WTF is a media company now?

The press was complimentary and he's like, "You know, I like the dynamic you have. You know, Troy's very cantankerous." You know, I. Yeah. Don't be sensitive. The other thing, I'm not sensitive, I'm cantankerous. Don't you hate when someone's like, "Don't be sensitive" because then like your response, you can't. I hate that. Now. Now. Now. Now. People vs. algorithms is a podcast dedicated to detecting patterns in media, business and culture. I'm Brian Marici and each week I'm joined by Troy Young, writer of the People vs. algorithms newsletter, and a long time media executive who is most recently the president of Hearst Magazine's. This week we're taking a bit of a thematic approach and we're going to talk about a big question, which is, what exactly is a media company now? You know, we're in a strange time for the media business. There's a consensus that having a loyal audience has never been more valuable. You regularly hear people saying that every company at some level will be a media business in the future. And yet, being a media business is more challenging than ever, it seems. At least for the quote-unquote traditional media businesses. This week, Troy and I discuss just what makes a media business now, and how it is completely different than what came before. It's more about understanding digital culture, it's more personality-driven, and it's very often not about the quest for eyeballs to show ads, or even necessarily to sell subscriptions. Hope you enjoyed this episode, and please, if you have a moment, rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, subscribe on Apple or Spotify, and send me feedback on what we can do better, or if you have a question or topic that you would like to see us use in future episodes. My email is [email protected]. Alright, explain this flow theory, and then we'll see if we use it or not. Because I like flow, I like the flow theory. You know, that's the guy I can't pronounce his name. Mihaela, just the cacavo. I think the reason that I'm on it is that I find that there's a breed of internet entrepreneur that really understands how the internet works. And it's about understanding how traffic flows, how people come from search, what the role of social is, like how to kind of interrupt those flows in a commercial way that is profitable. And I find that a lot of times when we plan business initiatives, we talk about stuff that's conceptual and that's never going to be anything, especially when we talk about stuff like tam, it's a total addressable market. It's mostly useless. Right? And we spend a lot of time kind of deconstructing an opportunity to present to an investor or venture capitalist or whatever. And really what matters is, is there a behavior that exists that you can get in front of and like get a product out there really quickly and figure out if someone's going to embrace it? Yeah. And so to me, like because everything in our world is connected, right? Like entertainment, community, transactions, you know, communication, that really the modern business planning exercises about understanding flows and what role you're going to play in them. And so I thought it was a cool idea. I mean, I think you could spend a lot of time breaking it down and creating frameworks to help people, you know, identify where the flows are and stuff as a means to kind of plan a business. What I think is interesting about that is that it seems to me it's like, it's almost like self-taught. It's not something that you take. Like, it's like I always thought it was kind of funny to go to Stanford and like major in entrepreneurship, right? Like it's like, that's not generally how it's done. Even though you see a lot of people like back into it operationally, right? But like, you're not going to learn that you like you, I think you're seeing like a lot of media brands that are developing that are like if you will flow based. But it's done because like, there's an innate understanding of people who is like who are deeply understand the flows of like digital media. Yeah, I mean, you know, you can appreciate it in all kinds of ways, even like for example, guys that in the early days would buy up all the domains of misspellings, right? Like, you know, Marx and Spencer, or Mark and Spencer, or whatever. And then they would put offers on those pages and they'd buy like literally tens of thousands of those domains and build these. It's just like an appreciation of how stuff, even when it's not working, is creating flows. Yeah, that was like Richard was a richer person plot. The guy started demand media. He started it after having like a portfolio of like thousands and thousands of like random domains. Yeah. So I guess that's what's interesting to me is like the version of it now. It seems like it's more around the culture of the internet because the internet is so much more mature and so much more vast and it's being able to find these little tribal niches. And what and what activates them, if you will. Right. Also, closely related, I noticed that Google is starting to mess with their search result pages. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, you dismissed me saying this like last week. Next topic we're on to is about Troy admitting he was wrong. I'm sorry, Brian. You make me doubt myself because you're you say it in a contankerous way. And so I. Well, how did I challenge you on this? What did I say? Because I said like I see Google out there advertising search and we always think things are permanent. But like Google search, this could be the time it's threatened. At the end of the day, nothing is permanent on the internet. Everything seems permanent and nothing has remained permanent. Okay. Search is probably the most protected place. But they're clearly being threatened right now. To me, if you're looking to like truly change the 10 blue links have not evolved that much since like the early 2000s. Like I think it shows that they're threatened by the new ways of discovery that are out there. You know, I think I don't think I disagree with that. But the I thought the example that was in the verge piece was a search query. I don't know if Google pushed this out, but it was like Wauhaqa, in Mexico. And it was essentially surfacing an organized cluster of information to help you kind of navigate that idea or that destination. And you know, I think one of the challenges for Google is essentially what they're doing is building a web page on demand. Right. They're answering the next question and in answering the next question, they threaten the architecture of the internet. And that's problematic because if they answer the next question, for example, a search query related to a product review. This is when everybody in the publishing world went ballistic because they were taking basically snippets of reviews and including them in the search query and had not kind of gone to the market to talk about how they would manage attribution around affiliate revenue in that context, which is a big problem for people that peg their publishing business to affiliate advertising while. In this case, it's sort of like yet another iteration of the like, why do you need to go to a weather site when you just type, you know, what's the weather Google? Right. Weather sites don't need to exist. Movie times is another example. Right. So the more that they organize search queries in ways that anticipate the next question, the more they undermine a lot of people that rely on them and they open one. Yeah. But I think what they're worried about is how do they make their results much more visual. Just much more engaging and visual to compete in a world where people flip between videos with their phone. Yeah. That's the point of like TikTok being like a potential rival. Like I think that there's, it's like the internet is changing and I think Google, they're not going to be left behind. So they're going to need to have like richer results pages and it'll provide new ad opportunities. Jim Lanzone was on to this like very early because I talked with him many times over the years that ask Jeaves about like because that was their whole thing. They were going to give you the answer rather than like give you 10 blue links. That was I think he said it to me like a million times. The land zone is just a sharp product that just work. Exactly. All right. Troy, you're doing this from London. I'm back in New York City. I want to talk a little bit about the office and more specifically the headquarters. This week there was news that came out about dude perfect. You know, dude perfect. Well, I don't follow the much but I know who they are. I bet your son. I bet your son knows them. They do all those cool tricky basketball videos. So if they were not fraternity brothers, they should have been fraternity brothers, some sort of Texas University. They started like trick shot basketball videos. This thing blew up. It's one of the most popular YouTube channels, et cetera, et cetera. It has millions of followers. And now they're talking about building a $100 million headquarters. And what I find interesting about this is that it's not the typical office building. It is a place to experience the brand as much for their community as it is for themselves and their employees. It got me thinking because we're in this period where I don't know about you at any sort of. meeting that I have, it ends up, we end up talking about return to office stuff. It always comes up. It comes up with the employee side when I'm meeting with them. I had two meetings this morning. One was a CEO of a technology company, and he's like hell bent on getting people into the office, and he's, you know, he's on the extreme end of that. And then I had another meeting where I was over here and people at the table saying, "There's no reason for me to go into the office." So I'm going to the office to like have like Zoom calls. So I want to talk a little bit about what the future of the office is and the future of the headquarters in particular, 'cause it's always served a few different roles, I feel like, particularly within media brands. - Is that a question? - Yeah, this is where you're supposed to jump off. - Well, I thought something different when I saw that thing. Basically, it seems like Dude Perfect is going to build their own kind of monument to themselves, right? And it'll be like a stadium. And the overtime guys did something remarkable. They built a stadium in under 12 months. And I think it can accommodate a couple thousand people. We talked about this, right? - Yeah. - And it's really a stadium/video production environment, it's heavily laden with screens and cameras, and it's a platform for broadcasting. And what's remarkable is they built it in kind of this kind of prefabby way where they assembled it together in under a year, which is pretty incredible. Because if you talk to the overtime guys, they'll tell you that they pivoted their business model during COVID from a kind of youth oriented sports media company to a creator of leagues, and then this kind of environment where they could stand all the stuff up and create content with a live audience. And I thought that was pretty cool. And it made me think about the Mr. Beast thing. And it made me think about how we are about to see these kind of amalgams of new influencer or creator or media brand led things in this new world are gonna create new kind of business types that are really unfamiliar, right? So it's a media brand that has a stadium that sells hot dogs that has a league, right? Or it's a stunty YouTube brand and like the dude guys and a stadium and a museum or it's Mr. Beast and a chain of burger joints and who knows what's next? Or it's Kylie Jenner. And I was in the airport yesterday and there's a vending machine with all of her products in it, right? So these are their attention led or media led brands that are assembling commercial capabilities behind them in ways that we haven't seen before. It's you can call it content to commerce or whatever, but there's just these new kind of hybrid businesses that are enabled because basically supply chains, the notion of that broadly defined are totally fungible. Like we can create whatever we want. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, and I think that's what you're seeing with overtime. It's like in five years, like are they a quote unquote media brand? I don't know. I mean, they could be just as easily in a different category. You're seeing media used across so many different categories that I think it's gonna be hard to pitch and all people is like, are you a publisher? Are you not a publisher? You know what it is? This came up in our board meeting this week and it's kind of the old media constructs were very much tied to format and distribution, right? So you were a magazine company. You had a printed thing. It got distributed by new standard subscription or whatever, right? But it was defined you were magazine company, and you make a magazine. And I think that then the next one was you were like a web media company. You made a website and that defined what you are. And now it's kind of a holy shit moment because the website kind of doesn't matter for a lot of companies. And there are obviously are gonna be those that optimize for the website and have affiliate businesses or have big search traffic bases and all that stuff. But increasingly the website doesn't matter. So people then say, well, what are you? Well, I'm an IP based media company that distributes my content and open platforms or whatever. But basically you got IP, you got a brand and you got to figure out what to do with it and how to become famous and then how to attach value to a downstream. Less and less, it's about advertising. And that's a big shift. And I think it has to do with the next generation of media companies defining themselves outside of a foundational platform. Yeah. Well, it used to be the debate about who is a media company who is not. Like you had like on the one hand publishers who were masquerading as technology companies. I will name many names. And on the other hand, you had platforms that were denying that they were media companies. That always bugged you. You know that? It always bugged you that I do. But always, well, of course it does 'cause it's bullshit, you know that. Well, I built a differentiated platform. Okay, leave aside, say media. Most of the people who were PRing themselves as technology companies were doing it for valuation reasons, not for reality. It was about optics. It was about optics, but it was more than that brand. It was existential. It was that because anybody can light up a website, there was no way to protect yourself. So you wanted to have technology story that hopefully would create some kind of mode. And so it was an honest declaration. Be nice, please. Don't be so contentious. Oh, it can rub off on me. But at the same time, I think a lot of these definitions sort of go like, "Me, contentious. Did they call you cynical or anything else that was prejointed or was it, oh, you're so nice. How do you do this with that contentious guy?" Yeah, it was more like that, actually. It's my breakfast. I mean, a lot of these questions don't matter though, right? Like you get attention like in a lot of different ways and then you just build a business like around that. And there's a lot of different ways you build a business. And I think what's been great is that there are many different ways now to make money that are not necessarily just advertising. There are many ways that are not just advertising or subscriptions, right? Agreed. (laughs) (soft music) All right, Troy, you're in the UK right now. I mean, bad week for the UK. It's completely coincidental that you're there. But I think by the time you leave, the dollar will be worth more than the pounds. I don't know, I mean, every single discussion I have, like the second topic after, returned off as stuff, ends up being the recession. And like a lot of times we can talk ourselves into this a lot of it is psychology. And a lot of it is outside of your control. But at the same time, you need to plan for it. And I've written about it before. I don't know if you have yet, which actually would be pretty interesting. Because the things that work during good times are not the things that work during tough times. Where do you think like, we are right now with like heading into a potential recession? And is that gonna end up having like a clarifying effect on the market? Yeah, I really like the all-in podcast. I know that people like to hate it and I know Alex is an offend, but I really like it. And I just wanna make a point quickly into this recession thing because they talk about a broad set of topics from kind of global conflict to economics, to the business strategy to spacks, everything, right? And I don't think a podcast like that would have existed in the past because you wouldn't have had that kind of talent with that kind of expertise creating media. And so now that media is open, anyone can create it and the benefits of doing that are you know, influencing all that stuff. You get people like that creating what I think is really and you know, pretty provocative, interesting, informative media. But you asked about the economy, what I would say is if we thought there was gonna be a soft landing, I think that we were mistaken. And I think that, you know, and I'm in the UK, pound is falling. Mortises tend to be short, or term interest rates are going up. So real fundamental home expenses are affecting-- Don't forget energy costs. So you got energy costs. You got, you know, the cost of your home, you got food costs, and it's really troubling for folks. Now we're not here to be economists. We're here to talk about media. And you know, I think that one of the interesting data for instance, like the Buzzfeed stock price, now that might be, you know, short term, it might be Buzzfeed specific, but this thing is trading in like at $200 million. Like it's pretty-- - I mean, it's remarkable. It is remarkable. - I love that. - Right. So, you know, it went out the $10 back price, what have given it about about a billion dollar valuation, right? Or more. And $200 million, I mean, you know, it's a portfolio that includes, you know, complex, tasty, health, bobo, blah, blah. - Yeah. I guess my question is, what does that say about the, like when the market is saying that? - What does that say? It says that the market has no confidence in that business model. - Is that, I guess what my point is, is that unique to Buzzfeed order? Is that like the market has no confidence in those businesses, those type of businesses? Obviously it's a mix. - I think the market doesn't like those kind of businesses. - Absolutely. - What do you think? - I mean, it's clear that the market doesn't like this kind of business. The idea of the Forbes back got quickly shelved. And I think next week, the bidding is due. I'm very interested to see what Forbes ends up trading at. My guess is it's not gonna be anywhere close. close to what they had hoped during those short lived spack dreams. What wasn't like bustle gonna go out and be a spack at some point? I mean, there's other people who keep threatening that they're gonna go to the spack route and there's like no possible way in the world. - No, but that kicks up. But what does it mean to the business models, right? So it says, in the case of Buzzfeed, it's a advertising and commerce led business model. People believe there's gonna be pressure on that. It's gonna lose more money when it starts to lose money. It's gonna have a very hard time raising money and therefore, the value of the enterprises under mud. Now, what does it mean to a model like bustle, 100% advertising being a largely and I think that there's no exit in the near future for them anywhere near what they had hoped for? What does it mean for the subscription led models straight up, do next generation kind of video IP models straight up, over time raised a lot of money at a very high valuation. Why, what are they seeing there? In that case, it's total opportunism because of people believe that we need more sports to anchor streaming businesses and that this is a bet that you can create that kind of IP that will be very, very useful in the bundle coming in the future. So I think that what you're seeing is differentiated businesses that have strong brands diversified revenue and can kind of play into a future model where they can make the bundle more resilient or higher priced are gonna get priced higher are gonna get strategic valuations. But people that are trading in these kind of web based advertising business models are just getting slaughtered. - That's right. So what do you think the next wave of success? 'Cause it's funny, 'cause we're coming out of the end of this period where all of the large digital media companies that places like Hurst were threatened by at some point, I guess, on some level. That has receded quite a bit. Like these businesses are getting combined and the market is saying that they're not worth very much. I guess in spinning this forward is the models that are gonna work, right? Are ones that are creator led, like, I mean, 'cause you've written about this that the publisher themselves were, in essence, like a middleman in some ways for talent, right? And being a middleman or a middle person these days is not a really good place to be. - I think it sucks. It was a simple epitome when I wrote about that just that there's creators in the future and there's platform companies. And Alex said something really cool. I at the time he said that tools may culture or something like that. And I thought that was a great observation that personalities powered by global creation platforms and then with enterprising business people that put businesses behind them is the future. And if you had a media brand whose value was that, like you said, a middleman in it was the sort of front end for a bunch of journalists, like, the model seems really, really difficult. Really difficult. And then this week, even recurrent is laying off people. - Yeah. - I mean, that's an important data point, isn't it? I don't know. - Yeah. Well, I think it's awesome. Private equity got interested in a particular form of digital media, I feel like, right? Like, financial people are like, stay away. Like, this thing is a mess. But in some areas of it, particularly ones that can drive transactions, private equity has always been involved in it. And then they start to realize that like, this is a really, really messy business. - No. So private equity got interested in recurrent because they said that they were diversified around shopping. - Yeah, that it wasn't like the story that like people were going out with. It's like, oh, we're going to get together these audiences and we're going to have a CMS, we're going to put display ads up there, and we're going to win that way. Nobody's going out with that story, right? - It feels like it's over. - You know, and so I-- - I like your business model better. - I do. I like my business model too. - What is your business model? - My business model, it's like, basically, this is when you know someone, when you're repeating the question is like, not ready for an answer. (laughs) Look, I remember when like Henry Blodget said to me in a very snarky way, like he was like, oh yeah, digital day is like an events company with a website. And I like hated it because it was like true to some degree. But that's actually a better business, you know, in many ways. It's better than like having a programmatic ad business, which is what Henry had, although he exited a massive valuation so that was a better business. Look, I think like on this level, at least for me, like I think you want to be able to have, like you've written about it, like a lean media model, and that the way that you create leverage in that is by having people who can be like 10X like content creators, because that's how you develop like real expertise and influence. And those models are very analogous in some ways to what you see going on in the quote unquote, creator economy. The businesses that are being built around creators are at least from my standpoint, so much more resilient than the kinds of models that came before, at least at this point in time. You just have so many different ways to make money, first of all. You have so many different ways to keep costs down. And it just seems like a better approach to me. How are you contrasting it with the alternative? Well, to build up like a institutional publishing brand, you need to like solve for like so many different functions that you end up having a really bloated infrastructure, and there are so many mouths to feed. And I think that that's a challenged model. There aren't that many billion dollar publishing companies for a reason. I like it like look at punch bull, right? It's in a small area, but like look at what they're able to do with probably like six people on like the content side. Like they'll probably have a $10 million business with like six people. They've great people on it. Okay, why are they able to do that? Because I got really good people, and they are nailing a very simple and lean product. They didn't build like amazing technology or any of that stuff. You don't need it, you know what you're totally right? You don't need a lot. Here's the thing. I would say that with that group of people, let's call it somewhere between 10 and 20 people in the editorial group, they take up a huge amount potentially of my attention with the reporting that flows into my email box. And it ranges from yesterday, they did a thing on Apollo and to the stuff they do, you know, covering endlessly, covering CNN to stuff they do in Washington. But the point I'm making is a handful of people that are admittedly, probably extremely hard working can really move a lot of attention. Yeah, well, I mean, that's what we see with the dude perfect, right? Like, you know, this is a group of five, six, whatever. They have 56 million YouTube subscribers. They're able to command tremendous amounts of attention. And it doesn't take like as many people, it's really difficult to compete against that to some degree for established media companies. And as we head into the downturn, these bloated infrastructures are going to become milestones around a lot of these businesses. They're going to have to figure that out. Is there a gotcha, Brian, do you think? What's the other side to it, right? Is it that these brands are more transitory? Yes. Because they're rooted in people. Sure. Did you see the tri-guy controversy? No. Okay, so tri-guy started at a Buzzfeed, right? They blew up the idea as far as I understand it because they've never watched Tri-Guy's videos is they try different things. I don't know. They try different foods, try different experiences and whatnot. And it's funny to some degree. They got so big they left Buzzfeed because they wanted total control and everything like this. Well, one of the tri-guys who's like a extreme wife guy that he's like very much beyond like supportive of his wife, like they're like, she's a character in there too, but like they had a cookbook and stuff. Anyway, he cheated on her with another person and so the tri-guys are all in disarray and stuff like this. That's the risk, right? Like people are people. And, you know, I talked with Casey Newton who left the verge and is doing his own thing a platformer. And that's what I asked him. I asked him, "What's the enterprise value for this thing?" Because it's just you, right? And his point was, you know, things are only cool for 10 years, whether it's like a band, a publisher, whatever. And so maybe that's what it's supposed to be. He's good. Some more transitory brands, maybe? Yeah, well, that's what I speculate. That would agree. You know, it's kind of like bands to me, like the future of like publishing a media is a lot like bands and very few bands last forever, right? And they all have their peak. And maybe that's the future in this like creator economy. I think that's right. Okay. Nice. Let's do product. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Troy, what product do you have for us this week? I would start with a shout out to Ben Dietz, who reached out to me. He said that he was in Montreal for an event and they're based on our podcast. He was seeking out Fair Lawn Beggles to see if I was full of shit or not. We need affiliate revenue there. Yeah, I'm glad that our last good product, recommendation, touch some people. Cute Dietz nuts. Yeah, Dietz nuts. His email for those that don't know is what's called sick weekly, SIC weekly. Yeah. It's good. Lots of good links in there. And he's smart and he's on it. So thank you Ben. You know what I would have to say? That is a good product. And this isn't a comment about the quality of their op-ed group or their editorial board or their media product. But I would say that the new product, York Times app is a good product. And it struck me this morning, Brian, for two reasons, and I'll just highlight both of them. There's a new type of media storytelling happening, and it's manifest probably most effectively and inside of the New York Times app. And it's a combination of images, video, text, and interactivity packaged beautifully for a phone. They're the kings of that. They do the best. And they had in their top carousel a series of images from Florida. We're thinking about the people in Florida right now. And it was a combination of satellite imagery, video, like sort of very current video of what was going on in the coast as well as images that you could just effortlessly flick through with your thumb, was beautifully packaged. And then you move down the feed, and there's this interactive piece about the discontentment in the ranks of Russian soldiers. - All right, with the audience. - The audience? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It was annoying as hell on desktop, which I think is like a sign of where things are and that it was made for mobile. - You would scroll through it, you would hear the audio, we would highlight the dialogue in English, and you could move through it. And it was just really, really great hybrid storytelling. And I think they do it extremely well, and it's a really, really good product. And no one else is near them in that regard. I mean, that's not to mention all the things that they're doing in cooking and games and all the same, I mean, I just think they're crushing it. - Well, I mean, they have so many more resources and then everyone else that, of course, they're gonna be good at this stuff. I know I mean to dismiss it. I think that they've come really far with making these kind of things like integral to their product versus like the snowfall era of like, these things were clearly like, skunk works, things done on the side that were then retrofitted into the product. Even like, remember like NYT now? Like they tried like a standalone app that was different. And they integrated a lot of things like from that app, which failed into like the existing app. But I do think the New York Times is sort of unique in the fact that like, they have so many more resources than just about any other publisher. - Okay, but that shouldn't take away from me putting it forward as a good product this week. - Don't be sensitive. - Another thing, I'm not sensitive, I'm contentious. - Don't you hate when someone's like, don't be sensitive 'cause then like your response you can. - I hate that. - Find a thing on the other product that I'm interested in. 'Cause like, you know, people talk about newsletters a lot. And I'm very into newsletters myself these days. But I keep like thinking like, what is the next sort of newsletter format? Like if you were to make like a newsletter but was for like, say Gen Z, I mean, is it a TikTok? But I really think it might be a TikTok account. You're saying newsletters are an artifact of. - I'm saying if you were starting Morning Brew today, you absolutely would not do it the way Morning Brew is. Okay, so if I wanna start a media company that's gonna reach young people and it's going to be a news product, let's just say that. There's no way you would do it as a pithy email. - No. - It would be these like comedic TikTok accounts or meme accounts, I would think. - You did have to be funny. I don't know what you do. - Yeah, yeah, multiply, yeah, that's what I mean. Like the multi-platform TikTok, YouTube shorts, live streams. I mean, there's this woman who I think's like doing like amazing work, you know, Kyla Scanlon. She writes a newsletter but she has a TikTok slash, you know, like this, like YouTube shorts, like Twitter videos where she talks about complex like economics and finance topics. - No, I've looked at her before, yeah, yeah, no her. - Really good. That's the future of business news in a natively done for a younger generation. I mean, I learn a lot of shit from her. - Yeah. - I'm doing on Discord. Oh my God. My brain was formed in an analog era and like it's too much. I can't deal with Discord. - I'm on Discord, right? - Really? I can't stand it. I'm 49. I grew up with like Atari. (laughs) I didn't have the internet until like 1996, 1997. - I guess I wonder, Brandon, how do you think those people make money? - I don't know. - Doing news on TikTok, doing news on a Discord server. - I have no idea. My guess is like they're incredibly under monetized and for the sort of attention that they get. But that's how it always works, right? Advertises don't know how to buy that or they do courses and they do other things that. But yeah, I mean, there's revenue shares on TikTok too, but we saw this with YouTube, right? You know, YouTube creators didn't make that much money for years. You think, "Dude Perfect" was making my. I remember when they started, the guy used to watch like the trick shot videos. They were reliant on like the tiny income they got from that YouTube ad format that they ripped off from you. - Do you think we're in the middle of a big change in how advertising works? - In what way? - Well, listen, media always changes in overlapping waves. And nothing ever completely dies, right? Like it just kind of becomes less important. So people still make television ads. You know, the NFL is saturated with them. You know, it's still an important part of the toolkit for advertising. But it feels like you have a whole. You know, just think about the question you asked a minute ago, you have a generation that are gonna get their news from individuals on platforms. And there won't be, you know, these kind of standard insertion mechanisms that defined, you know, the ad world forever. And even, you know, all that, you know, hype about for years around like programmatic and all that. Like that stuff is like being, you know, marginalized. That's like old media now. So, you know, what's coming behind all of that? Like, is this a, are we in the middle of a material change in mindset and how you execute on that? - Well, like think about this. Like very few people are going out with media businesses that are first and foremost advertising reliant these days, right? Like very few. I don't think that's a really good pitch to have. Will advertising be part of it? Does YouTube creators and TikTok creators get money from advertising? - Absolutely, sure. But it's just like, that's the incremental. Like it used to be the other, you know, stuff, the brand extension, the IP was the incremental. And I think what is incremental for the new businesses is advertising. Like the stuff that used to be incremental to the old model is now like the main thing. Commerce, driving transactions, IP. - Yeah. Right? - Like, I think that's a really great way to frame it. So that the model is flipped over. - And like what is like, like over time, I would assume that in their five year plan, like advertising as like display advertising, that type of advertising is not a very big part of it. That's not what they're raising, all that money based on. - No, I think they're looking for rights revenues. But they today, it's an advertising business. - Yeah, but it's like a means to get to where, it's just like was, I, you can go back to the same examples, but you know, bar still used advertising. Obviously, it was challenged. And I think that forced them to find a different model because their content like alienated a lot of advertisers and their brand did. But good thing for them that they couldn't rely on advertising, right? And a lot of things lined up with gambling and whatnot. But that seems like that would be the model. Look, everyone like copies what came before and was successful, right? And more people will copy or take inspiration from in the nicest way, you know, a bar still like model, you know, then they would a box media model, I would think. - Yeah, you know, I guess I just get reminded of how massive this generational shift is in media type and delivery. And so I don't know if we talked about this before, Brian, but my kid sent me that Aaron Rogers interview from Barstool last week. - Okay, he goes on all the time. And it was one of those dudes and the guy that eats ice cream behind him, the modern sidekick. But it's like a video equivalent of a meme. It's like totally surreal. Like the interview is surreal. And it's inappropriate and it's funny and it's weird. And it's like the interview format has been processed by the internet. And what came out is really fucking weird. And I loved it. I thought it was hilarious, but it's just, I think it's important to just kind of appreciate that Johnny Carson was very similar to Jimmy Kimmel. But this bar still format is nothing like it. - I think that's totally right. All right, Troy, we're gonna stop there on this one. I know we're gonna revisit this because I think we're gonna agree with me. This is sort of where media is going. I think of like where the most interesting models are. And they're more likely to be found in these kind of YouTube creators and TikTok creators than they are in these established publishing companies. - Great. - Thanks for listening. Thank you to Jay Sparks, producer of this episode. As a reminder, please send your feedback. We can feature it in the mailbag segment. You can email me at [email protected]. (upbeat music) ♪ I've been night and girl ♪