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Ready to shape the future of digital business? Then don't miss Demexico 2025, Europe's leading event for digital marketing and tech. On September 17th and 18th in Cologne, digital pioneers, innovators and decision makers come together to share ideas, network and shape the future of digital business. Expect top speakers like Carson Meschmeyer, Vanessa Schutzel and Sir Martin Sorrell across 10 summits. Get inspired. Be bold. Move forward. More@DMEXCO.com.
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Hello.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Digiday Podcast, a show about the business of media and marketing. I'm Kumika McCoy, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday.
C
And I'm Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio digital media. What's going on, Kimiko?
A
Tim, it's been a summer, to say the least. Ariana Grande has got a new tour date coming out. She has been on the road in a while. Taylor Swift is engaged now to Travis Kelce. Saw that one coming. It has been a eventful summer, to say the least.
C
So here's my beef. One, I don't feel like I had a summer. Two, I live in Southern California. We get a late summer. It is not even 10am on Friday, August 29th and it's 81 degrees here. We're getting a heat wave next week. I'm not prepared for to have conversations with people in September talking about, like, how was your summer? Because I'm going to be still in it. But at the same time I feel like. So we have digital managing editor Sarah Jeudy on the show this week and the three of us kind of recap what was a pretty messy summer. And I think like the biggest takeaway from it is everything that we talk about, you know, streaming, rebundling and resembling traditional TV publishers confronting AI companies, corporate changeovers at agency holding companies as well as media companies, Google getting all of this competition from these AI companies and of course tariffs, all of that feels like just precursor for what the rest of this year is going to be like.
A
Yeah, if you thought the summer was busy, there are expectations for an equally as busy, messy fall. So if you don't already have your seatbelt on, may want to put that in place.
C
And with the caveat too of we tried to hold out to record this intro. So we're in the United States. Monday, September 1st is a holiday. We're not working on that holiday. We're not making our producer work on that holiday. This episode goes out September 2nd. So we're recording this on Friday, August 29th. By the end of August, there was supposed to be a decision made in the Google search antitrust trial what the remedies would be. We tried to hold out to be able to talk about that because that was going to be kind of the capper on the summer and what will make for a messy fall. Depending on what those remedies are. If Google's forced to divest Chrome or can't do exclusive search deals anymore or has to share its search data, or if Google just gets a slap in the wrist, hey, you have to pay an X billion dollar fine, but otherwise you're good. Yeah, that hasn't happened.
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We're just do, do, do, do, do, do, you know, cue, cue the Jeopardy Waiting music to see how that. That shakes out.
C
Yeah. So to Kimiko's point, messy summer. Gonna be a messy fall. This Google remedies question mark seems like the perfect inflection point for us to, I guess, say goodbye, summer, hello, fall.
A
Yeah, yeah, go ahead and get your pumpkin spice latte ready. We're here.
C
I'm not ready for this.
A
Well, luckily we've got, you know, everything covered with Sarah. It was a really, really good conversation, kind of teeing up all of the things that have happened and also kind of like what that could mean for the fall. So we'll check in with Sarah and hope you guys enjoy.
C
Happy Fall, everyone.
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Hello, hello and welcome to the show to our managing editor, Sarah Jeudy. So excited to have you. How are you?
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Hi. So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
A
Sarah, how has your summer been so far?
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You know, it's been chaos, but the good kind of chaos where there's a lot of interesting news to dissect and I'm looking forward to chatting that through with you guys here today. It's definitely not been a slow one. I feel like we kind of sort of look forward to having slower days and to enjoy the beach or the nice sunsets, but that's not really where we found ourselves this summer.
A
No, we have found ourselves in rebundling AI. Not quite the uncanny valley, but we're creeping close at this point. And then obviously Google and everybody that's coming for their throne. So we've had a lot to talk about as far as the recap of. I won't call it a hellscape. I feel like I've been calling 2025 a hellscape a lot.
C
It's felt messy. It's been a messy summer because, like, in trying to think of what the hell happened this summer, the answer is, like, a lot. But there Wasn't to me, there didn't feel like any one thing that kind of, like, dominated the news cycle. It was just a lot of things that dominated the news cycle all the time, which I think is a fitting summer for 2025.
A
That's fair. And if you want to consider the Trump effect, that's a hellscape within itself that publishers and the rest of us are also figuring out. So let's start with the streaming rebundling era. Tim, that's obviously your baby. You've been in your own hellscape trying to cover all of this.
C
It's funny, though, because as much as this is a huge shift, I think as we go through the other news stories of the summer, it's gonna feel almost quaint by the end of it, because. So there have been a bunch of big developments over the summer, and a lot of this started last year. Last year, obviously. I think it was last summer was when National Amusements had announced that it had agreed to sell Paramount Global to Skydance Media, which is owned by David Ellison, son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. That took a year to close. It finally closed this summer because of agreements that Paramount and Skydance made to the fcc, for one. Also a lawsuit settlement with President Donald Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. So that was one of the big stories. But then also Warner Brothers Discovery announced, yes, we actually are officially going to split these companies. They're going to have a streaming and studios business, and then the cable TV networks, you can kind of see yourselves out the door. Figure it out. Good luck to you. And then Disney folding Hulu into the Disney app as opposed to having it as a standalone streaming service. That's. I mean, in a maybe normal summer. I don't know what a normal summer is anymore, but that would be like a big story because Hulu was one of the original streaming brands, and the brand is still going to stick around, at least for now. But as a standalone streaming service, not so much. And then espn, which is owned by Disney, as well as Fox, which is a separate company, both announced and launched yesterday, we're recording this on Friday, August 22nd, their standalone streaming services. And so it's been a lot going on in the streaming world, kind of a remaking of streaming in a way. On the one hand, we finally have a standalone ESPN streaming service, which has been kind of the thing that the expectation was, if and when that ever happens, then we're really going to see the floodgates open on cord cutting. At the same time, Streaming services have gotten so expensive that we've talked about it on the show before. I'm thinking about signing up for pay TV all over again because I think it's going to actually be more cost effective at this point. Sarah, what's your streaming situation? How many services are you on? Do you have traditional tv? Kimiko is famously a traditional TV holdout.
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And I really respect her for that. But no, I only watch traditional TV when I'm in hotels and or my parents home. Other than that, I am streaming exclusive and I'm a loyalist to the three services that I use without ads because I enjoy just that no ads experience. But it's funny, I recently had my nephew here this summer and he is about to be nine and he was watching something on YouTube while I was watching over his shoulder and he got it, served an ad and he said quote, ads are so annoying. And I was like, oh, media is ruined with this next generation. They don't get it. Like you have to watch the ad to pay for the service.
C
But it's funny, unless you get a YouTube Premium.
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True, true. I gave myself away there by saying that YouTube Premium is not on my three streaming services.
C
But what are you three?
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I've got HBO, Netflix, and then I piggyback off of someone else's Hulu, which I really appreciate.
C
You know, now you'll have to figure that out.
B
Exactly. Now tbd, what that's going to look like. But it's funny, I feel like a lot of people are in the same boat about considering going back to cable to begin with just because everything's getting so expensive.
C
Well, especially because you have like, you know, yesterday I got an email from Charter, which is one of the major pay TV providers in the US announcing like, hey, if you sign up for charter Spectrum's cable TV service, you get ESPN's standalone streaming service and Fox's standalone streaming service as part of that subscription. So it's just like, okay, the streaming services are just the extension of cable. We have these TV network companies getting rid of their cable network businesses and kind of recreating them, but with streaming services now.
B
Totally. This reminds me too of like when I got my new phone plan. I was given the, you know, three months free of Netflix and then two months of Disney. And so I wonder how this will affect those bundling offerings too, if at all.
C
And those that aren't part of bundles but are raising prices. Like this week Apple announced it's raising the price of Apple TV to $13 a month, which is pretty pricey. Considering there isn't a whole bunch to watch on Apple TV plus. But I had actually gone to cancel my Apple TV plus subscription like a week ago because I forgot that I had it. I was just trying to like do some summer house cleaning, I guess, and immediately got an offer like, wait, don't go. We'll give you Apple TV plus for two months for $3 a month. And I was like, all right, sold. Now I just got to remember in two more months to cancel that.
A
I do wonder what's the plan kind of going forward? Because I think that's part of the challenge here, right? And I, I am a notorious, like, can I have your password to watch this program? And then, you know, you're more than welcome to have it back lest you be cracked down on by the password sharing police. But when you've got this bundling and whatnot, and then you've also got people being like, okay, I will come in to watch severance on Apple tv, but like, once the season's done, I'm not going to continue paying you, you know, 13, 14, $15 to continue watching this programming. So like the cable experience or anything that can be packaged becomes a lot more appealing because now it's kind of a one stop shop as opposed to paying 30 bucks for ESPN, 17, 17 bucks for Netflix, $13 for Apple, and all of those start to add up. By the end of it, you're looking at like a $200 bill.
C
And it's just like cable where you end up paying for a lot of streaming services that you're not actually watching or watching all that much. So I don't know, I just, having covered this industry for a while now, it's been cyclical. But like the, it feels like a 720 degree turn. Like it's not even a 360 anymore. It just feels like a loop de loop.
A
And then also who wins here in the end? Because like you've had the thing about like Destructors, right? You had the cable networks, they were disrupted by the likes of Netflix and Hulu. But in the end of this, like did the cable kings or these, these media companies, right, that are hosting these services and offering these bundles, like, do they win in the end?
C
Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of the story of digital media. And you know, since digital media is kind of eaten media media overall for the past decade plus of the aggregators win. And the aggregators had won in traditional TV before, but then you had this unbundling with streaming, but now it's Coming back to aggregators, and aggregators are the ones who are winning, then it's a question of like Netflix kind of doesn't need to be aggregated at the same time. Like Netflix has so much programming that it's effectively an aggregator in its own right. But for others, like an Apple or Roku with. Howdy, I was going to say I'm.
A
Waiting on you to bring up.
C
You know, it's kind of what is this going to mean for those that aren't being part of these bundles? You know, like Apple, some of these services are selling through resellers. Like you can. Through Amazon prime video channels you can buy a subscription to like an AMC plus and others. Fox one, I think even as part of it now espn. But to your point, it's a lot easier to just sign up for these subscriptions through an aggregator at this point and manage them that way. It's also really cost effective depending on how much you're watching. If you're disciplined like Sarah and you can stick to the three services, then that's no problem. But if you're like me who just watches too much or feels like I'm. I need to be able to watch too much, it gets really expensive real quick.
A
Well, here's the thing. Maybe at some point AI gets good enough to be able to sort through all of those things for you. Right.
C
I mean, there's, you know, AI companies that are popping up right now. They've popped up over the summer that you can go in there and create your own, like AI animated show and people can create an AI animated shows that then audiences can remix to their liking. So you talk about Hellscapes, we're not even there yet.
A
Too close to the Uncanny valley for my comfort.
B
Yeah.
C
Speaking of AI though, and getting away from the Hellscape for a second for a different kind of Hellscape, a lot, obviously a lot going on when it comes to AI, but it feels like we're seeing, we saw a lot of moves this summer that seem to be companies kind of responding to the AI era or preparing themselves for the AI era. WPP's had challenges, but getting a new CEO who has a background at Microsoft and on the enterprise side of things feels like a gesture towards the AI era and the nature of agency work and agency client relationships changing, especially with the specter of Omnicom and IPG coming together, which seems to be happening. Kimiko, you've been all over these stories. Yeah.
A
With the AI space, I think what we saw initially was, you know, the, the HYPE cycle, which we've talked about before. I can't give you the name of the bell curve, but at this point it's become pretty apparent, right, that AI has become an a must have as opposed to a nice to have if you want to keep competitive. So when you had chatgpt and perplexity and all of these things kind of come out, agencies and legacy media companies scrambled to kind of keep up with these changes. And I think now what you're starting to see is the ripple effects that that's having in that space where there's more deals being struck. And if it's not a deal, it's a lawsuit to be able to kind of stay ahead of the, of the, of the curb here on the agency side, bring some of those tools in house. And then on the media side, you've got this. You know, let's see if we can partner. Sarah Guaglioni, our senior metering reporter, wrote about this a while ago about the IAB Tech Lab meeting where there was more effort to have deals kind of struck here in space.
B
I will say too, what we're seeing is an interesting publisher response to AI. I mean, this is trying to, this is a publisher space trying to come together and achieve some sort of scale and really voice in the room. And at this point it really looks like a numbers game to have some sort of negotiating power going up with control over their, how their content is being scraped and used by these AI companies. I think a lot about how it took really a trial, a lawsuit against Google to have some hard numbers being shared by publishers in its ad tech trial, to be able to understand how publishers had been affected by these big platforms. In that sense, it was Google and it's ad tech. Not to say that there are mass lawsuits, though. There are already some in the works coming against these AI companies from publishers. But I say that as a way to describe that publishers need sort of a ground to stand on. And the way that they have seen that ground coming together is by using this IABT tech lab room to really voice their concerns. I guess my question is like, is that actually going to amount to something? Like, are publishers actually going to be able to bring about change? We have seen them lose out over any number of issues in the past few years, like the cookie mess. It's just privacy and it really requires, I think cynically, from my perspective, publishers to take a step back and stop finger pointing and actually come up with solutions to the problems that they're seeing. But I think step one to their Credit is getting into the same room, putting both egos and competitive businesses aside to say here's what we're all seeing together. We can stand stronger together. Let's go up against the AI companies. But I mean do you think this is actually going to be fruitful? Like what's your, what is your guys take?
C
I think egos are going to get bruised all over the place. I think they're going to. I mean we've already seen publishers like, you know, this summer just Davies reported on how Conde Nast and Hearst had signed deals with Amazon to, you know, content licensing deals with Amazon. The New York Times signed a content licensing deal with Amazon. It's kind of the who's who of digital media companies that are getting these licensing deals. You haven't heard of a mid to long tail publisher get these deals because what's. I'll be really interested when a Puck announces one of these deals because Puck has very valuable content as someone who's a Puck subscriber, but it doesn't have a ton of content. It's not a volume publisher and it's also a paywall publisher. Like a lot of the stuff that they have is subscriber only. And so I wonder to what extent they're going to do a deal with any of these AI companies and what that could signal. But I feel like from the AI company's standpoint, you don't need to do a deal with everyone because you're not going to need content from everyone. Especially if a lot of publishers are publishing unoriginal content or stuff that just isn't, isn't necessary. Like, you know, I don't know that you need quiz articles as a, you know, chatgpt or a perplexity.
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I'll just say I'm eager to see these deals mature. I mean I think the low hanging fruit of what content is feeding the LLMs, what licensing deals look like, those have been done. I think what I'm eager to see is to your point, Tim, the unique examples of the Pucks or the folks who have done really interesting things over newsletters to see how that evolves with.
C
AI, there's a story from the information, I believe it was like earlier this week talking about, you know, publishers wanting to switch from kind of this flat fee licensing model with AI companies to more of a usage based model, which makes a lot of sense because it feels, I mean we just, you know, last week's episode with Seb Joseph and Michael Berge Kimiko, we were talking about kind of usage based products Pricing models, in that case, compensation for agencies from advertisers. But it makes sense that a New York Times would be compensated by an AI company based on how often Amazon's Rufus is citing New York Times articles. Where that gets tricky is who's auditing that, who's proving what the actual usage is there? Because conceivably Amazon could just scrape or not scrape because they have an official deal, but like check the New York Times content feed once a day and then just make that available to people once it's in the model. I don't know, that usage based pricing just feels black boxy.
A
Yeah, kind of like the grading your own homework type deal. Which I think kind of takes you back to the point of the importance of having like a strong allegiance between all of these people. Like, you know, all of these people, all of these publishers to the best of the abilities. Because one, you know, kind of all boats rise with the tide. If you've gotten allegiance between somebody as small as Puck, but also the New York Times kind of all fighting the same fight, you've got a much better chance of one, you know, the perplexity ChatGPT, OpenAI and whatnot showing up to the table and having a serious conversation. And then kind of on the other side of that, players big and small have a better chance of being acknowledged and recognized and having a better seat at set table.
C
Yeah, because I wonder if it's a rising tide lifts all boats or rising tide kind of drowns some of these boats. Because even some of the actions that we're seeing from companies like Disney and NBCUniversal sued Midjourney, which is a AI image generation tool. Now they're doing video also, which is probably timely with this lawsuit. But Warner Bros. Discovery was reportedly supposed to be part of this lawsuit and decided not to be. So that feels notable. The New York Times has gone after OpenAI on its own. So that also feels notable that we haven't seen outside of the conversation at this IAB Tech Lab meeting. We haven't really seen publishers move in mass together. And then there's also just. We had two pretty notable legal verdicts come down this summer when it came to the copyright lawsuits against Anthropic and against Meta. In both cases, Anthropic and Meta won because in this case it was book authors. The book authors couldn't prove damages.
B
I think what you're describing is a word that I love to use when it comes to this beautiful industry of ours, which is inconsistent. And I think that especially with an issue like this, if you are going to negotiate en masse, you need a vision and you need a thesis. And there are too many views and differing perspectives on how to use AI and how to partner with these AI companies for publishers to actually get their shit together and bring about change. But now I sound really critical and skeptical and that's not where I want to be this day.
A
Well, it is the summer that is the hellscape.
C
I think it's fitting and it could turn into a real hellscape for Google, which is one of the AI companies but has had, well, all summer long. The verdict or what's going to be the decision in this Google Ads and search antitrust case has been hanging over it, specifically the search one, because Google lost that antitrust case. And now the judge, Judge Mehta, has had to decide, okay, are we going to make Google get rid of Chrome as the Department of Justice, which filed this lawsuit against Google as the DOJ wants, or is there going to be some other decision made in terms of how Google gets penalized for having a search antitrust violation? We don't know yet, but Google is just kind of getting it from all sides at the moment.
A
In the end, if they are forced to sell off Chrome, I know Perplexity is first in line throwing their hat in the ring to be able to buy it up. They've also put their line, their hat in line for Tick tock and who knows what else they're going to be betting on. But you know what's interesting there is that there hasn't been a complete decision made at to your point, Tim. It'll, you know, we're still shaking it out, but also, you know, I think what this does say is that Google is facing some real stiff competition when it comes to, you know, their Chrome business, their ad business, their search business, and kind of what that means for them going forward.
B
I suppose too. What I think about when I think about the summer of trials when it comes to Google and everyone coming for Google's crown, inevitably if Chrome is sold off and does go to a player like Perplexity, are you then just passing the crown to another player to rule the monarchy? I think we need to be realistic that we are not changing the government system in this, in this situation, like we are just passing the baton to someone else who will then sort of rule the roost when it comes to digital advertising. I don't know, do you think that's fair or do you think that's off base?
A
I don't, I don't think It'll be perplexity. I'll say that much.
C
We'll see. They're dangling the $34.5 billion offer, but perplexity is only worth $18 billion. So if it can actually get that money together is one thing. I don't know. I kind of buy Google's argument that Chrome isn't as valuable without the Google integration. That said, part of what makes Chrome valuable is I feel like for anyone who has used any other browser, inevitably you run into some situations where it's just like, oh, this thing doesn't work in Safari, you gotta use Chrome. And so that the Google thing feels like the biggest reason people use Chrome the second, and maybe this is just like a Focus group of 1. I run into so many different web tools, web apps that I try to use where I have to use Chrome for them and it pisses me off and I get super annoyed by it. I also like it immediately makes me not trust that web app because it's like, wait, what data are you taking from me if you don't like me using Safari? But that's a whole other situation. But I think if OpenAI is the one who gets Chrome, I think that's the more interesting outcome. Or if a meta swoops in.
A
Because I was also going to bring up the point like, does somebody like our Perplexity or some of the smaller AI players in this space have the infrastructure to be able to. The money aside, do they have the infrastructure to be able to do this? Because when you look at OpenAI and they just launched, is it Comet, the name of their own search browser and whatnot? Yeah, kind of the backing and the infrastructure to be able to maintain what Google has to your point about passing the baton, you know, you pass the baton to somebody who can't catch it and now what?
C
Yeah, although it's. I just got access to comment the other day, Kamika, I think I shared a screenshot with you when I did so Sarah, with. With Perplexity's browser comment, I went, you know, downloaded it, open it up. First thing it asks is like, hey, you want to import all your Chrome settings into here? Like please import all your browsing data, all your bookmarks, everything. We will just make this baby Chrome for you.
B
Amazing.
C
Felt really savvy. But yeah, I mean, at the same time, because of what's going on with zero click search, this idea of people are just going to Google with AI mode and AI overviews now and not going through to websites, you almost wonder, is there a joint venture here where I don't know what publishers could have this money, especially in this economy, but where publishers come together and try to acquire Chrome if only to protect the search based click era. But I don't know like if that really would make sense for them because people would still be going to google.com most likely for their searches unless the publisher signed some of their default search engine deal with another browser. But what are you going to do? Bing? All the browsers are moving AI anyway, so maybe I just talked myself out of this entirely.
A
It was a very quick turnaround that.
B
Put Shivers down my spine to think that publishers then could become or try to get into tech again, which like we saw Crash and Burn with the Washington Post, CMSS and Fox Media and them trying to get into proprietary tech though.
C
Yeah, but Sarah, wasn't it just in the past year when BuzzFeed, when BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti said, hey, we're going to create a social platform everyone.
B
Yeah, listen, I will never defend Jonah Peretti's views, particularly on the podcast. So that's what I'll say there.
C
Speaking of spines, Shivers, now we got to talk about the Trump effect because that's just, that's the thing that put Shivers down the entire global economy spine because of the these tariffs that have been on and off, just like the TikTok thing has been on and off. But whereas TikTok the span still has not happened, the tariffs have taken effect. But I don't think we've really seen a direct impact from these tariffs just yet. We've seen definitely prices go up at grocery stores and elsewhere and there's been a lot of concern from advertisers. But all of that felt more preemptive of like, oh, if tariffs are going to increase costs, let's get ahead of that by increasing prices now that these tariffs are in effect, at least when it comes to, you know, some countries like in Europe, you know, Mexico, Canada, now I guess we have to see in the fall what effect this is going to have on the ad market for one and then the knock on effects on media companies.
A
I feel like right now a lot of this is kind of like the boogeyman, right? Where there's kind of this because there are so many threats. I guess you could label it as that way. Right. The same thing with the TikTok ban, the tariffs being on and off, lawsuits kind of being hovering against different players in this, in the advertising space and whatnot. The best way you could describe it is kind of like this Trump effect where You've got mergers that can't close without the approval, where you've got publishers that are, you know, being seeing backlash from saying, you know, and then there's the tick tock band that kind of puts advertisers on the fence, tariffs that put advertising fans. So a lot of this is just like things that haven't happened and just this ominous overcast, you know, about what could happen.
B
It's honestly like more finger pointing for me babes. Like, you know, we. There's been a lot of excuses about like how spent has been affected. I mean particularly now, like back to school was really sort of a marker in my mind and, and to Kimiko, in your reporting to say that like marketers were going to start back to school spend even earlier than they had in previous years to brace for, you know, school costs to be going up and to see how consumer spend might be affected. And yet here we are going back to my nephew, he started school earlier this week and like they really still haven't taken effect. So for me it also presents a scary like Q4, you know, is all of the like shit going to hit the fan when we actually see things changing? I don't know, like how is the rest of the year looking in terms of your sources, Kimiko, for how they plan to spend?
A
Well, keep in mind that because there was so much uncertainty around like Willie or won't he with tariffs on the front end, as soon as the tariffs were even introduced, you had a bunch of companies start stacking aside products and things like that to make sure that they didn't have to or like Walmart's case, like absorbing some of those tariff costs themselves. Right. So those were kind of the two camps that they fell as to not have to drive up other parts of their, of their business. I do think that it'll come down to like offsetting those costs or manage. Our executive editor of News said Joseph this morning wrote about how, you know, Walmart is betting a lot on its ad business to kind of offset some of those costs that are being incurred from the tariff. So I don't know, there's a lot of different ways that you can prep. But again it goes back to, you know, depending on what your business is and what part of the country you're having to source from as to how that's going to impact how much marketing spend you have left.
C
Yeah, it's something where like as messy as the summer has felt with like everything that going on, even just like having this conversation and recapping the summer, I've felt like the mess inside my head and trying to make sense of it all or remember everything that happened. It feels like this is only precursor to what is going to be a messy fall and fourth quarter, because all these things that have transpired this summer have been more setup than necessarily results. Like we still have to see what's going to happen with Paramount under this new ownership. We still have to see what's going to happen with this Google antitrust remedies decision. We still have to see what's going to happen when it comes to WPP's new CEO and when Omnicom and IPG officially close their deal, what's going to happen with publishers coming out of the IAB Tech Lab meeting and obviously what's going to happen with the tariffs and whatever else this administration is going to do. So I think it's going to give us a lot to be covering on the show. Sarah, I'm sure we're going to have you on sooner than later to help Kimiko and I make sense of it, but yeah, Messy summer. Happy fall, everyone.
B
So excited.
C
Foreign.
A
Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of the Digiday Podcast. Thank you to everyone for listening. And please don't forget to share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it. You can even rate us and leave us a comment on Apple Podcasts. We'll be back next week with another episode of the Digiday Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.
Release Date: September 2, 2025
Host(s): Kimiko McCoy (Senior Marketing Reporter), Tim Peterson (Executive Editor), with guest Sarah Jeudy (Managing Editor)
Main Theme:
A look back at the frenzied, tumultuous summer of 2025 in media, marketing, and digital business—as streaming, AI developments, corporate shifts, and global policy changes set up an equally messy fall.
This episode centers on a lively conversation between the Digiday team about how the summer of 2025 upended expectations for a seasonal media lull. Instead, the industry faced rapid change in streaming, an AI arms race, landmark legal battles (particularly around Google), agency shakeups, and the looming "Trump effect" on tariffs and platforms—creating uncertainty that will carry into the fall. The tone is candid, lightly humorous, and appropriately skeptical about whether the chaos will subside.
(Primary segment: 05:15–14:44)
(Primary segment: 14:44–24:28)
(Primary segment: 24:28–30:12)
(Primary segment: 30:29–34:07)
(34:07–35:23)
The Digiday crew candidly dissects how 2025’s summer brought nothing resembling a “media lull”—instead, the industry faces relentless change and existential questions. Streaming is rebundling even as prices spiral, AI’s disruptive ripple effects shape business models and legal fights, Google’s antitrust fate could upend search’s status quo, and tariffs cast a shadow over global markets. Above all, every earthquake feels unresolved, setting the stage for a potentially even messier fall. The hosts close with a sense of both exhaustion and anticipation—ready (perhaps reluctantly) for the challenges ahead.