The Digiday Podcast

It’s been a busy summer for Bon Appétit and Epicurious’ editor-in-chief Jamila Robinson, who stepped into the top editor role last September. Amid changing algorithms and impacts to search traffic, Robinson is prioritizing relationship building between audiences and Condé Nast’s cooking brands by expanding the coverage of food to include categories like sports and relationships, challenging the idea of “traditional” cooking and building new subscriber products. Bon Appétit took a page from its sibling brand Allure to create a subscription business similar to Allure’s Beauty Box, but with a cooking twist. This month, the Cook with Bon Appétit monthly subscription box launched, priced at $34 per month, $96 per quarter or $336 per year, providing subscribers with five editorially selected ingredients, five recipes using each ingredient, video instructions and a digital subscription to Bon Appétit and Epicurious. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Robinson talks about the new Sports issue of Bon Appétit, hitting newsstands today, as well as widening the aperture of cooking culture and lifestyle that the magazine covers to appeal to a modern audience.

As the creator economy grows, the very definition of what makes a creator or influencer changes. It has expanded to be inclusive of everything from college athletes under the name, image and likeness (NIL) policy change in 2021 to the latest crop of virtual influencers, springing up alongside generative AI advancements. For Nicole Dye Anderson, svp, head of media relations and influencer strategy at Wells Fargo, influencers can extend to anything from celebrities to media personalities. “[Traditional influencers] might have a strong social following and that's extremely important, to have that strong social following as well,” she said. “But then again, as the newsrooms are shrinking, [shoppers] are looking to these [media influencers] as the experts.” In this week’s episode, Anderson shares more about Wells Fargo’s influencer marketing strategy, how the financial institution mitigates backlash and defines authenticity.

Making the digital advertising ecosystem more sustainable has been a burgeoning topic for the past couple of years, but the biggest excuse that’s been holding back companies from making moves to actually reduce carbon emissions is the lack of standards around measuring emissions in the first place. But the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and Ad Net Zero aimed to remedy those concerns with its Global Media Sustainability Framework, launched ahead of the Cannes Lions Festival earlier this month.“ We’ve reached a bit of an inflection point to sort of say, ‘Let’s do the right thing by the industry, and make sure that there is a voluntary, flexible framework that basically can enhance transparency, drive consistency and introduce rigor in a way that drives confidence in the work,’” said Rob Rakowitz, co-founder and initiative lead at GARM. On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Rakowitz shared how the framework and standards came together and how their existence should influence the way stakeholders implement carbon cutting initiatives and measure carbon emissions in the advertising ecosystem going forward. 

Instacart is on a mission to make every surface shoppable, pitching that to advertisers at this year’s Cannes Lions festival. Notably, there’s been an increased presence of retail and commerce media networks on the ground with brands like Chase and United having a presence here at Cannes on the heels of launching their own networks. “This last year has been about moving off-platform. So now, we’re making our data available on an aggregated, anonymized basis to other media platforms,” said Instacart CMO Laura Jones. As things begin to close down today, Jones joins this episode of the Digiday Podcast at Cannes to talk about Instacart’s beefed-up retail media offering, presence at Cannes, and more.

We’ve made it to the halfway point of Cannes Lions, where Lee Brown, global head of ads business and platform at Spotify joins this episode of the Digiday at Cannes Podcast.  The audio streaming platform has spread its wings a bit, taking a swing at visual content, like music videos and lyrics to follow along with music content. In expanding its content offerings, it has also expanded its opportunity to take in more ad dollars. Keeping pace with the AI boom, Spotify recently announced the launch of its first AI ad format, where marketers can leverage AI for voice ads. For the last 10 years, Spotify Beach has been a Cannes Lions staple, most notably for its concerts on the beach, featuring big-name performers like Dua Lipa or Foo Fighters. For this episode of the Digiday at Cannes Podcast, Brown talks about Spotify’s Cannes anniversary, its play for more ad dollars and becoming a main line item in advertisers’ budgets.

We’re on day three of Cannes, joined by Megan Ramm, global director and head of CPG partnerships at Uber, for this episode of the Digiday at Cannes podcast. This is Uber Ads second year in business and simultaneously, second year at Cannes. Just a few days ago, the company announced that it was expanding its programmatic ad business to include partnerships with demand-side platforms like The Trade Desk, Yahoo's DSP and Google’s Display & Video 360. As of late, programmatic has had a rough go with shrinking ad budgets, uproar around made-for-advertising sites and more. As Uber Ads continues to grow its business, Ramm stopped by the Digiday Podcast at Cannes to talk about Uber's approach to challenges in programmatic, the rise of artificial intelligence and the company’s trajectory. Recorded in Spotify’s studio on the beach at Cannes Lions, tune into the conversation with Ramm.

On day one of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the Digiday Podcast is joined by Dow Jones CMO Sherry Weiss live from the Wall Street Journal’s new location — WSJ has relocated from on the pier to its new location next to the famous Carlton Hotel. Thus far, it's been the usual wheeling and dealing of Cannes Lions with dinner parties and happy hours. Much of the conversation at Cannes has been dominated by the topic of artificial intelligence, a focal point for Weiss. On the ground here at Cannes, Weiss said she's looking to chat with partners about leveraging AI tools for the creative process, something that's become mainstream amongst marketers at this point. But as the AI hype cycle continues, data privacy, safety, and return on investment become bigger talking points. "Honestly, that's going to be a lot of what I'm gonna be doing this week," Weiss said, "is talking with some of our tech partners to figure out how we can start using some of their technology." In the second episode of the Digiday at Cannes podcast, Weiss talks about AI tools in marketing, data privacy within AI and WSJ’s new ad campaign to boost readership.

Bonjour from day one of the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and the kick-off of the Digiday Cannes podcast. Ahead of this year’s rosé-induced festivities, Hilton CMO Mark Weinstein, a Cannes Lions veteran attendee, joins us for the first episode of Digiday’s week-long podcast series. Last year’s generative artificial intelligence hype cycle hasn’t quite fizzled out yet It's expected not only to show up this year, says Weinstein, but drown out other conversations. No doubt, marketers have found uses for gen AI beyond social copy and internal content creation, but it’s yet to be said if AI will reach an inflection point for brand at this year’s Lions. “Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation will be just blustering and hot air,” Weinstein said. “We're not yet at a point where any of us know, including the people building the capabilities by the way, where this ends.” Tune in to hear how Hilton is using AI internally and how Weinstein says the industry should be talking about AI at this year’s Cannes Lions on the Digiday Podcast at Cannes. And Make sure to tune in tomorrow for the next Digiday podcast at Cannes.

Molly Burke and Tyler Oakley joined YouTube more than a decade ago and built their respective online followings by advocating for the causes and communities of people that were important to them — even if it wasn’t always the easiest way to rapidly grow given the platform’s algorithm. Since then, Burke and Oakley both expanded to additional platforms, like Patreon and Twitch, to continue garnering meaningful relationships with their followers. While Burke said she’s been able to learn a lot about her viewers personally through Patreon, Oakley said that two-way direct communication on Twitch has been instrumental in how he creates content in the moment. In the fourth and final episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Burke and Oakley discuss why advocacy and speaking from the heart has always been central to their strategies as long-form video content creators, and why that’s helped grow their audiences and businesses.

In a world where video has become the predominant medium for content creators, Substack offers a reprieve in the form of the written word. The subscription-based newsletter platform received a surge of interest during the pandemic, garnering hundreds of new creators — including Hunter Harris and Caroline Chambers — who were interested in monetizing their ideas without always needing to jump in front of a camera. And less than four years later, the platform has enabled these creators to monetize their content via thousands of paid and unpaid subscribers — not to mention advertiser sponsorship, affiliate links or even book deals. In the third episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Harris and Chambers discuss how they’ve transitioned their Substack subscriber bases into communities that ultimately help them feed the funnel of audience engagement.

 What started as a part-time, pandemic-induced pregnancy journey vlog has turned into a family business for social media creators Ben and Lazara Martin, and their three boys. Since 2020, the couple has racked up nearly 8 million followers across social media, boasting family-friendly content to strike deals with brands like Huggies, Flexcar and Applebee's. But even as the influencer and content creator landscape continues to grow, changes in platform algorithms, the looming TikTok ban and more put pressure on creators. In the second episode of the Digiday Podcast creator series, the Martin family talks being full time content creators, navigating said ban and more.

As a platform, X (formerly Twitter) has seen better days. After Elon Musk took over back in 2022, the platform has fallen from grace with advertisers and creators alike, due to the reinstatement of previously banned accounts, an increase in bots and simultaneous decrease in brand safety. However, X hasn’t managed to scare away everyone. In fact, Jessica Davis, a part-time creator who focuses on career content, has managed to build out a following of more than 40,000 people since starting her account in 2021. Since then, she's been able to convince subscribers and brands to shell out for her tweets, pulling in revenue from monthly subscriptions and funds from the platform's ad revenue sharing program, which launched last summer. In the first episode of the Digiday Podcast’s Creators series, Davis talks about being a text-based content creator in the short-form video era, navigating brand safety on X and the future of content creation in the ever changing landscape of social media.