
Loading summary
Sean King
The Agile Brand.
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, E commerce and whatever's next for the omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show.
Interviewer
If Google sent you zero traffic tomorrow morning, would your P and L still be breathing by lunchtime?
Greg Kilstrom
Agility requires re engineering your revenue model.
Interviewer
At the speed of AI. Today we're going to talk about how AI chatbots are siphoning off audience attention and what forward thinking publishers can do about it instead of panic refreshing their analytics dashboards.
Greg Kilstrom
To help me discuss this topic, I'd.
Interviewer
Like to welcome Sean King, Chief Revenue.
Greg Kilstrom
Officer and GM of Media and Entertainment at Veritone.
Interviewer
Sean, welcome to the show.
Sean King
Thanks so much for having me Greg. Pleasure to be here.
Interviewer
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Definitely a timely topic here. Lots of, lots of people thinking about this. Before we dive in though, why don't you start by giving a little background.
Greg Kilstrom
On yourself and your role at Veritone.
Sean King
Excellent. Well for about myself, well I've been in the media and entertainment space as well as the advertising side for about the better part of the last 20 years and have added various roles across operations, sales, go to market and strategic partnerships. But at the end of the day I looked and love looking at a lot of managed service based businesses which are a lot immediate and entertainment and advertising and looking at ways in which you can better operationalize those businesses. Bringing new tools, bringing new workflows that can help take a mundane people process and make it much more streamlined and much more effective. So when I had the chance to come work at Veritone for the better part of coming up on nine years now. Wow. I mean talk about a space where AI can provide can really be a force multiplier for this entire industry at large.
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah, love it.
Interviewer
Well yeah, let's Dive in here then. And I want to start with, I think definitely something that's top of mind for anyone who, you know, search traffic is a significant, you know, whether it's revenue driver, whatever the case may be. Gartner is saying that AI search experiences could cut traditional search traffic by 25% by 2026. So significant. Tolbert just reported a 49% surge in retrieval bot visits this year alone. How are those numbers reshaping the urgency for publishers to rethink what is their core business model?
Sean King
I mean, those are really dramatic numbers. We can take a step back and look at those ones and frankly, I mean, it's a wake up call to a lot of these groups. And what you're really seeing is you're seeing almost the rebuild of the Internet taking place with a lot of these large language models and other search. I mean more and more individuals are going to LLMs and whether they're OpenAI, Gemini Cloud, whatever it may be, they're looking at those as the way that they're becoming their trusted search engine. It's there. But the reality of the situation is organic search has already been kind of declining for major outlets, major publishers, which means they have to kind of pivot from the traffic they depended on coming from the search into new ways. So really this means that those AI platforms, their content archives that they're using, they have to be turned into usable, valuable training data sets. So that way they can start to be found by these different groups and can continue to allow them to do that. Because everyone's consumption for content, everyone's consumption, whether it be print or film or video, it's still there. It's just the ways they're going about finding that content is shifting. And so it puts an added pressure on these groups to make sure they're that more agile to make sure that they can meet the demands of where their consumers are going to.
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
Interviewer
And I mean in a sense this is, we've been designing websites for bots, you know, for, I mean there's been bots ever since there's been an Internet almost. You know, so like in, in a sense this is, we call it something different, but it's, it's, it's a little bit the same, but it, but it, in other ways, it's, it's certainly different. And so, you know, from a, from a consumer perspective, you know, people are still consuming content. I mean they're, they're certainly, according to the stats, they're consuming it through LLMs more, more than they, they certainly were before, but they're still consuming content directly from publishers as well. How does a publisher make sure that they're reaching real people in addition to those bots?
Sean King
Well, I mean like you said before, I mean people are consuming more content than ever and but these are making sure that you're making your assets more accessible to being able to be found by, we'll call these bot like AI intermediaries. You know, rather than visiting these publishers kind of directly, they have to find new ways in which in game, not just with their, their standard audience, you know, I'll consider the loyal, the humans of it, but making sure that those assets are data ready so that these AI in America intermediaries, these AI tools can make sure that that same content is discoverable in these new ways.
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
Interviewer
So Veritone put out an ebook recently that talks about viewing content as data as part of a strategic mindset shift. Can you talk a little bit more about this? You know, what does it mean and how does this connect to the growing role of AI bots? As we've discussed so far, this is.
Sean King
One of my more favorite topics to think about because it is a mind shift. If you're an engineer, you're in product every day you're up there and you're writing code. At the end of the day, what do you do with that code? You put it into GitHub, you put it there, you put into a safe repository that's there so it's accessible, so it's safe in the media, entertainment, you don't think of that as data. You think of it as film, as videos, as entertainment. You have to kind of think about that the same way in each thing I'm creating every day, whether that be this podcast, whether that be a short, a reel, a video, a sporting event, all of that film that you're creating, all of that, all of that is data. So what do you need as an organization? You need to make sure that you have a partner that can ingest all of that content, that can append the necessary data to that on kind of a frame by frame rate. Who's on the screen, what is it talking about? What objects may be there? What are those ways in which that I can make sure I understand the most about this content and where is it? In a really effective data lake, so to speak. That's kind of time correlated that I can make sure that all of that content is accessible, it's discoverable and you got to make that a data centric approach. So you always think about it. As a creative approach, a conversational approach, you have to keep those same creative ways going about in which you're creating content. But through that workflow you need to think about, okay, at what process am I turning this into kind of AI ready data assets? So that way later I can make sure I'm getting the most out of my content and making sure I have the most understanding about it. And that's kind of one of the things that Veritone does a lot with our partners is we kind of orchestrate the, that transformation of content, of film, of audio, of video, of photos, of paper, anything that you want to, and kind of orchestrate that transformation into AI ready assets that can be accessible through applications or to create custom workflows to help solve for what you're looking for, find the operational efficiencies you're seeking.
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
Interviewer
So then that's what Veritone. Maybe talk a little bit more about the role of Veritone's platform then. And also just your experience so far with that mindset shift. You know how customers are adapting to that.
Sean King
Great. So look at Veritone at large is we're a software company and we have a platform that's called, we call AIware. And every single day across our customers in both the public sector and the media and entertainment or commercial sector, we're ingesting about 150,000 hours of content a day. So I think in 2024 we did something short of a little more than 58 million hours of content.
Interviewer/Co-host
Wow.
Sean King
I mean it's, it's, it's a lot. And as that content is coming in, we're appending all the necessary metadata to that content, depending on the use case for that customer. And once that's there, you can access AIware through either our applications. So when you think about it, think of aiware as your operating system, your applications as how you interacted. I always like to give the example of like Microsoft Office, you know, you have to have your IBM operating system or Microsoft operating system, but you may only use Excel or PowerPoint.
Interviewer/Co-host
Right.
Sean King
So we have, you know, in the media entertainment, a lot of our groups use Digital Media Hub, which allows you to interact with your content. And it's a, it's an AI enriched archive management tool that's there. So as that content is coming in, you know, we're appending all the data, we're making it searchable, making it discoverable. They may want to power workflows, they may want to find all their content, make it accessible for secondary and tertiary use cases like content licensing or data monetization of their assets, which is, you know, a lot more media entertainment groups are doing more and more these days, but you have to have a common data standard for how these things are coming in, how things are getting labeled, how things are getting appended. And it may look a little different from our media entertainment customers or someone in the public sector like a local police department. For us though, a camera is a camera. So it doesn't matter if it's a body worn camera, a dash camera, or a camera looking at Augusta National Golf Course or the US Open. Doesn't matter to us. Camera's a camera. But the workflows are very different and how you're interacting and what you're wanting to do with that content is quite different. And we just kind of help all of our customers, both in public and commercial sectors get the maximum yield that they can get out of their assets.
ZipRecruiter Announcer
When you're hiring, the process can often be so time consuming, including waiting for the right candidates to apply, sorting through resumes, trying to get in touch with potential candidates, and even finding the right candidates only to come to realize they're not actively looking for jobs. Well, the future of hiring looks much brighter because ZipRecruiter's latest tools and features help speed up finding the right people for your roles so you can save valuable time. And now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com work with ZipRecruiter's new advances, you can easily find and connect with qualified candidates in minutes. Over 320,000 new resumes are added to ZipRecruiter monthly, which means you can reach more potential hires and fill roles Sooner. No wonder ZipRecruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2@ziprecruiter.com work use ZipRecruiter and save time hiring. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And if you go to ZipRecruiter.com work right now, you can try it for free. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com work ziprecruiter the smartest way to Hire Want to learn more.
Meacon Conference Announcer
And join the discussion About Marketing and AI? Attend a premier conference dedicated to marketing and AI. That's Meacon, the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference from October 14 through 16 in Cleveland, Ohio. MEAKON brings together the brightest minds and leading voices in AI. Don't miss this opportunity to connect with a Dynamic community of experts, visionaries and enthusiasts. The Agile brand is proud to be the lead media sponsor of this important event. Register today@MarketingAIInstitute.com that's MarketingAI Institute.com and use the code AGILE150 for $150 off your registration fee. I can't wait to see you there.
Interviewer
So we've talked about making the content searchable, discoverable, all of that. Now let's talk a little bit about protecting as well as monetizing that content. So, you know, we're seeing a flurry of licensing deals between AI companies and some major outlets. Smaller publishers though, you know, maybe, maybe worrying they're going to be left out or sidelined. You know, what negotiating leverage do mid tier or niche publishers still have and how can technology level that playing field?
Sean King
It's a great question in those look, mid tier publishers hold significant value and leverage because more of their content tends to be specialized. And it's something that is going to be way more domain specific than a lot of the major publications. And there is, you know, a unique vertical training aspect where these could, you know, have significant value for, you know, not just commercial, but for, you know, potential AI use cases that are there. A lot of those ones come into. It's really what are the needs of the data scientist or what are the needs? Just like they are if you're licensing for a commercial. You know, I want to get this great footage for a documentary I'm doing or something that's there. I mean, it's the same type of kind of domain specific needs that will come in. So what I always suggest is rather than focusing on kind of individual pieces or individual specific types of content, having the publishers kind of position themselves kind of with some more ongoing strategic data partners, you know, you know, I may be one with 5,000 hours of very specific content. Well, great. If I can work with a partner that I know has many other different partners in that space, there's opportunities in what I'll consider more of the tonnage. Well, I may be a mid tier publisher, but I have very domain specific information. Well, there's 15 others that are like me. Well, when you put the 15 others, you actually have something that's quite meaningful and valuable and it helps bring more opportunity to all those groups.
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
Interviewer
So then is part of the strategy strength in numbers then is that, as you mentioned, alliances of publishers banding together is that, you know, is there any downside to that or, you know, is that kind of the, the path?
Sean King
I mean it's it's not, it's not necessarily a downsizer, it's just, it's. It's making sure that there's the right type of opportunity. Yeah, I mean, most of the groups in these sides, everything is still being dominated by the hyperscalers today, which obviously are looking for lots and lots. But you know, we haven't necessarily seen the next wave of vocal consider like these very specific LLMs, domain specific LLMs. So it's not saying that there wouldn't be. And frankly, we've seen this movie before when YouTube came out. Right. And then how did that turn into these smaller groups? What's happening to it? And you started to see all the different creations of these MCNs and everything else that started to take place just like what took place on the web before and where all the traffic was started to go to the netscapes and the AOLs and the yahoos. Well, then we're going to see a similar evolution as this plays its course out.
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah, yeah, makes sense.
Interviewer
So last topic I want to talk about is something that I know Veritone has written quite a bit about as well, is, you know, responsible AI. And you know, let's talk. Follow that down to, you know, some future web talk as well. Veritone's AI for good principles, transparency, trusts and security and compliance and empowerment, aim to keep AI on the straight and narrow, which, you know, good. Definitely on. On the right in the right way. How do those guardrails translate into, you know, day to day decisions about using and licensing publisher content inside these generative models, LLMs, so on and so forth?
Sean King
Well, I always like to say, I mean it's, you know, I think we've all heard of, just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Interviewer
Right, right.
Sean King
And I think that's just a general purpose anyone should think about and how they're using AI, you know, with Baritone specifically. And I got to give credit to our founders, you know, Ryan Steelberg and Chad Steelberg, that kind of went, you know, back in 2014 with this, you know, the vision and the hypothesis that in order for this to be truly safe and scalable, you almost have to democratize AI. And that's kind of what the vision was for AIware, which was, you know, we have over 1100 AI models of which and that's almost 58 million or so hours I quoted. I think we used 864 throughout last year. And it's not because one's better than the others or it's the use cases. Is that in Order to make sure you're solving for the right type of outcomes. You cannot be beholden to singular models or singular usage. You have to make sure that you have the accessibility to as many as possible. That really becomes the backbone for kind of mapping out and creating the right data points that serves as the basis for kind of, you know, everything that goes forward. But really when it comes into like ethical usage of those, I mean, there's so many different things that we see and unfortunately in the media we see all the nefarious use cases of it of someone took someone's deep fake, whether it be their voice or their image. But what we're not seeing a lot of it, and the things that we are most usually proud of are how AI can be used to protect IP and those ones and advance safeguards, you know, client control, controlled usage of their rights, how that goes into licensing optimization tools and using against unauthorized defense and different things across that. You know, we've done some things over the last couple of years like we had, we did the vault with the caa, you know, one of the largest agencies, and they created the CAA vault, which kind of as a similar. You think of content as data. You know, CAA had the foresight to think of, well, we got to think of people as data when we're creating these digital twins of individuals, you know, it's not the outcome is it, it's the training data that's the value. It's the scans of their voice, of their faces, of their bodies, everything that's being used to do that. You're taking these, you know, human individuals in the real world and you're putting them in these digitally immersive environments. They felt that the same principles that we expect in real life needed to actually go into this digital universe, which was really awesome and something we're proud of working on it with that because it's again, it comes back to your name, your image, your likeness of individuals and all the assets that you own. Those same principles of ownership need to make sure that they're protected in these digital use cases. And that's why you kind of have to have that radical transparency over all of your data, over all your assets. Which kind of goes back to me referring to you have to start thinking about your media, your content as data, because if you're not thinking about this way, how are you going to be able to track, govern and make sure anything is being safely deployed in these environments? I mean, it's a core, a core principle to being, you know, AI first is that data.
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I would also imagine, you know, another factor here is that regulators around the world are hinting at, you know, fair compensation mandates for content owners. Again, you have to be able to quantify that in a, in a way before you can compensate fairly. Right. You know, if you, you know, if you were talking with lawmakers right now, you know, what would your advice or what you propose to balance kind of innovation with publisher sustainability?
Sean King
I mean, I think it's a combination of both legal and ethical considerations that, you know, has to be paramount as these AI models are developed. You know, we just need to make sure that, that the days of scraping the Internet are over.
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah.
Sean King
And frankly it's already been done and that's been done. But as we're going into these next frontier, as we're going behind these gated walls of where this other data and other goes, that everyone needs to look at it from the legal and ethical consideration standpoint.
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
Interviewer
And so, you know, from the publisher's standpoint then, you know, given that, you know, there is uncertainty, regulations are, you know, I'm sure there's some in the works. There's always, there's always some uncertainty there. What advice do you have for publishers that need to make some potentially long term decisions that may have implications for whatever those regulations end up being down the road?
Sean King
Well, let's face it, the regulation will evolve as things happen to it. So I think right now it's critical to establish some flexible systems and frameworks for publishers. And I think most importantly is clear visibility on how, where and by whom their content is being used. You know, is it just for R and D purposes? Are they looking for display rights? You know, you have to have these flexible frameworks because I think with those it's going to be easier to adapt and kind of as both the laws evolve, but also as these different modes of monetization and usage and other things may evolve. It's just really important to be proactive and you know, just thinking about really the how, the why and the what is being used and where it's being used. So you can make that, you know, you can make the judgment, call the business decision and more importantly, how can you minimize your future risk?
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah, yeah, Love it.
Interviewer
Well, Sean, thanks so much for joining today and sharing your insights. One last question for you. I like to ask everybody, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Sean King
It sounds corny and cliche, but I like to play. And what I mean by that is I love trying all the different models. I love testing new and different things. I love playing around with new tools. I always joke around that I'm technical enough to be dangerous but not enough to do any real work when it comes to this one. And I'm getting more and more amazed as the weeks and months and years go on on how closer that just curiosity and these different tools are making me that much more technology first. And so it's just exciting just and I encourage everyone just if you're unsure, play around.
Interviewer/Co-host
Yeah.
Sean King
Love it.
Interviewer
Love it. Well again I'd like to thank Sean King, Chief Revenue Officer and GM of Media and Entertainment at Veritone, for joining the show. You can learn more about Sean and Veritone by following the links in the show notes.
Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagile brand.com that's theagile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory.
ZipRecruiter Announcer
Services or are looking for a speaker.
Greg Kilstrom
For your next event, go to www.greggkilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
Sean King
The Agile Brand.
TechSystems Announcer
Before we continue, I wanted to share a key strategic resource that a majority of the Fortune 500.
Interviewer
Are already aware of.
TechSystems Announcer
Finding the best technology, business and talent solutions is not easy. With business demands and competitive pressures mounting, you need to be able to design, deploy and optimize your technology to provide leading customer experience experiences while driving business growth. Those of you that have been listening to this show for a while know that this podcast is brought to you by TechSystems, a global provider of technology, business and talent solutions for more than 80% of the Fortune 500. TechSystems accelerates business transformation for their customers. Whether you're looking to maximize your technology roi, drive business growth, or elevate customer experiences, Tech Systems enables enterprises to capitalize on change. Learn more@techsystems.com that's teksystems.com now let's get back to the show.
Guest: Sean King, Chief Revenue Officer & GM of Media and Entertainment at Veritone
Date: September 1, 2025
In this episode, Greg Kihlström sits down with Sean King of Veritone to dive into the transformative impact of AI—especially large language models (LLMs) and AI chatbots—on how audiences search for and discover content. They discuss the challenges and opportunities for publishers and brands as traditional search traffic is disrupted, strategies for maximizing content value in the age of AI, and critical considerations for responsible AI use and data monetization. The episode gives marketing leaders actionable insights for staying agile and future-ready in a shifting digital ecosystem.
Making Content AI-Ready
Operationalizing for Monetization
Licensing Leverage for Mid-Tier/Niche Publishers
Alliance Strategies
Principles of Responsible AI
Guardrails for Data Use
Preparing for Regulation
Visibility & Flexibility First
Stay Agile Through Curiosity
On urgency for publishers:
“It’s a wake up call to a lot of these groups. ...It puts an added pressure on these groups to be that much more agile to make sure that they can meet the demands of where their consumers are going to.”
— Sean King (03:23)
On content as a data asset:
“You need to make sure that you have a partner that can ingest all of that content, that can append the necessary data to that on kind of a frame by frame rate. ...You got to make that a data centric approach.”
— Sean King (06:32)
On alliance strategy:
“Well, when you put the 15 others, you actually have something that's quite meaningful and valuable and it helps bring more opportunity to all those groups.”
— Sean King (15:17)
On ethical AI and digital ownership:
“It’s not the outcome, it’s the training data that’s the value...those same principles of ownership need to make sure that they’re protected in these digital use cases.”
— Sean King (19:27)
On adapting to rapid change:
“I love trying all the different models. ...I always joke around that I'm technical enough to be dangerous but not enough to do any real work ...And I encourage everyone, just if you're unsure, play around.”
— Sean King (23:22)
This episode delivers a roadmap for publishers, marketers, and media leaders wrestling with the realities of AI-driven search and content aggregation. The call to action is clear: see your content as data, invest in making it AI-discoverable, build alliances for better leverage, and ensure your frameworks are agile enough to flex with regulatory and ecosystem changes. Embrace experimentation and stay ethically grounded as you navigate the next era of digital content.
For more resources or to connect with Veritone, see the show notes.