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The Digiday Podcast
Digiday editors discuss how publishers are navigating Trump ripple effects
00:37:30
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- [00:10]
Tim Peterson
Hello and welcome to the Digiday Podcast. My name is Tim Peterson. I am the executive editor of video and audio at Digiday Media, and I'm.
- [00:19]
Kamika McCoy
Kameka McCoy, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday.
- [00:23]
Tim Peterson
Kamika, how you doing?
- [00:25]
Kamika McCoy
Yeah, well, we're hanging in there. You know, what about we're doing, we're making do, as we say in the South. How are you?
- [00:34]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, making do. And that's kind of, I think, the theme of this episode. So obviously here in the US we had presidential election. Donald Trump won the presidency, so he will be returning into office. And that's kind of the only story of the past week that wasn't the only news. We've had earnings from various companies that we cover, but everything feels like it not only pales in comparison to Trump being reelected, but also will be affected by the news of Trump being reelected. Everything else now takes on a new inflection with this election. Is that kind of how you're looking at things right now, Kamiko?
- [01:26]
Kamika McCoy
Yeah, I think there's a through line through all of that, especially when, you know, for a beat like mine, which covers marketing, a lot of that is how marketers are spending their dollars to get in front of people, which will absolutely be impacted by things like inflation, tariffs and whatnot. So, you know, and the same on your end with media and things like this. So, you know, even I think I saw this on Twitter the other day where someone said, I don't do politics. Well, politics is going to do you. It's in, like you said, it kind of touches everything. So here we are reporting on it.
- [01:56]
Tim Peterson
Yep. And so across digital as well as our sibling publications, Glossy Modern Retail and Work Life, a lot of coverage going out right now and in the weeks, months, years to come, just around what this selection means for the various industries that we cover. And so for this week's episode, we thought who better to have on than Seb Joseph, our executive editor of news here at Digiday, to talk about kind of the initial post election outlook. Like, as we're all gathering our thoughts, Seb, I think is a great one to talk to because he's very even keeled. He also has a bit of actual distance from the situation, being based in the uk, being British himself. And so I thought it was really great conversation to get Seb's take on the whole situation.
- [02:48]
Kamika McCoy
Yeah, I totally, totally agree. Lots to cover there. And then him being from across the pond and having that bird's eye view, I think will be really interesting for our readers and listeners yeah.
- [03:00]
Tim Peterson
And as much as we talk a lot about the looming Trump presidency, we also. One of the reasons why we wanted to have Seb on was because he and I were at the DJ Publishing Summit Europe the week before the election where we were talking with a lot of the European based publishers just about what the situation is facing media companies in Europe, how that compares and contrasts to publishers in the U.S. we came away with there being a lot of similarities, but it also felt like those conversations became in many ways even more relevant after the election because there's so much conversation around brand safety and just the impact of how advertisers are handling brand safety and what that means for news publishers in particular.
- [03:47]
Kamika McCoy
Yeah, we'll have those. Good, good ripple effects happen in here and then next week we'll be doing some more of that reporting, bringing in more of our TODAY colleagues, which is Sarah Gaglioni and Christina Monlos, who are going to bring in a marketing and a publisher point of view for this, because in our line of work, like I said, there are ripple effects that are going to be seen throughout the industry. So we will be bringing that to you from every angle.
- [04:11]
Tim Peterson
Yep. And so as Kimiko and I continue to gather our thoughts and our reporting, here is the conversation we had with Seb Joseph. Hey, Seb, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.
- [04:31]
Seb Joseph
Thanks for having me, Tim.
- [04:33]
Tim Peterson
Very glad to have you. Very grateful to be talking with anyone without an American accent right now. No shots. Can we go?
- [04:41]
Kamika McCoy
None taken. Thank you.
- [04:42]
Tim Peterson
So, I mean, Seb, we want to talk about publishing. Digiday Publishing Summit Europe, which you and I were both at. God, was that only a week ago? A little over a week ago. Jesus. But then also catch up on the Google Ad tech antitrust trial and just kind of like where things stand since there's been some time since a lot of the arguments and the witnesses and all of that were done, but we're still waiting to see how things go there. But obviously the big Trump sized elephant in the room that we have to talk about is this election. And I'm curious to get your thoughts not so much on, like, what does this mean for the future of humanity and democracy in this world? But like, at this point and being a bit removed from it, based in the uk, I feel like you probably have the most reasonable head about what this means for media marketing and tech industries.
- [05:40]
Seb Joseph
No pressure, Tim and Kimiko. Bloody Elle. What a way to set things up. Look, it's still so soon after, right? So it's been really hard to get a kind of firm handle on much. I think the in the immediate aftermath of the election, a lot of the industry execs that we're talking to, at least at this moment, seem to be anticipating or at least wondering about a return to the boondays. Right. The days where, you know, kind of Trump and everything he said and did generated all manner of kind of attention and impressions and clicks for publishers and kind of broadcasters alike. I guess you factor in the fact that, you know, Trump is the resounding kind of victory. He's kind of emboldened a lot more. Right. And has made a big point of the fact that he will go after the news media in ways that, you know, he was just not able to kind of the last time round. So a lot of that kind of anticipation that, you know, the media industry will be able to see a kind of direct benefit of this. You sort of have to caveat it with that. Right. The fact that, you know, Trump is all likely to respond to criticisms from the all part, all quarters of the media industry really directly in ways that he just wasn't able to the kind of last time around. So that seems to be the kind of overarching kind of narrative, you know, in the kind of it what, three days, my head's kind of all over the place. Can't imagine what you guys are like at the moment. But yeah, that seems to be it. And then publishers are, I guess, having to think about how they monetize, if indeed they can, that attention. Right. Because the last time round they struggled with that conundrum because there were many brands that didn't necessarily want to be anywhere near that type of editorial. And that as we sort of heard at the brands and the kind of digital publishing summit in Europe, it was a week ago, geez. Overzealous blocking kind of continues to be a big thing. Right. And Trump will kind of exacerbate that in more ways than one. So yeah, like I think, you know, it's that kind of age old phrase, isn't it? Kind of history doesn't repeat itself, but it definitely kind of rhymes. And I think publishers, media execs are sort of reckoning with that at this kind of moment in time.
- [08:45]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, no, I think it's going to be interesting to see to what extent there is that Trump bump 2.0 because our senior media reporter Sarah Guaglione just did a story where she talked with SimilarWeb about just what election day and in the week leading up to the election, what traffic looked like for publishers. It was a bit down from the 2020 election cycle. I think it was even down from the 2016 election cycle. Will that continue? Will people be burnt out by everything? I think the New York Times had a good story, like day after the election on just kind of the potential for there to be a bit of burnout on these things from an audience size that could mitigate any Trump up. But then there's the brand safety consideration, like the news cycle. I don't want to think about what the news cycle is going to look like, but I imagine not great and definitely all over the place. Kimiko, you talk with the buy side a good amount. Have you gotten any sense on obviously, like Seb was saying, it's all super early days, but just how marketers and agencies and those folks are feeling.
- [09:59]
Seb Joseph
Yeah.
- [10:00]
Kamika McCoy
I mean, for a while there's been concerns about brand safety. Right. Which is why you saw a lot of money being pumped into, like influencers and things like that. And so from the conversations that I'm having, there's again, super early days, nobody there. The tea leaves are still being read here. It's been what, a week? So a lot of the conversation is just like, you know, don't bust a move too soon, let's wait and see kind of how this thus plays out. But at the same time, there's a lot of conversations happening. There's conversations that have been happening given that we've been coming into this election for a while. And then not for nothing, I think also like on the publisher side, you've got brand safety. But I also looked at the idea of influencers and creators where publishers have been fighting that battle and subscribers turning to get their news from, I don't want to call them alternative publishing sites, but you know, the social platforms, influencers and things like that. So there's kind of a battle on all sides and who's to say kind of how the Trump bump pans out with those things being accounted for.
- [11:03]
Tim Peterson
Yeah. And it seems like one of the legacies of the because I feel like so often presidential election cycles from the lens of like media marketing tech, kind of get painted as the TikTok election or the Facebook election or something that, like, is indicative of some trend going on in the industries we cover. It feels like this one's getting painted as the podcast and creator election.
- [11:27]
Seb Joseph
Yeah. So, yeah, that came up in some reporting that Christina Monlos, the senior marketing editor for Digiday and I did yesterday. The manosphere, right. The Andrew Schultz of the worlds, the Joe Rogans. They left A mark on this. Right. Whilst it's kind of still too early to say how big a mark that was, I think you just have to look at the demographical kind of breakdown of where Trump's folks came from to kind of get a feel for how important those podcasters, those creators, were to are, you know, kind of Trump's success, as it were.
- [12:15]
Tim Peterson
Right, yeah. And then what does that mean for advertisers? Because those people have very large audiences, but they're very specific audiences. And so the brand safety concerns you would think would carry over to that inventory, you think?
- [12:32]
Seb Joseph
Right. I think again, this came out in the reporting. Marketers thrive in a capitalist world. Right. So I think they. The thing wasn't necessarily that they would steer clear of those influences, but they're definitely pricing in the fact that, you know, these are divisive characters. There is a risk associated with that. But as Trump has kind of shown, there's also huge upside to that if you can kind of stick the land in. I think, you know, Kimiko, I wonder if this is coming through in some of the reporting that you're doing, that there's going to be a lot more guardrails put around how advertisers work with those types of characters, and also a lot of due diligence in the run up to it in order to make sure that they don't get swept up if things do go all right.
- [13:30]
Kamika McCoy
Yeah, I think that's something that'll have to be considered going forward. At this point, you've got to kind of create a new playbook as to what brand safety looks like for your company. I think one of the things that we saw is brands trying to play in the space of having brand purpose and whatnot. And we saw the backlash happen there. And now you start talking about, like, you know, how that factors into brand safety. And again, it's just a matter of having to rewrite it. Because when it's not a society that you were functioning in two, three years ago, you've. You've got to. You've got to rewrite it.
- [14:02]
Tim Peterson
And that rewriting been going on because it feels like a lot of the walking back de and I commitments tease up brands to act a bit differently in this post election period.
- [14:17]
Kamika McCoy
Yeah. And then also the way that they spend money. I talked to multicultural agencies who are, you know, media buyers in the space and creative agencies, and they said that those budgets have either been slashed, causing them to have to scale back, work with those clients, or not work with them at all, which points to the idea that, again, that brand playbook has been ripped up and being rewritten, which.
- [14:40]
Seb Joseph
It has done to Tim's earlier point time and time again. Right. I think brands are nothing but, sorry, brands are malleable. And when this whole deal, I think, kind of came back, when was it? 2020, in the wake of George Floyd, that was the invoked thing to do. Right. There was a big wave of support around it. And it, and it, you know, cynically, it drove sales. It doesn't anymore. Right. I think, you know, everything you've seen with Bud Light and, you know, even with how, you know, Musk's kind of entanglements with the World Federation of Advertisers, there is a massive pushback against that type of advertising in business these days. And as a result, there's no upside in it for CEOs anymore. So, you know, it makes sense, sadly, that those commitments have kind of been walked back and in many cases just shut down kind of completely because, you know, there's. There's too much risk associated with doing that. Now this is. You do something like that and, you know, you're risking your. Your markup, which is nuts to kind of say. And, you know, look at Bud Light lost its kind of number one beer status in the matter of what, like, months.
- [16:01]
Tim Peterson
Yeah. And I think Sebi touched on this too, when you were talking about, well, maybe advertisers are okay advertising against these manosphere influencers, which was a term I wasn't aware of before reading that article. But there's a price that kind of comes with it. And I think that was something that also came through in the conversations we were having with news publishers, particularly during dpse, was just kind of the financial incentives at play with brand safety and how so much of this kind of gets postured as missions and purpose and then concerns around brand safety and suitability, but that so often it kind of just comes back to capitalism and financial concerns and how is this going to affect companies? Bottom lines?
- [16:55]
Seb Joseph
Yeah, for sure. I think the word that summed up all that for me, coming from the summit, at least from the discussions, away from the stage, was resignation. Right. It was a resignation that publishers have done all they can to kind of solve that kind of issue. But it felt like they've taken it about as far as they could, you know, that they were almost kind of tired of talking about it because they felt, you know, it wouldn't really amount to much beyond kind of blowing off some steam amongst their peers. So, yeah, it was a. It was a resignation about brand Safety, but delivered with all the enthusiasm of a. Of a psy, really. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they've kind of completely given up on it. Like, you know, I don't think they can afford to really do that. But, you know, the days of them thinking to your point, kind of, Tim, you know, the market genuinely believes in, you know, creating a sustainable ecosystem outside of the walled gardens are, you know, they're fading fast. Right. You know, and the publishers definitely feel more cynical now, and it's hard to blame them. Right. Like, it was interesting in those town halls here in the agency is kind of there saying that they've tried to talk to advertisers into taking a more nuanced take on news blocking, kind of focusing more on what's suitable to be around, not what they should be blocking, only for that to kind of get lost in translation almost from the initial conversations they have to the actual buying of the ad itself. And the crux of that, I don't know if this came through to you, Tim, but the crux of that seemed to be that, I can't believe I'm saying this, that marketers don't feel like there's any real business incentive to back away from brand safety measures. Right. Even if those kind of mechanisms are, you know, a bit too blunt and imperfect, they're kind of meant to be precautionary. And for brands, at least, you know, there's no penalty for being overly cautious, right?
- [19:14]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, it seems like the penalty would be if the brands aren't reaching enough of whatever target audience they have. But there's so many publishers, there's so many inventory sources, there's so many inventory sources beyond publishers. Like, when you think about the social platforms that, to your point, brands can get away with, whatever reach hit there would come from blocking because there's enough inventory for them to go around elsewhere.
- [19:43]
Kamika McCoy
And then to the point about resignation, this is. Trump's been on the ballot for every election over the last, what, three. Three elections, you know, so that's a battle that they've been fighting for a while.
- [19:56]
Tim Peterson
I think one thing, if I've been trying to think of, like, okay, where's opportunities for optimism? Even in, like, that conversation we were having during dpse with the publishers around the brand safety issues and kind of the resignation they were feeling is like, okay, so is this just going to be a problem forever, or is there, like, any hope for some sort of solution coming? And then on election Day of all days, there was One ad that I didn't see, but I saw it reported on where calm was running like 30 second silent spots during I think CNN and MSNBC where it was just they wanted to be in the news cycle, but they had a creative that found a way for the brand to be part of the news cycle without having to necessarily choose sides or anything like that. And that was an example. Okay, so maybe if advertisers and their agencies just get a bit more thoughtful and creative because there's so many eyeballs on news and potentially so many more eyeballs that are going to be coming to news over the next four years that maybe some of it is just the problem is there being a laziness. I think some of the publishers even made that point. If advertisers and their agencies get a bit more, again, creative and thoughtful, maybe there will be a rise in advertiser demand for the news. But again, this could just be me trying to hold out hope for any sort of optimism and positivity right now.
- [21:27]
Seb Joseph
Yeah, I think there's something in that, you know, like that need to kind of stand out, kind of paving the way for some sort of shifts. But I also think like these are systemic issues kind of tied back to entrenched players, right? Ad verification companies. And until there is a real kind of shift there. And I think you're starting to see signs of that, right? It's interesting that the News Corp. CEO kind of called out, you know, brand safety, not just the kind of verification partners, but also, you know, the advertisers and agencies that have propagated them. Until we get more of that, that the kind of open criticism and that just being kind of put in the main, in the sort of spotlight continuously like we saw with the whole transparency stuff around ad tech and until you have more high profile CMOs kind of talking about it, but also kind of making some genuine decisions, right? Like look, remember Mark kind of Pritchard kind of cut like a lot of adtech intermediaries. Until we sort of get that, I think it's always going to be small potatoes because, you know, advertisers are sheep, right? And whatever Coca Cola P and G kind of does, they sort of tend to follow relatively sort of quickly. I'm cynical, but there's a tiny bit of me that kind of hopes that next year, you know, we might start to see a bit more of this. Particularly as some of those larger enterprise contracts with the ad verification companies, you know, get put up for renewal and advertisers start to make way up Whether or not it makes sense now to sort of move away from them, at least from some of the sources that we're hearing from, there could be a couple of big instances of that happening.
- [23:27]
Tim Peterson
That's interesting. To that point, Kamika, at one point during one of the town hall sessions, a couple of publishers were making a point of how they cited WPP specifically, but how agency holding companies like WPP have pretty close relationships with DoubleVerify with IAS. But then you have Stagwell, who's coming in as a challenger, and they have taken a different approach to brand safety where they're not just kind of like blocking and following the verification firms fully. And so the publishers were kind of encouraged a bit by that of, well, other if Stagwell starts taking more and more business from a wpp, a publicist, an omnicom, does that lead to something of a change with the other agencies? Because standards kind of follow this.
- [24:20]
Kamika McCoy
Okay.
- [24:22]
Tim Peterson
Which again, like, we have no idea at this point in time. But I thought that was a really interesting point I hadn't considered at all.
- [24:30]
Kamika McCoy
Yeah, it seems like there's, I mean, to you guys point a couple of playbooks that are gonna be rewritten, it's too early, you know, as was said, for the tea leaves to be read. But I think there's some indicators that are happening here.
- [24:43]
Seb Joseph
Yeah. Just to build on that point as well. Like this came up in conversations. Well, the interesting thing is that a lot of those verification companies, they have contracts directly with the brands now as well. So that's kind of where some of the tension between the agencies and the advertisers also happens. It's that just agencies don't have much sway over that because, you know, these are kind of often like procurement led decisions to some degree.
- [25:12]
Kamika McCoy
Yeah. And what does that power balance look like?
- [25:14]
Seb Joseph
100%.
- [25:17]
Tim Peterson
Speaking of tea leave reading, things being too early, power balances. Seb, before we let you go, I want to kind of hear from you the Google Ad tech antitrust, which is a hard pivot on this conversation, but I'm trying to make it somewhat smoothly. But we're like, you know what, less than a month before we're going to have some sort of conclusion to this trial, right?
- [25:44]
Seb Joseph
Yeah, yeah, well, kind of, at least some of the initial thoughts and then we'll sort of get like an actual kind of decision early next year. By the way, your segue's always as good as this. They're pretty good, Tim.
- [25:56]
Tim Peterson
You know, I have no idea. This may just be me being punched drunk this week between the election, I had jury duty earlier in the week, but yeah, so I mean, it's been what, a month since both sides kind of closed up their arguments. Ad Exchanger had a piece earlier this week where I made all shout out to Allison Schiff. She also posted the argument recaps from both the DOJ and from Google, which are 455 pages apiece, roughly. I definitely threw that into ChatGPT and was just like, please create a table of contents for me. Anything that's stood out to you, Seb? Now that there's been some time since all the arguments were being made, witnesses were put on the stand. Now that there's been some time for kind of the collecting of thoughts.
- [26:51]
Seb Joseph
Yeah, I think so, yeah. Earlier this week, kind of Google and the DOJ kind of submitted their respective findings of fact. Right. So that's kind of basically their recap of the kind of trial from their respective. Like it, looking through it, it sort of read like a case is for and against Google's monopoly over online advertising. There were no real kind of surprises in that. Like, it was interesting that, you know, the DOJ highlighted things like, you know, the lack of independent witnesses. So Google, none of the witnesses that kind of Google presented during the trial were not on its payroll in some.
- [27:35]
Tim Peterson
Shape or form or in some, like, business relationship with Google.
- [27:39]
Seb Joseph
Yeah, yeah. But I think stepping away from that and kind of looking at kind of what happens next, it's been interesting, particularly kind of talking to publishers about this because they're the ones that have arguably kind of got the biggest actor grind in this case. And again, there's a bit of an apathy there because, you know, whilst they have been glad to see the DOJ take on Google's grip over online advertising, you know, for many, at least the ones that we've spoken to, it kind of felt overdue. You know, they would have preferred it happened like five or six years ago back when that kind of gap between, you know, what publishers and, you know, Google was kind of earning from online advertising wasn't quite as kind of stark as it is today. So, you know, they might have had a shot at building something to kind of better compete with ad dollars. You know, if Google's ad dominance had kind of been curbed kind of back then. So, you know, and everyone, I think everyone is also aware that this will take a long time to sort of shake out. Right. Like, you know, and so as a result, it's kind of hard to get kind of too wound up by it, especially now that you know there's a Trump administration and that's going to have an impact on, you know, both at the summits of the doj, but also the FTC as well.
- [29:20]
Tim Peterson
Right? Yeah. And you called out one thing that stood out from in terms of the DOJ being able to effectively kind of finally comment on Google's case or how Google presented its case of Google didn't bring any really impartial witnesses to this day. And one thing I thought that was interesting from the Google side in commenting on the DOJ's case is Google saying, look, the DOJ didn't prove that the industry would be better off without us having this. I mean, Google wasn't going to say without us having this ad tech monopoly because they're not going to admit to being monopoly. But without us having this huge ad tech infrastructure undergirding so much of this economy, they didn't prove that there would have been growth otherwise. Which I imagine probably super hard to show that especially how foundational DoubleClick was to the online display market for so long from its inception, at least on the programmatic side of things. But having served jury duty earlier this week, spent two days in a courtroom having to hear about the burden of proof on the plaintiff side and the kind of, the need for that, I thought that's kind of a fair argument to be made of like the doj. Did the DOJ make its case strongly enough?
- [30:44]
Seb Joseph
How do you though? Right. It's such a opaque, abstract thing in kind of many ways. You know, I think maybe the only kind of pushback there would be. There were many instances during that trial where publishers tried, you know, kind of to create a thriving kind of business outside of kind of Google, you know, go independent essentially and, you know, kind of found that they were kind of curtailed from doing that at every point because Google had thought about different ways of kind of locking them, you know, locking them in. So, yeah, I don't know, like it's, it's a tricky one. Like I wish I had something more salient to kind of say there, but it's even sort of divided some of the sources that, that we've spoken to kind of about this over the last six months or kind of so like that. Yeah, like has to your point, Tim. So I'm not. Yeah, I don't know. Time will kind of tell. But I think though I personally think that there's. Given how the search one went and I don't think there was nearly as many sort of examples as they were presented in this one. I think given the precedent there, I don't think Google will get away kind of scot free here. I think, though, that with the Trump sort of administration sort of coming in, a breakup is probably less likely. Right. And if anything, it will be like a slap on the hand. Fine. Similar to what Microsoft got when was it, back in 2002, something like that.
- [32:31]
Tim Peterson
And I think that's totally valid and probably how things will go if I put on my conspiracy theorist hat. What is it? Foil hat?
- [32:43]
Seb Joseph
Tinfoil hat? Yeah, tinfoil hat.
- [32:47]
Tim Peterson
It's like. But with the relationship Elon Musk and Trump have X being in the mix, does that lead to a situation where there's maybe more of a likelihood of Trump going after Google? Not to mention like, we're going to be looking at a different Justice Department next year. We're going to be looking at a different FTC next year. Regulation is going to look a lot different. But I think the most salient point is the one you made Seb of. It's just too damn early to tell on any of this stuff.
- [33:21]
Seb Joseph
Yeah, that Musk sort of influence, though, is definitely one to watch. Both, like kind of within this sort of us, but, you know, particularly outside of it when it comes to kind of China as well, which I'm sure future podcast episodes will kind of contend with.
- [33:38]
Tim Peterson
Absolutely. All right, well, Seb, I said at the start, I'll say it again, it was really great talking with you. I can't think of someone I would have wanted to talk more with, especially given that you don't have an American accent, which is much appreciated at the moment.
- [33:54]
Seb Joseph
You guys. No, definitely have me on again at some point. I've really liked it.
- [33:58]
Tim Peterson
Oh, we're gonna have to. Especially, like, probably in a month or so after we get. We just get more perspective on everything. Life.
- [34:08]
Seb Joseph
Yeah, life. Let's do that. All right, thanks, guys.
- [34:12]
Kamika McCoy
Thank you.
- [34:13]
Seb Joseph
Excellent.
- [34:20]
Tim Peterson
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Digiday Podcast. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you're listening. Get more from Digiday with our daily newsletter sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.comnewsletters to sign up.