Speaker 1: I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
Speaker 1: going to have to start making better content. I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
Speaker 1: When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
Speaker 1: I think it's that we're purpose driven platform, like we're
Speaker 1: trying to get to substance. How was that? Are you
Speaker 1: happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? And
Speaker 1: it really is? What's up? I'm Laura Currency and I'm
Speaker 1: Alexa Kristen. Welcome back to episode I don't even know
Speaker 1: what we're on two, and we have some special announcements.
Speaker 1: We're taking this show on the road, on the road
Speaker 1: and I R l yes. So we will be opening
Speaker 1: up the I A b S Annual Leadership Meeting in
Speaker 1: February out in Palm Desert, California. Big focus on direct
Speaker 1: to consumer brands and how incumbent brands can learn from
Speaker 1: new startups and direct to consumer brands, and how the
Speaker 1: whole ecosystem of supply chain and um reaching audiences has changed,
Speaker 1: and why direct to consumer brands are coming into their
Speaker 1: own at this point. It's really going to be an
Speaker 1: interesting conversation. So we're excited to be there and big
Speaker 1: thanks to I a b for having us come out totally,
Speaker 1: and we're also excited to announce that we'll be doing
Speaker 1: two of our favorite things, talking and eating, yeah, talking
Speaker 1: any with a bunch of friends. We're going to be
Speaker 1: launching an inaugural dinner series starting at the on air
Speaker 1: fest with our friends at Work by Work. We're excited
Speaker 1: to be doing that in Brooklyn at the White Hotel
Speaker 1: in February as well. And stay tuned because they're going
Speaker 1: to be more at Landia Dinners and you may have
Speaker 1: a chance to come and join us. So today we
Speaker 1: have a special caller, probably the hottest media trends reporter
Speaker 1: in the industry right now, wouldn't you say, I would
Speaker 1: say hottest and still not known about enough. Right So
Speaker 1: we're going to get on the phone with Sarah Fisher
Speaker 1: from Axios Media Trends newsletter. I love her background, So
Speaker 1: she's going to tell you about how she actually got
Speaker 1: to Axios and what she was doing before. And I
Speaker 1: think there's actually a signal in the noise here. Um
Speaker 1: And so when you list and you hear her talk
Speaker 1: about her background and add sales and on the business side,
Speaker 1: I think it actually gives so many people on the
Speaker 1: business side, something to hold onto and say, wait a second,
Speaker 1: I can have a perspective beyond what I'm selling, right,
Speaker 1: like walking in with just a proposal and selling to
Speaker 1: a brand or a publisher or a client or whoever.
Speaker 1: Right that everyone in this space should and can have
Speaker 1: a perspective on the business And I love that, right.
Speaker 1: I think what was interesting about her point of viewer.
Speaker 1: What is interesting about her point of view is the
Speaker 1: perspective around how to fish for information. Right. If you're
Speaker 1: thinking about how you're selling, you're asking for client objectives,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out where you can slot in. You know,
Speaker 1: your unique point of view is what you just said
Speaker 1: to get something sold. But I think that there's something
Speaker 1: interesting about how you know, when you think about the
Speaker 1: seller buy a relationship and you think about that dynamic
Speaker 1: at the table of what they need to pull from
Speaker 1: you to get to, you know, to the point of
Speaker 1: how we make this deal happen. It's interesting to see
Speaker 1: her translate that over to the journalism front. And it
Speaker 1: comes down to ask the right questions, asking the right questions.
Speaker 1: And yes, it doesn't mean it's more work sometimes absolutely,
Speaker 1: but it also means that you have a more meaningful
Speaker 1: relationship with the people that you're talking to and selling
Speaker 1: to totally what I appreciate it, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: having chatted with her quite a bit, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: see sort of where at Landia has sprung up in
Speaker 1: the market, where Axios Media has sprung up in the market,
Speaker 1: and the different unique point of view you get from
Speaker 1: people who are in it right, the people who are
Speaker 1: grinding it out, the people that have expertise and have
Speaker 1: practiced um and how they're able to take points from
Speaker 1: brands or points from publishers and able to shape it
Speaker 1: into a conversation that actually extracts value because you know,
Speaker 1: you get it. So I think that's really interesting. So next,
Speaker 1: let's call Sarah cam dialer up. Hi, this is Sarah Fisher.
Speaker 1: Sarah Fisher. Hey, Sarah, it's the ladies from Atlantia are Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Good morning, Good morning. So you
Speaker 1: have the hottest media newsletter in the industry right now,
Speaker 1: Axio says Media Trends. Can you tell us, Sarah, how
Speaker 1: you got started and why you made the jump over
Speaker 1: to Axios two put this out into the world. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much for the kind words. I mean,
Speaker 1: It's kind of serendipitous how it happened. I was in
Speaker 1: ad sales for the majority of my career. I sold
Speaker 1: advertising at Politico, and when the founders of Politico jumped
Speaker 1: to create Axius, they wanted to create a product that
Speaker 1: looked at the business and technology sides of media, and
Speaker 1: they wanted a reporter who they wouldn't have to explain
Speaker 1: what a CPM was, or they wouldn't have to explain
Speaker 1: how how tor bidding worked, and that can be kind
Speaker 1: of challenging to find, especially because we're headquartered here in Washington.
Speaker 1: And so they figured, let's see if Sarah would be interested.
Speaker 1: Even though she comes from the business side, she's not
Speaker 1: really a writer, we know she gets those important topics,
Speaker 1: and it just sort of worked out really well. I
Speaker 1: started before the company launched last November. We launched the
Speaker 1: newsletter in June, and it's sort of taken off from there. Wait,
Speaker 1: so you went from ad sales to journalism. You had
Speaker 1: not been a journalist before. No. I spent a few
Speaker 1: years during my sales career. It took some time off
Speaker 1: and went to CNN, and I learned some of the
Speaker 1: editorial concepts that you need for report to be a reporter,
Speaker 1: you know, how do you initiate something off the record
Speaker 1: on the record. But for the most part, I've never
Speaker 1: been a writer, and then when they brought me on
Speaker 1: to do this, I kind of had to wing it.
Speaker 1: But luckily for us Axios, our format is, you know,
Speaker 1: really short writing. It's not using a lot of words,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of leading on expertise. So it turned
Speaker 1: out to be a good fit. So how are you
Speaker 1: sourcing stories? Because obviously there's a ton of media trade
Speaker 1: organizations that are out there reporting on very similar issues,
Speaker 1: but you seem to have found an angle in a
Speaker 1: bend in that was able to cut through very quickly.
Speaker 1: How are you sourcing those stories? And what are you
Speaker 1: looking for in the market to really find your point
Speaker 1: of differentiation and Axios Yes, So I'd say that every
Speaker 1: time you read the newsletter you'll probably find that between
Speaker 1: the five to seven items that I include, there's three
Speaker 1: to four people that are on the record. But what
Speaker 1: you don't see are the you know, thirty or forty
Speaker 1: people I talked to that week, whether it was on
Speaker 1: the phone, on background, off the work record, in an interview,
Speaker 1: at a conference, in a conversation just to be able
Speaker 1: to better form an opinion or a perspective that could
Speaker 1: help me shed light on some of these really nuanced
Speaker 1: topics to readers. And so when it comes to sourcing,
Speaker 1: it runs the gamut. This is like the most important
Speaker 1: skill that I took from sales and I brought to reporting.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter who you are, where you are. Everyone
Speaker 1: has an interesting perspective when it comes to media. So
Speaker 1: sometimes I'll talk to the folks that I used to
Speaker 1: sell ads to, some of the adviers. Sometimes I talk
Speaker 1: to regulators because I'm here in Washington about what do
Speaker 1: you know about how this industry is transforming that maybe
Speaker 1: some many times the industry parties don't even know about
Speaker 1: because they aren't looking at it from such a high level.
Speaker 1: Or I'll talk to brands. You know, it really runs
Speaker 1: the gamut, but there's no sort of equation like I
Speaker 1: call this person every day. I call that person every
Speaker 1: day because I'm covering such a wide scope of things,
Speaker 1: everything from media trends in publishing, telecom technology, business deals
Speaker 1: that you can't allow yourself to you know, only talk
Speaker 1: to the same like ten people. You just got to
Speaker 1: talk to everyone. Well, I think it's really impressive is
Speaker 1: that there's so much noise out there and you distill
Speaker 1: your newsletter into really smart, really pointed topics, and um
Speaker 1: they is that people need to be paying attention to
Speaker 1: and when you're talking everybody, how do you do that?
Speaker 1: How do you Lauren, I talked about spotting the signal
Speaker 1: in the noise? How do you spot the signals and
Speaker 1: the noise? It's a great question. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I did have to do when I was at scene,
Speaker 1: and which was hard, was they put me in this
Speaker 1: thing called the feeds from and you'd have to listen
Speaker 1: to like hours and hours of White House briefings, Pentagon briefing,
Speaker 1: Stage department briefings, and then you have to send a
Speaker 1: note to the network of like the top five things,
Speaker 1: like what were the biggest things after five hours of
Speaker 1: listening to people? What are the five minutes that matter?
Speaker 1: And so it really helps hone your editorial judgment. And
Speaker 1: I like to sort of apply that same thought process
Speaker 1: when I write the newsletter. It's like, Okay, I have
Speaker 1: lists that I've made all week of things I've heard,
Speaker 1: things that are interesting. But if I'm a business executive
Speaker 1: and I need to get smarter about my media business,
Speaker 1: What are the five things that I have to know?
Speaker 1: And so, honestly, it just comes down to ranking. It
Speaker 1: becomes it comes down to just having good news judgment,
Speaker 1: going with your gut and ranking things. And sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: identify something that no one else is talking about, and
Speaker 1: I wonder, oh, my gosh, am I missing? Am I
Speaker 1: missing the mark? Like? Am I the one that's just
Speaker 1: going totally off the cliff here? And then people will
Speaker 1: respond and be like, thank god you wrote that. I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about that, or I hadn't thought about it
Speaker 1: this way. I'd say, like, the best example is when
Speaker 1: I talked about some of the issues that we're facing
Speaker 1: with like Chinese investments in media, or you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to have something tomorrow on you know, Comcast and
Speaker 1: NBC their merger sort of remedies expired this past weekend,
Speaker 1: Like what does that mean for a T? T? Time
Speaker 1: Warner And what does that mean for you if you're
Speaker 1: looking to advertise with a T and T. So a
Speaker 1: lot of it is just me kind of going with
Speaker 1: my gut, and sometimes I guess I could be off,
Speaker 1: but it seems so far that people have liked my gut,
Speaker 1: you know, It's interesting when you talk about being able
Speaker 1: to distill it down in five points. I think there's
Speaker 1: a side hustle in there for you, because if I
Speaker 1: read one more sales deck that goes fifty pages instead
Speaker 1: of five points and four pages, I think there's something
Speaker 1: there where you could uh kind of consult with folks
Speaker 1: on how to get straight to the point. So you've
Speaker 1: been obviously on you know, some of the hot tips
Speaker 1: coming through, and you you dropped a very special edition
Speaker 1: UM in the middle of CS last week around the
Speaker 1: news relative to Facebook. Yes, can you give us the
Speaker 1: background on what you see being the most important facets
Speaker 1: UM for our listeners around the news of Facebook changing
Speaker 1: their algorithm to focus on engagement with posts, which obviously
Speaker 1: are going to have negative applications on brands and publishers. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'd say the most important thing is that if
Speaker 1: you take a look at traffic patterns, any sophisticated publisher
Speaker 1: that's eyeing or analytics, And by publisher, I'm referring to
Speaker 1: brands too, because they published on Facebook, they should have
Speaker 1: seen this coming. I mean, the amount of referred traffic
Speaker 1: from Facebook and comparison to Google and others has just
Speaker 1: been waning for months, and so you shouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: by what you're seeing. However, you should expect for it
Speaker 1: to continue to ramp up, meaning that less and less
Speaker 1: of your posts will have visibility, will have exposure. I
Speaker 1: think here's the sneaky to ways where it's going to
Speaker 1: creep up on publishers and brands that they might not realize.
Speaker 1: One is so many people who do long form natives
Speaker 1: rely on Facebook to distribute traffic to those native pieces,
Speaker 1: and that will become much harder. Did you day just
Speaker 1: wrote a piece on this If you had bought, you know,
Speaker 1: a one hundred thousand dollar native execution with a publisher,
Speaker 1: but on your media plan there was like a eighty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars social distribution Like most of those clicks you
Speaker 1: were banking on from Facebook, You're probably not going to
Speaker 1: get in half as much as those. So that's one
Speaker 1: big side effect that I'd say is going to have
Speaker 1: on brands and publishers. The other is there have been
Speaker 1: analytics to support this, and we've run a purse on
Speaker 1: this throughout the year, but short form video for the
Speaker 1: sake of short form video is just not going to
Speaker 1: be an option for developing an audience anymore. And we've
Speaker 1: written about this extensively, particularly as we mentioned actually a
Speaker 1: few editions ago, how it will help other sort of
Speaker 1: technology advancements like voice or et cetera, become bigger. But
Speaker 1: you can't just create Facebook is to try to go
Speaker 1: viral anymore and get more people to like your page
Speaker 1: and maybe sign up for your newsletter subscription. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to rely on much more strategic, much more well
Speaker 1: crafted types of editorial or content. Is. You can't just
Speaker 1: make spami videos anymore. Hasn't it been that way actually
Speaker 1: for a long time. Now it's officially that way now
Speaker 1: with Facebook going down this direction, it's definitely going to
Speaker 1: be a marked difference. But I would say if Brand's
Speaker 1: thought for the last three years that they were getting
Speaker 1: real virility out of Facebook without giving them significant spend,
Speaker 1: they're wrong. Well it's interesting, right, Like one of my
Speaker 1: favorite tweets that I read that came in the feed
Speaker 1: right afterwards was, you know, we talked about it all
Speaker 1: this time, the difference between delivering traffic versus delivering engagement
Speaker 1: and true audience, and people are going to start finding
Speaker 1: out to your point, Al said that you know, this
Speaker 1: whole time. It was volumes and volumes and volumes and
Speaker 1: scale and scale and scale. But the reality of the the
Speaker 1: situation was how many of those folks that were coming
Speaker 1: across your post or watching your video or actually qualified
Speaker 1: audience that was going to stick around and engage with
Speaker 1: the brand or were they getting real morality? I think
Speaker 1: the question for me is was anyone getting real virility
Speaker 1: at this in the last few years with Facebook anyway?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Yeah, I completely agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think there was a lot of inflated virality and
Speaker 1: inflated engagement through paid Now we've heart you know, we've
Speaker 1: quoted analysts saying that it's you know, organic reach is
Speaker 1: basically going to be dead on Facebook and you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to buy a lot of your reach. I think
Speaker 1: that's one thing publisher should be really wary of is
Speaker 1: if you're not creating incredibly culturally timely relevant content, Like
Speaker 1: if you feel like you have to pay to elevate
Speaker 1: your organic stuff, your organic stuff could be stronger. And
Speaker 1: so I think brands are going to have to think about,
Speaker 1: how do I create more like culturally relevant moments, How
Speaker 1: do I create more authentic content that breaks through the
Speaker 1: noise without me having to pay for it to break
Speaker 1: through the noise. And so you're right, it's been happening
Speaker 1: for a long time. But I think this is the
Speaker 1: way of Facebook putting me icing on the cake. We
Speaker 1: keep talking about Facebook. Let's talk about everything but Facebook.
Speaker 1: So like, where's the opportunity. I was reading an article
Speaker 1: recently where the CEO of Fatherly was saying that a
Speaker 1: lot of his traffic is coming direct from pinterest. Is
Speaker 1: this an opportunity for other tech players like a Pinterest
Speaker 1: to come in and create a whole new environment for
Speaker 1: brands and publishers. It is, And we talked about this
Speaker 1: a lot of accius and we get a ton of
Speaker 1: our traffic from Flipboard. It depends on what type of
Speaker 1: publisher you are. If you're a lifestyle publisher, if you do,
Speaker 1: you know, sell home decre or something like that, then yes,
Speaker 1: Pinterest would be phenomenal for you. If you're a news publisher,
Speaker 1: something like Flipboard or Google News or Apple would be
Speaker 1: great for you. The thing that publishers are going to
Speaker 1: have to think about, though, is that we got into
Speaker 1: this situation where we were signing deals with the devil.
Speaker 1: We were signing away our I P and are content
Speaker 1: to these different platforms, and we weren't getting enough of
Speaker 1: a revenue share in return. We're at the point now
Speaker 1: where if you want to develop strategic relationships with your audience,
Speaker 1: if you want to be able to make you know,
Speaker 1: sound financial investments, you can't just rely on traffic from
Speaker 1: these platforms. You have to rely on a strategic relationship,
Speaker 1: a strategic investment where you're getting revenue in return. And
Speaker 1: so this is one of the problems that some publishers
Speaker 1: crist out with Apple News. It's that where's the revenue share?
Speaker 1: Is it good enough? Are we making enough money from
Speaker 1: that partnership. I know Snapchat has been really vocal that
Speaker 1: they're trying to make this better. They're announcing a publisher
Speaker 1: summit where they can focus on AD rev share agreements,
Speaker 1: I mean the most important thing. There are different distributors
Speaker 1: that are going to rise as Facebook falls, like Apple News, Flipboards, Snapchat, Twitter, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But publishers are going to have to be pretty picky
Speaker 1: about the ones they choose to really invest in unless
Speaker 1: they're getting a big return on that investment, either through
Speaker 1: an AD revenue share or content license. Agreement. They need
Speaker 1: to be really picky about where they just hand over
Speaker 1: their I P because then they're just going to fall
Speaker 1: into the same trap as Facebook. How do they vet that? Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta have a smart audience development team that's in
Speaker 1: constant communication with the partner. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember seeing there was a CNBC article about
Speaker 1: how Amazon reps can be really hard to get in
Speaker 1: touch with and to sort of work with. I mean,
Speaker 1: Amazon has a relatively nascent advertising business. It's growing faster
Speaker 1: than everybody else's, but some of that institutional infrastructure of
Speaker 1: how do you create sales partnerships, how do you create
Speaker 1: smart revenue partnerships and content are just newer to them.
Speaker 1: That's not what they focused on. They were an e
Speaker 1: commerce platform forever, and so you need to choose your
Speaker 1: partners that have experience and that are committed to getting
Speaker 1: that sort of publisher relationship right. And that means having
Speaker 1: a lot of uptrunk conversations with their sales teams about
Speaker 1: what does the revenue share look like? Am I going
Speaker 1: to be contract? And how long does this contract expire?
Speaker 1: Where are the flexibilities in this So that if we
Speaker 1: have a huge enormous bumping traffic that we can get
Speaker 1: earned for it because we're bringing elevation to your platforms.
Speaker 1: All of these things are conversations that brand's got to
Speaker 1: have with the distributors, and unfortunately, not all distributors are
Speaker 1: at the level where they're sophisticated enough and developing these
Speaker 1: types of contracts. If you take a look at what
Speaker 1: cable has done with some of the networks or cable
Speaker 1: satellite companies, that those partnerships have been solidified over a
Speaker 1: long period of time, starting to get a little bit
Speaker 1: rustled now with redistribution agreements, but they've been solidified. We're
Speaker 1: still at the point where we have not created a
Speaker 1: really solid distribution ecosystem for digital Regulation is going to
Speaker 1: have some stuff parts to do with it, but I
Speaker 1: also just think time and experience are going to help
Speaker 1: to you know, it's interesting, UM, what you were just
Speaker 1: talking about in terms of content I P and not
Speaker 1: necessarily just giving away the milk for free. I think
Speaker 1: it's something we've talked about at Nausea and probably on
Speaker 1: this show, is that publishers UM and media companies in particular. Um,
Speaker 1: it's almost like you need to turn the mirror inward
Speaker 1: and start taking a deeper look at what you are
Speaker 1: bringing to the table um and some of the content
Speaker 1: um that has been you know, chasing the lowest comments dominate.
Speaker 1: You're looking for scale and finding these partners just to
Speaker 1: put it out wherever anybody wants to view it. I
Speaker 1: think as an industry we need to reevaluate that distribution
Speaker 1: strategy because at the end of the day, if you
Speaker 1: have an asset or you have content um that people
Speaker 1: are willing to pay for, um that people can't get
Speaker 1: anywhere else, I think people are willing to come and
Speaker 1: look for it, and I don't necessarily think that that
Speaker 1: has to be in the Facebook feed UM. So would
Speaker 1: be curious to get your thoughts on that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree more. This is the lens that I
Speaker 1: would approach to the people's way of thinking about this.
Speaker 1: For so long we measured success in media by reach
Speaker 1: Nielsen ratings. How many people listened consecutively for one minute?
Speaker 1: What was that reach? Radio? Same thing, what was that
Speaker 1: reach over a fifteen minute measurement period? Even in digital
Speaker 1: when we first started out, we were measuring things by
Speaker 1: unique visitors. Over the past really I'd say two years
Speaker 1: because reach has become democratized through smartphones, you can reach
Speaker 1: anyone at a time. What has become the shift is
Speaker 1: how engaged how much of someone's time can you capture.
Speaker 1: And so when we're thinking about i P and we're
Speaker 1: thinking about just making our content free and accessible, you
Speaker 1: don't need to reach everybody any more. That's not the
Speaker 1: metric of success. You're hand pumping. We're hand pumping. The
Speaker 1: metricup success should be how much does your content engage
Speaker 1: someone so that they can have an positive brand lift
Speaker 1: and help get you to a point of sale if
Speaker 1: you're trying to sell product, or how much does your
Speaker 1: product give you a positive brand lift so that if
Speaker 1: you're a publisher, you can develop that direct to consumer
Speaker 1: relationship to monetize it in other ways. And so if
Speaker 1: you're thinking about I just need to get my i
Speaker 1: P out there, I need to scale my audience. I
Speaker 1: need growth. I need growth. I mean, stop trying to
Speaker 1: grow so fast and start trying to grow smart. Where
Speaker 1: can I put my IP in a place that I'm
Speaker 1: going to get value from it and my consumers are
Speaker 1: gonna get value from it. Because one of the other
Speaker 1: issues is you totally dilute your brand. When you just
Speaker 1: try to kind of push all of your content everywhere
Speaker 1: without being strategic, a half of it doesn't become viewable, right.
Speaker 1: Impressions aren't viewable in the US anyway, So why are
Speaker 1: you spanning it on crappy programmatic channels and b when
Speaker 1: it does get viewed, if it's not contextually relat in
Speaker 1: like what we're saying before, the impact is so much less.
Speaker 1: So this is going to force everyone in the ecosystem
Speaker 1: at Atlantia. Soul sister, what you said about um, you know,
Speaker 1: stop growing so fast, start growing smart, I think is
Speaker 1: like Mike drops, I actually think it's a new episode
Speaker 1: that I would love for you. We would love for
Speaker 1: you to come in on. Because one of the things
Speaker 1: that we talk a lot about is in this economy
Speaker 1: of companies and brands that are being driven by short termism, right,
Speaker 1: and by the market that says you have to grow,
Speaker 1: you have to grow, you have to grow at this
Speaker 1: exponential right. And then what's going to happen is we're
Speaker 1: gonna see brands, including media brands and companies have these
Speaker 1: meteoric rises and falls just as fast. And so what happens,
Speaker 1: I think to the whole landscape when that when that
Speaker 1: starts happening. I mean, the rise and fault thing that
Speaker 1: you just hit on is so crucial in understanding how
Speaker 1: all of the new age digital publishers are failing. Because
Speaker 1: if you're VC backed, which like excuses the EC backed
Speaker 1: business Insider Refiner twenty nine, the list goes on. If
Speaker 1: you're backed by venture capitalists. This is why vcs typically,
Speaker 1: by the way, don't get into media. They want to
Speaker 1: see a tend time return in their investment, meaning that
Speaker 1: if you bring in you know, one million dollars one year,
Speaker 1: the second year, you gotta double it. Bring into the
Speaker 1: third year, you've gotta double it, bring in four. By
Speaker 1: the time some of these companies get into really it's
Speaker 1: like the fourth and fifth year, the pressure to continue
Speaker 1: to double revenue it swallows them, and so they just
Speaker 1: start to grow as fast as they possibly can to
Speaker 1: accommodate it. They don't have the flexibility of longevity and
Speaker 1: time to build and develop a smart audience, and that's
Speaker 1: where you're seeing a lot of them start to rely
Speaker 1: on platforms just to scale big meet those DC expectations,
Speaker 1: and then once those platforms pulled the plug, they're screwed.
Speaker 1: And so I think a lot of publishers are going
Speaker 1: to have to think strategically about their funding. If you
Speaker 1: want to get into this game, where are you gonna
Speaker 1: get funding that your expectations allow for long term growth?
Speaker 1: And I recognize that that seems a little bit contradictory
Speaker 1: because Axis is VC back. It's a challenge we're going
Speaker 1: to have to face to leave and open about that.
Speaker 1: But people should think really strategically about that because we're
Speaker 1: watching people that have those very steep growth curves ahead
Speaker 1: of them just flounder in this environment. I also think
Speaker 1: that to just to put a cherry on that and
Speaker 1: then they commoditize their experience. So not only have they
Speaker 1: lost any kind of funding, they've lost audience. They've completely
Speaker 1: lost audience. Some of the people that came to them
Speaker 1: initially now see that the content has totally derived from
Speaker 1: where their brand or what that publisher stood for to
Speaker 1: begin with, and they suddenly don't find any resonance with it.
Speaker 1: I kind of think about Huffington's Post in a way.
Speaker 1: The post was built as almost an open platform for
Speaker 1: people that have left the center, you know, uh viewpoints
Speaker 1: during the Bush administration, and then once media had to commoditize,
Speaker 1: where a lot of left leaning words you know, daily
Speaker 1: costs and others popped up there. You know, value add
Speaker 1: for being sort of this open platform suddenly decreased. And
Speaker 1: what you saw was that loyal havington post readers, they
Speaker 1: could just get this completely commoditized stuff and other left
Speaker 1: of center sites, and it became more difficult for them.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that there isn't intrinsic value, because they
Speaker 1: do do amazing reporting. It's just they're a good example
Speaker 1: of a publisher I think that has sort of had
Speaker 1: to figure out how to navigate these waters because they
Speaker 1: grew really fast at a time when the Facebook was
Speaker 1: just starting, and now they have to redefine themselves well
Speaker 1: not so to just bring a full circle. That's where
Speaker 1: we talked about the value of content. I p if
Speaker 1: you have something that is truly differentiated, think twice before
Speaker 1: you start distributing it all over the place. I do
Speaker 1: believe we can get back to this push versus poll,
Speaker 1: leaning more heavily on the poll because if you know,
Speaker 1: I've got something that nobody else in the market has,
Speaker 1: well ship, I'm gonna gone exactly So, Sarah, it's time,
Speaker 1: I know when I saw you in Vegas at c
Speaker 1: E S, you said, oh my god, killed by d
Speaker 1: I Y. How come nobody's ever prepared for it? So
Speaker 1: let's see if you are, we'll see, We'll see how
Speaker 1: it goes. I don't know, So what would you kill? Um?
Speaker 1: I would kill This might be a little bit of
Speaker 1: a specific one, but this is going back to my
Speaker 1: sales days. I would start to really think if I'm
Speaker 1: a brand, about killing offline items and media plans that
Speaker 1: are off platform for the brand that I'm running with.
Speaker 1: So if I'm trying to buy I don't know whatever,
Speaker 1: someone's audience, why would I ever want to target this
Speaker 1: publisher's audience through audience extension on another platform. It never
Speaker 1: really made sense to me. It always felt like you're
Speaker 1: getting the right people, but you're not getting the right experience.
Speaker 1: So I would kill off just like generally speaking, the
Speaker 1: concept of audience extension. If you're going to run with
Speaker 1: the publisher, you're doing it because you want to get
Speaker 1: that audience amid your content that I p next to
Speaker 1: the right people at the right time. I think this
Speaker 1: splicing and dicing, well, I'll get this audience, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put it in front of the competitor's content. Because
Speaker 1: it's cheaper, You cheapen the experience. It's not worth your time.
Speaker 1: Kill it. From that line, I don't interesting I like it.
Speaker 1: What would you buy, bling, Bling? I would buy a
Speaker 1: measurement company in podcasts, whoever they are, wherever they are.
Speaker 1: We need it so bad. Apple Analytics is not enough.
Speaker 1: It's a really quickly growing industry. There's no reason it
Speaker 1: shouldn't be taking off. The only reason it isn't is
Speaker 1: because we don't have a way for advertisers to measure
Speaker 1: the success of it and equate it in a way
Speaker 1: that could make it easy to buy and show return
Speaker 1: on investments. So I would buy whoever can measure podcasts
Speaker 1: in a really meaningful way. Maybe you should come talk
Speaker 1: to the Panoply folks because they have to make a
Speaker 1: phone platform. Or maybe we should shift a d I
Speaker 1: Y and let's just build it ourselves. So what would
Speaker 1: you do yourself, Sarah? You know this is something that
Speaker 1: we hope to write about at one point. UM. I
Speaker 1: work with a lot of comms departments, either in brands
Speaker 1: or UM publishers. I think I would start to reimagine
Speaker 1: what the reporter and brand relationship looks like you see
Speaker 1: so many people that just kind of spam you with
Speaker 1: press releases, is opposed to taking the time to strategically
Speaker 1: walk you through their goals, their mission, and their product.
Speaker 1: And if they were to do that, we would have
Speaker 1: a much easier time actually giving them some of that
Speaker 1: or media that they're craving. But when you just sort
Speaker 1: of spam us with press releases, it becomes really difficult
Speaker 1: for us to develop a smart relationship with your product
Speaker 1: and your brand. So I think I would reimagine that
Speaker 1: the you know, reporter brand relationship. I love that. I
Speaker 1: think something that Laura and I talked to folks about
Speaker 1: in the industry a lot is don't just put a
Speaker 1: press release out in the wire yep. That's the old school.
Speaker 1: It doesn't do anything. So these relationships um and bringing
Speaker 1: uh you know, reporters into the fold on what's really
Speaker 1: driving the business and why this came about so smart
Speaker 1: so right, yeah, And I would say that if I
Speaker 1: was a VC, Sarah, that's why my money's on you,
Speaker 1: because you're asking the right questions. So with that, thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Sarah. If people need you, get in
Speaker 1: touch with you, drop you a tip, Go on background.
Speaker 1: How do they find you? Sarah s A r a
Speaker 1: at Axos dot com. And if you haven't before, subscribe
Speaker 1: to Sarah's Axios Media newsletter. It is awesome. It's something
Speaker 1: that now I get so many newsletters in my inbox.
Speaker 1: I always make sure I'm reading that every Tuesday morning. Sarah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for calling in. It was great
Speaker 1: to chat with you. We hope you see you in
Speaker 1: New York City soon. Yes, thanks guys, talk soon by
Speaker 1: So how smart is Sarah Fisher? I love her. She
Speaker 1: could be like the third leg of the stool. She
Speaker 1: might be the third leg, and she might be the
Speaker 1: fourth leg. I'm not really true she counts for two legs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was great. So definitely subscribe to Axios Media Trends
Speaker 1: newsletter if you haven't already. Um, but that said, we
Speaker 1: have our thank you's. Thanks Cameron Drew's, Andy Bowers, Matt
Speaker 1: Turk and all of our friends and family and Panoply
Speaker 1: and our fabulous listeners who have been sending us I
Speaker 1: don't even know. I mean, like Twitter is blown up.
Speaker 1: Twitter is blown up with the emails that we're getting.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, they're like phenomenal hair raising make me
Speaker 1: spits and tear up like, thank you, thank you for
Speaker 1: everyone reaching out and saying how much you're enjoying the
Speaker 1: show and giving us ideas on things that you're interested in. Um,
Speaker 1: we are forever grateful and keep them coming. So with
Speaker 1: that island yet, we'll be back in two weeks. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Full disclosure. Our opinions are our own.