The Rebooting Show

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Rebooting Show. This week’s episode is a sponsored Spotlight episode, where I feature a conversation with a sponsor of The Rebooting in order to get a better understanding of their approach to solving a challenge of building sustainable media businesses. The way these work is I agree on a general topic with the sponsor – how data plays an important role in building sustainable media businesses, in this case – and then the episodes are like any other. My goal is to make these as valuable and informative as any other episode. Please let me know your feedback – and get in touch if you’d like to sponsor upcoming mini-seasons on the creator economy, newsletters, subscriptions and more. My email is bmorrissey@gmail.com.The entire tech industry is going through a broad reckoning over the collection, storage and use of consumer data. Government regulations, Apple’s new data policies, the demise of the third-party cookie and other market pressures are changing how a large chunk of advertising works. Look no further than Facebook’s historic stock price meltdown after disappointing results it blamed, in part, to new obstacles to targeting and measuring ads. “We get a reset that gives the industry an opportunity to rethink a lot of things,” said Jake Abraham, chief commercial officer of Audigent, a data platform that works with publishers to better understand their audiences and turn that understanding into achieving business goals. “While it’s messy in the middle, ultimately we come out with a [situation where] the publisher is the source of truth, more transparency, better privacy and more tools to actually do what both advertisers and publishers want.”Below are highlights of the conversation Jake and I had about how publishers need to think of their audience data as an asset class, the false dichotomy between contextual advertising and addressable advertising, and how Facebook gets small businesses hooked.The negative impact of rampant data collectionThe only people in the world who use the term “personalized advertising” are those who work in ad tech. For the rest of humanity, this is ad targeting or, increasingly, “surveillance advertising.” The backlash against the use of data in advertising is somewhat curious since there are seemingly far more worrying data trends, particularly how governments are using data sets, but likely ties back to the chaotic, complicated way digital advertising works in the hopes of getting the right ad in front of the right person. “Publishers are victims often. Their margins are squeezed harder than ever before. As the technology evolves, there's more and more middlemen. It's very hard in this ecosystem to understand the technology, and understand how those middlemen might be using the data and taking a vig on the transaction. Some of the [intermediaries] are super important. But there are plenty of others that, in a pretty unregulated industry, have found a way to insert themselves and arbitrage. And while that may not be illegal, it certainly doesn't provide a lot of value.”Not all middlemen are badIf digital advertising has an original sin, it’s likely the ability to separate the audience impression from the media. This was a nifty tri

This week I’m continuing a run of discussions with people operating the publications that sit at the nexus of power and politics. Punchbowl has had a successful launch as one of the new crop of publishers. Check out the episode, and if you’re not already, please subscribe on Apple or Spotify. Also, please leave a rating and review if you use Apple. Washington D.C. has long been a company town, only the company in question is the sprawling federal government, its various apparatuses – and those who influence them. It’s no surprise then that the once-sleepy media business around the government has become one of the most vibrant areas of growth in digital publishing. Consider:Axel Springer ponied up $1 billion to acquire Politico last August.Axios has pulled off one of the most successful early runs for a media company in its first five years, with a valuation of $430 million.The Hill was bought by Nexstar Media Group for $131 million last August.Grid News recently raised $10 million in venture funding.Add in Punchbowl, a year-old media startup founded by Politico veterans. Jake Sherman, a co-founder of Punchbowl, wrote Politico's flagship newsletter, Playbook, along with fellow co-founder Anna Palmer. (John Bresnahan, the former Congressional bureau chief for Politico, is the third co-founder.)While some digital media startups go to great pains to hang their differentiation on a new format or approach or business model, Punchbowl’’s model is fairly straightforward. It is going to out-report its competition and be a must-read for those who need to keep up with the ebb and flow of legislation on Capitol Hill. While many outlets wander to focus on the White House, Punchbowl is squarely focused on the legislative branch.“We know we know the audience, we know what they're interested in, we understand the business model, we have ambitions,” said Sherman, speaking from his office at the Capitol during a week when the legislature was in recess. “We felt like we had the playbook, so to speak.”So far, so good. Punchbowl reached $10 million in revenue in its first year, with $1 million coming from subscriptions and the rest from sponsorships bought by trade groups and companies looking to get their public affairs messaging in front of those making and influencing policy. That’s with a team of 10.Jake and I discussed how Punchbowl differentiates by using the Capitol as its lens, how being entrenched alongside the audience helped, and why ads and subscriptions can work well together. (Answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.)Focusing on the CapitolAs Trump and Biden have learned, the presidency’s powers are limited when it comes to passing legislation that reflects the president’s priorities. For Punchbowl, named after the Secret Service code name for the Capitol, the focus is on the legislative process, in particular the priorities of the leadership of both parties.“I’v

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyThe roaring 20s of publishing has begun with several new brands launching, each with their own twist on dealing with the challenges of audience growth and sustainable business models. What’s notable is most publications are not promising to build massive audiences. Instead, most are focused on high-value audiences that lend themselves to high-priced ads and subscriptions.Grid is one of this crop of newcomers. Laura McGann, a Vox.com editorial director who is running Grid’s editorial side, saw an opportunity to build a news brand premised on a new newsroom model that seeks to tell a more complete picture of news stories through a collaborative approach that taps into different areas of expertise. The end result: a “fuller picture” of the news.“We're trying to create our brand around the idea that we can create additive value where one plus one equals four by putting really smart people together.,” said Brad Bosserman, Grid’s CRO who joined the company following seven years leading brand partnerships at Politico. Brad and I discussed the current boom of publishing startups, journalism-led innovation and building a sustainable business model around targeting influential readers.The new cycle of publishing innovationMy view is we’re at the start of a multiyear cycle of innovation in publishing, as legacy publishers look to consolidation and efficiency while a new class of upstarts spring up to move faster to capture new  opportunities that inevitably spring up with the macro environment changes. Brad points out that media is a reactive business.“Media companies tend to be born in generations. When you look at that 2005-2007 period, you had all sorts of companies that were born in that same window. And now 15 years later, you're seeing another one of those generations where a new breed of companies is being born. A lot of times media companies are downstream of larger changes in the culture, consumer behaviors, business models and technology platforms. As those things change, media companies react to those [changes]..”The pivot to direct connectionsDuring the last period of publishing innovation, platforms were at the heart of most companies’ distribution plans, at a minimum. The idea was simple: Facebook was connecting the world, might as well hitch a ride to grow alongside a once-in-a-generation company that’s adding millions of users a day. Easier to swim with the tide than against it. These days, you’ll rarely hear mention of platforms in the pitches for new publishers. You’re more likely to hear about how important email newsletters are.“There's a lot more skepticism around the platforms [and] the idea that you could get a lot of audience quickly from Facebook. There's a big push toward owning audiences in a much more authentic way. That’s at the core of everything that's being launched: the idea is that you really need to own your audience. That's because of all the experiences that folks have had over the last 10-15 years. [Platforms] did allow for a lot of companies to acquire large audiences at various points, but they found that they were renting them. That’s behind a lot of the push toward subscription models and the push to first-party [data].”Sign up to get The Rebooting every Monday and WednesdayJournalism-led innovationNew entrants to a market typically lead with a product innovation. In the news publishing bu

Thanks to everyone who has sent notes and left reviews for the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks to Jrdoog, who called the podcast “essential for anyone working in the media industry.” Note for future guests: Jrdoog wants me to keep badgering you for numbers. Be forewarned. This week’s episode with Protocol president Bennett Richardson is brought to you by Audigent.Publishers often struggle to know which partners bring incremental value. And the complexity of programmatic advertising has only exacerbated the problem. Audigent has been focused on demand generation for publishers’ premium data since day one, delivering customized solutions that drive additional direct and indirect revenue. Audigent’s platform is simple to integrate and focuses on a combination of technology, service and unique demand, providing a proven solution for what pubs need most today and into the cookieless future. White-glove service, superior technology and demand generation are three primary reasons why some of publishing’s most-recognizable and innovative brands rely on Audigent.Many publishers want to run the Politico playbook. What Politico managed to do is take politics and cover it like ESPN covers sports, attracting big enough audiences for a robust ad business, while focusing on narrower slices of must-have information on legislative minutiae to power a high-priced subscriptions business. It only makes sense that Politico itself would look to do the same, as it has with the two-year-old Protocol, which is applying the Politico playbook to the sprawling world of tech.Tech has long since matured as a vertical topic, rooted in Silicon Valley, to a horizontal story of power and influence that spans industries, governments and societies. It also happens to have both deep pocketed investors and advertisers..“The very core of Protocol was an extension of that same thesis, which is, can we use this similar influencer-focused, unbiased model that made Politico successful and made Politico Europe successful?” said Bennett Richardson, a Politico veteran and the recently named president of Protocol. “Could we take that out of politics entirely and bring it to a different power center in a different industry? Unsurprisingly, given everything that media and every other industry are going through, tech was the obvious first place to bring that thesis to.”Protocol is currently 55 employees, with eight newsletters that collectively have 250,000 subscriptions. The site gets about 1.5 million visitors a month, Bennett said, adding only that Protocol’s revenue was up 150%.Bennett and I discussed the Politico playbook, balancing consumer and specialized publishing, and why some ad categories like public affairs are booming. Below are some highlights of the conversation.The power of influenceFor all the downsides of the news business, there will always be a place for publications that can break through and serve the needs of elite powerbrokers. These audiences are simply too valuable. There’s a reason Axel Springer bought Politico for $1 billion, Axios has grown so quickly and upstarts like Punchbowl are making a splash. That’s also why the still-unnamed global news venture from Justin Smith and Ben Smith will target elites, promising “unbiased journalism,” and why upstart Grid secured $

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyI’m continuing my look-ahead series of podcast episodes to kick off 2022. Last week, Sara Fischer, media reporter for Axios, laid out her big themes for the year. This week, I spoke to Troy Young, the former president of Hearst Magazines, who over the years I’ve found to be very thoughtful about how the media business is changing. Reminder: If you like the podcast, please share it with others who might also find it valuable – and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you’re in the blue bubble brigade. Big thanks to mpm318 for this nice review.If you’re making bets for a Word of the Year in digital media in 2022, identity is a good candidate. The nature of digital advertising is changing as the industry transitions away from the third-party cookie as a key audience identifier. Identity, both on the page and across the ecosystem, is an evolving and complex component to publisher monetization. Audigent’s Hadron ID serves as a cookieless “container” solution, delivering cookieless solutions at scale while being fully interoperable with other ID systems. It is simple to deploy and instantly enables end-to-end cookieless programmatic buying while delivering addressablity. Audigent is transforming how clean first-party data powers the programmatic landscape by putting the control back in the hands of publishers and advertisers.Troy Young has been through the various interactions of digital media going back to the start. During the dot-com boom, he was an executive at early web marketing agency Organic. During Web 2.0, he decamped for video ad network VideoEgg, which turned into Say Media, a hybrid tech platform and vertical publisher, eventually landing at Hearst Magazines, where he was president. Now, he qualifies as officially Web3 curious, if not ready to start his day with “gm” tweet and regularly rely on riddles to explain what’s seemingly inexplicable in crypto. “It's an incredible time to be a curious person,” he said on The Rebooting Show. “There's so much to learn and there's so many people who are not part of what is a sort of classic media ecosystem that are writing about things that there's really an unending source of inspiration.”What stood out to me from the conversation:The need for media companies to use Web3 to rethink their relationships with their audience as well as within their organizations The promise of Web3 – and yes, we’re mostly talking promise vs reality at this point – is a fairer deal for all involved rather than the benefits and power going to a select fewThe opportunities for new brands that are part of communitiesFinally, I’m often struck by how few people deeply involved in the development of digital media are particularly pleased with many aspects of how it has turned out.“Let’s face it, monetization on the open web never really worked that well outside of the datasets and buying interfaces that allowed Facebook and Google to sweep up the long tail of advertisers and take over huge amounts of that ecosystem, including everything f

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyHope everyone’s 2022 is off to a good start. I’m kicking off a new mini-season of episodes this month that will focus on what to expect this year in digital media. To start, I spoke with Axios media reporter Sara Fischer, who has chronicled the industry for the past five years with the Axios Media Trends weekly newsletter.  As a reminder, please leave a rating and review of The Rebooting Show on Apple Podcasts.The key to sustainable media business models is having a tight relationship with your audience. That means understanding them. Audigent helps leading publishers like Penske Media and Fandom to unlock the power of their audiences with an industry-leading data activation, curation and identity platform that’s supported with best-in-class tools and teams that boost business outcomes. Audigent was founded on the belief that first-party audience data is a critical asset, today and into the cookieless future. The Audigent Platform is a flexible, turnkey solution that improves business for publishers of all sizes.I’ve always thought of the opacity of the digital media system as more of a feature than a bug. As a reporter that means sorting out what success looks like in an industry where smoke and mirrors have long been deployed as a strategy.“The industry is going through sort of a reckoning around measuring success,” said Sara Fischer. “It's hard to quantify progress in the industry, whether it's television or digital. We just don't seem to have a ubiquitous understanding of how to measure success.”Here’s what Sara expects to be major storylines in digital media in 2022. Expect more consolidation, only smaller deals2022 presented a unique M&A market for the digital media industry. With a booming stock market and ample opportunities for financing, the focus was on big corporate moves like BuzzFeed’s SPAC and Vox Media’s purchase of Group Nine. But the year to come will likely be less splashy as big digital media players do smaller deals.“There's going to be less talk about consolidation happening through SPACs. It's going to be more traditional and that's just because we've seen with BuzzFeed that there are some challenges to doing it that way. The SPAC market is cooled. What you're going to see more consolidation, but it's going to be private. So similar to what you saw with Vox Media, merging with Group Nine. You're also going to see more low hanging fruit continued to get scooped up. We're going to see a lot more of the Some Spider Studios getting acquired by Bustle.” The pivot from general newsTrump was very good to news publishers. Top news publishers racked up record audience gains and the obsessive attention Trump commanded from those who support and oppose him gave a boost to these publishers’ subscription programs. Of course, what goes up often comes down. For Sara, that means expecting news publishers to follow the lead of The New York Times and diversify their products into lifestyle categories to expand their customer bases beyond political obsessives as people increasingly tune out a “boring” Biden presidency.“Given the absence of a very volatile news

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyHappy holidays. I’m wrapping up the year with a final podcast and then, on Wednesday, I’ll send out the second annual Rebooting Awards. In the meantime, my final podcast of the year is with Rishad Tobaccowala, a longtime advertising executive who is now also publishing his own newsletter, The Future Does Not Fit In The Containers Of The Past. If you enjoy The Rebooting Show, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts – or share it with others. But first, a message from this week’s sponsor, Mediaocean.Next week many are heading to Vegas for CES, the annual confab of the tech, media and advertising worlds. I know some of you will be skipping the action this year, but that doesn’t mean you have to miss out. Mediaocean has set up a livestream of its programming of the Mediaocean Retreat so you can still enjoy the thought leadership the Retreat will feature from an array of top executives, including Twitter chief customer officer Sarah Personette, Cadillac CMO Melissa Grady and S4 Capital CEO Martin Sorrell, not to mention my podcast guest this week, Rishad Tobaccowala. The programming will run Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 from 12pmPST to 4pmPST. Check out the agenda and register now. Be sure to tick the box for virtual and you’ll receive access links. Also, the recordings will be available on demand following the event.Rishad Tobaccowala has long been known in the advertising industry for his sage view of the need to embrace change – “Change sucks. Irrelevance worse.” – often delivered through pithy phrases and neatly numbered lists of points. For the final episode of 2021, I wanted to speak to Rishad to take stock of where we are and where we’re going as we come up on two years into the pandemic era.For Rishad, the pandemic is a marker of a profound shift, part of what he calls the Great Reinvention. The pandemic is not a singular crisis like previous shocks such as the Financial Crisis, but is instead a polycrisis affecting health, the economy and society. That is leading many to reassess their approaches to life – just see the rise of the so-called anti-work movement. As he put it at the start of the crisis: “We had not just a financial crisis, not just a social crisis, not just a health crisis but all three, occurring not just to some people but to all people, not just for a short period of time. If you take the entire world and put them through a financial, social and health crisis for two years and expect things to be the same, you should not be in business and should resign immediately.”Below are highlights from our conversation.The unbundling of mediaOne impact of the rise of Substack and other newsletter platforms is they have given a convenient outlet for people to share their expertise in their fields. Rishad is one of them, starting a Substack back in August 2020 to “remain relevant and keep learning new things.” It became much more, serving as the basis for a new

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyWhat a strange end to the year, with Omicron the march, inflation jitters and more unknowns than seemingly ever before. But there’s not the same amount of panic and anxiety as the spring 2020 — positive Covid tests seem to be the new social media flex. Nearly two years into this pandemic era, we’ve grown resilient, whether we dwell on it or not. We have so many more tools and knowledge now than when this all started, and we are also just better equipped ourselves to deal with the ups and downs and uncertainties. The last two episodes of The Rebooting Show this year are tied to this theme, considering what we have figured out since the pandemic began. This week, I spoke to Spencer Bailey and Andrew Zuckerman, co-founders of The Slowdown, a media company focused on making sense of the world around us. When the pandemic hit, they started At a Distance, a podcast in which they shared conversations with an array of influential people about how we should rethink the world. The resulting interviews became fodder for a new book. Thanks to Mediaocean, sponsor of these year-end episodes.Covid was momentous from the start, even if we just called it by the generic coronavirus. Once cities started shutting down, it was clear this wasn’t a passing blip or even a localized shock. It wasn’t 9/11 or the Financial Crisis. The scale was unimaginable. The entire world on pause. For those lucky enough to be forced to isolate — health care and essential workers didn’t have this luxury — the pandemic was a forced period of reflection. Many didn’t like what they saw.For The Slowdown, just a year old as a company, its bet that the frenetic pace of the world was unsustainable turned out to be on the nose. Without being able to host its intimate conversations for Time Sensitive, The Slowdown’s conversation series with influential figures in business, arts and culture, Spencer and Andrew decided to move to Zoom with a new podcast, At a Distance, a podcast that gathered luminaries to use the forced isolation we all dealt with in order to think big thoughts about what comes next. At a Distance has compiled over 130 interviews so far.“We realized everyone we were talking to was thinking in a really different way,” Andrew said. “Everyone had permission to think big picture, like this rupture had occurred and everyone was thinking about the world in a very different way and seeing opportunities and the issues were super coherent.”Finding an intersectionMy theory of media businesses is those from the creator or content side typically start with the need to make something they want into the world, then they fit it to the market opportunity and business model. People coming from the business side tend to work in reverse. Both can work. The Slowdown is the first type. “We wanted to make something that we wanted in the world that we couldn't get,” said Andrew.  “So we figured we'd make it ourselves.”“Our philosophical foundation was not in terms of scale, growth and the attention economy. We didn't see in the world a company that was truly looking at this vector of culture, nature and the future and where that comes together.”A time capsuleFrom its start, t

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyThis week, I’m wrapping up the first mini-season of The Rebooting Show. This season was dedicated to modern B2B businesses. If you haven’t already, please check out the first four episodes of the season:Adam White of Front Office Sports discussed the advantages of bootstrapping.Julia Noran Johnston of Business of Home shared how she found an underserved niche in interior designers.Angus Macaulay of Stat explained its Politico-like model for life sciences.Industry Dive’s Sean Griffey spoke about the advantages of finding valuable but overlooked industry segments.To cap off the season, this week’s episode is what I’m calling a Spotlight episode. This is an opportunity for the underwriter of the season to explain how they’re partnering with publishers to build sustainable media businesses. I treat these podcasts like all the others, and I only work with companies addressing real problems in the building of sustainable media businesses. This week’s Spotlight episode is  a conversation with Bernard Urban, CEO of Silverblade Partners, a strategic finance partner to publishers agencies and ad tech firms. Thanks to Silverblade for being The Rebooting Show’s launch sponsor.When I started to report on the media business, two things quickly became clear that I found odd: nobody could agree on how to measure audiences, and nobody paid each other on time. Publishers and agencies always complained bitterly about crazy payment terms. The way it usually works is those with the most leverage, ie the most money, force the smaller party to wait for long periods of time, up to 180 days.Of course, the problem is your everyday costs as a business – salaries, rent, tech systems – are constant, creating a cashflow crunch. Stretched payment terms has created a velocity mismatch: The media business moves incredibly fast, only the financial system underpinning it slogs along like molasses. For many publishers, this means running a business with high fixed costs in terms of salaries, benefits, rent and more while the financing structure means publishers often wait a long time to get paid. That’s why I was happy to partner with Silverblade Partners to sponsor the first season of The Rebooting Show. With access to over $1 billion in financing, Silverblade has the financial resources to solve liquidity challenges arising from outstanding accounts receivable for most media companies. Silverblade was founded by veterans of the media industry, with a deep understanding of the particular nuances of the business that your average bank simply does not have. Silverblade has built a cashflow solution that will finance accounts receivable and accounts payable on more flexible and favorable terms than an option like factoring from a bank. Bernard and I spoke about some of the basics of trade finance, why traditional cashflow solutions like lines of credit or factoring are a mismatch for advertising media, and why finance should be a strategic function within media companies. Let me know any feedback you have on the episode: bmorrissey@g

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and SpotifyThis week’s episode of The Rebooting Show features a conversation I had with one of my favorite media success stories: Industry Dive, a collection of vertical industry sites. Sean and his team have grown Industry Dive into an example of a sturdy media business, on pace to break the $100 million in revenue mark next year with healthy margins. One request: If you listen to The Rebooting Show on Apple Podcasts, please leave a rating and review. Thanks to Alfred Westcott, who left a very nice review that ranked me “one of the best interviewers in media.”Industry Dive is one of the most successful modern digital media businesses, even if it doesn’t get the attention of splashy consumer titles.Sean Griffey, who founded Industry Dive in 2012 along with Ryan Willumson and Eli Dickenson, doesn’t mind flying under the radar compared to splashy consumer brands while Industry Dive focuses on industry verticals like retail, marketing, utilities and more. “This is a better business. It’s great you’re targeting millennial fashion consumers, but I’m in the electric utilities space and that matters to everyone. The industries we write about touch every person. I leaned into the boring part because I know it’s important. You call it boring, I call it profitable.”It helps that Sean has receipts.340 employees2.5 million email subscriptions25 publications$85 million in revenue this year, $100 million expected next yearEBITDA margins above 25%Here are key takeaways from our conversation:Details matterFor all the talk of vision, the media business is an execution game. Industry Dive began in 2012 with a handful of publications and the idea that it would differentiate by providing a better user experience, focusing on the right industries, and sticking to what the team knew best.“We thought there would be a chance to use the mobile experience to differentiate ourselves. We wanted to invest heavily in design. In business media it was pretty horrific. We wanted to invest in content. We thought niche media had abandoned that for leads over time.”The power of nicheScale and niche aren’t in opposition as often presented. But many digital media companies born around the time of Industry Dive took a different path. They focused more on general news audiences instead of specific areas. Industry Dive developed a formula for targeting industry sectors.Industries changing rapidly due to tech and/or regulationHigh capital spendingA buy and a sell sideEvidence of a vibrant market in the form of competing publications and trade shows“There’s real value in 100,000 incredibly targeted, valuable people. In each of these markets, you could create a $10-20 million business, just marketing supported. But if you wanted a $500 million business, you had to do it a lot. For us it was how do you build a scaled niche business.”Email is more than just a delivery mechanismEmail is the lifeblood of B2B media, allowing a direct connection to an audience – and a way to collect relevant information to understand the audience better. That’s why Industry Dive email subscribers can have a lifetime value of of hundreds of dollars.“It’s a platform you own and nobody can take away. More importantly, it’s a push platform. There are very few things you can push to audiences vs pull, where they come to you. Email is also personally identifiable. You can start tyin