Molly Burke and Tyler Oakley joined YouTube more than a decade ago and built their respective online followings by advocating for the causes and communities of people that were important to them — even if it wasn’t always the easiest way to rapidly grow given the platform’s algorithm.Since then, Burke and Oakley both expanded to additional platforms, like Patreon and Twitch, to continue garnering meaningful relationships with their followers. While Burke said she’s been able to learn a lot about her viewers personally through Patreon, Oakley said that two-way direct communication on Twitch has been instrumental in how he creates content in the moment.In the fourth and final episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Burke and Oakley discuss why advocacy and speaking from the heart has always been central to their strategies as long-form video content creators, and why that’s helped grow their audiences and businesses.

In a world where video has become the predominant medium for content creators, Substack offers a reprieve in the form of the written word.The subscription-based newsletter platform received a surge of interest during the pandemic, garnering hundreds of new creators — including Hunter Harris and Caroline Chambers — who were interested in monetizing their ideas without always needing to jump in front of a camera. And less than four years later, the platform has enabled these creators to monetize their content via thousands of paid and unpaid subscribers — not to mention advertiser sponsorship, affiliate links or even book deals.In the third episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Harris and Chambers discuss how they’ve transitioned their Substack subscriber bases into communities that ultimately help them feed the funnel of audience engagement.

Ben and Lazara Martin, a family of social media creators with nearly 8 million followers, share their journey from part-time vloggers to full-time content creators. They discuss navigating the influencer world, maintaining relevance across platforms, engaging with their audience, and building successful brand partnerships. The podcast highlights the challenges and successes of being a family of social media mavens in the ever-evolving creator landscape.

As a platform, X (formerly Twitter) has seen better days. After Elon Musk took over back in 2022, the platform has fallen from grace with advertisers and creators alike, due to the reinstatement of previously banned accounts, an increase in bots and simultaneous decrease in brand safety. However, X hasn’t managed to scare away everyone.In fact, Jessica Davis, a part-time creator who focuses on career content, has managed to build out a following of more than 40,000 people since starting her account in 2021. Since then, she's been able to convince subscribers and brands to shell out for her tweets, pulling in revenue from monthly subscriptions and funds from the platform's ad revenue sharing program, which launched last summer.In the first episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Davis talks about being a text-based content creator in the short-form video era, navigating brand safety on X and the future of content creation in the ever changing landscape of social media.

Formed in 2020 after TPG bought Goal.com from DAZN, FootballCo has been steadily growing an international audience of soccer fans across its portfolio of nine brands.But this year, FootballCo is making a concerted effort to appeal to the burgeoning fandom of U.S.-based soccer enthusiasts under the leadership of Jason Wagenheim, CEO, North America.Wagenheim, previously the CRO of Bustle Digital Group, joined FootballCo having never before worked in sports media, but that’s what he said his bosses were interested in. Having led the advertising businesses for many lifestyle media companies in his career, Wagenheim said his goal is to convert “soccer curious” advertisers into active spenders by blending lifestyle and sports content into a video-dominant mix that appeals to non-sports native brands.And with many global soccer sporting events coming up in North America over the next couple of years, culminating in the men’s World Cup in 2026, Wagenheim is hitting the ground running, using these tentpole moments to appeal to advertisers and audiences alike in this market.

Like other companies, Canva has been in growth mode recently, looking to scoop up new audiences to grow the Australian design platform’s user base. Notably, headlines from The Information and Barron's dance around Canva possibly going public in the coming years, but no concrete timeline has been announced.In the meantime, the focus is expanding the Australian-based company to other markets around the world, like India, Germany, Japan and Europe, according to Zach Kitschke, CMO at Canva.“We've made some huge strides there over the past few years, but 170 million [Canva users] is just a drop in the ocean of the total population around the world,” he said.Canva has also been prioritizing its artificial intelligence capabilities, which has become the industry’s latest obsession. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Kitschke to talk about Canva’s marketing strategy, global growth initiative and plans for AI.

 In the era of so-called subscription fatigue, subscription clothing rental service Nuuly has managed to not only increase its number of subscribers, but also turn a profit while its competitors are scrambling for profitability.Nuuly, which is owned by Urban Outfitters, hit its first growth spurt in Q3 of last year. Nuuly's net sales came in about $65.5 million last October, up from $35.2 million in that same quarter the year prior, marking a nearly 86% increase, according to the company's earnings report. The clothing rental company also amassed nearly 200,000 subscribers as of last December, according to a spokesperson.On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we caught up with Kim Gallagher, executive director of marketing at Nuuly to talk about the company's growth plans through 2024 and beyond.“This is not the sexy answer, but we feel like we are in this unique spot of we’ve had a lot of growth, we’ve just achieved our first profitable quarter and we still feel like we have a lot of work to do to make our service as good as it can possibly be,” Gallagher said on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. “It’s been a couple of years of chasing growth, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, you know what? Let’s just focus on the core for a minute.”

A presidential election year has the potential to be a boon for news and politics publishers when it comes to drawing in and monetizing audiences. But even though 2024 is a lot like 2020 on paper, platform performance issues and an unreliable ad market may make this election cycle less lucrative than hoped.For Newsweek’s global chief commercial and growth officer Kevin Gentzel, this means testing out new audience growth strategies and revenue streams to get back to growth this year.“We did end the year with some growth, which was great, [but we] didn't achieve what we set out to accomplish in [2023]. But I feel like we strategically started to sow seeds throughout the year that we knew were going to strategically benefit the business, our readers, brand partners, and start to develop other core commercial aspects of the company that we're beginning to see in 2024 and beyond,” said Gentzel.On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Gentzel discusses how his team is generating referral traffic from alternative platforms, why political advertising dollars are hard to compete for and how Newsweek is looking to monetize readers with new subscription offerings.

Digiday Media's WorkLife is proud to present season three of The Return, a podcast about the modern workforce, with this season focused on middle management.Last season, we heard what it’s like for Gen Z to enter the workforce for the first time in a post-pandemic world. We highlighted themes like why values are so important to Gen Zers, whether or not they are loyal to their employers, how they use TikTok for career advice, what it means to be a young professional who is a boss to older workers, and so much more.This time, we’re hearing from the population of workers that some argue is the backbone of a successfully-run organization: middle management. They are the ones who are navigating those RTO mandates, welcoming a new generation of workers that have a different approach than those who came before them, the rise of artificial intelligence – the list goes on.In season three of The Return, we speak to middle managers themselves to hear beyond their everyday stresses of the job, but what they need to guarantee everyone they manage has what they need to be the best at what they do. C-suite, listen up because they need your help too.We dive into how middle management stress is a decades-long issue (there are New York Times headlines dating back to 1971), how the wrong people are being chosen to be managers which is leading to the rise of “accidental managers,” what it’s like to have hard conversations and having to be a therapist at times, where people are finding support as a middle manager, and how AI is impacting the job of a middle manager.With a Q+A format, you will hear in-depth conversations with folks including Colette Stallbaumer, Microsoft’s general manager of Microsoft 365 and Future of Work Marketing, Rob Pierre, former CEO of advertising services platform Jellyfish, and Emily Field, partner at McKinsey & Company who co-authored “Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Keys to the Future of Work,” to name a few.Season three of The Return is hosted by Cloey Callahan, senior reporter at Digiday Media’s WorkLife, and produced by Digiday Media’s audio producer Sara Patterson.Subscribe to the WorkLife podcast now on Apple Podcasts – or wherever you get your podcasts – to hear the first episode on Tuesday, April 23.

The 25-year-old fashion, entertainment and culture publication Nylon went digital-only in 2017, but owner BDG is officially reviving the print magazine this year – albeit biannually.Debuting with a limited 50,000-issue run, the magazine will be distributed on newsstands, in the lobbies of high end boutiques, hotels and airport lounges and at Nylon House events, vs. being available via subscriptions, according to Emma Rosenblum, chief content officer at BDG. But that number and distribution model could change based on the reception from readers and advertisers alike, she added.And so far, the advertiser reception has been better than expected, with the premier issue featuring several ad pages. Rosenblum said that she was willing to put out the first relaunched issue of Nylon without any advertisers signing on, just to get a proof of concept in order. But with the sales team already up to snuff on selling a print product thanks to six-times-per year W magazine, securing ad revenue was possible before the first issue went to print.On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Rosenblum discusses the highs and lows of making a print product and why Nylon was the first brand within her remit to have a physical iteration.