The Digiday Podcast

A large portion of the world's TikTok videos have been created by individuals (and many are quite young) on a mission to say something funny. But Flighthouse has made the crafting of TikTok videos into a company business, relying on a content studio with all trappings of a Gen Z-styled television production set."Flighthouse is basically the largest entertainment brand on TikTok right now," said the company's CEO Jacob Pace on this week's episode of the Digiday Podcast. "We're really the only ones producing original content."If TikTok becomes a stalwart media channel as opposed to being a mere flash in the pan, content production companies like Flighthouse will have something to do with it, Pace said.On the podcast, Pace shared his insights about TikTok's similarities with YouTube, the advent of Quibi and what kind of content works best on TikTok.

Geoff Schiller served as chief revenue officer of PopSugar until stepping into a similar role for Group Nine, the company that acquired it late last year. And some aspects of the two companies' strategies remain much the same.The PopSugar playbook was all about its verticals: "pets, finance, food, all the way through," Schiller said on this week's episode of the Digiday Podcast. "With how that scales across Group Nine, it works even better because now you have five brands to play with," he said, referring to Thrillist, NowThis, PopSugar, Seeker and The Dodo.Group Nine's editorial emphasis on a young demographic and optimism seems to have rubbed off on Schiller as he goes about his work trying to diversify his company's revenue streams, with advertising remaining a big piece of the pie.Young readers "spend more time with us than anyone else in the entire competitive set," Schiller boasted, referring to estimates the company has made based on Comscore research.Schiller discussed how his media group is capitalizing on its name recognition to stage events and the way his company is diversifying its revenue sources beyond advertising, as well as competition between legacy media companies and young digital challengers.

Eric Yang started Gear Patrol as a side hustle to his job at CBS because the publications he knew we missing the mark when it came to product coverage."The men's magazines out there -- GQ, Esquire -- they were increasingly unrelatable to me," Yang said on this week's episode of the Digiday Podcast. "For me it wasn't about a Brioni suit and living your best lifestyle in New York. I had my own personal interests, and that for me crossed over between automotive and tech, and you had magazines that were just really focused on bro culture in men."That was in 2007. A few years later as Gear Patrol took off, Yang and his colleague Ben Bowers quit their jobs at CBS to dedicate themselves to the site full-time. They've since announced a minority stake investment from Hearst (last April), launched a print magazine and e-commerce efforts and landed about 5.5 million unique visitors in what was recently their "best month ever," in Yang's estimation."We've been profitable every single year at Gear Patrol except for the year we took investment because we were growing," Yang said.He adds that about 40 to 50% of their traffic comes from SEO, not social media or other sources. "It's a lot of direct traffic, and the direct traffic is actually growing, for us."Yang talked about when he decided to leave CBS and make growing Gear Patrol his full-time job, the thin line between media and commerce companies and how the website's reluctance to depend on social media turned out to be a smart move.

This week's episode of the Digiday Podcast is a look ahead at what 2020 may have in store for the publishing industry.The site's reporters weigh in on the beats they know so well: Tim Peterson breaks down the streaming wars that have only just begun, the UK-based Lara O’Reilly makes predictions on a future that goes "beyond the cookie," and Max Willens explains how publishers' revenue streams may change in the New Year.

Sara Fischer, media reporter at Axios, joined the Digiday Podcast for the first of two year-end wrap-up episodes looking ahead to 2020.On this week's episode, Fischer weighs in on why the flurry of digital media acquisitions in 2019 will continue into 2020 and why next year regulation will be in the spotlight. (Next week, Digiday media reporters Tim Peterson, Lara O'Reilly and Max Willens will add their own outlooks for the year ahead in media.)

Gaming is often thought of as a subculture, but it’s just as dominant a part of youth culture today as music. For gaming companies, that means growth opportunities on par with MTV.“Music might have been at its core, or might have been its origin, but at some point the majority of content that they made had nothing to do with music,” said Lee Trink, CEO of FaZe Clan, a gaming collective that’s part professional eSports teams and part creator network. “What [MTV] had was a relationship with the audience and they understood what that audience wanted.”FaZe Clan boasts over 7 million subscribers to its YouTube channel, where its videos regularly top over 1 million views. It created branded content and also operates a merchandise store.“We reach enough people that we are tantamount to a cable network,” he said.Trink joined the Digiday Podcast to talk about FaZe Clan’s revenue streams, the brand’s signing its first (and for now, only) female member and what work is like in the Hollywood mansions these content creators all live in together.

If you've been upset by something you read in The New York Times' Style section, that was by design. "[The] Style desk covers change, it covers generational change, it covers change in how we talk about gender, it covers young people," says the section's editor, Choire Sicha. "It covers technology, and it covers love, marriage and how we look. Those are all things that are incredibly fraught at this time, and they're supposed to upset people."Inter-generational conflict is a hot topic (even before the paper of record revealed the collective Gen Z eyeroll that is "OK boomer").So is the massive cross-industry known as wellness. But how do you cover that responsibly?"We're not talking about people's parents or people from the outside, we're talking to people and for people who actually do this stuff," Sicha said. "The Times historically will have been one step removed from that, which sounds funny to call out, but that is what we did: 'Hey, what are those kids doing in their bedrooms?' And it's like, 'We need to go in the bedrooms.' That sounds weird, but you know what I mean."Sicha joined the Digiday Podcast to talk about the freedom that comes with being funded by 4.9 million subscribers, his own take on Gen Z and how he feels about the end of Deadspin.

The Washington Post's CRO Joy Robins thinks ad agencies deserve a little more sympathy."We need to better understand their business, better understand how they make money," Robins said on this week's episode of the Digiday Podcast. "You start to see more and more that the agencies represent their own business model, they are facing their own challenges," she said. "So how do we stop looking at these ad agencies as essentially the purveyors of the RFP?"Part of her answer is to borrow what she sees as the successful methods social media platforms have used in working with the same agencies. Since October, some of the Post's sales teams are directed at "really working with the senior-level executives at holding companies and ad agencies, to understand what are their pain points, what are the things their clients are tasking them with, and how can we ultimately partner to create something that adds value to their businesses?"On the Digiday Podcast, Robins also spoke about brands' skittishness when it comes to displaying ads next to news about the impeachment inquiry, the broken model that is the RFP and how often she sits down with Jeff Bezos.

Condé Nast is on a journey to remake itself from a magazine company -- home to Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and more titles -- and into what new CEO Roger Lynch calls "a 21st century media company."The exact contours of what that looks like remain a work in progress. One aspect that isn't in doubt: video and the establishment of franchises is absolutely part of that vision. Condé Nast Entertainment now creates more than 4,000 videos a year, garnering on average more than 1 billion views a month (mostly from YouTube, Katzeff said). Now, the challenge is turning those views into franchises."We haven't done a great job yet in taking that IP and giving it legs beyond print," said Condé Nast Entertainment president Oren Katzeff on this week's episode of the Digiday Podcast. "And that's no big surprise and that's no knock on anybody. For so long the magazine was the be all end all for IP. A lot of consolidation in the media space, it's about a lot of things but one of them is the opportunity to garner IP and monetize IP in long-form content. You look at Disney, HBO Max and Netflix who are spending $100 billion this year on long-form content, and we've only scratched the surface of that."

Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs worked together for five years before cofounding Food52 in 2009. That was enough time for them to recognize a gap in the online landscape. Americans were getting more serious about food and cooking as rewarding pursuits and social opportunities but the internet had yet to reflect that movement."We felt that aside from food blogs, which were really exploding, there was no platform for real people to have a say, to share their knowledge and expertise, to have a social experience with one another," said Stubbs on this week's episode of the Digiday Podcast.Their answer was a website that serves as a content publisher, a forum and a good place to shop for pots and pans. And people do turn to the site for kitchenware: Food52's revenue comes roughly 75% from commerce and 25% from ads, Hesser said. The Chernin Group recently paid $83 million for a majority stake in Food52.In our latest podcast, Hesser and Stubbs discussed the 19th-century antecedent to crowdsourced recipes, the majority stake acquisition taken up in Food52 by the Chernin Group and a few straightforward recipes that everyone should know.