants to redefine the journalism business model to bring art back into the craft of journalism. Launched in 2020 by founding editor and longtime journalist John Patrick Pullen and hedge fund manager Bill Perkins, Long Lead’s mission is to give journalists the ability to tell their story in the most effective way possible — not the most efficient way possible. So rather than publishing stories as quickly as possible and monetizing them with advertising or paywalls, a freelance journalist can come to Long Lead with a pitch and work with the team to determine its best format: be it a documentary, a podcast, a book or a performance piece. Long Lead then provides the journalist with the technical resources, staffing, time and — most importantly — funding to create the project. Granted, that’s not a cheap feat. And while Long Lead has the luxury of being funded without having to fulfill a revenue goal just yet, Pullen explained that the expense of operating a business like this won’t detract from the journalists themselves. In fact, the journalists are all able to keep their own IP from the projects they create with Long Lead once it’s finished. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Pullen shares why Long Lead is focused on supporting the art of journalism and how his team determines the best format for different stories that come across his desk.

1h 0m
10 SEPT

How Babylist's chief growth officer Lee Anne Grant navigates the AI roadmap

Marketers’ attention to the industry’s latest shiny object, generative AI, has yet to shift out of focus. Some agencies have moved to ink enterprise-level deals with major AI players, like OpenAI, Runway and soon, Perplexity. As these AI-powered tools continue to flood the marketplace, agencies and brands alike say they’re creating auditing policies to ensure data security, stability and fairness. It’s a similar story at Babylist, a baby registry company, according to Lee Anne Grant, chief growth officer of Babylist. “Even before AI, when we tried to build things in-house, our founder and CEO would always say, ‘I always want to see the recommendations of the machine against a human and just gut check it’,” Grant said. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Grant talks about how babylist is navigating the AI hype cycle and what the roadmap ahead looks like. Also on this episode, Digiday catches up with Grant about Babylist’s retail media network efforts and its value proposition to advertisers.

49 min
3 SEPT

Why Sam’s Club's ad platform is banking on member data to attract advertisers

The retail media network space is shaping up to be a competitive one. With countless retailers vying for ad dollars, which retailer gets the bulk of said dollars depends on size and scale. With an expansive brick-and-mortar footprint in the U.S., size and scale are what Sam’s Club Member Access Platform (MAP), the company’s retail access and ad platform, is banking on to draw in advertisers. In this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Ryan Burns, head of strategy at Sam's Club Member Access Platform, talks about Sam’s Club’s pitch to advertisers, standing out in a crowded retail media landscape and plans to continue growth.

58 min
27 AUG

Amid layoffs and cost cutting, Time CEO Jessica Sibley is expecting a 'very strong second half'

Even billionaire-backed media companies are not immune to the challenges facing the media and digital advertising industries.Last week, 22 staffers were laid off from Time — which is owned by Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff and his wife and philanthropist Lynne Benioff — as part of a larger reduction of operational costs amid ad revenue declines. Cuts were made to the editorial, sales, marketing, technology and TIME Studios teams, according to a memo from CEO Jessica Sibley sent to Time staffers last week that was shared with Digiday. And more cost cutting measures are coming down the pike, including limiting contractors and downsizing its New York headquarters.At the center of these changes is focusing the company’s editorial and business strategy on its “most commercially successful work” and the “biggest opportunities for growth” at Time, which is its coverage of leadership – particularly in the categories of AI, climate and health — Sibley wrote. That, in part, has played a big role in the transition to the sales team’s B2B revenue strategy.On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast (which was recorded on July 22, prior to the layoff announcement), Sibley discusses why she views Time’s B2B revenue strategy as the best path forward for growth, as well as other areas of revenue opportunity, including partnerships with AI technology companies like OpenAI and Perplexity.

59 min
20 AUG

Future's Jon Steinberg shares his philosophy on AI content licensing deals

Big changes came for the media industry in 2024. Between generative AI technology companies spending millions of dollars to license their content and Google flip-flopping on third-party cookie deprecation plans, publishers have had a lot to sort through. When asked which has been the bigger concern to him, Future plc’s CEO Jon Steinberg said, “The cookie thing keeps me up at night more than the AI thing. The AI thing used to keep me up more at night, but [now] … I have more optimism … The cookie thing — every cookie conversation begins and ends with, ‘Well, there's so much uncertainty.’” On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Steinberg discusses both these topics, as well as why Future hasn’t inked a content licensing deal with an AI tech company … yet.

59 min
13 AUG

How Baked by Melissa's CEO and co-founder Melissa Ben-Ishay went from founder to influencer

With so many changes happening across the digital marketing landscape, sometimes the best strategy is to have no strategy at all — at least when it comes to social media, according Melissa Ben-Ishay, co-founder and CEO of dessert company Baked By Melissa. Instead, Ben-Ishay props her phone up on her kitchen counter at least once a week, where she walks her TikTok followers through everything from how to make crispy rice to gnocchi, and, of course, a catalog of desserts. Ben-Ishay is one of many founders-turned-influencers who are navigating the booming influencer marketing space and putting a face to their brands to more authentically connect with followers. The founder-influencer pipeline is standard at this point, and perhaps the trend is most commonplace in the small- to medium-sized business and direct-to-consumer brand spaces, where founders are cranking out content to keep up with the likes of influencers who are launching their own brands. In this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Ben-Ishay talks about being a founder-influencer, and shares her thoughts on the ever-looming TikTok ban and why Baked by Melissa’s social strategy is no strategy at all.

48 min
6 AUG

How Twitch CMO Rachel Delphin works to woo livestream creators in a fragmented digital marketplace

In the midst of a booming creator economy, where U.S. marketers are expected to shell out $7.14 billion on influencer marketing by the end of this year, according to Goldman Sachs Research, livestreaming platform Twitch is making a play for creator and advertiser attention, competing against other big tech platforms. Last year, the company was reported to have lost its way with the streaming community, which could be seen as its most valuable asset. At the same time, culture is changing, becoming more fragmented in a way where fewer monocultural moments exist. All said, it’s harder than ever to keep people’s attention, said Rachel Delphin, CMO at Twitch. “Attention feels so divided and it also feels really short as a person, but also as a professional,” she said on the most recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “Creating content and programs that really capture attention to the point where people want to engage with it, share it, comment on it, that’s a really high bar.” On this week’s Digiday Podcast, Delphin talks about Twitch’s plans to stay in the cultural zeitgeist all while keeping attention from creators and advertisers in a fragmented digital marketplace.

1h 10m
30 JUL

Third-party cookies are hanging on, but Epsilon says brand marketers should still focus on first-party data

Google may have changed course on its approach to third-party cookie deprecation on Chrome, but that doesn’t mean brand marketers should take their foot off the pedal when it comes to testing cookie-less targeting solutions. At least that’s what Rachel Cascisa, vp of platform adoption at Publicis’ marketing tech company, Epsilon, believes. As it is, recent studies from Adobe and Epsilon have found that marketers are “considerably less ready” for third-party cookies to disappear from the advertising ecosystem in 2024 than they were in 2022. And while Chrome may not experience total deprecation after all, by and large industry executives are estimating a steep drop off, upwards of 70% to 80%. “I think that you can liken it to procrastinating to study for an exam,” said Cascisa. But instead of waiting to study, she said Google’s announcement “gives opportunities for [marketers] to focus on things that are third-party cookie deprecation adjacent. Things like first-party data strategy. That is just a good strategy for marketing, regardless of whether cookies will be deprecated or not.” On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Cascisa discusses the different strategies that brand marketers should be putting to the test now, prior to Google firming up its proposed cookie deprecation plan, including clean rooms, data collaboration and ID bridging. She also discusses why or why not these solutions are working for marketers right now, and where cookie-less targeting is still lacking.

47 min

12/07/2022

Introducing The Return

Digiday is proud to present The Return, a podcast about what the return to the office can look like as corporate America adapts to the new, not quite post-pandemic normal. The Return follows the staff at one Atlanta-based advertising agency through Covid outbreaks, as well as the highs and lows of transitioning to hybrid work after two years of pandemic lockdown and working remotely. While the future of work is still under construction, employees across the country are forging their own paths to determine what that future looks like amidst parenthood, corporate mandates, long commutes and an ever-looming pandemic. The Return is hosted by Kimeko McCoy, senior marketing reporter at Digiday, and produced by Digiday audio producer Sara Patterson. Listen to The Return on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

12/07/2022

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3 min

The Digiday Podcast is a weekly show on the big stories and issues that matter to brands, agencies and publishers as they transition to the digital age.

Creator

Digiday
Years Active

2015 - 2024
Episodes

403
Rating

Clean
Show Website

The Digiday Podcast