The Digiday Podcast

Most publishers see Snapchat as a nice-to-have but not a must-have platform. But Vertical Networks, a digital content company founded by Elisabeth Murdoch, is betting on Snapchat as showing the way to the future of mobile programming. Jesus Chavez, CEO of Vertical Networks, joins us in this episode.

Quartz is onto its next big move to diversify reader revenue. The publisher, which originally launched as an ad-supported model, launched a membership program in November. Lauf discusses the subscriptions business, why Quartz remained valuable as a company in the time of fire sales and more.

The pivot to paid models is on. Next up: CNN, who is focusing its strategy on creating a variety of paid products for specific subsets of the CNN audience. Andrew Morse, evp at CNN U.S. and general manager of CNN Digital Worldwide, also discussed rebranding CNN Money as CNN Business, competing with platforms on technology and tools and working with advertisers who don’t want to be next to news.

Craig Silverman’s stories have it all: lies, fraud and billions of stolen dollars. But they’re far from a true crime podcast. The Toronto-based BuzzFeed media editor writes about fake news, the spread of misinformation on platforms and ad fraud, where every participant in the supply chain is a culprit passing on the blame. Silverman discusses the lack of incentive for marketers to speak up against ad fraud, Facebook’s scale problem and more.

Digital-only media brands with millions of dollars in venture capital funding have gotten a lot of attention. However, slowly but surely, they’re hitting a wall. And CBS is capitalizing. Jim Lanzone, CEO and President of CBS Interactive, discusses the opportunity in OTT, original programs, reducing reliance on advertising and more on this episode.

As the end of 2018 approaches, we're also coming to the end of an era of VC-funded media companies, perhaps because the industry was not conducive for the growth demanded by venture capitalists. Steven Kotok, CEO and President of Bauer Media Group USA, says that was never the ideal model anyway. Kotok discusses focusing on the reader, the business from the newsstands, big bets in 2019 and more on this episode.

This year the buzz has been around subscriptions. At the most recent live podcast event for Digiday Plus members, BBC Global News CEO Jim Egan said that they're thinking about a reader revenue strategy but for now, bbc.com is an entirely ad-supported property. Egan explores the ins and outs of relying on an ad model, relationships with social media platforms, the advertiser reluctance to appear next to news content and more.

Industry Dive, an online-only B2B company based in Washington D.C., is a good proof point that the sky is not falling for all "ad-dependent" media. Founder & CEO Sean Griffey discussed the reasons why he wants to stick to the ad model for Industry Dive, stretching brands across the several industries they cover and their ability to make measured bets in their business.

For female media brand PopSugar, the name of the game now is profits. The 12-year-old company has finally gotten into the black, and it intends to stay there, CEO Brian Sugar said on this week's episode of the Digiday Podcast.

Bloomberg is not immune to the pressures of old business models, but it does have a plan. It launched a subscription offering, struck a partnership with Twitter for TicToc by Bloomberg and created a new event platform to offset the decline in digital advertising. This year, revenue growth is in the double digits. In our latest podcast, Smith discussed how TicToc by Bloomberg achieved profitability in its first year, the misnomer around the industry-wide pivot to subscriptions and why there's still room to grow in events.