The revenge of brand

[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting Show. I am Brian Morrissey. This is part two of a two-part special edition of the show that we recorded at the TRB Lounge at Nobu at the Possible Conference in Miami Beach last week. We call this TRB Conversations, presented by xCo.

xCo is smarter video technology driven by real-time machine learning, built to help media owners maximize revenue across every screen, whether that be web, mobile, CTV, or digital out of home. Find out more at x.co. In today's edition of TRB Conversations, powered by xCo, we have a series of discussions with executives from the Financial Times, Hearst, and BDG about how media companies are navigating what I think can be called the wreckage of the digital publishing model and figuring out what comes next.

But to kick things off, I spoke with Shahar Oren, the chief marketing officer and the chief revenue officer at xCo, about how much of the history of digital media is now playing out again, with some variations, as advertising across screens, whether that's TV, out of home, or retail media, becomes revolutionized. Here's my conversation with Shahar. Welcome to TRB Conversations, powered by xCo. I'm joined by Shahar Oren, who is the CMO and the CRO of xCo.

Sure, Brian. How are you? Thank you for, thank you for joining me. So you guys have been in the digital media space for I guess a dozen years now.

Mm-hmm. Right? You've been in CTV for two years. Correct.

And I think just walking around Possible, I'm struck by how what has gone on in digital media for a dozen years is coming to TV through CTV. So now you have these two ex- sets of experiences. Tell me what's the same, and tell me what's different. So it's really interesting because, as you said, we've been in online for a long time, and we've seen specifically the programmatic ecosystem, which is where we operate, evolve and become so sophisticated, and everything is powered by AI and machine learning.

And then we went into, you know, the, the CTV space and all of a sudden we see things that we haven't seen in online, you know, five, seven, 10 years. It's like restarting all over again. Everything is handled more, you know, from a direct campaign perspective, direct buying. Programmatic is not as evolved.

It's both, you know, there's an expertise gap. The tech is not there. And so a lot of what we learned in online throughout the years we can now apply in CTV, and it's really interesting to see that it's going through almost, like, the same evolution as- Yeah... online did.

And one of those is, I remember when I first started, like, writing about online advertising was this... They, people used to always bring up this Mary Meeker slide, and it was the gap between time spent and budget spent. Mm-hmm. And, like, Mary Meeker was like, "This is go- this is the opportunity.

It's gonna narrow." A lot of digital publishers got funded on, on that slide. They didn't know that that, that gap was gonna be filled by Google and Facebook, but- [laughs] Perfect... leave that aside.

This gap is also, this time spent and budget spent is, is repeating itself, right? It's 100% repeating itself. I think the latest I've read is 20% of time spent is on CTV now, but only about 7 or 8% of media budgets are actually going to CTV. Even though, you know, every day we're seeing CTV budgets are climbing- Yeah...

and growing, but it's really, it's g- again, goes back to this gap of, you know, a lot of the budgets are not well monetized. You know, we can't really... Like, there's still a big fragmentation and a lot of gaps in how the tech behind CTV is able to really monetize the budgets well. So there's- So there's, like, a tech, tech challenge to it, right?

But how much of it is also just the reality of, of, of online advertising was that there were so many advertisers that were able to... I mean, you could just bring so much demand in because it was completely democratized. I mean, running, like, you know, a text ad on Google is far easier than, you know- Right... running a TV commercial as it- Right...

used to be. Right. How, how much of that is a factor? 'Cause I think one of the interesting parts of CTV is that it could be a way to really actually democratize and widen the aperture for who can run what we used to call TV commercials.

You know, it's, uh... That's where the, the, everyone's favorite buzzword, you know, the agentic advertising can come in. Oh, boy. [laughs] I'm sure you've heard that, what, like, 25 times today?

Yeah. [laughs] It really can democratize a lot. It's not, not just on TV. I mean, still, even buying premium inventory o- online is still not fully democratized.

So all of that can be democratized with AI now making everything so easy. You don't need big budgets. You can, you know, run 50 different variants of a campaign easily without even coming up with them. A lot of different things, like your budget can be used in a much smarter way, and so now you don't have to have a big agency or, you know, a, a, a lot of programmatic expertise to really be able to, to approach this inventory.

And so it is... There's, that's something that us at xCo are really excited about, is that opportunity to, you know, to be able to democratize the buying of- Yeah... of that inventory. When you're talking to marketers here and, and just in general, I mean, what are you hearing for, that is their biggest challenge with deploying more budgets to CTV?

'Cause it seems like marketers have always loved sight, sound, and motion, right? It's just been very expensive to, to run on, on TV. Mm-hmm. And, you know, now it's much more accessible.

What are the challenges that they're dealing with?So it's a lot of, you know, are they collecting the right signals? Are the signals standardized? Do they have the right technology to be able to run their campaigns in the most optimized way?

Again, a lot of the CTV industry is still run on a direct basis, and that is the opposite of, yeah, being in- being democratized. It's higher budgets. It makes it... You have to have the right connections.

It's really not at a place yet where it's accessible for everyone, and that's a lot of kind of us at xCo where we come in, is being able to bridge a lot of the tech gap and the expertise gaps from the ad ops perspective with technology, with machine learning, make it a lot more accessible, a lot easier, and grow revenue for- Yeah... you know, a lot of the companies in the space. So as you're focused more on CTV, right? Mm-hmm.

Like, how about the digital media business? Like, I mean, you're, you're, you're gonna be- We're still very much there, by the way. Still very much there, right? Not abandoned that at all.

Exactly. Yeah. And so, like, I assume that the, the, the vision is to be able to run across all screens, right? Like, I mean, they're just screens at the end of the day.

At the end of the day, they are. Like, I'm in- Yeah... in an Uber, it's a screen. It's a...

Yeah. Like, you know, on... Put on a TV, it's a screen. And there's gonna be more and more screens- There's a screen here...

as time go- There's screens everywhere... there are screens on your watch. It's... Yeah.

We're gonna be surrounded by screens before we know it. Yeah. So is the, is the idea, and, and how much are you seeing an appetite for advertisers to run across multiple screens versus, okay, I want you to do, you know, digital media, I want you to do CTV, and then, you know, out-of-home is different? There is a- an appetite to run across different screens and to really kind of diversify the strategy, but we feel that, you know, a lot of the advertisers still have a more traditional approach.

You know, they still wanna spend where it's safe, whether it's YouTube or, you know, where they know exactly what they're buying, but it's getting more and more sophisticated, and we love working with companies that have different screens. So a broadcaster that has both web presence and then CTV, and a lot of these companies also have, you know, are more legacy, and any use of optimization technology is very new for them, and that's really a sweet spot for us. And I think, as you said in the beginning, like, that's going to expand, and everything will be a screen, and we're gonna be seeing ads when we, I don't know, shop at the store, and we're gonna be monetizing that, too.

Yeah. I mean, they're already doing the freeze. I don't know if there's still as, as many of those. The...

You know, I don't know, like, in the freezer aisle- Mm-hmm... they're turning those into screens. I've seen someone here go with a backpack that was a screen. [laughs] Like, every- everything now.

There's digital screens, like, flying in the sky above the pool. It's- Well, there's Ballyhoo-... it's everything... here, which is a ad network that is on the back of boats and is just literally dragging screens- Yes...

across your field of vision as you're looking at the clouds- I've seen-... and the horizon... I've seen that. I've seen that.

Which is a very Miami thing, I believe. [laughs] I've seen that. It's, it's crazy. It's really surrounding us everywhere.

So when you're s- when you, when you're talking to, to marketers, right, like, when they think about, like, how they're measuring across these, these different screens, where do you see the challenges there? In measurement of results of, um- Well, because they're running campaigns across all of these different screens and diff- different areas, right? Mm-hmm. Like, measurement is always a challenge, and it's e- even a challenge within, like, you know, one s- particular area, right?

But when you're, you're trying to stitch together all of these different environments, I'm just wondering how you're seeing, you know, marketers be able to have a unified measurement. We see a lot of times, like, kind of a lack of control over measurement and lack of understanding of results. And again, this is where we try to really simplify, you know, the results and dashboards and how, you know, the clients that we work with are able to, to measure what they're getting from their programmatic stack and to really make it more accessible to them.

But measurement and, you know, passing signals in a standardized way is, are both some of the biggest challenges that our clients are facing. Okay, final thing is what is one sort of change that you think will be coming to the sort of CTV landscape in the next year? Are we allowed to say agentic or no? Yeah, yeah.

No. You can say it. I mean, it's funny, like, that's what everyone's talking about, and I feel like every week I'm reading a new launch of a new, you know, SSP or DSP launching a new agent doing something, and that's obviously the biggest change that's coming, and it's exciting in many ways. But I think, you know, as we said before, like, nobody really understands what it is yet, and I'm excited to see where it's actually going to take us, like, where the impact really will be and how, you know, both sides of the industry will experience it 'cause I think now there's a lot of talk and a lot of press releases- Yeah...

and not a lot of essence. So yeah. That, that also sounds familiar to go back to the beginning of our conversation- Right... of how digital media developed.

So what o- Correct... what is- Correct... what is old is new. Press releases first, essence later.

Exactly. It's, uh... We, we don't like that. [laughs] Okay.

Thank you, Shahar. Thank you, Brian. I really appreciate you taking the time. In our next conversation, I spoke with Brendan Spain, the VP of advertising at the Financial Times, about what it means to be one of the, the last truly global business daily publications.

You know, Brendan has to navigate brand safety anxiety among marketers. This thing still exists. They say they wanna... The marketers say they wanna support quality journalism, a- at least at conferences, but when it comes down to actual buying decisions, they, they run the other way.

Brendan's got a really great and candid take that a lot of the challenge is, is simply making sure a screenshot doesn't end up in the wrong inbox. Here's my conversation with Brendan.Welcome to TRB Conversations, powered by Xco. We are here at Possible in Miami Beach.

I'm joined by Brendan Spain, the VP of advertising for The Financial Times. Brendan, welcome. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Appreciate you being here. Okay, so let's talk about what's working at the FT, 'cause this is... We like to talk about what is working. As you know, I am an FT super fan.

FT Weekend is my must-read. Get it in print. Everyone at home, I recommend reading actually the p- print product. It is a great print product.

I- I'm pro. I'm pro print. A growing print product as well. Yeah, that's- that's reassuring.

So beyond that, what is working? I think on the client side, what we're seeing is lots of proactive conversations around the news cycle and brand safety. The news cycle's been tough for- for our campaigns, particularly with global publications, where we're covering kind of four or five things that lots of brands would be concerned running- running around. We're making it a point to make sure that they're not just relying on their technical ways of- of placing ads and filtering content, but that we're also speaking to them about how we manage campaigns on a manual level, and making sure that they're comfortable with the nuance and the way that the FT view is on things, as opposed to some of the mass media they might be seeing.

Yeah. But I mean, outside of that, I mean, you have, you have a, a, a very affluent audience. Yep. Right?

And they're- they're interested in spending money on things. Yep. And you know, they're... Y- you guys charge an unbelie- you charge me an unbelievable amount- [laughs]...

of money, so [laughs] Thanks for paying it. Yeah, no. Happily. And it's worth every, it's worth every penny.

It is. It is. You- you know that. It is worth it.

It is worth it. And it is a business expense. But, like, you know, you can end up, like... And that's why, like, you know, How to Spend It is great, and FT Weekend.

Yep. And you can, you can be able to monetize, like, a lot better in those areas, right? Yeah, I mean, I think we monetize lots of our business well. Our B2B business is really strong.

It's not just the sort of ultra-high-net-worth individuals targeting, we're targeting with the fashion houses or high-end s- beauty and, and art and such. Our B2B, our B2B offering is super strong because of the data that we have on all of our subscribers when we're targeting people by job role, the industry, the industry they work in, a- and also the- their, their title. Yeah. What is the opportunity with The Story of Money?

I was, like- Yeah... excited to see this. I'm a Gillian Tett super fan. Love it.

Robin Wigglesworth, Alphaville. Great, great- Amazing... character, great name. Yep.

You know? Yep. But, like, I, this is... You know, you guys are n- I don't think of the FT really in the sort of video genre.

So I think you're right in thinking that, and we wanted to change, we wanna change that thought so we can reach some younger audiences on different platforms that they don't necessarily think of us in. The Story of Money has been, it launched, what, just a week ago, I think- Yeah... last week, and the reception has been great so far. The idea was to use new platforms to drive viewership and, and younger viewership that we might not be getting t- as direct traffic to the FT, and also working with Nuveen, who's the sponsor, to make sure that, that their objectives for media are also being achieved at the same time.

So you kind of have a symbiotic relationship where Nuveen is obje- has their media objectives, and the FT, we're also achieving our readership ob- objectives of trying to reach younger audiences. Okay. And that's gonna be primarily YouTube. Y- well, it'll be available on all podcasts.

The- the videos will be- Yeah... primarily YouTube and on FT, and then podcasts available everywhere. Okay. And not, like, obviously not s- just for subscribers.

Not just for subscribers. I mean, that's like top of funnel. That's the whole point. That- that's the whole point.

Top of funnel, I'd go to, go to platforms where- Yeah... we know younger viewers are and get them introed to the FT content in a way that engages them, that interests them, you know, look at, looking at the story of money from Mesopotamia to today. Yeah. I mean, 'cause you have a very strict paywall, in my experience.

Yes. I think, well, I think that's the only way to have a real paywall, right? Is to have a strict paywall. We've tried a lot of different models over the 22 years we've had a paywall, from metered access to free trials to 99-cent trials, and I think, you know, we've learned a lot over th- those years.

That's not my part of the business, but where we are right now, we're- we're growing, particularly here in the US and in places like India, where we've set some objectives for growth, so it seems to be working. Yeah. Talk to me about, like, being a global brand. I mean, obviously you're...

I mean, obviously you're American, right? But, like- Yeah... it's like the FT, like I'm, I just did a podcast that came out this morning with Steve Sacks from, like, The Guardian. Yep.

And there's a lot of UK-based brands- Yep... that are looking to break into the US market. Yep. And there's obvious reason the US market is just so much bigger than, than the UK.

The language is the same. Our cultures are kinda different. Yep. And they're g- they seem to be, like, actually going farther apart than, than, than more together.

What are the particular advantages to being a global brand, but also, like, rooted, like, in London? Like, how do y- y- you guys think about that? Yeah. So I think that the way that we think about global is not only that our audience is everywhere, but the way that we write and think about- Yeah...

our stories is, you know, what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz and affecting the price of fertilizer in Detroit, or probably not in Detroit, but in Michigan maybe. Yes. [laughs] So it's, it's about linking the, the, what's happening globally to local audiences, but also I think particularly in the US, international audiences look at the media as being somewhat biased in one direction or the other, depending on what- Yeah... s- what, what publication you're looking at.

I think being, being based in London, where our home, you know, our, our, our, our mothership is, and having a global presence, even, even though we know we're, we're, we are politically neutral, I think it even gives us a, a better, better view from our readership of being politically neutral. I think that, that-The way that we cover things and even our, even our opinion pages are, are a lot more balanced than what you'll find in domestic news media here and I, I think right now that's something that people really want and they turn to.

Yeah. 'Cause I think it's just- it's diff- like, I always think of, like, The Wall Street Journal versus, like, the FT ultimately here, right? And, like, The Journal is a great product, but it's like, I, I don't know, like, do you see it as like a sub- I, I don't think of the FT as a substitution product necessarily. Like, I think, like...

Or, or do you... Like, what does your, like, data sh- say about that? Like, I mean, are people either FT or, or Wall Street Journal, or is it Wall Street Journal and FT? Uh, there's...

Well, depends on what audiences you're looking at. Yeah. We have a strong, there's a strong slice of business decision-makers who work in import, export, or, you know, some of the more internationally focused, internationally focused industries that we know don't read the FT- don't read The Wall Street Journal- Right... like they read the FT.

You know, as I say when I'm talking to, you know, more junior agency folks, you grow up knowing the FT because you're... Sorry, you grew up kn- knowing The Wall Street Journal 'cause your parent was a CP- the CPA in Phoenix. They're not gonna be reading the FT necessarily, not, not 20, 30 years ago, right? We weren't really even- Right...

in, in, in the US yet. But they will h- the... You will be familiar with The Wall Street Journal 'cause, 'cause it was on, it was on your, on your kitchen table every morning, and that was the way that people were looking at their 401[k]s. People don't buy the FT to understand what's going on in their 401[k]s or how markets are moving.

It's about how markets are moving because of geopolitical and, or, or world, world events. Yeah. It's interesting that, like, I feel like American brands have struggled to become global brands in many ways. I mean, even The New York Times has not had a lot of success at being a global brand, and part of that is the advantages of a massive home market.

Yep. Like, I mean, you just- Gonna have to... stay in your- Yeah... you know, you stay in your home market more often.

And, and media's always been more local. But then, like, it's, it's interesting that, like, British brands have had m- way more success in becoming global. I mean, maybe it's the empire that [laughs] set them up for success. But yeah, we, i- we consider ourselves to be the last truly global business daily.

Yeah. So final thing is, like, on the ad market, you had mentioned, you know, news. Like, are you seeing more willingness of brands to, to, to be around news? I mean, you, you mentioned, obviously in the news right now, it's like, things like Iran and, like, th- that's just news.

Like, that is how- It's just news, yeah... how it works. Yeah. And I feel like for a long time, news publishers have said, "You should run on news- Yeah...

and we have this study," and all this stuff. Yeah. And, like, the brand says, "Okay, sure." Look, I think there's two, I think there's two points of view.

One is a lot of marketers, senior marketers, say that they wanna support news. Sure. It seems to fall down somewhere- [laughs]... either at an agency level or even in- Yeah.

There's a large gap between w- the stage and, like- And yes... the actual eye. Yes. Yeah.

That being said, I, you know, we try and have one-to-one conversations with the marketers who are saying they wanna support news, and I try and help them do that. And I think a lot of it is talking about nuance in the way that we cover things versus the mass market does, but also understanding that even when, you know, a brand's s- brand suitability is an issue, that the, there is no negative impact [laughs] on that brand for running an ad o- against that article. So a lot of it is simply, you know, making sure that a screenshot doesn't get sent- Yeah...

to someone senior. It's amazing we're still talking about the screenshots. I know, I know, but it's still there. [laughs] It's still there.

And we're, you know, we're trying to be really flexible with homepage roadblocks and, you know, and sponsorships and, you know, hey, th- we took the ads down, we took your homepage roadblock ads down because there's a tank on the front of the FT today. So, you know, we- we'll make, we'll do a make good tomorrow or the next time we have inventory, or let us know, you know, if you're up for putting them back up, we think, and we can prove through our, through our research, that- Yeah...

it's, it's brand safe. Yeah. Awesome. Brendan, thank you so much for taking the time.

Thanks for having me, bro. Appreciate it. [upbeat music] Next, I speak to Rachel Savage, the SVP of ad revenue operations at Hearst. We speak about the tension at the heart of running a large portfolio of distinct brands in a world that no longer rewards a single unified playbook.

This is something that comes up with a lot of publishing executives I speak to, because you have to, you have to run different playbooks for different brands. Hearst spent years building scaled audience systems designed to run efficiently across all of its titles, and now I think the more interesting question is what makes each brand irreplaceable on its own terms, and how you hold onto the infrastructure advantages of scale while letting each brand behave like, well, itself.

Here's my conversation with Rachel. Welcome to TRB Conversations, powered by XCO. We are here at Possible in Miami Beach. Thank you.

And I'm joined by Rachel Savage, the SVP of ad revenue operations at Hearst. Thanks. Welcome, Rachel. Happy to be here.

So we're doing this around what's working, and I wanna talk to you a little bit about what's working at Hearst and thinking about... Let me see how I explain this. Thinking about all of your brand, all of your brands as brands themselves, because I was, like, listening to one of your competitors, I guess, like Neil Vogel at, at People, talking about how they had, like, one playbook that they were trying to run across all brands, and this was, this was the sort of story of that, of that time, is like you wanted to, to have that efficiency and drive it across all of the brands in digital.

And then all of a sudden the world kinda changed a little bit. Mm-hmm. And we're sort of going backwards in some ways, or back to the future, I feel like, in that each brand needs to be... is gonna have a different playbook in some ways.

Does that make sense? I, I do, yes. I agree with that entirely. If you think about the spectrum of brands at Hearst, we're talking about Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Car and Driver, MotorTrend, and it's not necessarily a one fi- size fits all for the audiences and what they're, where they're consuming, what they're coming to us for.

And so I almost think that, like, you know, if you wanna build that relationship with an audience for MotorTrend, that's gonna look very different. Those, those users are going to be consuming things in, on YouTube or on other platforms that may be a little different than the Cosmo audience. And so we do- And how you make money off them- And how we make money... is gonna be totally different.

A hundred percent. So how you make money off, like, a MotorTrend, let's just say, say MotorTrend ver- Yeah... Let's do MotorTrend versus Cosmo. MotorTrend versus Cosmo.

Think about MotorTrend, there's a big community around, you know, the, the enthusiast for driving fast cars. That could be in real life events, it could be expertise on YouTube, but it's bringing all of that together. I think Cosmo is kind of similar but, you know, we're, we're thinking about TikTok. Gwil is, you know, creating social first content.

I think that there's a connection to commerce and pop-up opportunities, and building community around, you know, the, the culture she's creating through Cosmo. So they're just a little bit different cultures. Thinking about the person who's driving fast cars might be the same person as Cosmo, but likely not, and they're gonna be a little bit different, so how we show up for them needs to be different. Yeah.

So how do you gain the advantages of scale in that world, right? Because, like, when you're treating things separate, it sounds awesome because- Yeah... you know, you get to treat them as bespoke and everything- Mm-hmm... and you get to craft things, but ultimately, you know, scale drives efficiency, and I feel like we, that's why I would say we've like almost spent like a generation trying to figure out how to adapt publishing to a scaled- Sure...

you know, the internet reward has always rewarded scale, and then all of a sudden, it's like you put in place all of these scaled ad products and scaled, like, audience systems and, like, the media OS that, that- Yeah. Yeah... Troy was, was doing- Yeah... at Hearst.

And then all of a sudden, like, the world changes. Sure. Sure does. So what, what do you- It happens fast too...

so what do you end up, like, how do you benefit from the, the scale? Sure. I mean, I think that the, you know, when we were talking about the brands and the places they show up off platform, I think that there's, like, a learning trade that can happen between the brands. So what works here, we can apply that elsewhere.

I also think that, like, chasing scale is important, but not totally the answer, right? Where it's gonna be a balance of, you know, reaching enthusiasts, right? You think about some of our brands like Runner's World, it's a niche audience of marathon runners- Yeah... or, like, running enthusiasts, and, and the stories they're telling are gonna be very focused.

So I think it's finding the balance of creating those, you know, premium environments and bringing users to them at scale. So... How about having, like, ad products that- Sure... that work across?

'Cause again, like, I feel like there's always, like, a tension, right? Mm-hmm. In that, like, you wanna have ad products that, that scale across different brands, right? Yes.

Because that's, that's a, a massive advantage. But the- but then at the same time, you're trying to tr- to... Each brand has its own revenue playbook- Yeah. Yeah...

in some ways. I mean, I think that we've leaned into that with our Aura suite- Right... which was, you know, targeting and really thinking about targeting across the portfolio for users have, you know, propensity to do one thing or another. And I think that that can bring a lot of insights or surprises.

So you may think that, you know, your ad campaign is really well suited for one brand, but it performs really well somewhere else. So we're really kind of focused on the insights. But if you think about those insights, I think the, the work ahead of us is bringing those insights from all of the platforms that we need to distribute on and sort of normalizing that and, you know, working with our advertising partners to tell that story or show them what we're seeing in terms of what works well where and how.

And so bringing that data in and just, like, you know, sharing as much as we can as often as we can is... Yeah. Yeah. I think in this, in, particularly in publishing, you know, AI is always, like, presented as a threat because of- Yeah...

all the obvious reasons- Sure... with, with the answer engines. But what are the opportunities? Sure.

And, like, how, how are you applying AI to- Yeah... Hearst Business in order to, to strengthen it? Yeah. I mean, I think that, to your point, the first thing you think of is sort of editorial.

You know, I think Hearst has a legacy for, you know, providing, you know, authentic, credible information- Yeah... and that needs to stay true, so the company's been really thoughtful about how we use AI to aid in that process and not necessarily replace human judgment, which is super important. But I can take that same principle and think about that for revenue operations, right? Or our ad product suite, where we wanna think about how we're using AI to make us faster, providing more, you know, insights or data, but not lose the human element or judgment of, of what we're putting together, whether that's a proposal or, you know, ad product responses.

It's, I'll, I'll quote, we're here at Possible, "Clean, connected data is the backbone of all scalable AI use cases." Where did that come from? Right? It c- it's, it's seared in my brain because I've been pitched so many times on these things, but I think it's a truth that- What is it again?

Clean, connected data. Clean, connected data is the backbone for all scalable AI use cases. Okay? Okay.

Cool. I think clean, connected data is cool no matter what you do with it. It could be automation, it could be AI, but I think that's, you know, when we're talking about the brands, how are we gathering data? How are we connecting that data?

How are we sharing it the right way and putting the right sort of context against it to, to have, you know, insightful conversations with editors, marketers? Yeah. A- anything that you're doing with making new ad products that are, that are- Sure... using AI?

Sure. I mean, I think the, the team behind Aura is thinking about interesting ways to use AI and, and context to identify audiences or habits. It's a lot of, you know, classifying content and thinking about taxonomies behind the scenes that, that is interesting.We're thinking about it like agentic experiences too, and branded content.

That's a little newer but we're sort of exploring all, all of the things, and making sure that what we do, you know, maintains that sort of Hearst ethos in terms of, you know, the credibility and the editorial voice that- Yeah... we're known for. I feel like a lot of the AI conversation has moved to agentic, right? From- Yeah...

the sort of ChatGPT and the answer engines, right? Sure. And I think it's very unclear how... Like, w- what- how that will affect publishing.

Like whe- like assuming... Like right now, the, the agents are mostly clunky. We talked about these- Yeah... Coco, these delivery robots- Yes, we did...

and that are going around Miami, and they're still pretty clunky. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

But I have no doubt that, like, the burritos are gonna be delivered by robots. Right now, it might be pretty cold by the time it gets to you. Same thing kind of with, with agentic. It's clearly...

I don't know the timeframe. Yeah. How are you thinking about that? I, I mean, I think that...

Think about the teams, the, the teams at Hearst who are working on all of this. That, that's where my mind goes in terms of giving everybody the tools to play with AI, and sort of think about the day-to-day work they do, produce, whatever, and lean into it, and find good applications that may work for them or work for us. But having everybody really be open to learning and figuring it out so that as it evolves, we all evolve with it, and I guess get the burritos to you cleaner and faster, and not- Yeah, clean-...

stuck in traffic... clean connected, clean connected burritos. Clean connected data. That's what we want.

Final thing is I'm sure you've been, like, around the grounds here, and it's always a good litmus test of, you know, the various solutions providers that are about... I'm like, I'm shocked at the, the, the numbers. I'm used to like some s- there's new names that- Yeah... have like...

I feel like we might need to recycle some names from a previous era, but like there are new names. It is agentic everything. It is AI. How do you make sense of, of all of this?

I mean, you have seen these cycles, right- Yes... of solutions providers popping up. Yes. And people always then say there's too many of them, and then more pop up- Yeah...

and whatnot. I mean, I think it's, it's an interesting time to hear how people are thinking about applying these solutions and, you know, thinking about the, the things we wanna solve at Hearst, and whether there's a match or whether now is the right time. It is overwhelming though, absolutely. So we're figuring it out.

Okay. I'm figuring it out, so. Yeah. All right.

Together. Thank you so much. Thank you for this. It's been wonderful.

[upbeat music] Finally, I sat down with Avi Zemach, the Chief Growth Officer at Bustle Digital Group, about how BDG has reinvented itself around cultural moments and live activations after the volatility of SEO and social traffic really took out the founding principles of BDG. Brian Goldberg founded Bustle after hitting a home run with Bleacher Report. And you know, he... I, I give Brian a lot of credit, and we talk about it in these conversations, for changing with the times, you know?

Mm-hmm. His playbook basically got taken away from, so he's running a, a new playbook, okay? And you know, that playbook is basically how BDG is using legacy magazine brands like W and Nylon as basically credentialing mechanisms for... to combine with influencers, particularly around live events, you know, 'cause that's become the engine of this business.

And, and it's one that used to be built almost entirely around digital advertising. So here's my conversation with Avi. Welcome to TRB Conversations powered by XCO. We are here at Possible in Miami Beach, and I am joined by Avi Zemach.

Avi is recently- Recently... became the Chief Growth Officer at BDG, Bustle Digital Group. Bustle Digital Group. BDG Media.

I remember when, when Brian Goldberg, you know, started Bustle, and I gave an interview to, like, The New Yorker. They, they needed a quote, and I was like, "The New Yorker calls? Absolutely." And I said, "Oh, Brian's gonna run the same playbook he had at- Bleacher Report...

Bleacher Report." Yep. "And it's gonna be a, it's gonna be very SEO driven, and he's very good at operating those kinds of businesses. Keep the content costs low, and it'll be a digital ad business."

I think it was broadly right with the, the, the, the first iteration of it, but it's a totally different business now. Yes, it is. And a lot of that is almost like a back to the future in that Bustle acquired a bunch of sort of legacy magazine brands. Yep.

Go figure. Go figure. And those are like the- They're back... those are the growth parts of this business, right?

100%, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, it's interesting. Brian, he, he did run that playbook with Bustle, and very successfully. Yeah.

I think where his brilliance is, is he's a visionary. There's no question. He created Bleacher Report, sold it to Turner, created Bustle, built it out, built a really strong online property. But years ago, he was looking at the crystal ball.

We were all looking at the crystal ball and going, "Hold on a second. We're all beholden to traffic that's coming from Google and Meta and all the other places." And the volatility of that traffic was obviously detrimental to so many properties. I mean, they literally shut businesses down.

As he's watching this, I think Brian's probably better than anyone at, you know, squeezing the most juice outta that lemon, but he said, "This is not, [laughs] this is not the future of publishing. This is not the future of online. This is not the future of media," and I think very smartly pivoted his business and said, "We're going all in on cultural moments, and we're gonna go all in on creating activations and moments around these cultural moments that we can bring our brand partners into."

Yeah. And that me- that has shifted the business really from being primarily digital advertising driven to, like, activations. We call them events. We're at a massive activation- We're at a massive-...

right now... Possible it is. I have been, I have been, not, not far from here, completely out of place, at a massive Nylon party during Art Basel. Needed to see it up close.

It was purely for professional reasons. Of course. But it was impressive. There was like s- Yeah...

there... Not only was the crowd massive, but there were tons of activations that were going on within this, this party. Yeah. Like, explain how-You guys are seeing the role of these kind of media brands changing.

Yeah. So I mean, you know, for us, we've created this business, and I, I, I don't think anyone else is doing it. Uh, I don't really think anyone's doing it like us at all, and I don't know if anyone- any other media companies are doing it at all in the same means that we are. So we've essentially triangulated what it means to be inside these cultural moments with these activations, connecting the brands that we partner with, but also with the influencers and the celebrities that they wanna be attached to.

Right. So what we offer to brands, and I, I really don't mean to sound too sales pitchy here, but we're bringing the brands the influencers they wanna work with to these cultural moments at the events that we activate, and we're allowing them to actually create content inside these experiences, which are then amplified not only across our medium, but also through all these social handles that these influencers and celebrities have themselves. Yeah. And I think- Yeah...

that's the really interesting piece because, like, I remember talking with Brian about this, and it was basically... It's almost reporting, like, earned media, like, metrics- Yeah... versus, like, impressions or anything like that. It's- Yeah...

it, it... And it, it takes, like, partnering with influencers. I mean, we're in this moment where individuals are often outperforming institutional brands, right? 100%.

But institutional brands still have a lot of value in there. Yep. But partnering, like, makes a ton of sense. It does.

I mean, it- look, I've done... I, I'm new at BDG. Over the last year or so, I've done a lot of, we'll just call it study. I went back to school for a year, and I've, I've- Yeah...

taken other side courses and all this other fun stuff and really explored this world of influencer and social. And, you know, it- there's no secret, right? Influencers are their own brands. But I think there comes this point where they reach this glass ceiling of sorts as an influencer where they say, "Okay, how do I get past that 10 million, or that 15 million, or that five million?"

Or whatever the number is that they've got in their head of the space where they wanna c- consider themselves a success. How do they break past it? And what we're learning is that actually kind of anointing them with our brands or our seal, we actually created a, a membership around this where we're giving them, they're m- we're making these influencers Nylon members. By having the brand on top and kind of giving them...

I, I, I'd nearly make it akin to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval- Yeah... back in my Hearst days. Like, we're giving them the Nyloned Seal of Approval, and that's something that the influencers want because it helps them break through that, that glass ceiling and take them to the next level. So I think that connection piece between us kind of anointing these influencers and saying, "They're the real deal," aligning them with the brands, and then actually going out and creating content has been a, a real winning formula for us.

Yeah. So what is the playbook for... Let's just take W and Nylon. Yep.

Right? And, like, 'cause I think what's really interesting is... Bustle, I think BDG has, like, nine brands, right? Correct.

Like, but... And, and the old model was you had one playbook that you would wanna run across all the brands 'cause that's the scale advantage. Yep. Right?

But the reality today is that each brand needs its own playbook. Correct. They each have their own playbook, but I would also say, and this is something that I, I was challenged with stepping in. A few weeks ago, you know, my question to our editors, so we have these incredible editors in Sara Moonves, who runs all things W, and then we have Charlotte Owen, who runs the, the- Mm-hmm...

remainder of the BDG portfolio. You know, the question that I tasked them with, and I, and I was just trying to educate myself, was, you know, what is that connective tissue between the brands that we have? You know, we're a media company. As we look across the spectrum of both media companies and non-media companies, or companies that are trying to become media companies in whatever space, podcasting or events or, or pure play media, you know, what is that, that connective tissue that aligns all the brands we have?

And, you know, what kept coming up is that we get there first. We, we're shining a light on talent that not everyone knows about yet, they're kind of behind the scenes, but we're shining that light on them now and we're getting it first. W Magazine, for example, the current issue, we just announced Rihanna [laughs] is on the cover with her newborn baby. Like, no one else has Rihanna on the cover of their magazine with the newborn baby.

Meanwhile, we might look at Nylon, and Nylon will feature, you know, up-and-coming musical talent, actors. You know, we had Somber on the cover of Nylon before anyone else, and actually we just launched a new property called Nylon Guys. With Nylon, we just launched another new property. With W, a, a print title called W Youth we're very excited about, which was actually a brainstorm between Sara Moonves and Sofia Coppola.

But they each do, to your point, have their own point of view and their own unique space that they live within. But the connective tissue is that we get there first, number one. I think also we're taking this, this reader or this audience on a journey throughout their lifespan. So it's, you know, if you think about Nylon really reaching the, the It girl, this Gen Z-er, right?

Eventually, they become this girl who might, you know, not just be out at the parties all night and, you know, being the It girl, but rather this girl who's, like, walking through the village, you know, doing some shopping, sitting down with her friends at a local cafe, and then going back to her apartment that she just bought because she's a successful entrepreneur, and sitting on the beautiful couch that she just purchased and is really proud of, right? I would say that's more of a Bustle reader.

And then eventually you graduate to maybe Scary Mommy, another one of our brands, where it's like, "Oh, and now I'm a mom," and they wanna, you know, engage with that, that editorial and that content, to the point where you become a W reader, and now it's like, "Oh, wow, I, I can afford the finer things in life"- Yeah, yeah... like we were talking about earlier, in, in the world of luxury, which we do so well at. So that's just on an editorial front and how we connect the brands.

I think in terms of, you know, what the opportunities are or how we activate, to your point, W to this day remains, I think, one of, you know, the strongest print ba- brands in market, and arguably the strongest fashion luxury print brand in market, full stop. I think when you look at a brand like Bustle, which was really the, theThe, the initial property that Brian launched as he created this company, that still has a very strong online audience, its dedicated users. We're not trying to juice the numbers.

We're not out there being like, "Oh, look how many uniques we have," and, you know, slinging banners. It's a really c- clean, pristine experience, which if you look across our portfolio, it has that premium-like feel, and that's, like, really our, our strongest online asset. And then you've got Nylon, and then that takes us into this world of, you know, these cultural moments and events that we were speaking about earlier, where we activate in the largest cultural moments around the country, whether it's Coachella, and we do our Nyl- Nylon house, or whether it's this week during F1, and we're gonna have a couple Nylon nights at a really cool nightclub, or whether it's Art Basel, which was the, the party that you attended, uh- Yeah...

two years ago. So yeah, they each have their different way and approach. It's not that that's all they do. Mm-hmm.

W does great events, and Bustle does great events, and Nylon does great events, and also Nylon has a great online audience, and also a massive social following as well. Right. So just a final thing, though. Is, is in person is now...

I mean, it s- seems like it's the driver of the business now. It's the driver of the business. It, it's, it's a driver of our business, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we're also a very data-centric and data-focused company. So we have a proprietary system that we built in-house that we've had for years, which now we're throwing the AI layer on just to help make things faster and glean data, but we know every single user, every single person who comes to our event, every single one of our Nylon members.

We've got their name, their email, their address, their social handles. We understand whether they're gaining organic followings and traffic or whether they're using bots, and we, in, in mining that data and using AI to mine that data, we then have a human who actually says yay or nay to whether they should be a member- Right... or not. It doesn't mean they can't get into the party still, but, you know, we'll have 20,000 people apply to be a Nylon member, but we're only gonna allow in, I think we've let, allowed in 3,000 at this point because we need to make sure that they actually fit the bill.

That's on the data piece- Yeah... and we can talk more about that. I'm happy to go into detail. Yeah, I wanna know my score.

Yeah, I, I, I will give you your score. [laughs] You may or may not wanna know your score, Brian. On the live events piece, you know, for us it's a matter of... You know, I just got back from Coachella.

It's been a whirlwind. I've been here for five weeks. I've been... We were just talking earlier.

I've been to, to Coachella, then I had some meetings in LA. I've been to Miami. This is my third time in Miami. We had, we, we had John Summit, who if you're in the DJ scene, he's, like, the largest DJ ever.

He came and played our Ulta private music venue party that we did for free because he wanted to be associated with the Nylon brand, and it was, like, this amazing party- Oh, yeah... down at the 1 Hotel. Miami has a lot of DJs. [laughs] Miami has a lot of DJs, but they don't have access to John Summit- That's true...

who's like the DJ. But for us it's about getting these, our members, these influencers, these celebrities into the moment, into these different activations. They're running around, and then we've got the brands, and they're activating inside these live events where... I mean, just in Coachella we had Skechers handing out 1,000 pairs of free sneakers.

We had Trident. We had Matrix. We had Sally Hansen. We had e.

l.f. Beauty. We had Essie.

We had all these incredible brands that had these, these activations within our larger activation, and then we had 6,000 consumers there, of which the 6,000, 2,000 of them were Nylon members, which meant that they are people that we anointed with our Nylon membership, and we said y- you know, "You're, you're, you're part of us. You're part of our fabric," but that also means that they're influencers. They've got the right amount of followers. So they're running around the event creating content, creating content at the festival, creating content inside these different brand activations, and then they're amplifying it through their social handles, and then we're also amplifying it across our portfolio of brands.

Mm-hmm. So at the end of the day, you're getting millions and millions if not closer to a billion social impressions on top of the adjacency and the alignment with our brands online and/or in print. So that's, that's our, that's our, our ecosystem, if you will. Awesome.

Thank you, Avi. Thank you, Brian. Appreciate it. I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.