The Digiday Podcast

Influencers have developed a special knack for making a product go viral, selling it out seemingly overnight, and as more and more retailers and brands notice this, an opportunity has emerged for creators to take their talents (and followings) to new platforms to sell products in a more formalized manner. Enter influencer Katie Sands, who has run her lifestyle and fashion blog — as well as her Instagram account @HonestlyKate since 2016. In early 2020, she joined Amazon Live as one of its first live stream hosts to test, recommend and curate products from the online marketplace that are not only in line with her personal brand but will appeal to her followers to click the buy button. Sands has 332,000 followers on Instagram and she uses the social platform to give both fans of her blog and fans of her Amazon Live stream a look into her personal life, which is used to plan out the narratives and themes of each live stream. In the two-year period since acting as a host, she has accumulated anywhere from 1,000 to

The idea of an “overnight sensation” is often sensationalized when it comes to individual video creators. To accrue a sizable enough audience to become a full-time creator can require years of consistently posting videos and cultivating a community around them. But, thanks to adhering to a disciplined streaming schedule, Twitch streamer Blizzb3ar became a full-time creator in less than a year. During the pandemic, Blizzb3ar started more seriously live-streaming on the Amazon-owned video platform while working a day job for military contractor British Aerospace Engineering Systems. He gained a following thanks to his niche as a self-described “cozy streamer,” broadcasting himself playing less intense video games as well as building Lego sets and generally offering a space on the streaming platform for people looking to hang out. “Six, seven months in, I started trying out ‘just chatting’ content and just talking and seeing what it’s like to have a conversation with my community,” said Blizzb3ar in the latest e

Kris Collins was working as a hairdresser at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, and like so many others lost her job. But she soon found solace in posting content on TikTok that made her — and her fast-growing audience — laugh. By July 1 that year, she hit 1 million followers on her TikTok page, @KallMeKris. Once that number quadrupled to 4 million, she decided to add YouTube into the mix to try and diversify her audience and give fans more long-form content. “After that first million I thought it was going to stop [but] then it just kept going,” said Collins on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “I think I was in a constant state of denial until I was over 10 million [followers] on TikTok.” Now Collins has over 43 million followers on TikTok, 5.7 million subscribers on YouTube and almost 2 million followers on Instagram. Collins built her following without qualifying (as a Canadian) for TikTok's creator fund, which made it all that more pressing to have direct brand deals across all three platf

Creator duo Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry have a YouTube channel with more than 700,000 subscribers. But a little more than two years ago, they came close to calling it quits. “I have our 2019 [profit and loss record], and we were $18,000 in the hole,” said Chaudry in the latest Digiday Podcast episode. While the pair was producing videos for their YouTube channel “Colin and Samir,” their primary source of income was elsewhere. “We were doing freelance production projects, getting paid very little to do them, and that’s what was funding the channel,” he said. Then, in early 2020, Samsung offered Rosenblum and Chaudry an annual contract to become brand ambassadors. Securing that income provided the pair an opportunity to finally figure out the focus of their YouTube channel. The lack of content focus had been a strain since 2016 when they left Team Whistle — to which they had sold their previous company The Lacrosse Network — and struck out on their own as independent creators. “We went through three to fo

As a publication specializing in fashion and beauty, Vice Media Group’s Refinery29 has its origins in commingling content and commerce. Now the outlet is looking to extend its expertise to live shoppable video. “We’re going to start live testing [live shoppable video] in the spring. We’re considering YouTube as a our starting place, and we’re probably going to start with beauty because it’s a strong category for us,” said Refinery29 global editor-in-chief Simone Oliver in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, which was recorded in front of a live audience at the Digiday Publishing Summit on March 29. With live shoppable video, Refinery29 expects to take a similar tact that it has adopted with its commerce content overall: Allowing its audience to experience products vicariously through its editorial staff. “We know for us creating that sense of community, having our editors out front, having their faces in front is really important,” Oliver said.As Oliver said of Refinery29’s overarching approach to comm

In his forty years of experience in TV production -- spanning shows including Fox’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” NBC’s “American Ninja Warrior” and Netflix’s “Floor is Lava” Arthur Smith has seen plenty of changes. Nothing like the past two years, though. “There was a point between March and July [2020] where we were stuck in neutral. We couldn’t produce anything,” the chairman of A. Smith & Co. Productions said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. Effectively overnight, six of Smith’s shows that had been slated to go into production that spring were put on ice. “The day that the NBA canceled their season was the day that we were supposed to start shooting [the new season of “American Ninja Warrior”] in Los Angeles. We were all set up, all ready to go -- and we canceled it as well,” he said. As quickly as the entire production industry came to a halt, though, projects soon began to return to production in the summer of 2020, albeit with significant adjustments. Two years later, there remain differences compared

Crypto trade publication Blockworks is on track to earn $20 million in revenue this year, up from $13 million in 2021 and a large part of that strategy is targeting a new wave of wealth — DAOs. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are basically clubs for crypto enthusiasts, but they can be as organized and official as a company. Most typically operate under a shared goal and give each member an equal say in making decisions. As members have to buy into the DAO, they can potentially have more money than most clubs would ever know what to do with — sometimes billions of dollars worth of crypto, according to Jason Yanowitz, co-founder of Blockworks. In the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Yanowitz and co-founder Michael Ippolito explain why they’re training their sales staff to pitch DAOs on advertising opportunities and how brutally honest yet helpful the feedback can be from thousands of DAO members. And as a blockchain native publication, Ippolito and Yanowitz dig into their NFT strategy and wh

One year ago, Overtime announced it was creating its own basketball league made up of 16- to 18-year- old players — a demographic representative of the sports’ publishers’ audience. Called the Overtime Elite League (or OTE), the social media-first sports publisher used some of the $80 million raised last year in its series C to build a basketball arena, boarding school and dorm facility in Atlanta, and recruit 27 high school-aged athletes, all of whom are paid six-figure salaries, to get the league off the ground. As the three-team league wraps its first official season, Overtime’s co-founder and president Zack Weiner came on the Digiday Podcast to talk about the advertiser-based business model his team has created around the Elite League. The ultimate goal for making the league profitable, however, is to sell the live game rights to a network or streaming platform, which is the money maker for professional leagues, like the NFL, NBA and MLB. Currently, OTE’s games are not broadcast to Overtime’s audience, bu

Mark Garner’s job would have been much simpler a decade ago. As evp of global content sales and business development at A+E Networks, he’s charged with doing deals to distribute the company’s own original programming. “My job is to sell all the content that we have in our library and all of our upcoming content that we’re producing on a go-forward basis across a multitude of partners,” Garner said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “Multitude” may not capture the magnitude of distribution outlets. In the past, the distribution would have been largely limited to selling the shows through storefronts, be they brick-and-mortar like Blockbuster or digital like Apple’s iTunes. But the scope of those deals now spans the spectrum of streaming services, from Netflix and Discovery+ to The Roku Channel and Crackle. And then there are A+E Networks’ own streaming properties, including its 24/7 channels running on free, ad-supported streaming TV services. Setting up these deals isn’t so simple as selling to the

While some brands are flocking to the blockchain by launching NFTs or establishing themselves in the metaverse, other companies are still on either side of the spectrum. From contemplating whether their customers are ready for a new virtual shopping reality, or if the crypto-native internet users will be receptive to their brand’s debut in Web3, not all companies are ready to embrace the blockchain. But in these early stages of blockchain development, what a lot of brands aren’t realizing is that the move to Web3 doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing transition and can be taken gradually and thoughtfully. That’s how Amanda Cassatt sees it, according to the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. Cassatt is a pioneer in Web3, having assisted in the launch of the Ethereum blockchain as well as co-founding two companies, Serotonin and its subsidiary Mojito, both of which work with companies to find their footing in the Web3 space. As CEO of marketing agency Serotonin, her team works on customer acquisition strateg

In 2021, Integral Ad Science (IAS) took the plunge into the connected TV space with the acquisition of Publica, a company that sells ad inventory for CTV publishers.  This was a departure for IAS as it primarily focused on measurement verification and brand safety standards, but CEO Lisa Utzschneider said that it was the right combination of skills, insights and data coming together that enabled the newly combined company to be a one-stop-shop for marketers transacting in the CTV space.  Of course, as consolidation in the advertising tech industry takes place, monitoring potential opportunities for conflict of interest will be necessary for the buyers operating in this space, but in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Utzschneider said that IAS’s and Publica’s clients haven’t expressed concerns. That’s because the trust that both companies instilled in clients before the merger has carried through thanks to a deliberately long collaboration period prior to the point of sale, giving clients the chance t

In the entertainment industry, there’s a term called “multi-hyphenate” that refers to people who may act, direct, write, produce, sing and/or perform other crafts. As an entertainment journalist at The Undefeated, Kelley Carter is familiar with this term. She also embodies it as a journalist. Beyond her text-based reporting, Carter hosts podcasts — including ABC Audio’s recently debuted “Close Up” which features interviews with the who’s who of Hollywood and releases new episodes on Wednesdays — and is an Emmy-winning video journalist and co-runs a production company that is developing a TV show for Showtime. “A lot of this became an accident. I wasn’t necessarily seeking out to do anything other than what I was doing, which at the time was a newspaper reporter,” Carter said. Her experience at print newspapers also helped to familiarize Carter with the business side of journalism and the often tenuous terms of journalists’ employment statuses.  During her time at the Chicago Tribune, she saw other journalists

After the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in May 2020, many journalism outlets and journalists spent time reckoning with how the news industry could improve its coverage for Black people. Among those journalists was Lauren Williams, who was editor-in-chief and svp of Vox Media’s news property Vox.com at the time.  Williams and a former colleague Akoto Ofori-Atta — then-managing editor of non-profit news outlet The Trace — decided to leave their respective newsrooms to form their own, Capital B, a nonprofit news organization officially launched on Jan. 31 and focused on covering the news for Black people. “I do really think that, if I had gone to Jim Bankoff — who’s the CEO of Vox Media — and said, ‘I really want to do something different,’ I think he would have heard me in that moment and would have been open to discussing something. But I didn’t do that,” Williams said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. One reason Williams and Ofori-Atta opted to set off on their own is because they bel

Vice Media Group’s digital division, like many digital media outlets, currently generates the majority of its revenue from advertising. And like many media companies, VMG’s digital arm is on a revenue diversification kick. “It is my goal to get into 2024 to have a third of revenue coming from ad-supported, a third [from] commerce and then a third [from] consumer,” VMG chief digital officer Cory Haik said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. She acknowledged the aim “is ambitious for us” but discussed how VMG’s digital division — which is profitable — is already chipping away at the undertaking. Last year the company debuted a new commerce vertical called Rec Room and also introduced a subscription product, Waypoint+, for its gaming publication Waypoint. During the interview, she discussed different ways in which VMG will be building on those initial moves, such as by rolling out affiliate content on new properties like fashion and culture vertical i-D and adding a reader donation option for its news

Daniella Pierson founded the daily lifestyle- and business-focused newsletter, The Newsette, while on break during her sophomore year of college, and over seven years, has turned it into a $40 million business. That's thanks to, she said, a subscriber base of 500,000, that helped lead the company to end 2021 with a profit worth eight figures. Now, the 26-year-old entrepreneur, who also serves as the CEO of the media company, is planning to invest millions of dollars throughout the company to grow the business this year, including the newly formed creative agency arm, called Newland. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Pierson acknowledged that growth didn't come without challenges: “It really was touch and go until the last few years,” she said, and her team only recently doubled in size this year to 25 people. It’s “really important for young entrepreneurs to know that just because something isn't taking off and making millions of dollars a year or two, doesn't mean that it can't and year five.” Pi

Over the past eight years, Leaf Group (formerly known as Demand Media until 2016) has transformed itself from a SEO-focused content farm to a commerce-driven media company that sold for $323 million to Graham Holdings last June. Much of that transition was done at the hands of CEO Sean Moriarty, who wanted to build a portfolio of expert-led content that readers turn to when making purchases. And now the media side of the business earns about two-thirds of its revenue from its commerce business, Moriarty said on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. Moriarty joined Leaf Group after the media company acquired online art marketplace Saatchi Art in August 2014, where he had served as CEO for a year. The addition of the artwork marketplace (and Society6, another marketplace Leaf Group acquired in 2013 that turns its network of artists’ designs into buyable HomeGoods) has taught the media properties in the portfolio a lot about e-commerce, he said.

To many, the metaverse might feel like an obscure, perhaps mysterious, part of the internet that’s exclusive to gamers, NFT collectors and over zealous tech CEOs.  However, as the metaverse develops, the truth is that it has the potential to reshape the entirety of the online world in ways a lot of people don’t expect. The metaverse could be the solution to universal ID, a way to better connect scattered workforces and provide a new e-commerce strategy for brands and retailers looking to reach younger consumers. “Really the most important thing when people say the word metaverse is that they're just talking about a version of the internet, where when you go to Reddit or you go to Facebook or you go to Instagram, you are the same person,” said Digiday esports and gaming reporter Alexander Lee during the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. “You don't have different profiles or identities across those platforms. You are just yourself moving around in virtual space. ”But to get to that point, there is still mu

In its tenth year of being in business and after a string of publisher purchases — which have included The Players’ Tribune and FanSided — Minute Media made its first tech-centric acquisition in 2021 with the pickup of publishing tech platform Wazimo in November. The acquisition reflects how tech is becoming a bigger component of Minute Media’s overall business and how its B2B tech revenue is becoming interwoven with its advertising revenue “The B2B side of our business, it’ll end up [in 2021 having accounted for] 60-ish percent of our revenue. It’s a big part of that business. We’re as much of a tech company as we are a publishing business,” Minute Media president Rich Routman said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. The lines between Minute Media’s tech and publishing businesses are even blurrier than that. That percentage of overall revenue represented by B2B actually includes advertising revenue. While Minute Media does some deals in which it licenses its technology to companies for a fee, it al

This year was not a quiet one for the industries that Digiday covers and the reporters who have had their ears close to the ground joined the Digiday Podcast to talk about the challenges and trends that they’ve been covering on their beats as well as what we’ll continue to closely watch in 2022, including cookie apocalypse preparedness, mitigating platforms’ influence on media buying, and how the return to office is an ever looming presence.

BET actually entered the streaming wars before Disney and Apple. Two months before the debuts of Disney+ and Apple TV+, the ViacomCBS-owned TV network rolled out its own subscription-based streamer BET+. Now, as the current streaming era enters its third year, BET is preparing some updates to its streaming strategy in 2022, including testing an ad-supported tier and selling a subscription bundle with sibling streamer Paramount+. “We are very excited about the premium positioning that we’ve established with BET+, and so we’re working through what is the approach to a premium service with an ad-supported model. What I think our audience will see in 2022 is us kind of experimenting with different pricing models to see what their response is to those,” said BET CEO Scott Mills in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast. Having overseen the launch of BET+ in 2019 while serving as president of BET, Mills was named CEO of the TV network owner in November 2019. But, as he explained in the interview, that was mainly