[on-hold music] Welcome to the Rebooting show.
I am Brian Morrissey, and the following podcast is a discussion I held last week at the Media Product Forum, an event for product leaders and publishers that we held in New York City in collaboration with our partners at WordPress VIP.
In this session, I spoke to Samantha Winkleman of The Daily Beast and Adam McLean, the chief product officer at Dotdash Meredith.
We discuss the existential question that publishers face right now, which is: What should they build?
Particularly at a time of uncertainty about the future path of tech developments, AI, et cetera, traffic fluctuations, and an overall chill to the media market.
Sam and Adam both speak to the need to nail the basics, which reinforces actually the main finding of a research project we just completed with WordPress VIP, and that means starting with taking a jobs-to-be-done approach to the product that's completely focused on the audience.
Go figure. Enjoy this conversation, and please send me your feedback. My email is bmorrissey@therebooting.com. Now here's my discussion with Sam and Adam.
[on-hold music] [audience applauding] You know, I don't think everything's gonna be talking to a bot in order to get answers.
But as it does become more common, and we see all the time that you have to adapt in order to, to meet changed expectations. The environment is changing really quickly, and nobody I talk to can say what they...
what it will look like in, in three to five years. So to do that, I wanna bring up Adam McLean. Adam is the chief product officer at Dotdash Meredith. Adam, welcome. Thank you. Yeah.
[audience applauding] And Samantha Winkleman, the SVP of product at The Daily Beast. [audience applauding] Cool. Thanks for doing this. Thanks. Thank you. So let's talk about what we're gonna build. What are we building?
Adam, like, explain, first of all, like, how product works within Dotdash Meredith. I mean, you guys are, are a s- a sprawling entity now. Yeah. Product is core to everything that happens at Dotdash Meredith.
It's not dissimilar to Bloomberg, and in that we touch, of course, the consumer-facing surfaces, but also CMS, data, the ability to distribute and syndicate all of our content, and advertising, commerce, B2B, Decipher products.
We cover all of it, and so it's really fascinating to have that purview of things.
But then, because we have 40 brands in different spaces from health to home to food, trying to understand the user and the audience in each of those categories while also doing horizontal product work is a certainly interesting challenge for us.
Yeah. Horizontal. Like, you mean just across the different- Well, there's, like- Yeah... building CMS- Oh...
building APIs, building video technology, building the delivery mechanism for content, but then having it work and fit the user mindset and need at each individual brand or category level is a balance that we have to strike.
Yeah. Sam, how about... Very different, although you're, you're both part of the, the same family. Uh- Yes... a little bit of different scale. Very- Okay. [laughs]... very much different.
[laughs] Yeah, we are pretty tiny on the, the product end, but we do cover a lot of similar things. Probably need to make more significant trade-offs in terms of what we spend our time on.
But same thing around, um, ad product and commerce and, uh, the C- we have a CMS that's homegrown as well and just the, the website discovery, the app. We also have within our group newsletter products, subscription.
We moved subscription over a few years ago to try to have more of the user experience considered in that overall strategy. So yeah, data, all of that bundled in there. Data. Okay. So how is that different?
I mean, 'cause I mean, when I talk a lot about the more with less era, you, you've lived it, I assume. [laughs] Right? I mean, 'cause you have to do all the things.
It's not like a, a person arrives on a property and it's, "Oh, well, they're a smaller company and they're a bigger company, so our expectations are different."
It's, "No, their expectations are the same," and so you have to cover a ton of ground. So how do you do that? Yeah.
I mean, I think we are definitely in a bit of a reset moment, but it comes back to what is the thing that you are trying to do for your audience and, and like we were talking about before, just understanding the different audiences that you have in order to make sure you're focusing your resources.
And so right now I think similar to what you were describing with the study, like, getting back to basics has been really important for us.
And so thinking about discovery and habituation and how those serve all of our business lines, but also ultimately our readers to find the, the journalism that they're looking for and discover the next story.
And so I think it just... What do we want people to do in order to discover? Yeah. Adam, how about...
I mean, o- obviously you talked about how, you know, you're doing this across so many different properties, and they, they have different... I mean, you were from the About. Yeah. I- You, you went, go back to the About.
I, I've been there since the beginning with About, but- Yeah. Well, the true beginning was the mining company. That's true. That's true.
[laughs] I think the interesting thing for us is the notion of back to basics certainlyHolds water, but it also is sort of we're-- our challenge that we're trying to go even deeper than just the basics now, because we've, as a company, we've been very audience-focused the entire time.
We build amazing content on the best brands possible with respectful advertising. And to do that across all these categories, it's not one size fits all, and you have to really go at it and really understand the user.
And so our challenge now is to say, "Okay, we have the most amazing recipes on the entire internet. What can we do more for the user?" It's, that's not the end of their journey.
They need to save it or comment on it or add it to a collection or share it with a friend or make a meal plan.
And so a lot of our product work and thinking is like, "How do we take and uphold that amazing content and vessel of a page experience, and then build utilities around it and help people do something with it?"
Because for most of our brands, people are learning, they're trying to be inspired, they're gonna try and accomplish something.
And so we can provide product value around that journey and be helping them before and after that single piece of content- Yeah...that they're consuming.
Uh, how is it merging the sort of product ethos of the About sort of way that became Dotdash with Meredith? Because, I mean, magazine is very different than...
I mean, I think that's why it was somewhat surprising at the time the idea of Dotdash taking over the, the Meredith, you know, magazine properties.
The way I would describe it is that About and Dotdash was heavily, more heavily leaning into a vertical focus, and Meredith definitely, because of resources and the way they were run, was a very horizontal focus.
It was like very one size fits all for some of the UX, and we have blended those together I think pretty well to be able to- Mm-hmm...have product and engineering design teams focused in each of our categories, but also have a really strong, efficient, centralized platform that helps them do that, so that you're not recreating the same infrastructure or the same APIs over and over and over again.
But so it's that balance of how do I build a core platform that can support all these use cases, and then let those individual brands build on top of it. Right.
So I mean, like The Spruce is very different than People and like New York Life. Which is very different than health.com. Yeah. And so like everything from how bylines and navigation and research, so like I have...
There's a group, group of product folks that are deeply invested in those like core primitives, like centralized functionality that everyone needs to take advantage of, and they try and make them as configurable and customizable as possible so that every brand can take it and say, "Oh, this version of this makes sense for my user," or, "I can build on top of that and extend it and build a deeper experience that's unique to food versus entertainment."
Yeah. Sam, do you have like sort of... Obviously, the, The Beast is, is undergoing... I guess Ben and Joanna came on, what, like six months ago? About three, no three. Three months ago? Okay. Lot of changes, right?
How does that change your prioritization? I mean, I think of The Daily Beast as sort of in transition and being more audience-focused, more subscription, or at least wanting my data, that's for sure. [laughs] Yes.
You've got my data, by the way. We, we do have a registration wall. [laughs] I've heard you- Yeah, it's very aggressive...feelings about it. No, I like it. Um. I love data. I wa- I wanna do it, actually. Yes.
I would say we have the opportunity to be more audience-focused, and I think general news is obviously a harder area to crack in a lot of ways.
But something that we're trying to solve for is how do we make sure that people who come to the site actually understand our breadth of coverage? You know, we don't just have politics.
We have our entertainment coverage with Obsessed. We have fantastic crime coverage. We have amazing royals reporters with Tom Sykes and Tim Teeman.
And so, you know, how do we actually give that visibility across the board? And, and yeah, I, I think- Yeah...we, we have to think about the different audiences in the same way. Yeah.
But it seems pretty clear that you want audience data. I mean, maybe it's the- Well-...focus group of one, but, um- I don't think we right now are collecting many more details besides your email address.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Yes. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think email is incredibly important. It, it's sort of a win-win in my mind.
You, you have the, you know, short term, they're on site and you get better ad rates, sure- Yeah...first-party data.
But then I think there's also the opting them into other products for a publisher to drive that habituation loop and get them to come back.
Newsletters, I think we've found that people who are subscribed to I think the number is four or more tend to be just more engaged in general.
I don't know what the actual conversion rate is eventually, but obviously email marketing is really important to provide subscription offers, and so I think it's all a funnel there.
But I think what we're also trying to lean into in that engagement funnel by getting your email address, thank you, is to make sure that we are just surfacing the breadth of content and, or even just more relevant content for the things that you have already come to us for.
Yeah. Is that kinda, is that kind of first-party data almost more important than subscriptions, or is it just like a step to subscriptions? You know what I mean? I think it, it can serve different functions.
I personally work more on subscriptions- Yeah...um, within my group, and so I think of it through that lens. But I know people on our revenue side think of it more from the, you know, advertising monetization standpoint.
Yeah. How do you deal with the, the, the...
I mean, we talked about misaligned, and so maybe misaligned is not the right word, but I always said like when a lot of times when you arrive on a publisher article page, they, they sort of, I think we talked about this, the shipping of the, the org chart.
Org chart. [laughs] 'Cause you get the battle of the overlays, you know?
You get- Yes...someone wants push notification, you want the email, you want the subscription, and then all of a sudden, boom, a floating video player comes on over top. [laughs] How do we approach that?
Well, I mean, 'cause it's- [laughs]...you see, you see basically that everyone is competing. It's like the Holland Tunnel at 4:00 p.m. Everyone's trying to get through.Yes.
I don't have a really [chuckles] good description for that besides, yeah, I think it's something that we need to be better about prioritizing.
And I think ultimately, I know I'm a broken record here, but being able to put user needs first and actually understand who the different groups are within even a general news site.
You know, the people who are maybe coming to us for an update in the morning versus browsing and just understanding, you know, fun pop culture things that happen during the day, at night.
Being able to approach those audiences differently, give them a different experience, but also say, "Okay, well maybe we're more likely to get subscribers with this group, so maybe lighter on the ad product," right?
Or, or vice versa, and being able to make those trade-offs. Yeah. Adam, I thought, you know, Dotdash was always very early with... And, and I, I always love data when it, like, confirms the answer that you want to have.
It's the best sort of- It's, it's terrible when it, it tells you something you don't wanna hear [chuckles]. Then it, then it's skeptical, yeah. You know, I thought it was really good. I mean, you guys, I...
to me, were at, like, the forefront of showing that you can actually have a, a good user experience and that actually does not come at the cost of monetization.
'Cause I think a lot of times it has been viewed as a trade-off.
A lot of the, particularly the website products that, you know, have been out there, it's pretty clear that the trade-offs have been made firmly in the favor of monetization, [chuckles] I would say- Absolutely...
over user experience. Uh, can you talk a little bit about that? 'Cause I mean, this has been a while that you guys have been on that journey.
Well, we've always been focused primarily on, yes, u-users, but trying to understand and meet their intent, and that for us was always really tied to trust.
And if users don't trust the brand, don't trust the content, it's evergreen in a lot of instances. It's service journalism, so we're not the only one out there. We're not doing politics or sports or hard news.
And so we really double down on creating the best quality content and spending all that money, all that time and energy on fact-checking and medical review and citations, and all of these things that help people really say, "This is real.
This isn't misinformation. I can go make this recipe or go talk to my doctor about this." There's some high-stakes things that happen on our brands.
Putting ads endlessly and putting invasive pop-ups and going down that path of sort of what we would say is non-respectful experiences is eroding that trust in a lot of ways and starts to get into creepy territory.
And so we've been lucky that we've been able to focus the entire company on great user experiences since the beginning and try to thoughtfully layer in monetization or acquisition opportunities that are tied to intent.
So when you ask for an email, it's not just to get an email or to get a subscription in this instance. It-- for us, it's like, how do we say, "Oh, we know they came in on this article. They're gonna...
We're gonna get their email. Now how do we help them through the next four or five steps of that journey?"
For-- it's like opening a mortgage, um, talking to your doctor about a new diagnosis, building a full meal plan now that you've all of a sudden become lactose intolerant.
Like, we're lucky that we have all of these journeys to sort through, and we have content to meet users throughout those steps.
And so we're constantly thinking about intent and the journey and how do we h-leverage acquisition and advertising to help meet people in those moments. Yeah, and but it also, it fits the business model, right?
I mean, I know it's not searches less than half of traffic. Yep. We have to say that, right? But at the same time, search has always been a, a core part of the, the Dotdash model, right?
And you're wanting to get people in. It's great because they're telling you what they're interested in by their search, and then you want to- It's a pretty clear signal of intent. Yeah [chuckles].
Of all the algorithms that's between us and our users, yes. Right. And then you're trying to basically help solve an issue for them.
Can you talk about how you're thinking about the, the sort of tooling, I guess, of, of how you do that? Because I mean, traditionally, it was like, "Okay, well, this is intent. We'll show them ads."
But there is an entirely different, like, part of the publishing ecosystem that's totally different than content publishers, right? It was, it was people like Bankrate and things like that are...
You know, they operate a different, a different game than, than publishers, and I feel like those worlds are coming together. Those are performance marketing-based businesses- Yeah...
that are very tied to opening services or accounts or, or different types of, you know, conversion that's not consumer products like a commerce document with Round- Roundup.
We've all-- They, they come at some of this from the same perspective from my understanding, is that, yes, there's int- there...
You can leverage the intent of an algorithm like Google, and you can understand why people are coming, but users need to do something. They have to take an action.
It's not just enough to learn or to, to, to, to understand the headline and the, the latest news.
And so they were able to monetize those actions in a really profitable way and, and there's things that are very similar in our business depending on where users are coming in. Yeah.
I wanna talk a little bit about the Google changes. I don't know if you've heard that Google's done some, like, search changes. Yeah. Fake- Apparently. And obviously it's rattled a lot of people.
You know, you guys just reported, and you're, you're actually up in, in sessions to core properties. But, like, how has... I always find it very weird.
I mean, Google really sets the incentives for this market, and then they sort of penalize people for reacting to the incentives that they created, and it's like, but wait, you, you created the incentives.
People are just responding to them. But how have the both, the, the helpful content update and, what is the other one? Site reputation abuse update. Has that... Does that change?
Like, basically, do, do the algorithms change your, your product roadmap? At the heart, no.
We're always taking a long-term view and feeling if we focus on users and meeting their needs, the ups and downs of the algorithms are going to happen no matter what, and we can outlast those things.
Again, I feel like you hear all the time when the algorithm is not in your favor and never hear when it does work for you. And- It's like running.
I notice when the, when the, the wind is at my back, I just think I'm really strong, but if it's in my face- You're running really fast and you hit your PR.
You know, I'm like, "Oh, this is unfair."And so, no, it's, uh, it's, uh, we're of course monitoring all of that in the same way we're monitoring Apple News and email inbox, spam rates, and all the things that stand between us and our users getting the information they need.
But at the end of the day, if you focus, and we've proven it, I feel like, over the many years that we've been in business, that if you focus on users and you meet their needs, you can outlast a lot of these macro factors.
Yeah. I also think that there's a, a content format aspect that's less about the, the technology product of it all, and I think the product team can help with that.
But, you know, thinking about how you structure an article to help someone navigate it, if that's actually legitimately helpful for them, hopefully, hopefully Google sees that as well. Yeah.
But I think that's, that gets into content as the product more so than... A- and again that, that we can help support, but then the, the technology product. Right.
I mean, but I also th- It's, it's funny 'cause it's within news organizations it's unusual because, I mean, the product is the content, like, at th-the end of the day. Yes.
I mean, the product is the sort of packaging of it, but, like, the content is the core to the product, right?
And some of the changes to product, I mean, the fact that Axios, it's like they made bullet points and bolded some things, but it was actually- Right... an important product enhancement. It's helpful.
At the end of the day, it, it was really if you think about it, right? Yeah.
And I think, uh, you know, you think about how, I mean, you, you do this every day, the, the translation of how do you format a post on site versus how does it go into a newsletter as a different format in, and how do you, from the product side, think about helping an editorial team shape that and support that from design and just overall UX.
I think it's important in both spaces. And so, yeah, I think it all translates. Yeah.
And I always say, I mean, Neil hates when I use this example about the jump to, jump to recipes button 'cause it just shows the sort of misplaced incentives in here, the fact that that button needs to exist, right?
And the reason that the backstory that became a joke ever came to be was because of Google, right? I mean, they set the incentives to have all that stuff instead of just having the recipe. Am I wrong with that?
It depends on the brand and what they stand for. In some instances, yes, I would say that. But also, we have Serious Eats, huge foodie blog and- Yeah...
obsessive group, East West Coast for the most part, and they are rabid fans about the edit. They want to know, like, what the- That's true... the what... Like, so it d- it depends. There, there are exceptions. Yes.
But, you know, it's like everywhere on... And it's, you know. Kenji, I, yes, I wanna know- Yes. Kenji. You wanna know what Kenji said... the entire adventure that he went through to get to that pizza crust.
You also have to remember, you have to think through the recipe experience. You are sometimes there to be like, "Am I gonna be able to make this?"
And sometimes you're, you're there to say, "I've bought all the ingredients. I just need to get to the instructions." And so you have to figure out how to map all those experiences and why.
So on the evergreen content question, uh, tell me why... And I know it's so early with the AI stuff. We made it to ten minutes left, so that's fine. Oh, I thought we were gonna get past it.
It's so early with it, but at the same time, more people are gonna be using Perplexity, more people are gonna be...
You know, Google is not going to stop with, with the AI overviews, and people are gonna be used to getting that kind o-of, of commoditized evergreen content. And I think the line is, what's commoditized?
Now, Kenji's pizza crust that he, you know, went on this gigantic science experiment to, to make, that's absolutely differentiated than, "Oh, geez, I need to like, you know, make something.
Uh, just give me the three ingredients." How do you view that changing, you know, publishing, the, the product that you make? Or, or doesn't it? It really doesn't right now.
You don't think it'll change, like, people's- I mean-... expectations and...? I think the vessel in which we deliver information is going to constantly evolve. Look at TikTok, for example, and that's not...
We still have a magazine business. There's still a great market for that. We still do text and images on web.
But yes, the vessel and, and user expectations are gonna evolve, and we're gonna have to meet them in all those moments where it makes sense.
The other way to think about it is that until we get to a place where that output is, has citations, and you can trust it, and, uh, you can-- you feel like you could make that for your daughter that has-- that's a vegan, and it's gonna actually be palatable.
Like, I don't know if I would trust AI output for food. I also wonder if there's just a, a difference in the mentality of what AI will ultimately serve.
So the idea that, you know, obviously Dotdash Meredith has both very utility-driven content, but also, as you were talking about before, sort of the, the story behind the recipe and someone who's more passionate about the food aspect of it.
And so I don't know if you're ever gonna get passion from an AI answer, right? Yeah. Like [chuckles] maybe- Right... you just want how many teaspoons- But to be fair-... do you need?
But- A lot of evergreen content is not passion. I mean, the air purifiers reviews are- Fair... are not... Other than that one, the site that keeps coming after you guys, they're very passionate about it. HomeFresh?
HomeFresh. [chuckles] I would say that, again, I think that I would echo back to what I said before, which is like, are people... Some things cannot be replaced by AI. You have to touch the product. You have to test it.
You have to see if it works for you. Some simple things, possibly, but I still think there's a big, huge opportunity there- Yeah... for publishers. So how are you- But they have to do the work. Right.
They can't just write a roundup about things they saw on Amazon that had lots of great stars. Yeah. [chuckles] You have to actually test the products and provide value. Yeah. So how are you...
I remember a, a year plus ago Neil telling me they would never use AI for, for content creation. Nope. How, how are you...
I mean, obviously it's, it's part of Decipher, and you've got the OpenAI tool deal, and that's gonna somehow become part of Decipher. So how are you- Yeah... using AI, and is it, like, meaningful?
Decipher is definitely the biggest use case for us right now to be able to take that partnership with OpenAI and improve the cookieless intent targeting power of Decipher, which at its core is about understanding a user's intent and mindset in the exact moment they land on that piece of content.
We don't need to know who you were ten minutes ago or yesterday. We don't need your email.
We don't care about your demographic or any of those things, and so OpenAI is going to help make Decipher even better and scale-Okay. So how big is your, your product department? Three product managers. Okay.
Three product managers. You have more? A few. Few. Seventy-five. Yeah, yeah. Seventy-five, okay. AI's gotta be an opportunity to do more with less, right? [laughs] I mean, you gotta close that gap.
[laughs] And, and you know, we, we, we saw about efficiency as number one, and let's face it, at least the biggest promise that, that's it seems is basically scaling humans, needing fewer of them.
So how are y- uh, are there specific ways you're using it in order to cover more ground? I would say very early, but things that I'm thinking about, there's the less flashy part of it that's more process.
I was listening to another podcast about product, and they were talking about ChatPRD, which is essentially an AI tool to help with product requirement documents, and, like, that can be very time-intensive.
If you can sort of upload a lot of the, the details that you need, maybe that just saves time in the process so you can ship something faster. I don't know.
But then on the other end of it, again, more like how do we help the newsroom be more effective by helping them be more efficient with headline optimization tools?
Our head of data is just trying to build something right now where essentially you sort of feed, feed it all of the historically top-performing headlines, add the SEO guidelines that we've had from past audits, and so how do we actually, you know, help create headlines that might do better?
We don't know yet. We haven't actually used this, but human in the loop obviously needs to [laughs] be in there. Yeah. No, you don't wanna set it and forget it, I think. No.
[laughs] Could get you a lot of attention, though. A lot of opportunities, but I think o- obviously a lot of risks in this area. I do this other podcast called People Vs.
Algorithms, and we always close with a good product segment. I didn't prepare you guys for it, but what is a good product experience that, that you enjoy, that you think... 'Cause I think, and not with...
It can be within publishing, but that'd be a little nerdy. Go outside publishing if you can. I think I'm still gonna be a little nerdy in my answer.
You've, you've probably seen it on one of the social m- channels because they are so prolific in their advertising, but I am obsessed with my Bird Buddy. Have you heard of this?
It's this great hardware and software package where you get a bird feeder that has a camera built in with AI that recognizes the species and takes photos and videos and gives you basically your own Instagram, TikTok feed of them, and it's all powered with solar, and I am just obsessed with it.
Oh, my God. I... The solar was just like... That sort of put it over the top. [laughs] I told you. It was enough without the solar, Adam. [laughs] Wow, you gotta top that. Yeah. [laughs] I, I do not think I can top that.
I mean, I think adjacent to the media space but still about habit and content, I think Headspace does a really nice job actually helping make decisions for you about how you build routine and bringing you in and, you know, it just makes you feel good.
On the, you know, way less exciting side of things, but I, I have three young kids, and so I spend a lot of time trying to just get more clothes for them.
And so again, this is very basic, but I think that the Zara app just makes it feel like a less terrible experience, and they just make shopping for kids feel...
You know, they, they sort of make it very splashy and almost like a magazine experience, and I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, that's the thing is I wonder, like, how...
There's so many different pressures on publishers, right? But at the end of the day, I always say if, if it wasn't a pleasant experience, like, the restaurant's going out of business, right?
And so it has to be a pleasant product experience.
And I think sometimes the publisher product experience, not at your sites, isn't that pleasant of an experience, and I think a lot of times publishers could probably learn from people who are doing it better.
Granted, I got... They got, they got different... They don't have as many challenges as the publishing business. You told us to go outside of publishing, but I, I do think that...
I am a user of the Substack app, and I- Yeah... do like that as you're reading the article, they give you all of the options for what to do in a very subtle way around it. So do you wanna save it?
Do you wanna listen to it? Do you wanna jump to the comments? And it just feels very non-obtrusive, so I do appreciate that. Okay.
Is there a content product, non-Dotdash Meredith, that you enjoy, just you spend all your time in? Apple News is actually really fascinating.
It's amazing for me to be able to access all of these things in a single place with great navigation and experience, and they're adding games, so I spend even more time there.
I also really like being able to see the Apple News+ ecosystem.
I wouldn't subscribe or buy magazines very often off the shelf, even though we produce many of them, but it's finding them in that experience is actually really rewarding. Yeah. Cool. Thank you so much, both.
I really appreciate you coming out. Thank you. Thank you. [upbeat music]