The Digiday Podcast

This week’s episode recaps Google’s latest AI-related announcements, OpenAI’s hardware plans following its acquisition of io and Publicis Groupe’s purchase of Captiv8 to bolster its influencer marketing business. Then Google vp of global ads Dan Taylor (18:03) joins the show to discuss how the search giant is transforming its search advertising business for the AI era.

Digiday senior reporter Sam Bradley joins the show this week to recap the highs and lows of last week’s Upfront Week presentations in New York City, two major pay-TV and internet providers’ merger plans and Microsoft’s decision to shut down its demand-side platform. Then (19:45) Horizon Media’s president of global investment David Campanelli breaks down the state of play as TV and streaming’s annual upfront ad marketplace gets under way.

On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, co-hosts Kimeko McCoy, senior marketing reporter, and Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio, talk about the new SEO playbook in the AI era, why OpenAI is poaching Instacart’s CEO; and what Netflix’s new home screen means for product recommendations and, ultimately, ad personalization.

This week’s Digiday Podcast episode recaps the gloomy Q2 outlook in Meta’s, Amazon’s and Snap’s latest quarterly earnings reports, the roll-out of ads to AI chatbots and how Roku’s FrndlyTV acquisition could set it up to be a bigger streaming aggregator. Then Digiday senior media buying editor Michael Bürgi joins hosts Kimeko McCoy and Tim Peterson (19:27) to break down what are set to be the hot topics heading into this year’s TV and streaming advertising upfront market.

On this week’s episode of the Digiday podcast co-hosts Kimeko McCoy, senior marketing reporter, and Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio, talk about Google’s U-turn, keeping its third-party cookies in Chrome after all and the ripple effects of its anti-trust case fallout. Also on this episode, Hillary Kupferberg, vp of performance marketing at Exverus Media, breaks down the art of the JBP (joint business plan) deal in retail media (18:58).

On the Digiday Podcast this week, hosts Kimeko McCoy, senior marketing reporter and Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio, discuss the ripple effects of President Donald Trump's tariffs on the marketing and advertising industry (18:20). To make sense of all the tariff talk, they are joined by senior marketing editor Kristina Monllos and senior reporter Sam Bradley. Also on this episode, Peterson and McCoy discuss big tech’s antitrust trials, including the long-awaited ruling in Google’s ad tech antitrust battle with the Justice Department, OpenAI’s rumored X-like social media network and Netflix’s latest earnings.

This week’s episode recaps the topsy-turvy tariff changes, Walmart’s rising retail media demands and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against Meta. Then TikTok creator Alyssa McKay (16:17) joins to discuss how Snapchat and Instagram Reels could fill the TikTok void if the ByteDance-owned platform ends up being banned.

On the Digiday Podcast this week, hosts Kimeko McCoy, senior marketing reporter and Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio, discuss the TikTok ban’s second extension (yes, it has been extended yet again), tariff’s trickle down effects and why agency holding companies are looking to bolster the data capabilities. Also on this episode, Amie Owen (17:28), chief commerce officer at Kinesso, a performance marketing agency within IPG Mediabrands, breaks down how economic uncertainty impacts retail media spend negotiations, otherwise known as joint business planning (JBP), as well as what’s to blame for retail media’s executive dysfunction.

This week’s episode examines the gloomy ad market outlook, Apple’s App Tracking Transparency troubles and ad verification vendors’ bot blind spots. Then Dotdash Meredith svp and gm of D/Cipher Lindsay Van Kirk joins to discuss how the publisher has enlisted OpenAI to give its contextual ad targeting product a AI-assisted boost.

Sara Jerde, managing editor at Digiday, joins this week's episode of the Digiday Podcast to talk about Apple's $1 billion streaming TV loss, Ben & Jerry's ousted CEO and of course, Perplexity's proposal to buy TikTok the countdown to the ban continues. Also on this episode, Digiday senior media reporter Sara Guaglione and senior entertainment media reporter Alexander Lee joined the Digiday Podcast to preview the hot topics likely to dominate discussions with publishers during the spring edition of the Digiday Publishing Summit (22:49).

This week's episode of the Digiday Podcast covers recession fears and signals, and their impact on the market, how streaming networks are looking to scoop up YouTube creators for shows and Scope3’s plans to pivot, bringing the ad tech company into the AI era. Also on this episode, Digiday platforms reporter Krystan Scanlon walks through the ever-looming TikTok ban, and how it could impact marketers, users and creators alike.

This week's episode of the Digiday Podcast covers T-Mobile and Publicis Groupe's ad tech acquisitions amidst the "everything's an ad network" narrative, the TikTok ban tug-of-war and YouTube's new subscription service, Premium Lite. Also on this episode, Pinterest's chief revenue officer Bill Watkins walks through the platform's play for more ad dollars this year with AI-powered tools, a focus on performance marketing and balancing more ads with the user experience. 

Puck’s famed journalist-centric publishing model is changing. Sort of. The news outlet debuted in 2021 with its journalists as the company’s audience-facing focal point, not the publication. People would subscribe less so to Puck than to Matthew Belloni’s or Julia Ioffe’s newsletters via Puck. And Puck’s journalists were, in part, compensated directly for the subscribers they attracted. Lately though, Puck’s newsletters have come to resemble publications in their own right. “You almost have sub-brands under Puck that are franchises anchored by core talent versus in probably that first two years, it was a newsletter anchored by core talent,” said Puck CEO Sarah Personette on the latest Digiday Podcast episode. Belloni’s entertainment-oriented “What I’m Hearing” newsletter, for example, has enlisted contributors like legal expert Eriq Gardner and, most recently, former The Hollywood Reporter editor Kim Masters. Similarly, Lauren Sherman’s fashion-centric “Line Sheet” regularly features entries from retail write

In January, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission finalized an updated version of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. And for as much attention as the update may have received, it probably merits more. “It is a big deal. And I think because there’s been so much other activity in the news, people haven’t really paid attention to it,” Debbie Reynolds, a privacy expert and founder, CEO and chief data privacy officer at Debbie Reynolds Consulting, said on the latest Digiday Podcast episode. The primary reason the COPPA update warrants attention is that it requires companies to receive verifiable parental consent before they can target ads to children. Clear cut as that requirement may appear to be, complying with it may be more complicated. “Part of the confusion around privacy and the challenge companies will have with the update of COPPA is trying to figure out how to do things like how do you get verifiable quote-unquote parental consent beyond just having someone click a button to say, ’Hey, yeah, my pa

The house built around diversity, equity and inclusion is coming apart brick by brick. Since last summer, brands, retailers, holding companies and, most recently the federal government, have been dismantling (or retooling) DEI initiatives, many of which were built up after the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter Movement of 2020. The “diversity” portion of diversity, equity and inclusion has become divisive, impacting multicultural marketing agencies, Black-owned brands and diverse publications. And they're starting to feel the ripple effects, according to Kirk McDonald, CEO of Sundial Media Group, holding company for brands like Essence magazine, Afropunk festival and Refinery29. Although, he said, it’s too early to tell the full impact DEI’s retooling (or rebrand) will have on the industry in terms of media spend, marketing budgets or consumer habits. McDonald recently sat down with the Digiday Podcast to talk about how Sundial’s diverse publications, geared toward women and other histo

Google’s long kiss goodnight with third-party cookies seems never-ending at this point, as the tech giant's cookie phase-out plans still remain unclear. Seemingly, Google's plan to ask Chrome users to opt in to cookie-based tracking is reflective of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) move a few years back. Sure, marketers have long since seen the writing on the wall with this. But, as the future of third-party cookies remains rather ambiguous, marketing and brand executives, including Rankin Carroll, global chief brand officer at Mars Snacking, have started eyeing partnerships and leveraging artificial intelligence to fill in the gaps, with an eye toward a cookie-less future. “We had what we had, and it was the norm for the standard for the industry,” Carroll said on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “As we move beyond that, we're focused on innovating.” In talking with Digiday, Carroll laid out Mars’ plans to scale its first-party data across brands like M&Ms and Snickers and the role partnership

Last year Architectural Digest switched up its e-commerce strategy. Having added affiliate links to its “Open Door” YouTube series showcasing celebrities’ decked-out abodes in 2021, the Condé Nast-owned publication started redirecting viewers from the Google-owned video platform to its own site to shop the decor. “It’s a much, much deeper, richer experience for the user to go to our site. It’s more fully shopped-out there, and it’s more visual. We can put photos of all the items,” sad Amy Astley, global editorial director at Architectural Digest, on the latest Digiday Podcast episode. The strategy shift has coincided with the publication doubling its commerce revenue in the past two years. And it’s not like the previous approach of embedding affiliate links on-platform in the YouTube videos’ descriptions wasn’t working. But having a place on AD’s own site for people to shop the products featured in the “Open Door” videos seems to be working even more. “We saw a four-times increase in the revenue from ‘Open Do

Remember when 2025 was supposed to be the first official year of the post-cookie era? Well, clearly that hasn’t happened and seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. And it certainly won’t happen until sometime after Google introduces its user choice mechanism in Chrome for people to allow or block third-party cookies. “If there’s wild amounts of opt-in, then yeah, the third-party cookie in the Chrome ecosystem is probably alive and well. If there’s [a] wild amount of opt-out, if there’s no critical mass around the third-party cookie, then it is effectively dead, even if it lives on in some small percentage. We just — we don’t know how that’s going to shake out,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab, in the latest Digiday Podcast episode, which was recorded on the eve of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs, Calif., which concludes on Jan. 28. If Katsur had his way, though, the third-party cookie wouldn’t be on the chopping block in the first place. Moreover, other

Over the last year, marketers have been shelling out dollars to show up in sports, the supposed last bastion of monocultural moments and opportunity to get ads in front of a massive audience. There's been an uptick of interest in unconventional sports like pickleball, and women’s sports. Streaming platforms like Netflix bet big on live sports in hopes to bring in more money from advertisers. Finally, since the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) approved its name, image and likeness (NIL) policy back in 2021, the lines between influencers and athletes is becoming more blurred. That said, it’s getting more difficult for brands to stand out from one another as more advertisers flock to the space. That’s true even for a brand as big as Verizon, according to Nick Kelly, Verizon’s vp of partnerships. “We have to find something that we can own,” Kelly told Digiday. In this episode of the podcast, Kelly sits down with co-host Kimeko McCoy, senior marketing reporter at Digiday, to talk about its revamped

Omnicom Group’s pending acquisition of Interpublic Group seems especially timely in the hindsight of last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. A major talking point among the brand and agency executives in attendance was the onset of the so-called agentic era of artificial intelligence, in which AI tools handle multi-step tasks for people like booking a full travel itinerary — or firing off a client brief. In this era, data will be at even more of a premium than it is today “If you think about the IPG acquisition, we will have a broader platform to to do things. We will have the broadest dataset on the buy side anywhere in the world, and more expertise, more clients,” Jonathan Nelson, CEO of the agency holding company’s digital arm Omnicom Digital, said on the latest Digiday Podcast, which was recorded in person at CES. The combined company will also have Omni AI, a product that Omnicom is developing to combine various foundational large language models. “We’re putting that on every employee’s deskt