The Dow Jones recipe for growth

[upbeat music] This episode is brought to you by our friends at Beehiiv. I want to encourage you, first of all, to check out a expert session that I did with Tyler Dank, the CEO of Beehiiv. We really got into how they're using this MCP server. Actually, it's, like, super wonky, but I think it's really important.

It's basically you can control, like, all of your email operations just, like, basically through text message. And I think this is... When they talk about agents, a lot of times they can seem very sci-fi-ish, but a lot of this stuff is here now. And, you know, this is something that Tyler had talked about at our AI strategies forum with how people are building these kind of AI tools in order to, you know, improve how they operate really, and then also to make the product better.

But I think the first thing that it's being used at is no surprise. How do you do more with less? You know, things like this might seem small, but I think it really points to where this agentic stuff is going. So do check out that session.

I'm gonna leave a link in the show notes. Again, it was a really great conversation, and always appreciate Beehiiv's support. So this episode of "The Rebooting Show" is about to start. I am Brian Morrissey, and last week was the official end to the end of the end of the scale era.

Did I say that the scale era has ended? Mistakes were made, lessons were learned, and I think one of the big picture ones is this: legacy brands won. And I'm putting "won" in air quotes because it's still a fractured media industry fighting for the scraps downstream of tech giants who understood the control of the interface was controlling just about everything. All that aside, the undercard fight was always, as it is in any of these industries that I've covered over the years, it's the legacy players against the pure play.

I saw this in the agency world as a reporter at Adweek, where they had all these web design agencies that sprung up, and they said, "We're gonna compete against the legacy guys, the DDBs, the JWTs, the TV commercial people," and they were higher up in the social caste. And then, you know, the digital guys said, "Well, we know..." I'm just using that just as broadly. "We know how digital works.

We know the distribution patterns, et cetera," and so we're going to win. So anyway, that market, you know, fought it out, again, just to, mostly to a draw. I think in this market the, the legacy brands won, and that's because they were brands, and when you have a brand, you can do a lot of different things for it. And a lot of the mastery of those distribution mechanics sort of went away, and we saw that with a Google I/O announcement that AI is in fact eating search.

And I think you see this completely in the, the news industry, right? It's coalesced around a few big players. Notably, the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are the two that I think at scale have clearly done the best in navigating this transition, and any of the newcomers have not come close really. I put Bloomberg in a slightly different category than this.

So I, I wanna talk with Scott Havens, the chief growth officer of Dow Jones, to understand how they use their enviable foundations in order to grow. Because I think this is one case where they're not in triage mode. They can be in build mode because they have a lot of advantages, and those advantages include things like a large subscription base anchored in the business and finance industries where there's a lot of money, I might add. And they also have a diversified B2B business with exposure to journalism-adjacent information services that happen to have far better economics than news.

So I really enjoyed this conversation with Scott and wanna always hear your thoughts. You can email me at brian@therebooting.com. Here's my conversation with Scott.

[upbeat music] Scott, thanks for doing the podcast. You're welcome, Brian. It's nice to see you again. Yeah.

We kind of did like a warm-up of this at the, the DCN Next summit a few weeks ago in Miami. But we got... You know, it's good to practice off the record. Yes.

But we'll go on the record with, with this. Hopefully it'll be just as engaging. But I wanna talk about- Okay... you know, the growth opportunities.

You know, there's a lot of doom and gloom, and we can, we can dwell on it for a while, but, you know, you're still someone new to the job as, like, the first chief growth officer at Dow Jones. What, what's the remit? Well, great to be here. Thank you, and hopefully we'll offer some new material for fans that were at DCN, and if you weren't at DCN, you should go.

But I think the, the, the remit for the chief growth officer i- is both straightforward growth but also somewhat nuanced. I think the, the things I'm focused on, n- number one, there, there wasn't the sort of consumer product and brand roll-up before, and so how do we bring together the four current consumer brands of the Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, and IBD together as a team? And that includes the marketing team and the general managers and the partnerships teams and, and working closely with product edit and sales and, and think about it that way.

And, and 'cause I think there's a lot of power in not running those as silos, but thinking about the customer journey, right? Like MarketWatch is a bit more of an entry brand than say Barron's and... But, but we weren't doing that as much as I think we could. So just think there's opportunities in working more closely together and more collaboration between the brands and the newsrooms.

So that, that's like f- that's one. And I think then, then it's beyond, like, adjacencies for each of our current brands. Where are there new areas of growth, new verticals, new platforms, new regions of the world for us to explore? One of the things that since I left business school and got into digital in the late '90s, it w- was always about building something new andAnd, and I would suggest that the pathway for, for, for media growth usually i-i-is launching new things.

You can always optimize your current stuff, but I've seen success, Atlantic, Glover, et cetera, from putting new things into market, exploring new areas for audiences and for sponsors. So, so yes, it's a little bit of optimizing the core, bringing the team together, and then, and then building new stuff. Really, it's as simple as that. And, and speeding up that process to market, 'cause we are a huge company, and sometimes that can be slower than, of course, like the entrepreneurial set that the new media crew out there that is, you know, able to go from idea to launch in a matter of weeks or months.

It's a little harder in a public company, so I'm trying to figure out ways we can do that quicker. I think it's important to, for everyone who doesn't like to recognize that Dow Jones is more than The Wall Street Journal. Oh, yeah. In fact, Wall Street Journal is a, is, is a smaller part of it.

It's the halo brand really for a collection of assets, including, you know, a lot m-most of the growth I think is coming from, you know, B2B assets like in, in energy, risk and compliance. Yes. And those businesses are doing great. Journal's doing well, right?

But I'm always interested in how you stitch those things together to create new value. Yeah. So first of all, you're 100% right, and I think Dow Jones under Omar Latour's leadership really has built out a pretty diversified business under, un-under the banner of Dow Jones, and it serves us incredibly well. And there's growth everywhere, which is good, so it's not just on the B2B side, Brian.

We have growth on the B2C side, and I expect to accelerate that growth. But I think what, what is interesting is probably how we can work across more aggressively. And I don't like B2B and B2C as like binary labels or black and white labels. I do think it gets...

It can be - It's sort of relevant to us in industry. Mm-hmm. But, you know, to, to consumers who sometimes they don't think exactly that way. For, for, and for example, we are w-working with our partners in the B2B space to create some really new interesting things, like Barron's is working with Risk and Energy on a new set of premium newsletters, you know, around global conflict, around energy, and, and that's going well so far.

People are investors who are, quote, "B2C" are really valuing and paying a lot for the data and analysis that's coming out of our B2B verticals. So I, I think that's super interesting. There are product ideas that we have about connecting, and you see it on the editorial side a little bit today. Some of the data and analysis might move from one of our B2B verticals into The Wall Street Journal, where the journalists can incorporate a graph or a table a-and I think that's wonderful because, of course, people that really wanna go deep on energy risk compliance, et cetera, then might see, oh, well there's an opportunity to buy a, a subscription product that I didn't even know about.

And I think, so I think there's real value to be created from working together, and we've - Omar has brought in several GMs to run these B2B businesses, and we, we meet regularly, we collaborate, and it's, it's very collegiate, and I think that's great, and I think we'll unlock tons more opportunities to go forward. Yeah. I mean, 'cause like, I mean, you have experience in this obviously with Bloomberg. Yeah.

Yeah. Although- It's slightly different, but- A l- a little bit different. B-but yes, i-if you go back to my previous work, we, we did try to be a great partner, not only as a, like a front end, but you know, also on lead gen. And, and I think the Journal and the wealth and investing brands of Barron's MarketWatch, together, we have quite a big footprint every month.

And, and therefore, we could be a legitimate source of new clients for the B2B brands in a way that maybe we haven't done as much before. Yeah. So how are you thinking about growing with, with, you know, different niches? You know what I mean?

You're, you're doing, you're getting into the sports, the business of sports, you know, which makes, makes sense. But what is your... Like what's your, your sort of theory of the case with both organic and, and maybe even inorganic growth when it comes to, to getting deeper into niches? So I definitely think there's opportunities beyond sports.

We'll talk about sports for a moment, but in a moment. But, a-and we're thinking through those. But I think w-with sports it, it's almost too obvious that there is an opportunity for The Wall Street Journal to bring its trust, credibility. I mean, the fact that owners and investors around this booming industry pretty much read the Journal as a, as a, as a daily habit, so they know us, they trust us.

And, and I think as that industry scales, and the interest we see in the data from The Wall Street Journal readers continues to grow, it just was natural for us. And so we, we are gonna start with the summit in July. It's called the Next Sports Economy. It will be 150 roughly of, of the people who are owning and investing and operating these leagues, teams, and sports.

We're super excited about that. But, but of course, that's sort of the beginning. We haven't announced plans and I'm not going to today about what's coming, but- Oh, come on... we're, we will be going- Jessica said go ahead.

Jessica Dizzy? She didn't tell me that. No. We're, we wouldn't just do the event if we didn't think there was an opportunity for us to go deeper in, in our coverage of the business of sports in a very Journal-centric way.

Yeah. So, so we will, and that will be m- multimodal as we do everything, right? So we're, we're coming. There's...

I see the opportunities. I've been speaking to principals across the industry who will be at the event, and they are like, "This is amazing. Thank God. We're, we're excited for you to come into the, to the space."

Yeah. Even if it's a big crowd. So that was kind of obvious. There are other ones that- But wait, let me, let me just stick on sports for a minute, then we'll get to the other ones, because I think sports is- Sure.

I mean, again, just to go back, I mean, before joining Dow Jones, you're at the Mets, right? So- Yes, I was... you know, and, and-Sports to me is a really interesting... It's become like an asset class.

Yeah, 100%. Whereas it used to be rich people would buy sports teams for fun. You know, it was a cool, it's a cool thing to have. I mean, what's the point of, like, becoming a billionaire if you don't have fun things, right?

Well, it was, media, media is not as fun to buy. No. Sports is more fun. No.

No. No, I would much rather have a, have a sports team. But sports have actually become, like, a really important business line. You know, we see private equity is now getting involved in, in sports.

It is like almost like an AI hedge in some ways- Mm... because nobody knows what is - Every, every time I open up X, something is cooked. And, you know, the IRL economy is the one thing that is assumed not to be cooked because as everything becomes, you know, AI-ified, the idea is that things like live sports are going to be even more valuable. And it's interesting because it's, it's changed how sports franchises, I think, are, are run a little bit.

Mm-hmm. Like, you know, it used to be almost like your... There was like a guilt trip. Like it was almost like Medicis.

It was like, "Oh no, you're supposed to run this like at a loss, you know, and just like spend whatever." And I don't know, you probably have more experience with billionaires than I do, but they generally don't like losing money. That's not how you become a billionaire. That, that is correct.

Yeah, no, be-beyond the, the, the operating losses of certain teams, th-actually I think what, the, the, what, what's been interesting over the last few years is how sports teams have branched into ex- other experiences- Yeah... other content, building memberships, whatever. And like that, that's some of the work I was doing previously. But I think that's fascinating is they think about these as platforms, not just teams.

Yeah, and they're ties to like real estate, to- Oh, 100%. You see like casinos are being attached. They're, they're building like, you know, these things into complex... Like it's, it's become a much more, everything's become incredibly sophisticated, but it's a different type of- Yeah, and that, I was just gonna note, like you're 100% right.

And the reason, the reason that the Journal makes sense in the space is because of the capital flows. Right. But I think Alexis Ohanian said it at, at a conference I was at, like we're not really going to watch robots play soccer, like pay to do that. That may actually happen as a novelty thing, but we're, that's, we love the human drama, we love the human...

And so yes, I think this, this, I'm not calling it a dismissive movement away from social media, but there is fatigue. There is a desire for community. There's a desire for experiential. We're seeing it not only in sports, but in music and other, in trips around the world to travel.

And so yeah, sports is, is, is growing. The engagement, as you know, 90-plus percent of all the top 100 shows in terms of scale are like football games. [chuckles] And so therefore the, the media rights go up and then the asset values go up and, and we should be deep in that story, so. But, but back to like how, how we approach it.

I think it's in-interesting because what we're buil- what we're building is, a-and what we're going for seems a little more B2B, but it's gonna be, you know, connected to what I guess you could call the Journal is B2C. One might argue it's such an important workflow tool and daily read that you- Yeah... it's more, you know, right, B2P or whatever phrase you wanna use. But, but we think with sports you can build out the, the, the sort of Dow Jonesian framework of journalism at the core and then data analysis and community and have a really powerful entry into this vertical, and there can be some collaboration with so-called more B2C brands, right?

Yeah. So if it, it's considered B2B, but then have these things interlock and work together, and I think that's powerful. What is your lens then for like other verticals when you're thinking about like which- Well-... which niches?

Yeah, I think for, for me on the consumer side, and I think if you ask Sarah or Joel and Lisa, they'd, they'd have a different answer to this, but, but I am looking at the data for our consumer subscribers, and the biggest one being the Journal. What is it that they're interested in? 'Cause that's a great place to start. So we know they love sports.

Like it shows up, right? We know that they're interested in AI and tech. We know that they're interested in longevity. We know they're interested in how to spend money, like real estate, the stuff that Sarah Ball was brought in to do through the WSJ magazine and off duty.

And so there's a lot that we can see from the data about what our large base, our four-plus million subscribers of the Journal are interested in. And so I'm looking at that, then we're sizing it. Can this scale? Is there a data, proprietary data play?

How competitive is the market? Is there an experiential play? And if we check a lot of those boxes then, you know, we'll do the work to put together a plan on how to enter the market. And I, I think it, I think it's helpful as we expand to have a pretty clear framework and evaluation and then, then I gotta figure out how we can do these rapidly if they make sense, if they make financial sense, and they grow our overall, overall pie in the consumer group.

Mm-hmm. So that's how I'm thinking about it. Is that all organic or do you see acquiring assets? Well, Dow Jones has been relatively active, more on the B2B side.

The last acquisition on the B2C I think was IBD roughly five years ago. In fact, I think the, we just had the anniversary. So- It's been more active with like pricing indexes and whatnot. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It ha- it has, it has. Smartly so, probably. Yeah.

Look, B- B2B, as you know, has good margins, right? I believe- You had a big dollar bill behind you for this- But-... because we do video, so it's, it's a pay too. I know.

Yeah, look, we, we are focused on EBITDA and, and B2B has great margins. I, I think given the space that we play on the consumer side with brands thatAre, are necessary for, for executives to read and necessary as you manage your, your personal wealth in Barron's and, and MarketWatch. I believe, I actually think, and we are improving our margins too. You know, I don't know that we need to run on super lean, and we don't.

So I think there's opportunity there, especially as we work together as a group and we centralize the right things and we collaborate in the right areas. I think we can, we can grow our, our, our gross margins and our net margins the way that we have been as a company. So look, if there's some interesting opportunities, and I suspect there will be for Dow Jones, like I'm gonna be, you know, in Elmar's office talking to him about it. Yeah.

It's interesting when you think about an asset like TVPN. Mm-hmm. I think I can make the, you know, argument that it would make a lot of sense as, as part of, of Dow Jones. Maybe not at two hundred mil, like [laughs]...

You know, so you- Yeah. It's a, it's a bigger market, you know, when you've got like an AI companies that will, you know, put, they're like, "Oh yeah, sure. That's like a rounding error for us," but that's how it comes. You know, I'll let others opine on the, the, the acquisition.

I, I would say, and I have my thoughts, but I, I think we're pretty disciplined and would be very disciplined. It's gotta hold up to the financials and the, and the future opportunity, you know, otherwise it's, it, it's, it's not gonna be accretive to our business, you know. And so we, we would probably not pay ridiculous valuations for assets unless we thought there was incredible growth to unearth but, you know- Yeah. We're, we're different.

10X revenue. Sounds great. 10X revenue seems high, but- [laughs] It's like BI. It's like a flashback to the BI days.

It's just the comp on every single person's [laughs] M&A that they were selling. Yeah. It helps. Tru-truly.

Yep. So on, on TVPN, let's talk about creators a little bit. How are you thinking about creators? And I think, and, and we had talked a little bit about this at, at DCN.

You know, like Joanna Stern, I'm a big fan, fan of hers. Yep. You know, she, she left the, the Journal, is doing her own thing. She's got the YouTube show.

Mm-hmm. She's got a book coming out. And look, a lot of the energy in media, not all of it, but a lot of it, it is moving from institutions to individuals. This does, this feels structural to me.

It doesn't seem like it's, you know, a trend that will go away. How are, how are you thinking about... Because I think every single brand is thinking about how do we keep what we're, you know, what a lot of the value in. Obviously, you know, you've got great brands, but then how do we also benefit from this structural shift to, to individuals?

Yeah. I, I have a few thoughts there. The, the, the first thing I'd say is I think we quickly dismissed that all attention is moving to creators and away from institution. I think there are institutions, and I, I would put us in that camp, our brands, es- you know, especially our premium brands, as, as powerful as ever in this like, you know, sort of noisy, untrustworthy AI sloppy N- sloppy world.

So I, I, I don't think it's been like, it's not gonna be a full movement away from trusted institutions as long as they serve their audiences the right way. And you, and so I, I'm not as... I think every- we always like to talk in definites in media. It's like the end of advertising, the end of- Yeah.

Radio. Yeah, and it never happens. I mean, out of home is still un- not, not fully digitized, and AM radio still exists, so. But I also think that the, our institution, and others too, is, is made up of incredible journalistic talent.

And so, so phase one, I think, for us, is to build out, which we, we, we have launched, is this talent lab, and brought in Devin Smith, formerly I think of Gannett, and has done some, some work el-elsewhere, to, to really work with some of the great talent i-in our newsroom that, that wanna be. Not everyone wants to be more of an individual creator. Some are just great journalists. They wanna be heads down, and like that's totally fine.

They do amazing work. I think Devin is trying to, to work with people that we, we can bring out a bit under the banner of, of the Journal or Dow Jones more broadly and, and do more social, do some events, do some, you know, audio. And I think that's a great place to start for phase one 'cause we have talent, right? Joanna was one of them.

Two, I think we'd be remiss not to think about over the course of time, how do we both lock up and rethink our relationships f- financially and otherwise with, with talent. We just have to like ponder the way the world's going and how it can work for, for people who are hosts and anchors and, and, and that kind of thing. So there's conversations going on there structurally, organizationally. And then, then I think what is also interesting is how we might work with outside contributors.

There are people doing great work in the business and personal finance space. We would be silly to, to ignore that. I do suspect we're cresting with the creator movement, and we all know how some of the story ends. Some of they're gonna either be institutionalized, TVPN being one of them, like sell out at the top, become- Yeah.

Part of an institution. That would be wise if money is a goal for some of them who have built these big media. But some are gonna get exhausted from doing everything and decide I wanna take this thing back in to a, a place like Puck or Us or, you know, somewhere else. And, and some are gonna give up 'cause they're not in the top 5 or 10%, and the money is getting harder and harder to get from both sponsors and from subscribers or listeners.

And so we know, we know, we saw that. I don't think it's blogging 2.0. So you think it's, you think it is cresting, like so- I do.

I do. I mean, yeah. I do. The pendulum always swings too far in this field, so.

Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. But, but I don't, I don't think it goes back to everyone joining The Wall Street Journal. But I, but, but I think, I think some people are gonna realize that there were some benefits from the scaffolding and around being part of an institution, but I, and I think we need to evolve too, right?

And I think Emma and the rest of the, the editors and staff here are thinking about that. Like we'reThe Pandora's box is open, how do we work with them? And then we're doing this on the WSJ Opinion today with our free expression launch, but we are working with folks on Substack and trying to roll out some, you know, jointly created IP under like a slightly broader opinion page and testing out using Substack and email as the distribution vehicle for that. I think as we get deeper into and expand beyond phase one within the Journal, I could imagine working with interesting people on projects, whether it's an event or a podcast or a show.

Yeah. As long as they meet our editorial criteria. But, but yeah, I mean, look, the reality is audience - our, our premium audience has never paid more for content. That's a good thing.

They've also never had so many choices. That's a difficult thing when there's so much fragmentation. Yeah. And so we have to, we have to figure that out.

And it's all the, it's all like a business model thing. It's just the eco- getting the economics right to some degree. I mean, it's - obviously the fit has to be right. I think of someone like Kyla Scanlon, right?

Like- Yeah... she's like, you know, she's in her 20s, I think, but like she's young. I don't know if she's Gen Z. But anyway, she, she does economics and, and business and, you know, considering you guys have a slightly older audience.

I don't know. I, [chuckles] I haven't seen the data, but it is slightly older. This is true. Depending on, depending on our brand and our product, but yes.

Okay. For the Journal, it's a slightly older audience. You know, I mean, I think there's, there's space there when you think about the infrastructure that a place like Dow Jones has beyond the brand halo and all the rest of that. Like, there's a lot, there's, there's things both sides can benefit from, and I think it's just figuring out like how to, how to work out the arrangement, which is the hard part.

That's, I think that's right. That's right. Uh, and I think, I think there... We - I, I think it's pretty complementary.

You know, when I think about scale, distribution, resources, monetization, like, I mean, we have a, a huge consumer business here across our brands, like thousands of people working on it. To be able to take a talent and build something together and get it to millions of people. And like we're, we're a good partner, and we bring credibility and trust. Not that Kyla or someone else in the creator space doesn't have it, but generally they're relatively niche compared to the Dow Jones consumer brand.

So we do have something to offer, and I think you'll see some interesting models come out in the coming months. So let's talk about video- Yeah... and how, how you're thinking about video. Obviously, you know, Dow Jones across your properties do a lot of video.

You've long done, done video. But talk me through like what the strategy is, and I, I'm sure it's multifaceted. It is. And again, talk about fragmentation of platforms.

We've got a, as you, as you know, sort of various different platforms from LinkedIn to YouTube to owned and operated to Instagram Reels. I mean, you really, un- fortunately, unfortunately need to be where audiences that you have and the audiences you want are gonna be. So it is taxing. It's, it's a, a big investment for us.

I think, I think we're of two minds here, and we're doing a little bit of both, and each brand's a little bit different. I'll talk a bit s- about some of them. But, you know, for the Journal, we have a combination of v-video that we will post on social media to, for brand awareness and for the sort of like connect points that you need out of sight, out of mind in this world. So we do wanna make sure that they are accessible, and they are used, well, hopefully, accretive to acquisition, either in the long term or short term.

So like there is video out there. We do have a YouTube channel. We do, you know. We're also testing more and more both vertical and horizontal video journalism for subscribers because the, the time and effort that we put into it and the production i-is, is, is great.

And, and I think we do see more broadly, as, as we've talked about and you, and you talk about, it's n-more consumption of news through video. And, and it's not clear to me younger generations who have grown up with devices or with digital are gonna say, "You know what? I'm, I'm fatigued, and I'm gonna start reading again more than I do today." Like I, n-I haven't seen any data to suggest that, although there have never been more independent bookstores, so maybe that's a good thing.

But that's a different perhaps type of like reading and consumption. So anyway, we're... We, we might, we, we do believe there's value in having great video in web and app for subscribers to bolster the value proposition, and we're gonna continue to invest in that. I also think we believe strongly that it has to be a top of funnel play for us in a place like YouTube, which is the largest television network in the world.

You know, we have to be there to find new folk, and they're younger there than the Journal core subscriber. So we're doing a little bit of both. We also, like if you pop over to like IBD, they'll do like a paid, you know, investing roundtable video. Like people are paying- Yeah...

just, you know, for that. So, you know, I think as you get niche-ier too, there's... A-and it affects your wallet either as professional or as investor. Like there's opportunities to make money with walled off video for sure, and we've just barely scratched the surface so far.

But m-my job as I look across all brands, and every brand that we have is doing something in video, includes Barron's has a show on, on network and cable and MarketWatch doing a bunch of stuff on YouTube 'cause that's a little bit of our younger, more entry-level brand. How, how do I look across the portfolio and, yes, find efficiencies and synergies to like produce better and, you know, build some like operational infrastructure to do things and produce things better, but also how do we like pull this together into something more durable, more scalable?

More organic. That's, that's what I'm thinking about. I don't have, like, a pat answer there or a, like a fully defined point of view there, but we're working through that now that I'm, like, six months in. Because I think, I think there's something across Dow Jones that when we bring the assets, the talent, the data, the analysis together, and our resources together, we could build something pretty special.

Yeah. It is interesting that, to me, just observing it, like, that I think your, your strategy is different from, like, say, the New York Times. Like, the New York Times is, is putting video very front and center in their app. Mm-hmm.

You know, I think the pat thing is, like, they're trying to become CNN before CNN will become the New York Times, although I think that's maybe, that's a little old. [laughs] I don't think the New York Times, CNN's gonna become that. But- Yeah... you know, they chose to, they, they didn't even monetize it.

Like, you go to their, their app, they're, they're like- Yep... strategically, I had Joy Robbins on this, in this podcast, and she's like, "No, we're not running ads on, on, on our video," 'cause they wanna build the habit. I don't know, I mean, there's just, there's, there's different approaches to this. I think there's advantages to both, you know, introducing the, the ad product later.

But- Yeah, yeah. I, I don't disagree. I mean, I think what's important, there again, there's never one right answer, and you probably have to do a bunch of different things for different reasons. I do appreciate, like, the, their efforts on, I use the, you know, I got app, but I appreciate the sort of like seamless integration of that.

And, and is that building habit for me? Maybe not. But, like, I, I think it blends in well, and it's a nice experience, and there's lessons to be learned from people doing things like that, including our competitive set. So I think the key thing is to experiment, to look at the data, it is obvious statement, but, but, and, and talk to our audience.

Like, do you even want this? You know? And, and, and sometimes I think media companies launch things without actually asking those questions. [laughs] So I- Yeah...

that's something we're building a better capability to do here at Dow Jones, for sure. So how do you think about the i- the international opportunities? Like, I think one of the sort of blessings and curses of the United States is just how big and deep- Yeah... the market is, and so other markets end up becoming, you know, secondary or tertiary pretty quickly.

You go over to the UK and, and it sounds like, oh, great, they speak English and everything. And there's a reason that, that the direction of travel is, is from there to here versus vice versa, because it's just a far smaller economy, and that's just reality. But where do, like how do you think about that? Because, like, in truth, there aren't a lot of, like, I think Bloomberg is a little different.

Like, I don't know if the Wall Street Journal is like a global brand. I mean, it is, like, but it's not, like when you, how much of the revenue is in, is in the United States versus outside of the United States? Yeah. We, we, we've been public about this.

We're, we are eighty percent US with the Journal and, and, and so I think that's a tremendous opportunity. I think we have awareness around the world. I think the trick, and not just for us, but for other very US-centric brands, is how do you, is the product right for that audience, or is it basically an expat or C-suite only- Yeah... product of, right?

And so yeah, we could like flip it into any language now with AI and, and we will do this, by the way. But that only gets you so far. It's not just a language barrier because Google has always had a translator for a lo- last several years anyway, a pretty sophisticated translation plugin. So the, the question is, what, what is that product?

And it's gonna vary by market. But I think it does necessitate either like incremental and additional coverage of region. You wanna get a little bit of the national and local on top of the global. The Journal does a lot of great global reporting.

It's also a great window into the United States politics and business, which, which a lot of countries wanna know about. But if you wanna get to like the heart of the executive staff in Germany, France, Spain or Australia, like you, you've gotta cover what, what they care about most. And so that can be done through partnership, that can be done through licensing, that can be done through new product development, could be using our newsrooms in these places to do a little additional local coverage in addition to their sort of global lens.

And so we're gonna pick a few markets, I think this year, and experiment with a couple different models. And, and then of course, you gotta market too. I think one of the problems for US media companies trying to go international, sometimes they'll either translate their service or do a license, but then they don't really back it up with any marketing and awareness campaigns to like, or events or experiences to, to amplify. Like, "Hey, we're, we're in Thailand," or, "We're in Japan, and here's, here's why you should be subscribing to our product," you know?

And, and without that, it's can be a tree falling in the forest. Yeah. A large forest, but- Yeah, [laughs] exactly. Are there any like sort of hints you can give as far as the markets you're looking at?

Or at least the, the lens that you, you use in order to determine? Obviously, if you want a big market, you're not gonna do Wall Street Journal Netherlands, I don't think. But [laughs]- There might be reasons to do that actually. But, um, yeah, I, I think we, we will look at a few things.

I pr- I probably won't talk about the specific markets today, just- Okay... you know, I don't wanna like give people a, a heads up that we're going into these markets. But yes. I-i-is it, does it have a, a large addressable market of the C-suite or the decision makers that we have products for?

And not just for consumer. So I think consumer could be a bit of the, the tip of the spear also for B2B products because we have a bigger footprint, we can come in with a bigger bang. But, but I'd love for, for risk and energy and enterprise news to be right there with us benefiting from marketing campaigns and product launches, right, and doing joint events together. So, so the question in part is-Big market for us in consumer, but also, you know, presumably this is the answer is yes.

Is it also a good enterprise market and a B2B market? Is there - I, I'm interested in whether they have a legitimate, at least mediocre advertising market. The US ad market is sort of, you know, without comp- competition, and the CPMs we get in the consumer side are, are the highest probably in the, in the world. Like, if we go into certain countries, we know the ad markets are terrible, and the CPMs are single digits, and that's not super helpful.

But we have a pretty balanced model here on the consumer side. And, and yeah, GDP growth in the region, culture, competitive set in market. Do they have a legitimate, like, business publication in said country? And if not, maybe we go more aggressively in there with something that's more regionalized.

So there are a bunch of factors there, but it does come down. We can't do every country and every region, nor should we. Asia and Europe probably more interesting than Africa and Latin America for us right now for, for some obvious reasons. Yeah.

And the Middle East, I guess you're, you're putting in there in Asia? Yeah. Or is that not interesting because of- Sorry, th- I didn't mention the Middle East. I, I...

The Middle East is interesting. We do a lot of work there. We like it. Obviously, right now it's slightly complicated to have conversations and travel in and out.

Hopefully things will end over there. But yes, we've always had good partnerships there. It is an area of focus. I, I am quite sure we will have a bigger presence there in Asia.

Well, I mean, energy is like, you know, I think energy is like the fastest growing part of the, the portfolio, at least it was the last report. Like, you know, energy is a pretty big story there. [laughs] Well, e-energy and risk and compliance. Yeah.

Like these are, these are risk big time. Yeah. We are pretty well set up for this, on some level, sa- sad state of affairs. But like, yes, our products serve these, these companies and individuals.

But also on the consumer side, there are a lot of people across the Middle East and some well-heeled people that, that we, we, we want to be reading our publications, both news and wealth and investing information, so. How do you end up thinking about experiential? Like, and I just shorthand for me is like just events, right? Like I just, I just hit send on a, on an email about like another one about like events, events, events because not only do I do a lot of events, but you know, a lot of...

Look, the Journal is, it, or Dow Jones and the Journal is just very advantageous with a, with a big consumer revenue business and with an ad business that still gets like really healthy CPMs. A lot of publishers are half, if not mostly events businesses. I mean, in your own sector, I think, you know, Semafor has a, a different type of model. It's an interesting approach to me to, particularly when to build like a global model, because you can do that with events.

Like popping up an event in, in a locality is a lot easier. You can speed that up without- Mm-hmm... being, you know, massive, massive market penetration. But how do you end up thinking about that?

Because man, I see some of your broadly broad competitive set, they're doing hundreds of events a, a year, and like Dow Jones does a lot of events, right? But I just feel like they do- Yeah... it's a bigger part of a lot of other models. Well, we do over 200, uh, across Dow Jones, so we, we do a lot of events.

Again, we have... It depends which, which group we're talking to in Dow Jones. For example, our WSJ Leadership Institute, run by Al Murray, like they have convenings for, for their membership, for their members, right? And that is a different model.

Those are people that have paid to, for networking really, and for information and, and they get some content both through newsletter as well as on stage and, and through the programming there. But they really, I mean, I think it's a lot about like bringing them together. So, so they use events one way. On the consumer side, the way that I think about them, we'll talk about B2B, but I think they are an incredible complement for our brand advertisers, our sponsors.

Most of our conversations include some type of experiential with the big, big deals that we do. They love being a part of, say, Wall Street Journal Invest or tech or this forthcoming sports with the Journal House. You know, we get our Davos, like they wanna be there, you know, where conversations are happening. So we do weave in, in a lot of our big partnerships events.

And so, so that's great for that. Also, it's a great way for us to, to be part of like, you know, bringing people together. Like the, the Journal audience, the Barron's audience, these have communities and, and some great networking happens there. We try to facilitate that networking and deal making.

Certainly at the higher end events like the sports event, like that is not open really to the public. That is for, as I said, investors, owners, operators. I, I really hope people do work there, that people do conceive of deals and do transactions and really bond, you know, meet each other, bond there. So hopefully we'll bring people together at Midyear.

So, so we think it's a really, really important piece of the media ecosystem as a lot of brands do. But I also, I think I was talking to Omar about this the other day. I really think we need to, to do less, but do them more impactfully and at bigger scale. Like- Yeah...

I, I do think we're saturated. I do think there's fatigue on the speaker side, the sponsor side, the attendee side. And so let's, let's find the events that can really scale, that can really have impact, that people want to go to, and brands wanna be there because of that, and let's make them bigger and extend them and build out extensions to them. That, that's better model.

I, I've run events teams for years, and where we always made the money was on the big ones, not on the s- not on the, the 90%, but on the 10% of the events. Yeah. And it's easy to get pulled into those- Correct... small single sponsor...

couple hour events. Just like, yeah, yeah, sure. It's like, it sounds like a good idea. Yeah.

It depends on your model, but- It, it depends on your model. It definitely worked for UL. Like- Yeah... for us it's like, you know- We've got more employees.

I just said me and a few other fraction of people, so we are more sophisticated. Yeah. We, we don't... Th- that is true.

But, but also, but we need scale. Like, when, when you're a two and a half billion dollar entity doing an event for $20,000 or $50,000, does that make a ton of sense even if it's a 50% margin? Probably not. So we, we do need to think bigger.

We need to think more impactfully. And, and we also need to think about how do we use the great conversations and for content. You know, I talk- we talked about video, but some of the conversations we had at WSJ Opinion recently with like Scott Bessent were really interesting. Yeah, and the administration officials that were there.

We just had Future of Everything, some really interesting conversations with tech entrepreneurs, Anthropic, you name it. And, and those are, if well-produced, and we've seen this from lots of brands, those are great vehicles to get our brand out there, to attach sponsorship to, to be a, you know, another way to get our journalism out there. So we're doing that more and more. And then of course, on the BB side, they, they do webinars and, and live events to mostly to drive sales, some brand awareness and product awareness, but like ultimately leading up to can we close deals around the world.

But I think when we think internationally, it's a nice way to open into markets too. Yeah. You know, if we... let's just say everyone wants to be doing things in India.

Like if we wanna, the Journal really wants to be serious in India, for example. I use that hypothetically 'cause it's so big. Well, we probably should have like a seminal event there that exposes on all kinds of levels. Maybe we work with government, we work with, you know, companies in, in India on that kind of a project, and that's a nice way to kinda come in and say, "We're serious about your market."

I end up wondering wh- when there's saturation on the event side. I've been wrong on this. Like, it's like [laughs] there's too much of everything, I know. Yeah.

At the same time, so many publishers are leaning into events, particularly anything to do with business decision makers. Yes. Look, there's a lot of, I don't think you guys are there, but like I was surprised at how many publishers in, in your, in your set were like in like F1 in Miami. Like, everything is becoming like the front end to like a business decision maker convening strategy.

Yeah. Yeah. 100%. We didn't have a presence at that one, at the last one in Miami, but I don't think.

Maybe some people were there, but I think we're, it, it's going to take probably a macroeconomic event- Oh, no... to slow the growth. Like what would happen if we enter recession- Cancer virus. That'll do it.

Well, well, that might do it, but outside of a pandemic again, like what, what's gonna slow down the growth in live events? Well, probably like companies tightening up their purse strings, right? Yeah. Instead of sending 50 people to Cannes and launching, you know, something on the beach, like maybe you cut that back and, and sponsors pull back.

You know, so I, I do think in lieu of that, and that has been remarkably absent for years, some type of recession other than the COVID bump, then like I, I don't think it's gonna slow down, but we are very saturated. And again, I don't, I don't, I'm not calling a peak for creators or for events, but it feels like we're, we're frothy. Yeah. Yeah.

So final thing is around- Yeah... around consumer revenue, around subscriptions, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, you guys have been incredibly successful obviously here, and that's part of your remit.

How are you thinking about the next- Yeah... phase of growth in consumer revenue/subscriptions? Doesn't have to be consumer. No, no.

But yeah, subscriptions more broadly. Yeah, I'd say it's the most important part of my me- remit really. It's, it's a huge chunk of our revenue, and everyone loves recurring revenue, and we've got a lot of it. I think 80% and mostly digital.

And this is, this is all, these are all good things. But again, I think there's a lot of competition out there for wallet, and so we've got... we're gonna have to think differently. So how I think about it, new verticals, new content expansions, working with Emma on that are helpful.

Like bolster the editorial value proposition. What are we missing in, in the Journal today or Barron's or MarketWatch? Like, you know, being sharper on making sure that we market the, the value. I think the last few years we probably got away from that a little bit and, and I need to bring that back in.

Like, why do you need to have the Journal as part of your daily diet? Like that's important for us to bolster, especially for the post-graduate through like early 40s crew. As we discussed, they've been consuming media differently than, than us who grew up with print and have a habitual connection to like the Journal print and then sometimes digital. So, you know, we're gonna be sharpening our, our marketing for sure, building up the product.

I've mentioned international. And I think there's, there's also, we've been rather digitally traditional, if that's, if that's a phrase. We, like a lot of publishers, have spent a lot of time at the bottom of the funnel using cost-effective ways to drive new acquisition. Mm-hmm.

Meta and Google being the recipients of that. I think if you asked any of the publishers in New York and beyond, they would say the same thing. Yeah. So, and I think that we need to diversify a bit, whether it's working with Substack, Beehiiv, where people are paying for content and, you know, thinking about that.

Or even creating products on those platforms that are subscription products where people are like happy to consume and happy to subscribe or, or, or, or that's the intent for why they're there. But we haven't- So you, you, you'll, you'll, you're like open to having subscriptions go through a third party platform versus directlyI mean, 'cause you wanna own the consumer relationship. Of cour- of course you do. But I also think i- if they're not coming to you, would you rather have them through a third party?

We do this with Apple and Google, right? Yeah. So yeah, I mean, there's ideal, and then there's, like, being scrappy and- Yeah... and trying to find the u- So, so yeah, I - And there are ways to get them into our database too, right?

If, if they subscribe. Like, we have Free Expression, which I talked about before. That is up on Substack as a product. Right now it's free.

Our plan is to put a paywall on that at some point, and there you will pay for it, and then how we transfer the data is a conversation with the platforms, right? But, a- and not always easy, as we found out from Apple. But yeah, I think we're open to that. But yeah, again, better on our platform.

We will continue to think about new products, not just the core. We, I talked about Barron's with launching two newsletters. We're gonna continue to think about what our audience needs that we don't provide. We have a bundle, WSJ+ today, which has all of our brands in there.

As we launch new verticals, are there, like, flavors of the bundle? Is there a build-your-own bundle? Of course. Like, we wanna give consumers some sel- you know, some selection in there and some personalization to the bundles.

Are there ways to connect both outwardly into... So there's a couple interesting, like, new product things that we've been working on. One is, how do you work with the LLMs to connect what we have today? So obviously, you know, we, we've done some, at the News Corp level, some big deals with the LLMs to train on our data, our information, with proper guardrails o- in place.

But also, we're starting to build connectors. So y- if you decide that you like to use Claude or OpenAI, OpenAI, like, you'll be able to use a product like Factiva i- in that interface. I do see a world where potentially, if consumers suggest they want this, you might be able to read the Journal through OpenAI, Anthropic- Yeah... or whatever, right?

I think that's interesting. I think that's an area of growth. As opposed to waiting for a click-through, like we used to do in search, but we're not, we're just gonna bring you. You know?

We're not gonna t- we're not gonna try and wait for you to come in. We're gonna bring you. I mean, we sell API access. I mean, that's how publishers are going to be inevitably anyway.

Yeah. And, and I don't think that's necessarily bad if we're getting value for the IP that we're creating, right? I don't know that it matters. And we, and we have the data, right, to cross-promote other products, et cetera.

So I think that's an area of opportunity. Also, within Dow Jones, I think you'll see us being able, you know, to light up other products. So you can light up, if you're a WSJ+ consumer, you get the bundle, you can light up the other publications in your Wall Street Journal. So you can see the Barron's content, and you can see the MarketWatch content, and so it's, it's easier than having four apps, right?

I could imagine if you're a Factiva subscriber, potentially, 'cause they do this the other direction with just the Journal. If you pay for it, like, you could light up maybe a Factiva summary box next to a Journal article because you're, you know, we know you're a paid subscriber to that service. I think there's interesting opportunities as we expand the B2B and enterprise business too. What else would I say on the growth side?

Uh, price is interesting. You know, I think we built out a system both on, now it's live for acquisition and retention, but, like, I think we can get smarter about dynamic pricing and step-ups. You know, we, we have a, we are priced at the top of the market, and, you know, like, we're almost $600 a year. And so when you take somebody from an intro price of $100 for s- for example, up to six hundred, that's a bit of a shock.

So how do we really smartly, using data and propensity and usage, continue to, like, step you up smartly? So hopefully we get you to, like, full paying, but may- maybe not in year- Yeah... year two or at the seventh month. I think that can always get sharper and, and, and sophisticated AI tools and data helps.

But you know what? Churn is, like, such a big part of the game when you have millions of subscribers. You, like, you just wanna keep 'em, right? Right.

And so I think we're trying to ch- ch- to push the envelope there, be a little smarter there, 'cause that'll help on the growth side as well. Okay, cool. Let's leave it there. Thank you so much, Scott.

This was fun. Nice to see you. Thanks, Brian.