[on-hold music] Have you seen erosion that you can tie towards this keyword block list? Like, I hear about it a lot from national news. Yeah. The brand safety vendors and the new villains.
I think you're trying to trigger me, Brian, because the- No, I'm not trying to trigger you. Not at all. [laughs] I have no idea. This makes me- Oh, really? [laughs] Totally coincidental, Bridget. I didn't know.
This makes me super fired up.
[on-hold music] This episode of the Rebooting show is brought to you by House of Kaizen.
We're all in pursuit of strong and consistent growth to make our media brands lasting businesses amidst the push and pull of revenue requirements, shifting audience consumption behaviors, and turbulence in the market.
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That's Kaizen, K-A-I-Z-E-N. Thanks a lot, House of Kaizen. [on-hold music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I'm Brian Morrissey. This is the final episode before the Thanksgiving break.
I hope everyone is able to take a few days off. I always say that the media business is hard, and the hardest of the hard parts of it is in local.
Bridget Williams is an executive I've known for many years, going back to her time as an ad exec at Business Insider. We discuss what Henry Blodget got right at Business Insider, uh, at the top of this episode.
And Bridget knows the dynamics of the media business, and I wanted to have her on to talk about her progress as chief commercial officer for Hearst Newspapers, home of the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle and other local news brands.
And I like how Bridget formulates the need for the news industry to have thoughtful mercenaries, as she puts it. You know, the market for supporting local news is not going to magically get better.
It will instead require hard-headed approaches that don't tiptoe around the fact that news is almost always subsidized by other means.
The newspaper itself was always a bundle of everything from coupons to comics to news. And it strikes me as one of those things that isn't gonna change going forward.
We've already seen how non-news features like cooking and games is driving the majority of the growth now in The New York Times.
And so it's likely time for other news outlets to look beyond news to, well, save the news business. I hope you enjoy this conversation.
If you do, please leave the Rebooting show a rating and a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now on to my conversation with Bridget. [on-hold music] Bridget, thank you for joining.
[laughs] This is, like, in media res. I don't know. I've always wanted to start the podcast as if someone's just dropping in mid-conversation, so maybe we'll try it with this one. [laughs] Yeah, that's fun.
So I wanna get on to, to, to Hearst Newspapers, the future of local, all the easy stuff. We can cover that in fifteen minutes. But we got to know each other back when you were at Business Insider, right? And I- Yes.
I sort of... I don't know, Business Insider, the growth of Business Insider, I, like, followed it very closely. They hired many people on my team from me, which really kind of bothered me. Right. [laughs] That's right.
We also were, like, tenants- [laughs]... of Business Insider, so I would run into a lot of the male members of the commercial team in the restroom. Yeah. And I'd like to remind them.
I was one of the people who never pivoted to calling it Insider. I just... It was always BI to me. I just couldn't get it out of my head. Yeah.
And then Henry, yesterday they switched it back to Business Insider officially. Mm-hmm. And Henry is, has ended his remarkable run at Business Insider. I almost feel like it should have gotten more focus.
But you worked with Henry for a while, and I know you're a fan. Yeah, one hundred percent. It was one of my best experiences ever working with a startup founder. He hired talent. He let talent do their thing.
And it obviously grew so fast because it was a certain time when social was driving. But also they've just pivoted beautifully over the years, and they've just... They, they just have a lot of really smart people.
It's always been very collaborative. They care about journalism, which was so funny because it was such a knock always that they were just some cheap calories, but they really cared about getting things right.
I just think he did a remarkable job, and it was, I think, the best exit that one of the digital natives h-have, like, when you look, when you look at everyone else. One of? Come on. It's legendary.
[laughs] Literally, it is still being used at least at Hearst time as a comp in any M&A. [laughs] Because it was like, "Well, Business Insider got like eleven." A sup... Seven F- Eleven times. Right...
yeah, eleven times on every... Yeah. I mean, listen, it paid for my son's college, so I'm- The exit alone, Henry deserves to go into the pantheon as far as [laughs] I'm concerned.
But also just on, on the product note, I was one of those people who... I remember after BI did sell, I wrote basically a mea culpa. Although I put it off on everyone. I was like, "Why Business Insider one?"
The doubters, I was like, "No, I was one of them." And mostly because you think about where people start, and Business Insider did. It started in aggregation. Mm-hmm. It started in listicles. Mm-hmm.
It would piss me off- Mm-hmm... because we would do, like, a good article, and Business Insider would take the choices bit, bits of it, repackage it in a much more attractive way. Mm-hmm.
People wouldn't have to read through the fourteen hundred words, and the... and BI would get, like, 10X more of the traffic. Yeah. And it bothered meBut I can remember- Yeah...
being on vacation, I forget the year, in Croatia. If anyone ever goes to Hvar, go to this place called Falco's.
And I was by the sea, and I read Nick Carlson's piece about Marissa Mayer, and I was like, "Oh my God, I think I got this wrong." They're gonna make the pivot to- Yeah...
doing original journalism, and I never would've thought- Right... that they would be able to pull it off. So I give a lot of credit, uh, to both Henry and Nick and the whole team- Yeah... for doing it.
Well, it's interesting.
Maybe working there has shaped my overall view on media because I really believe that if you care about journalism, you have to be a mercenary, and you have to do what it takes to make the dollars to fund the news.
Because news isn't a business model. The business model has to come from things that surround the news.
And I believe that the reason that they did aggregation and the reason that they were so focused on social was to drive the audience so that when you publish something, it has an effect, right?
I like that, and I still agree with that. No, I think that's a great point. I like the mercenary point 'cause I think sometimes people get too...
I know on the journalist side, journalists get too hung up on any sort of whiff of, I don't wanna say shamelessness, but if you say you're never gonna do something- Mm-hmm...
then doing it, and you just respond to market conditions. Mm-hmm. If you're running a business and the facts change- That's exactly right... you change.
And like the idea that you wouldn't change because one time you said, "Oh, we're all about subscriptions," well, okay, well, what about advertising? That's right. Just change. It was like BuzzFeed.
When BuzzFeed adopted display advertising and programmatic after saying it was like awful- Right... the only people who gave a shit [laughs]- Right... were like people like me, basically, at the time. Right.
They spent years putting a stake in the ground saying that, that we will never and, and that the point of media is don't say that. [laughs] Yeah. No, I remember going to a breakfast and we can- Uh-huh...
get onto like where... It was Nick Denton actually put it together. It was like this one of those private breakfast rooms kinda thing, and Nick started li- he started going after Henry, some of the stuff BI did.
Henry's "Oh, yeah, no, I get it." Sometimes it's [laughs] he was like all cheerful that he's, "Yeah, okay, whatever. I don't take this stuff personally. I'm just- Right... I do what I gotta do. I respond to the market."
And I think probably could use some more of that. So let's talk about, let... Go ahead. Right. But what it, but what you do need to have if you are a mercenary- Yeah...
and I believe this is me, and I, and I will give cre- I think Hearst is 100% in this camp, is when you look at local news, you have to have a moral center and a compass that generally values journalism and investigative reporting and community impact.
And if you are just a mercenary there to maximize profits and go along with the trend and not protect the thing that is literally the core of your product- Yeah...
that's where we get, and that's where the state of generally local news is, except thankfully- Yeah... for where I'm working. So you have to be a thoughtful mercenary, basically, at the end of the day.
You have to have a moral core. [laughs] I, that's my memoir title. A lot of people think that mercenaries are just short-term thinkers. [laughs] Whoever pays them a buck, they'll...
But in fact, the really good mercenaries... No, I mean, that's, that's the point because a lot of this is balancing the short term versus the long term, right?
And if you over-index on one or the other, you're dead in this kind of market, in this business. That's right. And so it's not- Mm-hmm... an either/or, it's an and. And I think local is an interesting one.
It's why I wanna talk to you about it because you're really brave, you being in local, and I think there's actually some hopeful signs in local. I agree.
And I don't think they, they sort of get enough attention 'cause there is a ton of doom and gloom out there because it's just been a really difficult year, and it's a difficult time for the overall market.
So walk us through the Hearst Newspapers assets, 'cause Hearst is a big company. I've had on various people from various parts of Hearst. Yeah. I mean, David Carey was am- amazing.
I loved listening to him on your podcast.
So Hearst Newspapers, we have 27 different entities, including Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, San Antonio Express News, Albany Times Union, which I think, Brian, I made you a subscriber of at one point.
And then we have, and something that I'm very close to, is our non-subscription sites, digital native, SFGATE, Chron, My SA, a new site we're launching called Weekend, and those are part of the constellation as well.
Yeah. So why in the world would you [laughs] have gone into local? I always ask people who are in local. Well, it's, it's exactly as you said. When I was leaving Food52, what was happening in media?
It was a lot of the same, right? Yeah. It was like the same. Everyone wanted to do the same. And what is the hardest problem out there? The hardest of the hard problems- Yeah, for sure... is local.
And it also does have some really interesting tenets to it. One of the problems is that BuzzFeed and Business Insider and The Daily Beast, they all started to look and sound the exact same.
And when you actually think about local news, those are real brands, and there isn't a ton of competition. They are actually... I mean, there used to be more, right?
They are really one of the only major brands serving their markets. Mm-hmm. And so if you do it right, there's actually a very large opportunity to differentiate.
Many of the people on the central team, not in local, are from places like Amazon, Bloomberg, and The Times, and we all gather here because we know this is the hardest problem to solve, and we want to apply things that we've learned to it.
It's really fun. And there is a lot of momentum, so it feels like a really fun place. And you have the nice part on the side, which is I literally feel like I'm saving democracy. [laughs] Yeah. There's that.
It's a nice little side benefit. And so explain like the setup 'cause what's done like on the corporate level versus on the brand level? What is the sort of- Mm-hmm... the Hearst level do that- Yeah.
Our local markets are still run by publishers- Yeah...
who are very involved in the communityAnd I think it's one of the trademarks of our success is we have people who really care about the local community who are there.
And so those of us in central work really closely with our newsrooms.
We have product here, we have data here, we have engineering here, we have national strategy around revenue here, and I would call it growth, new product sitting here.
But it is always in partnership with our local markets. Yeah. 'Cause I've been asked because just today BuzzFeed is on its, like 15th different pivot, and now it's- Mm, yeah, I just read that. Mm-hmm...
you know, sort of giving up on the, "Oh, we're n- we're not about a network. The scale thing is actually bad for us. We're going down to the brand level and stuff," and it's whiplash.
But again, I know it's response to the market- Yeah... and that's where the market is going.
And I feel like the idea that these efficiencies could be rung out from a centralized network is probably not gonna work- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm... at the end of the day. Agreed.
I mean, there's some really interesting things that you can do. For example, you can standardize templates- Oh, yeah... of a newspaper. Infrastructure stuff. You can... Yeah.
And the data infrastructure here, of course, that should be centralized, right? It's one data lake. Everybody can swim in the lake to whatever they need. And we have...
For example, we have search experts that sit centrally, but they're working every day- Yeah... with the local newsrooms, right? So it might be silly to have a search expert in every single newsroom, right? Yeah.
I think the weirdest... I mean, I, I, I was living in Miami for a while, and I'll just pick on the Herald because here I d- the local news doesn't really count. Mm-hmm.
But the Herald was always just, like, running viral stories from, like, Alabama or whoever was through the network. And I just think that sometimes- Mm-hmm...
that centralization approach, you start to lose your distinctiveness. Mm. Like you said, a lot of these brands started to look alike during the social era. Mm-hmm. I understand why on paper- Yes...
centralizing, having a central audience desk or whatever, that, that would spread the same content among the different brands. It, it, it makes sense on paper.
But when you lose that distinctiveness, I mean, what do you got at the end of the day? Yeah. We have never and do not do that. You'll see very few national viral stories.
On our subscription sites like the Chronicle, you will almost see no wire because that's not the reason people come to us.
And when we look to create a high reach story, we're going to do it from an angle that is a California angle. We're not going to- Yeah... just republish what 97 other people have done.
And I really think we've had some nice audience growth over the years, and I think it's due to that discipline to not just reaggregate everyone else.
So le- let's talk about that a little bit just before we get into the positivity with some of the... What do they euphemistically call it? The headwinds. Everybody's traffic is down quite a bit. Are you seeing that?
On the non-subsc- Social circ- No, we had traffic growth on- Seems like it's eroding for most brands. Yeah, we... Yeah, it's... I would call it volatile. It's very hard to forecast, right?
But we are talking a lot and thinking a lot about what we would call controllable audience and non-controllable audience, right?
We are in a world where Facebook and Google control our lives, but we better be very good at it if we're going to be in this game. And so don't hate the player, hate the game.
Let's get s- search experts, let's get social experts to make sure that we are executing as well as can be in this non-controllable world.
In the meantime, our subscription sites, about 20% of our traffic is what I would call controllable.
We have aims next year to really amp that up so that we have a one-to-one relationship with more and more of our readers- Mm-hmm... through alerts products and newsletters and app.
Can you break down that idea of controllable versus not controllable? I mean, I understand it. It's the first time I've heard that formulation.
I think a lot of times people use direct and indirect, but this is a little bit more nuanced.
It's any channel that we know who the person is or have a direct way of reaching out to them without one of the platforms in the way. Direct traffic, email- So newsletter is a-... alerts, app. Okay. It could even be...
Listen, it could even be a WhatsApp group, right? It's that we have a direct relationship with a person, and we control it.
And how much of your traffic this year would fall into the controllable bucket across the portfolio? It's around 20%. Okay. And next year it will be? More. More. I hope it's not because the overall traffic goes down.
Any time anyone says, like, some portion is growing as a percentage, I'm- Yeah, it's a composition... I usually think that's just because the overall pie is shrinking.
No, listen- That's what I use, Bridget, as leverage to get them to tell me more detail. Correct.
We continue to believe there is more audience that we can go for that wants the kind of content that we're producing, and we continue to know that this is gonna be hard because of the world that we're in with the platforms.
[gentle music] How has the revenue composition changed since, say, you grew?
I- it's fine to do percentages, and again, I hope the pie is growing. The slice of the pie coming from subscriptions, for instance, is larger now than it was five years ago.
And I don't know, but how do you break out the revenue slices? Subscriptions has always been a huge part of a newspaper revenue. You know? Yeah. It's... I'm not... It's not like some of the native startups.
It's always been a giant part of our picture. We now have 400,000 digital subscribers. We think that number is going to grow substantially, so we feel pretty good about the balance.Okay, but that's four hundred thousand.
Was it four hundred thousand five years ago? Digital subscribers? Yeah. No, it was very small five years ago. All right, so it's grown. It's been growing significantly. All right, so then it has grown.
I didn't say that subscriptions didn't exist in publishers ever, or in newspaper publishers ever.
I'm just saying that a larger portion of the business, I would guess, is now coming directly from readers than it was five years ago. Is that fair? Well, not... Fair. Well, no. I mean, print readers have...
We've had print readers forever, right? Okay. So is it just transferring print reader- We've had, we've had-... print subscribers over to digital subscribers, or are you growing the actual base of subscribers?
It's two... It... We're growing the base.
Print subscribers and digital subscribers are very different, and they're subscribing to different products, and we want to continue to deliver really good value to print subscribers and really good products to digital subscribers.
And I don't think we think a lot about the transition because we think these kinda are two groups. Okay. So you've actually expanded some print.
So I mean, there's still, like, a place for print newspapers in the portfolio. Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting. Print is such an excellent bundling vehicle, right?
It's a really nice little package that gives you all sorts of news about the world and the nation and your state and your local, and it's got some coupons in it, and it's got- Right...
obituaries and it's got sports scores, and it's this really interesting bundle, and people really sometimes really like that.
They just want to complete it and feel like they know what's going on, and it is a completely different world from digital.
But we really think about if you get that paper on your doorstep, we just wanna make sure that it feels whole and good, and so we wanna serve those readers. Yeah. They're older. They're even older than me, right?
[laughs] Yeah. We did a subscription survey, and literally one of the responses wa- was, and I believe it was from a newspaper publisher, that their subscribers are not churning, they're literally dying, print products.
And this is the case. I mean, I forget, the Wall Street Journal, their average age of a print subscriber is, like, extremely high. Yep. So obviously there's a transition taking place, right? Hu- 100%. When...
If we look at the weight of the organization, obviously digital subscriptions is the growth area for us, and we think a lot about a variety of subscription products, how to move away from just having one product, having lots of different products for subscribers to choose from.
So how do you mean that? 'Cause I generally think that the overall industry went from BuzzFeed envy to New York Times envy, right? [laughs] It's like everyone wanted to be BuzzFeed- Yeah...
and then everyone wants to be The New York Times, right? Yeah. And The New York Times has proven to be extraordinarily successful. I hope it will not become the exception to the rule- Yes...
in the news industry, but every... Yeah, I mean, they are a guiding star for us. They are- Yeah...
definitely different than local news, but when someone said they're an entertainment subscription property with a news arm, right, because of the makeup of their subscriptions, and I say as a thoughtful mercenary, great, right?
In the olden days, people subscribed to print newspapers- Yeah... for that bundle, and inside that bundle was coupons and shopping and puzzles and comics. Horoscopes and landers. And... Yeah, exactly.
So if you break all of those things apart, and we've acquired PUZMO- Yeah... which is just an excellent platform, and we're so delighted. Zach is amazing. Andrew Dames is working with us on this.
The product is so much fun. It's got a Discord and a really fun kind of gaming group, and that's gonna be great for us. It's already...
We've even got fifty- Have you been able to onboard new subscribers to non-news products? Yes, 100%. Okay. And maybe news products that are not just a meter on general news.
Maybe there's a niche newsletter on Capitol news for New York. Maybe there is a high school sports- Yeah... product.
But we know that there is a ceiling of people that want to read a general news product in the local market, but we know there's lots of other pockets of people that care about specific things. Yeah.
I think that's super smart in that... I mean, it's... And again, I go back to the sort of journalistic sort of view of things.
Everyone when they talk about local talks about the school boards and who's gonna go to the school board meetings, who's gonna...
And, and it's real, but the reality is there's a, a ceiling and it's not a super high ceiling for that. You, you need to have a bundle that brings people in.
And yes, maybe they will then be like, "Oh, what's happening at the school board?"
and stuff like this, but if you're just hanging your hat only on, on covering the school board and city hall corruption and whatnot, I don't think it's gonna work.
So what are the non-news features or products you've added in to get people into the bundle? We don't necessarily think it's to eventually sell them more. We believe that there may be some people- Mm...
that just want puzzles, right? For example. So in addition to PUZMO, we have a comics platform that has many subscribers. You know, it's really interesting. We have this IP, which is comics, that has existed forever.
We have a full... We have a Netflix series that came out of this group. We've got things that we're pitching in for Apple that comes out of IP that we own in this group.
We do licensing, all sorts of really fun merch around Olive Oyl and Popeye.
So again, if you think about the historical newspaper, there's just lots of interesting threads to pull on, bring people u- utility that don't exist in a news product.
For example, so I'm launching this brand called Weekend. It's really a full event search on things to do on the weekend in your local market.
It will have feeds from Ticketmaster and AllTrails and active.com because that is part of what you expect from a local product. And so there...
We really are st- thinking about the utility of what someone expects from someone who has local-In their title. Yeah. Right. But it's also, it's, it's not just news, right?
I see within, for instance, the My San Antonio, right? I think for a lot of reporters, city hall reporters and stuff, they would look at it and be like, "Oh, wait, dog parks? Okay."
The reality is if you're new to San Diego and you've got a four-legged friend- Yep... that's furry, wanna know about the dog parks. That's right.
Like, and, and a lot of it, it's, it's not that complicated, but sometimes I, I feel like particularly when the conversation becomes about local news, they forget that the local comes first and the news comes second.
That's right. And people have other needs, and, uh, those needs are not necessarily less important just because it's about a dog park or- Th- that's right...
or- And again, our subscription site, Express News, is going to lean in a little harder. I mean, they also do excellent utility. Mm-hmm. But they are going to do a lot of the impact journalism investigative pieces.
And MySA is there to... Yeah, if you li- if you are a citizen or a resident and however you wanna live in San Antonio, we wanna help you have an impact, have a fun life there. [laughs] And so we- Yeah. It's part of life.
Life is not just the city council. Yes. I don't know if other people... Yes, the city council, but it doesn't rule my life. Yeah.
I, it's really- Um- I mean, we were just talking about this, um, Jeff Johnson, who leads this group.
There is the Alden Capital hedge funds that are not thoughtful mercenaries, and there are the very earnest- They're mercenary mercenaries. [laughs] Yeah.
There, then there's the very earnest work that a lot of the nonprofits are doing, which is this really impact journalism focus, and I really think we sit squarely in the middle where we understand the need to do all sorts of fun and utility and make money in lots of different ways, but we are going to use those profits to fund the news, the actually important news.
Yeah. And there is hope in that. Right. But you can't get to step two until [laughs] you get to step one, right? That's right. That's right. Like step two, fund impactful local journalism.
Step one is make the money to fund impactful journalism.
Now you can take an approach where you say, "Oh, we'll just petition the government to shake down technology companies and then transfer that money to us," assuming that it will go to, quote, quote, us and not to like other more political- That's right...
people, not that would ever be how government funds get distributed. Or we can beg a philanthropist and we know they're never fickle, right? No. And they're always...
They don't have any sort of interest of their own- [laughs]... when they sort of pick cover media properties. Right. Right. That would be insane. That's right.
How would someone accumulate billions and billions of dollars if they weren't just always just thinking about- [laughs]... how for the good of humanity? It's- Yeah. I mean- Catching me on a skeptical day. [laughs] Yeah.
I mean, it's 100% true, and I think walking that line is why this job is so much fun, but also the conflict that we all have in that we're, we're all digging into this really hard and trying to figure out the balance.
And I mean, I think I feel very hopeful of this organization's ability to figure it out. Yeah. So I mean, something like, for instance, commerce, right? So commerce has become a hopeful beyond incremental- Mm-hmm...
for some people. And in some ways it's not... Obviously, it's not new. Affiliate is not new. When people talk about commerce, they talk about affiliate. Right.
But also when we talk about it within a news context, let's be real. It really is very similar to coupons at the end- Yeah... of the day. Yeah.
Because people subscribe to a newspaper, and then they got a bundle and included in that bundle, uh, th- because they had the distribution, was this purely commercial product. Right. That's right. Right?
And I think about what commerce is, and to me, the pivot to video was a pivot to Facebook. Mm-hmm. The... If there was a pivot to commerce, it's a pivot to SEO in some ways. Yes.
In that you're taking a lot of the SEO authority that you have, just like you had d- and that's the modern distribution- Yeah...
at least it has been, and then you're introducing a commercial element just the same way that the coupons- That's right... got included with distribution. I feel...
I don't think any local news organization has figured out commerce because, as you stated, it is really in, in its current iteration an SEO game. And- Mm-hmm... I don't know where we have credibility to speak about.
I, I, I don't... I agree with you. Like, w- we call it shopping as news, right? We do really well in shopping as news, right?
When it's like a deal, like somebody wins a World Series and the merch that comes along with that or Black- Sure... Friday deals or there's a weather event and we're gonna help sell dehumidifiers.
I don't think anyone has really figured out what local brings to the game on commerce. It's one of the reasons that we're doing Weekend because when I look at all of the ways that commerce... You have products, right?
And we have... Our magazines are excellent at this, right? Good Housekeeping helps you buy products. What do we have credibility in? I think it's less about hard goods and more about services. So- Mm...
Weekend is going to focus on selling tickets, travel. I think we have a lot of credibility in helping you figure out what to do in Lake Tahoe, for example. Maybe more credibility than TripAdvisor.
So we wanna look at areas like events and services that I think we more naturally have a fit. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And are the margins better? No. I mean, are you gonna [laughs] are you gonna make more money?
Cool. I mean, it's, it's really hard when I hear people doing com- I'm like, you need a lot of volume if you're gonna like- A ton... be making like- Yeah. The, the answer is no. Like it's not worth it.
There really isn't yet. I think what we wanna do is just prove that people care about that and that we can help them. What's your competitive advantage with Weekend? Versus other people in the marketplace? Yeah.
If I just set up this, this site, me. Oh. Well, I mean, the event service that we're launching is...Using natural language.
And Brian, if you're thinking about what to do for the weekend, you may decide to go on a hike, you may decide to run a race, you may decide to go to a concert, you may decide to do your gardening, right?
And I think what we're- Yes. [laughs] I'm a renaissance man. Look at all these options. It is true, actually. I think of at least three of the four of those you might do. The gardening thing. That's right.
I didn't think that one was real. [laughs] Actually, in my... I- Right... like a little gardening. Yeah. So if you can imagine- This is good. This is totally accurate...
a search that allows you to kind of look at the breadth of what you might do on the weekend as opposed to just, like, an event search, it's going to be a very different experience that you might find a hike that you can do in the morning, you might find a class that you could take in the morning.
It's going to be very different than what is out in the market right now. Yeah.
But beyond that on a product level, because most commerce businesses rely on the fact that, like Penske relies on the fact that Rolling Stone has been around forever- Mm-hmm...
and has a lot of search authority- Mm-hmm... that can be transferred over to these commercial queries versus- Right... I don't know- That's right... other ones.
I think one of the challenges is you have a lot of distribution with people coming to these websites. Mm-hmm. How do you transfer that to this property versus just starting a new property? You know what I mean?
Like, what are the distribution avenues? I mean, we are literally starting a new property- Yeah...
and I agree with you that the user has to have intent [laughs] and we have to build a brand that we are better at helping them decide what to do on the weekend.
I don't think we can live and die by trying to trick some SEO authority here. Okay. I Google everything I wanna buy with Wirecutter at the end, right? Yeah.
I wanna get to that place with Weekend where you're like, "This is a superior product in helping me plan my weekend, and I'm going to go here with intent."
Okay, so this is gonna be a centralized service, but how do you end up localizing it? Because if I'm in San Antonio- Yeah... you know what I mean? I would assume you, you're gonna localize the offers. Yes. Or no?
Is it- Everything is going to be localized. Right now we're just trying to get the 200,000 listings launched. We're trying to make them good and interesting, and they are going to serve all the markets.
We're gonna focus on some test markets, and we have a lot of work to do. We haven't even launched yet publicly, so- Yeah...
but the idea is that, yes, it will actually be relevant to you whether you're in San Antonio or in Chicago. [gentle music] Got it.
So let's talk about advertising for a little bit. You're a veteran of advertising, including the fighting pits [laughs] of programmatic. [laughs] I... Yes. Um- I can't believe I'm back here.
Terrible year for the ad market- Terrible... right? Really challenging year. There is a little bit of comfort in number. I think everyone's in the same painful place. Yeah. There's two kinds of people I, I talk to.
There's the people who tell me it was a terrible year, and there are people that lie to me. [laughs] Yeah, exactly. That's how I divide them. Yeah.
Mike Orensky, who runs this for me, and our colleagues in magazines and TV, I think we all sort of want Google to just pull the Band-Aid off because we think everything will normalize when they don't support the third-party cookie, and Safari hasn't supported it for years, and we've been living in this world.
If the Band-Aid comes off, the marketplace will start to adjust, and then we can live our new life.
But we're living in this sort of limbo now where there's all sorts of privacy regulations that are hurting the effectiveness of the third-party cookie anyway, so let's just go live in a new identity-based life.
And I'm, I'm excited about it because I actually do think when you are an entity like Hearst, we have an amazing amount of data and an amazing reach, so it does start to put us back on the map programmatically. Yeah.
So give me the hopeful picture for post-cookie. For Hearst, I guess it would be if you have enough first-party data, and I don't know what enough is- Right. Mm-hmm... so I'd love your take on that.
It should, in theory, be good because the market will rebalance completely when- That's right... third-party data is not easily accessible to be applied. Right.
So if we have first-party data that is, um, mix of demographic, psychographic, but then adds in the affinity of content and understanding what someone is reading and how that affects with their propensity to buy certain products, we're going to have a very powerful data story to tell.
And so that's what we're working on. And you can imagine that we've got signals that are coming from all across the organization. Okay. So you'll be able to go to, let's just say, some, like, agency.
You're doing, like, a national buy across all the, the local sites. They wanna reach local audiences. What is the data story that you'll be able to tell Mindshare? Mm-hmm.
What are you able to do with your data that is going to grow your advertising business?
The special sauce that we have is that we have signals of what you have been consuming across Hearst Autos, Hearst Magazines, Hearst TV, Hearst Newspapers.
You add that to demographic data, and you have a much rounder picture of someone's propensity to buy things, what their psychographic profile are, and I think it's something that only content can bring to that picture to round it out.
Yeah.
It seems like a little bit of back to the future, to be honest with you, 'cause it sounds like early behavioral targeting, and- Y- yeah, but you're adding- But behavioral targeting early on could not skin- But you're adding demographics to that, I think.
Yeah. Okay. So it's like early behavioral targeting plus demographic. But the fact that everything went to one targeting- Right. Yep... I think, and that was the whole promise of programmatic.
That was what-David Verklin was saying only dog owners will see dog food ads- Mm-hmm... and stuff like this.
And that's the kind of stuff that not only CMOs like, at least those with a data background, but CFOs love to hear that. Yeah. So I get that pitch.
That seems to be going away, and the end result will be almost like going back to the future. Like- Well, I don't think it's going away because you're still going to be able to do that, but you might know...
That dog owner scenario is- Yeah... with third party data, that dog could have died a year ago, right? And you wouldn't know that.
If you are a dog owner and you're also reading about, if you're also reading about, um, a, a cl- What do you mean? You have that. Those dog- That's true. I just-... parks in San Antonio. I was just reading about them.
There, there you go. I mean, I know it. Yeah. And you're reading about dog parks for large dogs, you know a little bit more about that person, that they have a large dog.
But this whole what is going to emerge from the first party data conversation I think is unknown.
The advertising community has to look in the mirror and say w- we've been fishing from the very bottom of the funnel for a very long time.
And when you look at what Brian Chesky did at Airbnb, they stopped all the programmatic spending, and they didn't see their customer base change at all. Well, okay, what does that mean?
It means that they probably need to be fishing from a different part of the funnel.
And I think they're coming to that conclusion at the same time that first party is coming onto the scene and media's coming back on the scene with more robust data, and that feels hopeful to me. Yeah.
I mean, look, I always say the pendulum always swings too far, and the pendulum between context and audience swung too far- Audience. That's right... to the audience side. And I understand why it would.
I mean, who wouldn't want a customer machine where you just feed- That's right... feed some quarters in, get customers out, like down below. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds great.
Generally not how advertising has worked historically. That's right. How you need to generate demand and not just harvest it.
So I assume it, it'll normalize particularly with a lot of these, both the privacy regulations that are coming out from governments but also from platforms- Mm-hmm...
from the deprecation of the third party cookie- Mm-hmm... and on and on. And I also, I think there's just a realization that content publishers can't compete on the same level with retail media and the platforms.
Am I wrong in thinking like that is just a pipe dream? That is an open question.
There's certain reasons that I think we don't get a larger part of the pie that has not to do with data but has to do with how difficult it might be to work with us or to buy with us. Yeah. So we hope to be solving that.
Well, I mean, let's be real. I mean, can you do self-serve with your newspapers? In very limited classifieds essentially. Okay. Well, that knocks out like 98% of the advertisers of Google- Exactly... and- Yep... Meta.
Ex- ex- I mean, that's a perfect example. So even if you could, they have an entire sales force baked around self-service, right? It's not that self-service, right?
They have a giant engine that drives small and medium businesses.
So how much of it is just the input of the ad at the end, I'm not sure, but your general point is right, is it's sometimes it's, it's cumbersome to do business with us.
And so I think solving that is as important as solving the data targeting angle. Yeah. How about the mix between programmatic and direct sold? Uh, what is it on our side? Yeah.
And are you of sufficient scale where you'll see moving towards direct sold versus- Listen, we have amazing local ad sales teams.
I mean, they are, they are just out there every day talking to retailers and hospitals in their markets. In some of our local markets, we have very high sell-through.
We also have very specific products that are based on a vertical, for example. You buy a certain thing if you're in real estate.
So it really does vary based on lots of different factors, but we have very high local sell-through. We have a really robust local advertising machine, and I think it's part of our success. Yeah.
Have you seen erosion that you can tie towards this keyword block list? Like, I hear about it a lot from national news. Yeah.
The brand safety vendors and the new villains- I think you're trying to trigger me, Brian, because th- No, I'm not trying to trigger you. Not at all. [laughs] I have no idea. This makes me- Oh, really? Yeah.
[laughs] Totally coincidental, Bridget. I didn't know. This makes me super fired up. It's not even that I want marketers to be moral and thoughtful and support news. That is actually not it.
There is study after study that says if your brand is associated with a credible news brand, even if you're on hard news, your brand benefits.
And in addition to that, if you looked at all of the page views on our site, there are dog parks and recipes and travel, things that marketers should love, and we get blocked at the whole domain and by the largest marketers out there, large super center retailers.
Anyone you wanna, you wanna talk about? I know we're blocked by Target. Oh, there you go. And it's really upsetting to me. We've got between local TV and local newspapers, we have 90 million uniques nationally.
These are highly engaged people. They're just an excellent audience, and they're out there buying lots of brands that only exist for ads, and they're not aligning with really good audience metrics.
So it's upsetting to me. I keep saying, "Can I just get on a plane and go to Minnesota?" I don't know how to break through that conversation, but it's a really- Yeah... important one. It's really important to us.
I, I agree. Uh, what I like with, with your thoughtful mercenary approach is the world revolves around leverage at the end of the day.
[laughs] Just the longer I go through it, maybe it becomes more apparent than everyone. And if your leverage you're bringing to a situation is this isn't fair- Right... don't expect much.
I mean, at that point, you're in the Santa costume outside- Right... of the mall asking for money, and it's not a good place- Right... to be.But if you bring to the table that this is actually bad for business, then-
Right... it's much- Right... better. Now, I think it's difficult, and again, this is my sort of journalistic thing, where we hate hypocrisy- Mm-hmm... or some, which just, like, drives us nuts.
It's like someone like Target, you go to their site, and under Sustainability and Governance and all the stuff they have about how they're all about strengthening communities. Right. That's right. That's right.
[laughs] You know? And then it's, okay, those are words. Now let's see actions, okay? And then when it comes to the actions, not the words on stage at Advertising Week or something like this.
When it comes to the actions, they just simply don't, th- they don't measure up. Right. Right. And I don't think it does anyone a favor, honestly, by giving them a pass- Right... on this stuff.
I know they're doing a lot- I mean, listen, to anyone listening from Target, I will fund a brand study. Come and- Yeah... let us show you that we're going to be very effective for you. It's... I'm not asking...
We're not... It's your point, Brian. It's not about philanthropy. It's about good business. Yeah. Nobody wants to avoid accountability, but if you don't have a shot- That's right...
then, and if it doesn't make any sense at all. And we had one of these dinners that they do.
You were at, you were at a different one, and it was a bunch of people talking about these issues of how we support real journalism in this environment and had both the buy and the sell side.
And we do 'em private- Mm-hmm... and stuff. But one of the things that was discussed in here is really it just comes down to the fact that everyone's scared of getting in trouble. Mm-hmm. And nobody wants to screenshot.
The screenshot has been around for [laughs] 20 years at this point, and it's amazing to me still that there are so many things that are done that are obviously not in anyone's interest, but they're really just done.
The only KPI is CYA. Yeah. Yep. That's it. That's ex- it, it's- Let's fix this, Bridget. I'm on it. Brian, I- Step one, podcast. Step two... I, I have to say, Brian, I'm, like, so delighted by Rebooting in general.
You're doing such an amazing job. Wow. Thank you. It's must-see TV for me. Good. I'm hoping to push some level of change.
In the new year, actually, uh, I'm gonna be focusing more on the buy side because I realized that to create a sustainable and equitable and resilient ecosystem, most of the problems can really only be solved by the buy side taking a stand and having courage.
Yeah, and it, and so many people that I speak with that are somewhere in the chain say, "I can't solve this. It's beyond me." And I wanna say, "Who literally can change their mind?" I actually don't know.
It's such a- It's the brands. It's where the money starts. Yeah. At the end of the day, it's where- Yep...
the money starts, and I think that there is a responsibility because if the media ecosystem, the reason I focused on publishing outside of just being self-interested in it, is if your mission is about having a sustainable and equitable and resilient media ecosystem, you do not start with retail media.
Yeah. You do not start with the giant brands or anything like this. The only reason you would start with that is because you're just looking after your own business- That's right...
model 'cause it's just smarter to start that. [laughs] The sickest part of the ecosystem is the publishing part, and more specifically, it's the news part, and then subset is, like, [laughs] the local news part- Right.
Right... really. Yeah. And ecosystems don't live forever, and they can, and they do die out, and I don't- Yeah... believe that will happen here, but to me, it's pretty clear that there needs to be real- Yep...
change, um, and- And listen, we... To, to your point of accountability, we aren't throwing up our hands and saying, "Oh, boy, Google ate our lunch." We have to serve the user really well.
We have to create products that they love. We have to make their lives easier. We have to perform for advertisers.
We have, I would say, dozens and dozens of people who work on delivering results for local small businesses, right? That's part of our customers, are these local small businesses. So I agree.
I want buyers to take accountability, but we are continually focused on making ourselves better for our users and our advertisers at the same time. Yeah.
I think a lot of people in our space are just playing the victim card, and I don't- Yeah... I don't think that works either. Yeah, that won't get you very far at the end of the day.
You had to bring something more, it usually results- Yeah, we can do better. We, we wanna do better every- With us... we wanna know our users better.
We wanna give them things they wanna read, and we've never been closer to every day trying to understand what users want from us. Okay. Cool. Well, thanks a lot for taking the time.
I'm glad we finally got to get this done. Yeah, it was, it was really great to chat, always. Thanks so much, Bridget. Thanks, Brian. [upbeat music] Thanks for listening.
Thank you to Jay Sparks for producing the Rebooting show. If you have a podcast that you're considering making, you should check out Podhelp us and what Jay can do for you. Go to podhelp.us.
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