[upbeat music] But as industry leaders, we felt it was really important not just to focus on brand safety- Mm....
but to really start to focus on human safety, environmental safety, all of the other parts of safety that advertising can directly influence. Yeah.
So let's talk about, like, brand safety and then responsible journalism because I was talking to someone earlier about a large packaged good advertiser who's like, "No, no news is brand safe, and we just don't wanna be there."
First of all, how common is that, and how do you move the brand safety conversation? The reality is journalism should not be a luxury good that's only available to the at most 10% that will pay for news. It- Yeah.
We need credible information. Yeah, it's a great question.
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I'm Brian Morrissey. Two conversations this week are from an event I co-hosted with Outbrain at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago.
We brought together leaders to highlight the importance of advertising, supporting sustainable independent journalism, and I can't thank Outbrain enough for making this conversation happen and for sponsoring an entire series that I did on local independent journalism.
First up, I speak to Crystal Olivieri. There was this whole period where brands were gonna bring everything in-house. Yeah. You remember that? That was a fun wave.
Crystal is the Global Chief Innovation Officer at Group M, the largest ad buyer in the world. And we discussed the current economic climate and how advertisers are reacting when budgets get tighter.
Now, that's usually when we see ad spending shrink, and the spending that remains usually is more heavily weighted towards performance, and that's why journalism needs to perform ultimately for clients in an advertising model, even if it's not to the degree that clients are used to with the kind of hyper-targeting offered by platforms.
[upbeat music] Following my discussion with Crystal, I have another talk with David Kostman, co-founder of Outbrain, in which we take an expansive view of the year ahead for publishing and how publishers should think about weathering an uncertain economic time.
You know, the word that kept coming up in Vegas when I spoke to people was uncertainty, and the other word was grind, as in it's gonna be a grind. Welcome to the downturn. Should be fun.
Here's my conversation with Crystal. [upbeat music] Okay. And now from the advertiser side, I wanna bring Crystal Olivieri. Crystal is the Global Chief Innovation Officer at Group M. Welcome. Thank you for having me.
Hi, everyone.
I have to say, I was super stressed because, like, Crystal was so nice to do this, like [laughs] and, like, she's, like, back to back at all these meetings, and I was like, "We cannot start until Crystal shows up," and she sent me this, this text message.
What did it read? Like, "I always show up." I always show up. [laughs] That's what I... It's my one thing. I, you know, I'll be there right on time- Yeah... but I'll always show up.
Okay, I'm gonna start with you with the same question I, I asked David. How, how terrible is the year gonna be? In the back half of last year, we all thought the end of last year was gonna be really terrible, too. Yeah.
And it ended up not necessarily playing out in that way. We saw a lot of advertisers and consumers spending a lot of money throughout the holiday season and things like that.
I do think, obviously, with what's going on right now in the economy, the layoffs, we just saw more hit the press this week, it's not going away.
I do think that consumers will pull back, which will mean that advertisers will be more reserved.
However, we have some proven statistics that came out of COVID that advertisers that stopped advertising during a really hard time actually had a more difficult, lost more market share than advertisers who stayed in when people weren't actively out there.
So I think that marketers paid attention to that, and I don't think they're necessarily gonna stop spending, but I think they're gonna be more responsible about how they think about their investments in media.
So I'm hoping it's not a terrible year. I think it's gonna be a bumpy year. Okay. So do advertisers actually pay attention?
Like, every, this is my, like, third, third recession as, like, a working adult, and e- each one I mark by reading those, like, ad age, uh, columns that, that say that, like, people that stop advertising during a recession end up, like, you know, hurting themselves in the long term.
And I feel like the CFOs are like, they nod their heads, and they're like, "Yeah, cut the advertising." Yeah. I m- [scoffs] It varies brand by brand. Oh, God. Does it depend on client objectives?
[laughs] Is that my way of ducking that question? It, you know, we hope that they pay attention to that. I think some do. I think some don't.
It really depends on the brand, but I do believe that, you know, we have short-term memories. The recession was what? Yeah. Last recession was 15 years ago. Yeah.
At least COVID was only two years ago, so hopefully some of those learnings that come out of COVID can be applied to this a little bit differently than some of those more long-term- Yeah. "Ah, that was so long...
I don't remember that." Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's, like, I mean, I, I, I was saying, like, I wrote about hangovers, and I, I think, like, the guy who I saw today who's definitely got a hangover now, he's probably gonna forget it and go back out tonight.
Hundred percent. [laughs] I would take that bet. Those are good odds. [laughs] Yeah. So when you're talking w- with, with clients about, you know, the year ahead, and I know it depends on the client and stuff- Yeah...
like this, I mean, what are w- what are they cutting, and what are they not cutting generally? You know, and a- again, it, it depends.
I, in my role, I don't spend as much time necessarily talking to clients about their day-to-day budgets. I look at areas where they want to drive innovation, where they wanna- Yeah...
focus on sort of how to change in areas that matter to them. I think the constant challenge you have is if things are not core into your operations, they're pretty easy to get cut. Yeah.
So anything that's incremental, if it's not part of how your day to- how you day-to-day operate, how you have your KPIs set up, it's more likely to go.
I think advertisers right now are struggling a little bit with the balance of how much money to spend in the, in the proven things that work versus where there are areas on the edge, where there are areas of innovation that they wanna invest into.And then how you balance performance and responsibility because really a lot of the conversations we're having now are in areas like I know this isn't a sustainability panel, but sustainability has been a really big topic, and having advertisers start to understand, "Oh, my media has carbon emissions.
What does that mean as I start to think about shifting dollars?" Or, "I wanna make sure that I'm investing in, you know, publishers that represent diversity, equity and inclusion."
However, I need to always be finding that balance between those two things. Yeah. So it's not a cookie-cutter approach.
Like, there's no two clients that are handling that the same, and there's a list of things we work through. But I find that clients, none of the clients I'm speaking to wanna walk away from those priorities.
They're trying to figure out how, you know, how to balance these, these- Well, I mean, I-... different forces.
I, I'm glad you brought this up 'cause, like, during, you know, during the pandemic there was a lot of, uh, there was so much, like, just societal tumult going on.
And, and a lot of advertisers said a l- made a lot of pledges, and they, they talked about a lot of things, and they talked about putting money into, you know, minority-owned firms. They talked about sustainability.
They talked about supporting journalism and stuff like this. And now, like, the environment is different, right? And like I, I'm, like, reminded of, like, you know, the energy crisis in Europe.
Like, everyone was super green and then, like, you know, an energy crisis and it's like fire up the coal plants.
Isn't that, I mean, like, I would think that that is the big risk, that it's, it's one thing during, like, you know, really good times to talk about, like, this responsibility agenda, but it's another thing when thousands of people are getting, uh, are losing their jobs because there's a lack of demand out there in the economy.
Yeah. Well, yes. I think for a lot of our advertisers, the last few years have been really eye-opening in terms of the industry. Specifically, I'll, I'll use the digital industry as a, as a good one- Sure...
of it takes us a really long time to identify a problem, and then it takes us a really long time to address that problem.
So think about privacy and the, the many, many years we went through hoarding all of the cookies and all of the data, and then, you know, GDPR was coming down and that was, it took a few years and then it was implemented and it's still
iterative, and we have over here a whole bunch of different legislations that... I bring that up because these cha- these changes take a long time, but I think that advertisers
want to learn from the mistakes of the past and be better from the things that we've done.
And I know at, at least at the Group M level, like, we are really pushing for that and thinking that way, which is why we have our responsible investment framework.
I go back to if it's not core to who you are, if it's not core to your mission, if it's not core to, to, to values you have to your consumers, it, it's probably gonna get cut.
Luckily, a lot of the advertisers that we represent are also advertisers that it is core. You know, we have people inside of brands that their entire role is purpose marketing or, or responsible media.
This is showing up more and more inside of brands to make sure that it's not just solely about, you know, the return on investment matters, but the path to how you're getting that return on investment i- is more responsible than it ever was.
But it has to perform. But it ha- yes. I mean, yes. Yes. [laughs] So fir- first of all, for those who don't know, like, explain it how this responsible investment f- framework works.
'Cause I think it's, like, interesting 'cause I've always thought, like, for a lot of the issues that face the media industry, really the solutions all lie at the brand level. 'Cause that's where the money starts. Yep.
And I'm kinda reminded of, like, I always felt like there should be, like, ESG for, for ad buying.
And, like, I know a lot of people, there's some movements against, like, ESG and stuff like this, but I think it's the only way to have, like, a more holistic look i- if you, unless you're just gonna have, like, a pure cutthroat capitalistic approach.
Yeah. So we've started the responsible investment, or we launched the responsible investment framework, I believe in early twenty-twenty, maybe late twenty-nineteen, early twenty-twenty.
We had been leading in the brand safety arena for over a decade. I think that's been an area where Group M was, was very, you know, we're well-known for things like viewability standards and setting up GARM.
People complain to me all the time about it. Yeah, I know.
[gentle music] No, you know, I like to pretend that.
[laughs] But then we started to branch out in other areas. Like, one of the projects that my team actually ran was around data ethics.
I had this whole thing happen at one point where a company had come in and I was like, "Wait, how do you collect your data?" And it was completely legal. It was just gross. And, uh- Wait, wait, wait, how was it?
Tell us how it was. They, it...
Well, they got in trouble, but it was a, it was a company that was providing free anti-service, antivirus software, and they were tracking every single URL you went to and then giving advertisers that for attribution.
But I was like, there's no way a consumer who's downloading free antivirus software- Yeah... understands that every single URL they're going to is now being taken, given to advertisers.
And we went through, like, a log and there were some pretty horrific things in there that you would never want anyone to know that you were, like, looking at. And it, it, like, struck us at this moment.
I, I'll, I'll never forget sitting with my general counsel and she was like, "Listen, it's not illegal, but it's immoral. You're struggling with a data ethics issue."
And we really, I, I personally ran with that and wanted to see how we could start to operationalize data ethics.
There was a lot of conversation happening around sustainability, a lot of conversation happening around diversity, equity and inclusion, and then responsible journalism.
And we realized that we, these five areas that sort of were being managed independently by different groups across the Group M that just were passionate about these topics-We could bring them together in a really powerful way through the framework.
Now, the framework isn't a one-size-fits-all. Different clients, there's different... First of all, I would say different levels of where we are in sort of in the progression.
Responsible journalism, transparently, is probably the most difficult of those five to really build scaled products and, and solutions around.
But the framework allows for clients to say, "I really care about these three things," or, "I really care about this thing," or, "I care about all five of these things. What should I be doing in each of these areas?"
Or, "How can I start to benchmark myself to make myself better, to be more responsible in this space?" So the framework is the umbrella.
There's different products, solutions, standards that live within them, and we work on a client-by-client basis because some of these things can be standardized, but also some of them can't.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion looks different in every market. So- Yeah...
it's a way of thinking and a way of approaching, but as industry leaders, we felt it was really important not just to focus on brand safety- Mm-hmm...
but to really start to focus on human safety, environmental safety, all of the other parts of, you know, safety that advertising can directly influence. Yeah.
So let's talk about, like, brand safety and then responsible journalism because, like, uh, the reason I was, like, sort of joking, but they really did complain to me about it, is because brand safety wa- was often put in opposition to actually supporting journalism because a lot of advertisers said news by definition is not brand safe.
I was talking to someone earlier about a large packaged good advertiser who's like, "No, no news is brand safe, but we just don't wanna be there."
How-- First of all, how common is that, and how do you move the brand safety conversation or suitability or whatever- Yeah... the new term is?
The reality is res- journalism should not be a luxury good that's only available to the at most ten percent that, that will pay for news. It- Yeah... we need credible information. Yeah, it's a great question.
Br- brand safety sits on a spectrum. We have some brands that don't wanna be near anything that could remotely in any way have any sort of negative association, period.
You have other brands that have higher tolerances of risk, and they're more comfortable in sort of a gray space.
We've spent a lot of time over the last few years looking through our inclusion and exclusion lists because I think as an industry, when you start to think about those inclusion and exclusion lists, you can realize that actually some of the terms that you're blocking or that brands are blocking, they aren't actually, uh, risky.
It's about context. It's about the sentiment of the article. It's not just about that word.
You see, there are brands that don't wanna be anywhere near news, and though we have conversations and dialogue around that, we're-- we can't force any brand to do so.
A lot of it comes into how we can provide controls, how we can provide data back, how they can sort of understand more about the sentiment behind it, and I think we're gonna be moving a lot more into that space.
If we can get to a better place as an industry where it's not just news, but it's, it's the sentiment and the context of the article more deeply, not just the keyword, you can start to have different conversations with brands.
Mm-hmm. N- most of our brands do advertise in news, though. You know, because- Okay, so the majority are not, like, completely including- But no. No, they haven't all just walked away from news in its entirety. Right.
[chuckles] Well, that's reassuring. Yeah. But then there's the performance question, right?
You know, when someone is, is reading the latest, I don't know how many votes there has been at this point on, uh- It's been very interesting to watch... McCarthy. Eight. By the end of this, maybe nine. Maybe.
[laughs] Uh, but generally, people are not commercially minded and, and stuff like this.
Like, I don't know what kind of performance metrics can be given that give your clients some confidence that it's even worth it at some point, because I just see, like, when times get tough, tell me if I'm wrong, but, like, usually everyone just flees to the safety of performance.
What looks good on the spreadsheet is, is safer. It's a tough question. It's also a tough question 'cause I don't sit as close- Yeah... to, to some of those, but I'm gonna give my best here. Sure. What I will say is that
for a long time, platforms definitely had an advantage because they were able to provide sort of that end-to-end, you know, reporting- Sure... on the performance, and, uh, you talked about that in the last panel.
Technology's gotten better. Reporting's gotten better. None of our advertisers sit and think, "I'm gonna put five dollars here and ten dollars here."
You know, it is called media investment because it functions as an investment. You know, we think about it in the same way we think about how you manage your financial investments.
You may not know every stock that's sitting in that Vanguard ETF that you're buying.
It's our responsibility to also, as the holding company, to be thinking about when we're going out and we're negotiating with publishers, how we're making sure that we're bringing out the right composite mix, that we have those right opportunities, that we're helping bring smaller, independent journalists and publications into the fold, and that's been a big area that we've been focused on 'cause ultimately, yes, they wanna go to what works, but we're the ones...
You know, it, it's management of that investment portfolio, so it becomes about how do we make sure that it's a well-rounded portfolio, and that's been a big part of, you know, what we're working on.
Ultimately, there are clients that read through every single URL to make sure they're comfortable with the inclusion/exclusion list, and it all depends also on, on the benchmarks of performance because when you start to go into different ways that you're measuring,
especially with cookie deprecation and the changes, it's actually changed a lot of conversations around how you are measuring today. A lot of our clients historically really loved MTA.
You know, multi-touch attribution all done through cookies. That world is not gonna look the same in the future. Like- Yeah... we have to start rethinking about what actually performance means.
So it's been a really interesting dialogue, and all of this stuff happening at the same time- Yeah... as the changes in the data landscape. It's kinda left a- Yeah. I mean, I'm just wondering, I guess- Yeah...
who I, I, I understand, like, with multi-touch attribution, like, going away and, like- Yeah...
it'd be more econometric and stuff like this, but I also end up thinking that, like, oh, the platforms are gonna, like, you know, come up with their formula, which by the way, guess, guess who's gonna look best?
Look, I think our, a lot of our, a lot of our marketers, platform partnerships are very important, but they do not wanna put-All of their eggs in that basket alone.
It is an important partnership, it is an important relationship, it is important for their return on investment, but it is not the only place they wanna be.
And they are seeing more, and I go back to that responsible investment framework, they are seeing more that there is a responsibility to support in these other areas in making sure that the media they're buying has reduced carbon emissions through various however we get there, in making sure that there is more investment towards Black-owned media, minority-owned media, how there is, they are funding and trying to help local journalists.
I think the local journalism one is actually the hardest one because the, the mechanics aren't necessarily there fully in the same way. It's hard to spend money on local journalism. It is.
And when you think about where the world is going, I, I use this statistic a lot. I saw it somewhere.
You can quote me, but I don't, I can't remember where I got it, but it was like 40% of Gen Z are starting to search on TikTok, not on Google. There's a consumer consumption shift that's taking place.
A lot of people aren't going to websites anymore. Yeah. They're just not.
So it also becomes, how do we help local journalists start to think about and use the tools where the consumers of today and tomorrow are gonna be, to be able to tell their stories and to be able to get out there, and then to be able to make revenue against that?
And that's really hard because local journalists, I think, struggle right now. They don't have the same resources as the big players,
and the industry's moving really fast right now, so they also have to figure out what does that mean for th- for, like, where they spend their time, where they spend their money, and how they can get out there.
So it's a really interesting moment. I know at Group M we're not ready to fully...
We'll have an announcement coming in a few weeks, but there is more being, we're working on ways to be able to give local journalists around the world, not just in the US, around the world, and small, owned publications
access to more resource to be able to, to do more- Mm-hmm... and to be able to drive some of these changes that they need to and think through these things. So that's a teaser, I guess. Yeah. I can't wait.
More to come there. You probably don't have this figure or will tell me, but I'll ask anyway. You're putting me on the spot. Do you guys, do you track how much money is spent by your clients on
journalism, on advertising run against journalism, and is it, like, increased or decreased? You know, I'm, I personally don't have that number. [laughs] So I am- That's fine...
sure that someone in the investment organization does. [laughs] I'd like to believe, you know, we're data-driven, so- Yeah... I, I just, I don't have that figure. Okay. But you do measure it. You know- Theoretically...
I'm gonna say yes. Okay, so a final thing, another, another, uh, question you will probably dodge, Twitter. Elon Musk had, had RSVP'd, but I don't think he made it. It's unfortunate.
Uh- I, I wore the pants 'cause I thought he liked them. What? [laughs] What? First of all, like, how... I don't even know how close you are, if you're close at all to it.
Like, what do they have to do in order to, like, placate, uh, advertisers to go back? It's a tough question.
I- Advertisers, especially of platforms, they have an expectation of brand safety, of responsibility, of things like ethics, organizations living within there, and I think it's really important to still have those pieces in place.
It's really important for advertisers to feel that they can have controls, to feel that they're not funding radicalized or, or misinformation.
And for advertisers, I think it's deeply personal for each advertiser with, with Twitter. Our, again, I'm dodging to our investment team, sorry.
Our investment team definitely oversees that more than I do, but I know that the challenge that advertisers have right now is, will, will my ads remain brand safe?
There's also a reality that, like, a lot of advertisers, they're spent on Twitter, but there's also the organic use of Twitter.
So I think some of the narrative that every advertiser had pulled out of Twitter, that wasn't necessarily like that was a media narrative, that we saw some brands come out and publicly say it.
There were a lot of brands that weren't buying on Twitter prior to Elon taking over- Yeah... that just continued to not buy on Twitter. Yeah. Um- I don't know if it was my feed.
It wasn't like it was filled with Fortune 500 companies. Yes. No, mine- [laughs] No. But I think especially there's different ex- and I'm noticing this more and more.
Our advertisers are starting to think about almost tiers. This is your resource. This is where you sit.
This is the expectation, and there is a higher expectation on what the platforms are gonna be able to do, and the degree of safety the platforms are gonna be able to provide and control.
I think there's a bit more empathy for smaller independents that are up and coming and that don't have the same access to resource but are on a path to getting to a place where they can have those things, those- I mean, in general, and I know it depends on the client, is there more emphasis on context now?
'Cause I feel like the pendulum swung too far, like, over the years to just audience targeting and I, and- Context works. Yeah. No, it's fine. It's like the original. [laughs] Yeah. It's really interesting.
You know, my area of expertise is actually in data, so, um, I spend a lot of time with our clients talking about the transformation of the internet and what's going on with data and, and the data landscape.
And I, I'm a very firm believer that we as an industry way over-index, as I, I mentioned before to your point, on audience-based targeting, on profiling. We swung way into creepy land.
Like, nobody likes when you're sitting down having a conversation with your friend on the phone, you mention something that you've never even thought about or looked up before, and then 32 seconds later you're getting an ad for it on Instagram.
Like, that is uncomfortable. It crosses people to, to- So are they listening to us on the phone yesterday? The dark side. I don't know.
[gentle music] Um- See, this is the part that I find, like, amazing.
I, I feel, you know, do I have proof? Do the people in the industry even remotely- Do I have proof? No. Of course not.
But I mean it, you know, there's, there's definitely these factors that have made consumers really uncomfortable. They don't understand how it happens.
Consumers don't understand what information you have with a cookie or without a cookieSo in this moment, as we're going through this transformation, we've been talking to brands about actually this is a really incredible time to take a step back, like a real big step back.
And not just go in and hoard all-- like, go out and figure out how to set a target for X amount of records. Let's talk about what things you uniquely can understand about your consumers.
Let's also start to think about all of the other data that lives inside of your ecosystem.
You know, when I think about the FMCGs that don't own the relationships with the consumers, but they get SKU-level data from their retailers, like, you can start to do really interesting things with context, location, time to understand more about the, the sentiment of the person, the activities they're taking, the occasions that they're in.
We're really pushing our, our marketers and ourselves to not just look for a one-to-one solution for audience, but to start to think about and leverage the capabilities that are out there, to start to think about data and unlocking sort of these models of the future.
And with that, context is a big piece of the puzzle 'cause context feeds into a lot of how you can think about understanding where a person is at that time, what they're doing, why they're buying that product.
I don't need to necessarily know who every person is. Yeah. I need to understand more about the why and the, and what's- Yeah... the motivators.
So I do think that more brands, brands are really starting to open up and, you know, there were brands that never walked away from context, but I would, I would argue that a lot of them swung really far.
And I would say we're, we're coming into a place now where that conversation's happening and it's exciting. Yeah. We've seen a lot of brands.
There, there was this whole period where brands were gonna bring everything in-house. Yeah. You remember that? That was a fun wave. Most of them have reverted back. It is extremely expensive. It is complicated.
Though the promise of programmatic, as we talk about, it's like, "Oh, you click a button and everything goes." That's not how it works [laughs]. So, like, you don't just get to set up and walk away.
I think ad agencies are transforming. I think that it is, cloud still is a, is an important piece of this. Your scale is still an important piece of this.
But I think more and more it is moving into a much more strategic relationship with our brands. It's not just about that media investment, it's about how we navigate the future, how we navigate these changes.
Our relationships are trusted partners. So no, I don't think they're, I don't think they're going away. I think that just like anything else, there's an evolution taking place.
But I do believe that w- the industry itself sort of proved that notion of being able to bring in-house doesn't work for most. It's expensive. It's you lose the economies of scale of learning.
It's hard to stay top, like, in the top of new things that are coming out, new techniques and new ways of working. I'll be here.
And also, historically, I saw Rishad Tobaccowala out in the lobby, and I, and I know-- I remember him famously saying, at least to me it was famous, that agencies are like cockroaches.
They, they always find a way to survive [laughs] no matter what. You didn't prep me for this. Anyway, Crystal, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And thank you all so much. I really appreciate you coming.
Thank you. Um, thanks, thanks for being part of it. [upbeat music] Hope you enjoyed that discussion, and up next, I speak with David from Outbrain.
[upbeat music] Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Journalism Imperative. My name is Alexander Allmayr. I'm, uh, the new chief revenue officer at Outbrain.
I have to admit there are challenges, but where there are challenges, there are always opportunities.
And I think we are blessed to work in a industry that has proven over time to be very fast-paced, very adaptive, and being able to thrive in such an environment.
What I do see globally from Asia, from Europe, and in the US, there's a lot of uncertainty right now out there in the market. With that, I hand over to our panelists. First of all,
I would like to ask Brian Morrissey on stage. I think I don't have to introduce Brian Morrissey.
Nearly a decade president and chief editor of Digiday, and now founder of The Rebooting, a media company that observes where our industry is going, and there's nobody better suited for this panel than you.
And on the panel, I can introduce David Kostman, our co-CEO, co-CEO of Outbrain, also chairman of various public companies, and also chairman of Nice, and I think very well suited to discuss today what we have ahead of us in this year, now in the week where we embark into twenty twenty-three.
Thank you. Cool. Thank you so much. [audience applauding] David, welcome. Thank you all for being here. You know, I, I s- I left Digiday I guess two plus years ago and to start The Rebooting.
I, I named it The Rebooting because I think at the time, at least during COVID, I'd been undergoing, like, tremendous changes. I was... I left, I left my job of ten years. I moved to Miami, which was very strange.
And I think we all had a lot of different changes going on. At least I was one of those people, 'cause I feel like there was, like, two different, like, camps in COVID.
Like, the people that were thinking, "This is gonna change so much," and the people who said, "Ah, this is gonna go back to normal," right? And I was, like, in the group like, "This is gonna change so much."
That's why I called it The Rebooting. It's because I thought, like, this was gonna be the pivotal moment that caused a lot of change, not just in, like, publishing, but in society.
And it turns out really what happened was not a ton changed. And I think the r- I think what is gonna happen in the next year is I think the change is just gonna be delayed.
And so I think we're gonna talk about what lies ahead next year in twenty twenty-three, because I do think it's gonna be actually a year of rebooting to try to work in the brand a little bit. It is.
David, I hope you don't mind. But I, I think that what's important is, you know-That it's gonna be a challenging year next year, no doubt.
But that a lot of the things that were talked about during the pandemic, particularly around supporting journalism and, and being in bran-brand safe environments, that it doesn't get pushed to the side.
And so I wanna, like, really zero in on that first in this conversation with David, and then talking to Crystal Olivieri.
And we're gonna talk about whether or not we're gonna see a pullback in that sort of commitment to supporting high-quality journalism, because it's incredibly important.
And I really wanna thank Outbrain for allowing, you know, this convers- enabling this conversation to really happen.
You know, they've been great partners, and I just wrapped up a, a podcast series about local journalism that I did with people starting, you know, really bootstrapping small local journalism outfits that don't get a lot of attention.
And, and, you know, I really wouldn't have been able to, like, have those conversations and, and have it, you know, frankly, be, like, commercially viable without, like, the support of, like, Outbrain.
I thank you for that. It's great. It's our pleasure.
It's great, great to be here with you and to talk about such an important topic of how we combine business and saving and helping journalism, which is very close to all our hearts, so. Okay.
That's the optimistic stuff, David. I am. But let's get to, like, the reality. I mean, come on. That's not what this is about. This year's gonna be terrible, right? I'm an optimist- [laughs]...
so you have to be an optimist. I think it actually is an opportunity for publishers and advertisers to recalibrate and reboot a little bit. I mean, obviously, we went through a craziness of '21 into pretty rough '22.
I actually do think when you look, um, generally the advertising industry, and I think we've been suffering faster the impact of the economic environment because there's...
So, so it's a frictionless decision for businesses to ramp up or down advertising. I think what we're seeing now, I was listening this morning to Satya from Microsoft.
I mean, enterprise software companies are seeing it now happening more. I think we already got hit all pretty hard on advertising prices, so I think we haven't seen a further deterioration.
So I'm optimistic, and I do think there's actually... We'll talk about it, hopefully. There's a lot of positive things that can happen for publishers and the, the press, and we know how important it is.
And jokes aside- Okay... I think that's why it really is an important thing for us to- Yeah.
So I, I, like, to keep with the Vegas theme, I, I, I wrote this morning, I changed it a little bit, like, in the lobby because I saw...
I, I'm on East Coast time, and so I got up to have coffee at five o'clock in the morning. And luckily in Vegas, you can get anything, like, at any time.
And I went down, and it's, it's a wonderful time in Las Vegas to, to go down to the hotel lobby because you've got the people on East Coast time with their laptops open, and you have the people coming in from the night, uh, still.
And I was looking at this guy who was swaying in front of me. That's not me. That's not me. I... It was not, it was not David. [laughs] And I was thinking, "He's gonna be really hungover."
And I kinda feel like we might be heading into, like, a little bit of, like, a hangover because I think during the pandemic, so much...
There was, there were so many distortions to, to, you know, governments had put so much money into the economy that a lot of things were just put off.
And so is, is flat the new up in the year ahead when it comes to advertising? Look, I think what, what we're looking at is pretty much flat and, you know, up single digits percentages. Uh, we have an analyst here, Laura.
I'm not giving any predictions here for '23. Uh, but we're looking at sort of a flattish plus environment. We think there are opportunities. But if you look at the...
I mean, I listen to all the podcasts, but I think even the big agencies have been all adjusting down their expectations. So I think a few months ago they're talking about double digits.
I think everyone is looking at, you know, single digits. I think there are opportunities in digital of shifts of budgets. For example, we're investing a lot in video.
We think video will grow faster than other, than other, than other areas. Uh, we're seeing brands that are looking for measurable outcomes. Alex talked about it a little bit, so we're investing a lot in that.
But I think it's flattish to, you know- Okay... some, uh, degree up.
But the one thing I would say, I mean, many companies, and we are one of them, we put the brakes on a lot of this already in the March, April timeframe.
I mean, we, we, for example, we have a pretty big exposure to Europe, so we saw it happening. So it's not that right now, oh, there's a hangover, waking up now January, what do we do?
And I think many companies have already been sort of adjusting to, to this environment. Okay. So usually in downturns, there's a flight to performance. I assume that we'll see that, right?
Yeah, but I think performance, uh, we can discuss the word performance. I think also brand, enterprise brand- Were you gonna say it depends on client objectives? Uh, no, I c- you, you, you told me not to say it, so no.
[laughs] It doesn't depend on client objectives. But when you look at... It, it is about performance, and I think everyone wants performance. Let's use the word performance to talk about measurable outcomes.
So even enterprise brands that are, you know, spending more around awareness are going to look for more metrics that show: Where is my dollar spent?
When we talk to CMOs, they say, "Hey, I need to prove why I'm spending these dollars." So we are going much heavier into attention metrics, engagement metrics.
We are leveraging actually a lot of, uh, what we do, I mean, promoting a little bit was on performance. We're moving it to brands in a brand-safe environment and enabling brands to show real results for their dollars.
So people will be looking for real results for their dollars, which I think is a very good thing overall.
Okay, 'cause I think a lot of times when you hear performance, publishers end up thinking race to the bottom, right? And a race that they can't win, right? Because this...
I think one good thing is th- in this conversation will not be about the duopoly 'cause the duopoly is now a oligopoly, so thank God.
But in general, you know, publishers have not been able to win typically on performance against platform. Th-that, that's true, and I, I think, uh, I don't think that performance necessarily means a race to the bottom.
That's what we're trying to say. I think there's ways to deliver real performanceWithout that race to the bottom, I do think that in this year, publishers do have an opportunity.
I mean, we hopefully will talk about privacy and other trends that are helping the publishing industry. I mean, they're getting-- I mean, publishers are getting back the ownership of the user.
I mean, cookie's disappearing, I mean, in twenty four. I don't know, but everyone is adjusting. So I think there are certain advantages of m-more emphasis on contextual. That's a good thing for publishers.
More-- less ability of intermediaries in the ad tech ecosystem to use the data, it's a good thing for publishers that control the data. So I, I do think that that and what you see around...
I'm still a believer that quality journalism is important, important for our younger generations.
I-I'd love to see my kids read more real, you know, publications, and I think there's an opportunity here where I think social is more problematic. Journalism does provide a brand safe environment better than others.
It's really about better use of data, uh, giving them, showing them real metrics of further attention, engagement, how much time did you spend on it.
There's a lot of artificial intelligence that can help deliver these things. We are investing a lot in this, and I think it's really about demonstrating brand safe environment, but real measurable outcomes.
I think there's an opportunity, really, there's a real opportunity here in the next two, three years for publishers to get back more of their fair share because of the reasons we discussed, and for us in the ad tech industry to provide much better measurements and ability to evaluate your campaigns, which will get higher brand dollars into brand safe environments of publishers.
I think that will be a-- it's a win-win situation here that it's not happening tomorrow, but I think you'll, you'll see and you'll see the trends and not just us.
Again, as I said, many companies, we're not promoting ourselves, are looking into this, and I think you'll see a very positive impact of brand dollars that are higher CPM dollars that are going to look for brand safe environments that they can find in publishers.
So that's- Got it. You know. Okay. We're gonna leave it there. And, uh, David, thank you so much. Appreciate the conversation. It's great having a chat with you. Thank you for doing this. Okay. Thank you.
[upbeat music] Thanks again for listening. Thank you to Jay Sparks of Podhelpus for producing this podcast. If you want a podcast like this one, get in touch with Jay. You can find jay at podhelp.us.
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