Episode 209
The connection economy
In this episode, I talk with James Capo, CEO of audience data platform Omeda, about why the traffic-driven media model has finally run out of road and what replaces it. We dig into the idea of a “connection economy,” where audience relationships—not page views—are the core asset. We also get into why so many publishers struggle to operationalize audience-first strategies, how B2B and consumer media models are converging, and where AI fits if it’s meant to add real utility rather than repeat past mistakes.
Thanks to James and Omeda for supporting The Rebooting as partners.
Transcript
Welcome to the Rebooting Show.
Speaker:I am Brian Morrissey.
Speaker:Today I'm joined by James Capo.
Speaker:James is the CEO of Amed.
Speaker:Amed is an audience data platform used by publishers to better
Speaker:understand their audiences and hopefully build connections with them.
Speaker:James is himself a former publisher and I think he has a unique point of view
Speaker:on this moment of time in this industry and, and how the publisher publishers
Speaker:need to change, and I think they are.
Speaker:Broadly speaking, James changing.
Speaker:We had a breakfast, yesterday, with a, a great group of publishers and you know,
Speaker:I think a lot of the things that I heard there do thankfully square with some of
Speaker:the things that we're talking about all the time, and a lot of that is around.
Speaker:Making this transition from, you know, a traffic based page view system to one
Speaker:in which loyalty and direct connections to the audience are paramount.
Speaker:this is easier said than done.
Speaker:I thought, you know, a, a great frame came from Sean Griffey, who
Speaker:is a, board member of yours at OME and the former CEO of industry dive.
Speaker:when he talked recently about this idea of a connection economy, and I think it sort
Speaker:of encapsulates where we're moving to the transition, however, is messy, but what
Speaker:does the connection economy mean to you?
Speaker:No, and great to be here, Brian.
Speaker:I really appreciate obviously you having me on the show.
Speaker:Sean obviously has, been incredibly successful in how he thinks about, the
Speaker:business, but also as a, has been a long time friend of mine in the industry.
Speaker:And I, I truly, you know, when he, when he puts stuff out there, it's, it's,
Speaker:it's because of thought and he's, and he really sees things, slightly different.
Speaker:It's also frankly, how I've, we at EDA and I've been thinking about our
Speaker:interactions, with publishers over the years and when I was a former publisher,
Speaker:it was about building this connection or this relationship with the audience.
Speaker:And I think, you know, to call your other sort of podcast in, in,
Speaker:I hear People Versus Algorithm.
Speaker:That really is kind of, in essence also what, what publishing has been
Speaker:wrestling with for many years is we have been dialing, you know, turning
Speaker:the dials in so many different ways to get that 1% more or 2% more and,
Speaker:and, you know, tricks and things.
Speaker:And what we've kind of lost sight of in many, in many cases is
Speaker:that the best media companies are connecting with their audiences.
Speaker:In multiple ways, in multiple fashions, building a relationship with them,
Speaker:building that long, that lifetime value.
Speaker:And they're doing it in ways where the, the audience feels seen,
Speaker:they feel that they are resonating with the brand and the content.
Speaker:and for us and for the clients that we work with, those are
Speaker:the most successful ones.
Speaker:And, and we've, we've been trading sort of in this, this world of, of, well,
Speaker:the platforms have all the, the data.
Speaker:Particularly the socials.
Speaker:Well, what are the social platforms doing?
Speaker:They're building connections.
Speaker:they're building that connection and that relationship with the person on the other
Speaker:side, whether it's, someone you, you used to know from high school or, a family
Speaker:member you haven't seen in many years.
Speaker:So what they fundamentally do isn't any different than what media
Speaker:should be doing or has been doing.
Speaker:We've just kind of lost ourselves in, in always trying to get that 1% more, rather
Speaker:than taking a step back and being like, what do we have right in front of you?
Speaker:And who do you wanna be as a media company, from here?
Speaker:and so that's something we work with, with our, with our publishers a lot.
Speaker:And it's, and when we, we think about it, it's, it's less about transactions.
Speaker:and then what I mean that is like the transaction in the,
Speaker:in the relationship you have.
Speaker:Through the platforms you use or through the, the technology you use.
Speaker:And it really is building that relationship with the
Speaker:audience member over time.
Speaker:and that is frankly, core exactly to what OMI does.
Speaker:And and I appreciate Sean, you know, ni and I actually
Speaker:didn't even talk about this.
Speaker:He put that out there and this was something we've been, we
Speaker:have always said we do at Mita.
Speaker:And I think it's important for us as an, as an industry to be thinking this way,
Speaker:Yeah, that really resonates.
Speaker:'cause I think about, you know, a lot of like models were overly
Speaker:dependent on optimization.
Speaker:And, and I think that's where you're, it is like you go right to the, the
Speaker:activation piece or the transaction piece versus the more fundamental
Speaker:piece, which is, you know, before you get to activation or, or transaction,
Speaker:you know, you have to have some kind of relationship with, with the audience.
Speaker:And you have to build that by getting to know them and
Speaker:not treating the audience as.
Speaker:A, a monolith.
Speaker:'cause there's different people have different needs and you know, but I think
Speaker:that, you know, one of the things that came up a bunch yesterday at the breakfast
Speaker:was, you know, the challenges of falling back on the old ways and the old models.
Speaker:Because most of these businesses, unless they, you know, started
Speaker:recently need to operate kind of both models in some ways in that you're
Speaker:trying to operate the old model.
Speaker:It's in decline, you know, but then you have to be building
Speaker:the new model at the same time.
Speaker:I think one of the, the quotes that stood out, for me was the, the talks like, oh.
Speaker:The leadership will, will literally in the same sentence be like, we can't, we can't
Speaker:just be, be about traffic and page views.
Speaker:And then it was like, well, why is the traffic down like immediately?
Speaker:right.
Speaker:and that's just like a human dilemma.
Speaker:And it's also like an organizational challenge.
Speaker:Is that something you end up seeing in the
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:We see that.
Speaker:We do.
Speaker:And I think, I think we also get very focused and, and again, I think this
Speaker:is a nature of, of how media sometimes thinks, but we get very focused on.
Speaker:One channel and, and when I think of media brands and the ones that I enjoy
Speaker:consuming, as an audience member, I may not be engaged on their website.
Speaker:I may not be engaged in their newsletter, but I might go to their event, I
Speaker:might subscribe to their magazine.
Speaker:And I think we sometimes use traffic right as this sort of, again, single North Star.
Speaker:Of how we are measuring our success as a, as a media company.
Speaker:I'm not saying that doesn't drive top of funnel if we wanna get in and drive
Speaker:new eyeballs, but that can't be the only thing we look at as a media brand,
Speaker:because the audience members, they don't see you necessarily as just a website
Speaker:or just a newsletter or just an event.
Speaker:They see you as a brand that they are.
Speaker:They are migrating across and they're using your, your products.
Speaker:And that's how we think about it, that these are individual products
Speaker:underneath the overarching brand.
Speaker:And you need to be able to meet them in those environments
Speaker:and where that audience is.
Speaker:And so we see clients that are focused on website traffic, website
Speaker:traffic, and it's like, okay, but is that really driving your business?
Speaker:And are you really connecting with that audience member in an efficient?
Speaker:And I would say, Natural way.
Speaker:and many times they aren't.
Speaker:the audience is like, man, I'm, I'm really into this piece of your
Speaker:product, but you're still just focusing on feeding this beast and I'm over
Speaker:here telling you this is where I am.
Speaker:and we miss that sometimes, from here.
Speaker:Yeah, and I think sometimes that is, I think that in some, in some ways,
Speaker:that's a result of these businesses.
Speaker:Like, I mean, you talk about it all the time, like it's, it's, these are, it's
Speaker:a simple business to some degree, right?
Speaker:We, we overcomplicate it, but like it's, it's, your value lies in
Speaker:your content, in your audience,
Speaker:Those are the two thing media companies have, right?
Speaker:You've heard me say it over and over again.
Speaker:There's content and there's audience.
Speaker:That is what.
Speaker:We have as media companies are those two assets.
Speaker:And yes, the brand matters, but there I can also point to hundreds of brands
Speaker:right now that have come up over the last 10 decade that had no brand
Speaker:and have been incredibly successful because they've built the right
Speaker:content and the right audience, right?
Speaker:Skift, Axios to right of the top of my head puck that are being successful
Speaker:where there was no brand, you know, a decade, 15 years ago, from there.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But I think as, as publishers move to become brands, right, they
Speaker:have to think of of themselves as brands, and you're gonna reach.
Speaker:Your audience and build connections with them in a variety of ways.
Speaker:And there's a lot of people talking about liquid content and nude like
Speaker:buzzwords and terms that people can then argue about what, what they mean.
Speaker:Um, I'm just gonna wait until they come to some kind of,
Speaker:definition of it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then I'll, then I'll sort of pay attention.
Speaker:But, you know, but I think it's like, you know, it's, it's putting a new.
Speaker:Term on, on the same thing.
Speaker:Ultimately, you have to serve your audiences audience segments basically
Speaker:in a bunch of different ways.
Speaker:And you have to have, you have to have an understanding of those different segments,
Speaker:but they're going to, you're gonna reach people, not just through the website,
Speaker:like people get value a bunch of different ways, and I think a lot of the challenges
Speaker:that I see with publishers in talking to them is the business is compressed.
Speaker:And they have to do more things and those things don't necessarily cohere into
Speaker:a single sort of overarching approach.
Speaker:Just case in point, you know, yesterday we had a, a discussion about what is like
Speaker:the North star metric of these businesses.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:And you know, any, I I, I noticed you know, that, that there was,
Speaker:there was no, there was very little like agreement on, okay, it's arpu.
Speaker:Oh, it's, it's, it's LTV because there's always gonna be some outliers
Speaker:because the models maybe by necessity are, you know, kind of fragmented.
Speaker:Yeah, and I, I do think you need to have as a media organization.
Speaker:You know, and I, I don't know if we'll have video on this, Brian, but
Speaker:I'm doing the inverted pyramid for those who, you know, are listening
Speaker:on their radio, so to speak.
Speaker:but the, when you think about that audience, I do think there
Speaker:is a, a metric that organizations.
Speaker:Need to follow.
Speaker:Now, what that metric it needs for your organization is, I
Speaker:think dependent to your point.
Speaker:Is it arpu?
Speaker:Is it LTV?
Speaker:Is it time on site?
Speaker:Is it page like there is a P point there, but at least acknowledge what you're doing
Speaker:and what you're driving towards and how that business is funneling to that metric.
Speaker:And I think we, we sometimes, and I think we, we also talk about media and you
Speaker:and I have talked about this as well as this monolith at times, and it's not.
Speaker:Are flavor, how a hard news organization that you know is really looking at
Speaker:what I like to call acts of God, right?
Speaker:Where their traffic is, is spiked by things that happen.
Speaker:How they monetize and think about their growth as an audience is
Speaker:gonna be very different than a pure play, let's say B2B company that's
Speaker:covering the HVAC industry, right?
Speaker:Or covering like that, how they think about it.
Speaker:And I'm not saying it has to be this.
Speaker:Homogenous metric, but let's just be, be clear on what we're doing and what
Speaker:that, what our products are serving, what they're trying to be, and not
Speaker:kid ourselves that we're, we're trying to be something we're not.
Speaker:And then we can be real about what's the audience metric that
Speaker:actually drives the business.
Speaker:And for a hard news type publication, it might be.
Speaker:Listen page views drive to a subscription or a known user
Speaker:slash newsletter subscriber.
Speaker:Okay, got it.
Speaker:For a B2B media company, it might be, you know what, we make $5,000.
Speaker:Anyone, someone, someone comes to our event, right?
Speaker:That that event is incredibly lucrative for us and we are going
Speaker:to create an environment where those connections matter there at the event
Speaker:level and let's optimize for that.
Speaker:And I, I, I think we sometimes try to conflate.
Speaker:Media and the business models and not step back as organizations and say, okay,
Speaker:what, who are we and what are we good at?
Speaker:And what are we trying to drive to?
Speaker:And then let's layer in the metric that follows from from there.
Speaker:And I think that's why we get some of that, you know, as an issue.
Speaker:We had a, you know, obviously a diverse group of folks around the table
Speaker:yesterday from various organizations.
Speaker:I think that's why we get a little confused sometimes on there.
Speaker:Now the underlying issues are still the same across these organizations.
Speaker:Great content audiences, being able to activate them quickly, understand who they
Speaker:are, are the same, but what you're driving to sometimes the, the by financial metric
Speaker:can be different, from that perspective.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean you, you have experience in B2B too.
Speaker:I mean, you guys also have B2B and and B2C clients and, I've always
Speaker:been struck over the years that.
Speaker:How different the conversations I would have, like internally versus when I was
Speaker:talking to a, a consumer publishers, like they would be talking about
Speaker:comScore, I'd be talking about email.
Speaker:Like I literally wouldn't look at, at our, our page views.
Speaker:It just simply wasn't a metric that was important.
Speaker:They would be talking about programmatic.
Speaker:I'd be talking about events, you know, like and, and on and on.
Speaker:And then what I've noticed is it's kind of like changed.
Speaker:Like you literally couldn't have people in from, from the two sides.
Speaker:You might as well, you would need to like have Esperanto as like
Speaker:a common language or something.
Speaker:But now, like people talk, you know, similarly because a lot
Speaker:of consumer models are moving.
Speaker:I wouldn't say look more like B2B, but they're, they're, they're closer together.
Speaker:I don't know if you're seeing
Speaker:A hundred percent see that, and frankly, I find it exciting.
Speaker:Um,
Speaker:' I
Speaker:now we're finally talking
Speaker:yeah, we're talking about, and, and that's not to, that's not to say
Speaker:that the, the consumer side of of media, was doing anything wrong.
Speaker:They were doing what they knew they, they could do right.
Speaker:At the time.
Speaker:and responding to the incentives
Speaker:absolutely.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:And I think B2B has its issues too.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:B2B, in my opinion, has.
Speaker:Underemphasized content and editorial.
Speaker:And I think that's an area where you see really great B2B companies doing well.
Speaker:again, I've mentioned skit and others, over the time that have,
Speaker:they've really B2B, but are, create incredible content covering that
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, and kudos to Rafa for having like a, a, just like a,
Speaker:a fairly decent design, which
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:it's great, but I'll just say like, it's just, just, I'll take.
Speaker:Good enough,
Speaker:Yeah, and I think my, my, you know, I think my joke has been about consumer
Speaker:and B2B right consumer, at least from the B2B perspective was the sexy, you know,
Speaker:you live in Miami Bryant, it was the sexy restaurant on the corner of the street,
Speaker:ev line out the door, everyone to get in.
Speaker:But there were, you know, 50 people in the back making one cheeseburger.
Speaker:And B2B was kinda the shack on the corner with one person in the
Speaker:back making 50, cheeseburgers.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:And, and.
Speaker:Now if you overemphasize on design and content for the B2B side.
Speaker:So there's this, what I'm seeing is exactly right.
Speaker:You're seeing this sort of, this, the wall between hardcore B2B
Speaker:and consumer is breaking down.
Speaker:I still think you have another kind of piece on top, which are the big sites,
Speaker:you know, the, the, the New York Times and the, there there's gonna be a scale
Speaker:game that is always gonna be there.
Speaker:but if you are, you know, one of our clients is Milk Street.
Speaker:milk Street out of Boston.
Speaker:Chris Kimball, he cover, he is, has a PBS show, has a great,
Speaker:publication covering, food and, and cooking, and has products he sells.
Speaker:And it's a, it's a consumer mag, but it's niche and they're
Speaker:very clear on what they do.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Obviously we know Craig Fuller at Fire Crown, and, you know, yachting and boating
Speaker:and anything that you can put gas into Craig is really, you know, that is the,
Speaker:is the stuff here.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that.
Speaker:No, that's his matter, you know, from there.
Speaker:And then, you know, we, we work with Fast Company and Inc. You
Speaker:know, brands that are, you would say, are these big consumer brands.
Speaker:But when, when you think about Fast Company and Ink, who are they talking to?
Speaker:The business owner, the folks that are trying to, innovate in
Speaker:their, in, in their industries.
Speaker:and if you ask Fast Company and Inc. What they really, you know, kind of look at
Speaker:is using great editorial and content.
Speaker:To bring it to their, their Inc 5,000 to really create those connections of other
Speaker:business owners and other entrepreneurs, within their, their audience to,
Speaker:to drive that, that environment.
Speaker:And if you were to take those labels off those companies and throw up, you know,
Speaker:air conditioner monthly and, and, you know, manure today, which our friends in
Speaker:Canada actually have annex business media.
Speaker:the, the manure show like.
Speaker:This, what they're doing is the same.
Speaker:It's exactly the same.
Speaker:And, and, and that to me is where the fun, the fun gets to be.
Speaker:And we can really start to create some really cool things, around that.
Speaker:no, I definitely see, and particularly, you know, when we talked about this,
Speaker:this yesterday, you know, I, I sort of break it down to like, you know,
Speaker:what you know and who, you know, and many of these businesses are moving
Speaker:into a, who, you know, business and, you know, before in, in consumer,
Speaker:like a, who, you know, was, was about.
Speaker:Audience targeting.
Speaker:It was like, okay, well I can, I can understand more about the audience, so
Speaker:I can target them better wi with ads.
Speaker:I can sell intenders to, to, to some, some segment to, to
Speaker:advertisers or maybe package it up and, and put it on an exchange.
Speaker:But I feel like now it's different.
Speaker:I mean, you're, you're, you're looking to activate high value audience segments
Speaker:and you know, again, just to go back to the B two B2B two versus B2B B2C,
Speaker:thing is, you know, B2B always had these small groups of your, of your audience
Speaker:were dis disproportionately valuable.
Speaker:You were trying to find, If you had, if you have family offices in there,
Speaker:there's only 1200 in the United States.
Speaker:And like if you can find the heads of 1200 family offices and get them to take
Speaker:an action and ideally show up in like one place at one time, the unbelievably
Speaker:Incredibly valuable.
Speaker:Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker:And I think, and it's sometimes fun when we talk to some of our,
Speaker:our B2B clients and they're like.
Speaker:Well, I need more left-handed nuclear engineers.
Speaker:Well, how many of those are there, you know, well, there's 10,000.
Speaker:Okay, well, how many do you have on your audience?
Speaker:9,000. Well, you know, we're not gonna, we're we're doing pretty good there.
Speaker:but no, you're exactly right.
Speaker:The there is, there is a difference.
Speaker:And you know that the smaller, smaller, high value approach, right.
Speaker:Versus the.
Speaker:Scale and kind of, you know, anyone, you know, men over 35 who live
Speaker:in, you know, a top 10 DMA, right?
Speaker:That is a different conversation with advertisers than the, you know, targeting
Speaker:that specific group that has a family office and, you know, this is who we're
Speaker:trying to go after and it, and you can't.
Speaker:The underlying, fundamentals are the same, but how your sales team,
Speaker:how your marketing team, how you measure that, types of conversations.
Speaker:It is different.
Speaker:and I'm not gonna say you can go sell, you know, a big consumer brand.
Speaker:You know, you can't go to Nike and say, Hey, I only have 10,000 buyers.
Speaker:You know, to move Nike stock price, they need to sell millions of shoes, right?
Speaker:That's kind of what they do and why they buy Super Bowl commercials
Speaker:and things along those lines.
Speaker:But it's not to say there isn't a very high value, business around, consumer
Speaker:at, in a smaller, scale environment.
Speaker:I think there very much is, and we're starting to see that with events.
Speaker:We're trying to see some of these connections we've talked about,
Speaker:you know, connecting audiences together, those types of things.
Speaker:I think of what we're seeing more on the consumer side.
Speaker:So what are the, we talk a lot about like audience for first strategies.
Speaker:What are sort of the habits of, of audience first media
Speaker:companies that you see?
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, number one is, you know, and I will, you know, obviously I'll
Speaker:say this selfishly, but to kind of step back for a second here, going back to
Speaker:what we talked about, there's content and audience and it drives me crazy
Speaker:and, and having been a former publisher.
Speaker:And you're, you're an editor, you're a journalist at heart.
Speaker:Brian, if I had to make you log into five different CMSs to create your content
Speaker:and put that out into the ecosystem, your heads would've exploded years ago.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:No one on the editorial side would've ever allowed us to build an infrastructure
Speaker:where the product, which is the content.
Speaker:I have to do this across 17 different platforms and log into 17 different
Speaker:systems in order to, A, create my content, B, activate my content, and C,
Speaker:distribute that content in various places.
Speaker:We've solved that.
Speaker:What I fundamentally don't understand is if you, if you believe, and I think most
Speaker:people listening to this show would agree that content and audience are the two
Speaker:assets that make media companies valuable.
Speaker:Why do we continue to have.
Speaker:10 different platforms, six or seven different platforms, and I'll
Speaker:use the, the Fast Company and Inc.
Speaker:Example, they have seven, they had seven different audience
Speaker:platforms managing their audience.
Speaker:I, I just don't fundamentally understand that.
Speaker:Like, and, and that is why I have built and created OMI the way we have
Speaker:because it, like, what are we doing?
Speaker:And so to answer your question, and in all, you know, self
Speaker:servingly in many ways.
Speaker:Audience versus companies, and whether they're doing it with AMITA
Speaker:or they're bringing it together, they are absolutely creating an
Speaker:environment where they have access to their audience in a single solution.
Speaker:Now, how you do that happy, you know, those conversations can
Speaker:be had a different way, but that fundamentally is like step one.
Speaker:You have to have well organized, well structured audience data,
Speaker:otherwise you start to create these ideas, come up with these ideas.
Speaker:You end up going into 17 different systems, trying to pull it down, finding
Speaker:a great audience segment for a great new newsletter you just came up with,
Speaker:and then having to roll that back up into all these other platforms, right?
Speaker:It takes time, energy, money, and it's not efficient on there.
Speaker:So the fir, the
Speaker:I think I, yeah, I think I know why
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:I, and, and this is my theory is I think the, the root cause is that a lot of these
Speaker:organizations don't know who they are.
Speaker:Like I think that there is an identity crisis that is very apparent and has been
Speaker:for a long time in that trying to serve so many masters at the same time and having.
Speaker:Such siloed organizations has led to a confusion about what, what, what
Speaker:they are and what they're after.
Speaker:I mean, just, and, and as far as like different systems, like
Speaker:I, once, I'm like getting like a twitch, talking, remembering this.
Speaker:I finally like, I, like we couldn't even normalize data at like at Digiday and.
Speaker:I was like, how are we collecting all of this?
Speaker:And I did.
Speaker:I just had a, a product guy do like an audit about all the different
Speaker:like, ways we like collected data.
Speaker:Just like the forms, like literally the stuff you're ingesting data with.
Speaker:There were seven different like systems being used across
Speaker:a like 60 person company.
Speaker:I'm like, pretty soon we're gonna have like one system for each employee.
Speaker:Yeah, it's, and it's, and it's, you know, the SAS just kind of, you know,
Speaker:penetrates the entire organization.
Speaker:I'm from Atlanta originally.
Speaker:We, you know, kudzu, if you're from the south, goes all over the state
Speaker:and you can't get it out, right?
Speaker:And it's like, how the hell did we get all this in here?
Speaker:And, and it gets expensive and it's hard to maintain.
Speaker:so I think one, like from a pure strategy mindset shift, it, it's,
Speaker:it's really, and I know we've said it so many times over the last year,
Speaker:years and decades here, but it.
Speaker:Truly is putting audience at the center of your organization.
Speaker:Now the technology can flow off of that.
Speaker:The other thing I think I've seen Brian on, on audience first organizations
Speaker:there is true buy-in, which goes off my first point at the leadership level.
Speaker:At the executive level, there is buy-in.
Speaker:That audience development and audience management is a significant asset
Speaker:within this organization and many times at organizations, at media companies.
Speaker:The audience team or the traffic team or whatever team they were called at some
Speaker:point to your point, has been cobbled together from the, oh, they were the blog
Speaker:team, or they're the social media team, or now they're the newsletter team and
Speaker:they're all kind of this mishmash of.
Speaker:Functions that aren't aligned around audience.
Speaker:And I think you and I have talked about this as well.
Speaker:I truly believe we are getting into a moment where that chief
Speaker:audience officer at an organization and a media company is needed.
Speaker:And it's not the CMO marketing actually might report to the
Speaker:CAO in that environment, but it is companies that have.
Speaker:A true leadership focus at the executive level, at their leadership and their
Speaker:elts around audience, those companies I see, being successful as well.
Speaker:So those two things, everything else kind of comes off of that.
Speaker:They could sit here and say, oh, great audience companies,
Speaker:they ask great questions.
Speaker:They do progressive profiling and they do all these other things.
Speaker:Those are tactics, right?
Speaker:That's just, that's stuff that like, that's blocking and tackling that you
Speaker:should have a web form up that asks.
Speaker:These certain questions of your audience, or you should do it over time, or
Speaker:you should make sure this and that.
Speaker:Those things like, I'm sorry, but that's tactical.
Speaker:It all starts with at the top, and it starts with these organizations
Speaker:having a mindset shift that we are going to focus and invest in audience
Speaker:because it is what we are doing and who we serve as an organization.
Speaker:Yeah, and I'm not saying it's easy, obviously.
Speaker:No, it is not.
Speaker:But at the same time, like I, it look at, look at the Atlantic and look at
Speaker:how they've managed to be successful.
Speaker:Like compared to say the Washington Post,
Speaker:I'll, I'll say it.
Speaker:And I think what it comes down to, it's not just that they
Speaker:have a better billionaire than,
Speaker:my better.
Speaker:My billionaire is better than your billionaire.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, just on the record, it seems like she's more dialed in.
Speaker:I mean, I don't know.
Speaker:He is, he's in Paris for Fashion week now.
Speaker:He is just in St. Bart.
Speaker:does Guy ever work anyway?
Speaker:but I, I do think, you know, when it looks at, like, they made some tough
Speaker:calls, like I think people don't like remember, but you know, in 2020, you
Speaker:know, they cut 70 people out of their organization and they basically.
Speaker:They went away from events in away.
Speaker:Now, they went away from events of the Washington DC type small scale
Speaker:events, and they said they're gonna be audience focused and subscriptions
Speaker:are going to be for them, are gonna be the core of what they do.
Speaker:'cause they saw it was taking off and they weren't.
Speaker:They were doing a lot of these, Like video, they had a video
Speaker:unit that was doing more like documentary style videos and whatnot.
Speaker:And they have stockpiled talent, they have been audience, focused and that
Speaker:business is, is profitable and doing well.
Speaker:And, and you know, you, you see it in the numbers.
Speaker:You see what the New York Times was able to manage.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And New York Times is a unique case.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But I do think that there is something there that.
Speaker:If you can get these models to be aligned around a goal that often is, you know,
Speaker:on serving an audience, there'll be some that are gonna shuffle off to the, what
Speaker:I used to call the SEO Glue Factory, but
Speaker:Now then, now it's gonna be the, the AI chat, lounge, right?
Speaker:I don't, I don't know what it is.
Speaker:It's, it's definitely hospice care, but like, you know, if you're gonna have
Speaker:like a growth strategy, I don't see how you're gonna survive in, in this economy
Speaker:without being, without being audience
Speaker:No, and it goes back to what you were saying, like the Atlantic decided that our
Speaker:core metric is going to be subscriptions.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Great.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:Now we can optimize the audience in our content strategy to driving
Speaker:that, that might not work right.
Speaker:For, for a B2B media company.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:It, it might be a different thing that you're optimizing
Speaker:for, for that connection.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Bringing that back into this conversation a bit here, they've decided to connect
Speaker:with their audience, the most valuable thing they can do from a first,
Speaker:obviously a monetary perspective.
Speaker:Then for that, their audience is to create incredibly good content
Speaker:that drives to a subscription.
Speaker:I am actually, you know, having my, I've been, I started my career at the
Speaker:Associated Press and broadcast, so I've been on the television side and
Speaker:a little bit on the consumer side, but most of my career, on the B2B media
Speaker:side, and now obviously in a technology company serving the media industry.
Speaker:What is fascinating to me a little bit here until you talked about, is
Speaker:like, I think it's great that the Atlantic pulled back from those events.
Speaker:I see other companies in the Atlantic sort of sphere that are trying to do
Speaker:events and those are gonna be hard, right.
Speaker:I think events that do well in, in my experience, are when you're
Speaker:bringing these buyers and sellers together in that type of environment.
Speaker:And that's a very V two B, I can't say you can't do the festival route.
Speaker:That's a, that's an interesting thing.
Speaker:But over time, you know.
Speaker:You look at who's sponsoring these, you know, it's generally the large,
Speaker:you know, financial organizations.
Speaker:It's the JP Morgans, or it's the Deloitte and the consulting, sort of these
Speaker:big, what I call sort of, you know, horizontal, ver vertical companies.
Speaker:So everything that everyone buys, you know, for their, their business,
Speaker:their life, you know, HR platforms or financial services or healthcare, right?
Speaker:I don't care who you are, that's generally what you need in your organization.
Speaker:Over time, I wonder what they see, the ROI, on that, from there.
Speaker:And, and is that really what these, these organizations should be, be,
Speaker:over-indexing to
Speaker:I a hundred percent agree because I see, you know, I am most experienced in,
Speaker:in events, obviously on the B2B side.
Speaker:And, B2B is like you, you simplify stuff a lot.
Speaker:I remember you saying one time he saying it's a lead generation business.
Speaker:I was like, uh.
Speaker:I think actually that's
Speaker:true.
Speaker:It is a lead generation business.
Speaker:I mean, at the end of the day, that's what you're doing.
Speaker:You're matching up a buy and a sell side and you know, the,
Speaker:the sell side, needs, leads.
Speaker:And sometimes those come in the form of email addresses
Speaker:and name, title and company.
Speaker:And a lot of times, ideally, they come in in the form of a, a, a, I heard it
Speaker:called a legacy human the other day, which we're, we're onto legacy humans.
Speaker:So I know legacy humans are still very valuable.
Speaker:haven't taken over yet.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:and that is like, and that is true.
Speaker:You know, you, you, you, that's what you, that's what you optimize too.
Speaker:And I think a lot of times in when people get like, events fever, particularly
Speaker:who don't have experience in it, even if they touch like a business area,
Speaker:the way they do the events, it is, In my way, in my view, like off, I, I'm
Speaker:like, you can't, like, I, I love, I love the concept of live journalism and
Speaker:whatnot, but it needs to be in, you need to, you need to know the assignment.
Speaker:I and I, and I do think there's an, there is, you know, a, a model there that can
Speaker:work, but I just don't know if that's where these, some of these organizations
Speaker:should be putting all their eggs, right?
Speaker:Oh, we're getting, you know, it is, can be lucrative, but it's gonna
Speaker:be primarily from ticket sales.
Speaker:Some of these are free, right?
Speaker:We're gonna get people in the room.
Speaker:They're gonna hear, you know, Hillary Clinton get interviewed by so and so.
Speaker:Okay, cool.
Speaker:Interesting conversation, from there, but how does that transpire
Speaker:from that event for the advertiser?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:What is their, what's the goal that you're trying to, to connect and, and if
Speaker:the connection is, I just wanna bring, you know, and, and where the Atlantic,
Speaker:you know, use them, for example, we'll, we'll continue to, to use them.
Speaker:I could see them saying, Hey, our subscription actually includes,
Speaker:and they might already do this.
Speaker:A, an invite right to our invite only members only.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:You get a members only jacket and it's an invite only jacket and, and, and
Speaker:subscription to this, you know, annual thing we do for our readers, right?
Speaker:And it becomes that connection.
Speaker:So now I'm like, okay, now I get why the Atlantic might do an event, because they
Speaker:are getting their community together.
Speaker:The value for the reader is I get to get, meet other folks within the Atlantic
Speaker:community, get to connect with them and hear a really interesting talk.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:That I can get my head around.
Speaker:The part where I get a little confused on those types of brands is like driving
Speaker:these sort of these bespoke things that are that, I don't know if it's
Speaker:just who they are on the B2B side.
Speaker:Yeah, it is lead gen. It is.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:I would also argue the, the, the mechanics for a subscription and for Allegion are
Speaker:exactly the same one's just paying with data, one's just paying with dollars.
Speaker:it's just the monetization of it.
Speaker:and then how do you take that audience asset?
Speaker:And then what I also like to call is kind of resell the sawdust, right?
Speaker:How do I take that audience asset, that one individual and monetize it, which
Speaker:is the LTV across multiple ways, right?
Speaker:An event, a subscription, a webinar.
Speaker:That's where I do think B2B has done probably a better job over the years.
Speaker:The consumer is really thinking about reselling that sawdust, from there.
Speaker:Yeah, it's almost like a price curve, like an LTV curve.
Speaker:'cause I mean, you're gonna have people, and, and you know,
Speaker:again, B2B is, is it's normal.
Speaker:Like, I mean, you have people in your audience that are worth thousands and
Speaker:thousands of dollars, you know, and it's, it is not everyone in your audience.
Speaker:and.
Speaker:You know, you, you, you can make a lot of money, but I think that's
Speaker:also true with like how you think about subscriptions in that sometimes
Speaker:subscriptions are better to be for segments of the audience that you can't
Speaker:monetize at that thousands of dollars.
Speaker:Like,
Speaker:Absolutely.
Speaker:and and I, I mean, I do think.
Speaker:Where consumer is better.
Speaker:And I'm not saying that one better or worse, just different is, so I said
Speaker:earlier, the, the editorial content is, is in my opinion, generally, way more of a, a
Speaker:better than what you get on the B2B side.
Speaker:And I do think that's where B2B lacks and where you see.
Speaker:Organizations have done very well, over the years in B2B is 'cause they've had
Speaker:a, they've doubled down on the editorial.
Speaker:that, that's a piece that we, as, when you get into just a lead gen
Speaker:game, you sometimes overlook the editorial and that's a, that's
Speaker:the Achilles heel for for B2B.
Speaker:Yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker:That and horrific design.
Speaker:It could horrific design, correct.
Speaker:I think I could speak, I, I generally, I believe I am, there's,
Speaker:you know, B2B produces a rogues gallery of, of, of designs choices.
Speaker:I'm not sure why.
Speaker:there's a lot of good designers out there.
Speaker:They're not that expensive
Speaker:I, I a hundred percent agree with that.
Speaker:spend a little money, it's worth it.
Speaker:let's talk about AI we're legally obligated
Speaker:to.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Um, 'cause you have a, you have also a differentiated view on, on
Speaker:how this is because I, I think.
Speaker:A lot of publishers to me are kind of a deer in the headlights with ai, right?
Speaker:They, they're trying to fight the, the search declines, which, you know, AI
Speaker:overviews are a big part of it, but also a big part of it is just Google has, has,
Speaker:you know, decided to take more real estate off the, off the page, for themselves.
Speaker:and that it's their, it's their web pages that's, you know, they get to do that.
Speaker:and so, you know, the question is always like, what?
Speaker:What does this mean for publishers and what should they even be building?
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, so what I hit, what I, what I don't wanna see us do as an
Speaker:industry is repeat the sins of the past.
Speaker:And unfortunately, I think we are doing that a little bit already.
Speaker:that being said, ai, you know, I, I do believe is a game changer.
Speaker:I do believe it is going to.
Speaker:fundamentally change things, for us as an industry.
Speaker:Asley obviously for, for me and my company in terms of, of
Speaker:software and what we're able to do.
Speaker:but I think we also can't ex expect, you know, publishers.
Speaker:I, I just don't want publishers to repeat the sort of, you know, the search bar.
Speaker:We talked about this a little bit yesterday.
Speaker:Search on a website is, is terrible.
Speaker:Right on, on a, on a publishing site.
Speaker:Excuse me.
Speaker:And no one ever uses it.
Speaker:And if you use it, you're like, why the hell did I use this,
Speaker:this, I shouldn't have done this.
Speaker:I'm just gonna go to Google and search because that is better
Speaker:Just to underline that people who work for the publishers do
Speaker:not use their own search bar.
Speaker:right.
Speaker:And I, and I, the sites I ran, the, the search was terrible.
Speaker:so what I we're seeing now is like, oh, I'm gonna put a chat bot, or I'm gonna be
Speaker:like a chat GBT experience on my website.
Speaker:And it's like, is that really what your audience is expecting of you?
Speaker:Are they really expecting to come to your, your site and have it, you know, draft
Speaker:an email for you or ask questions of it?
Speaker:Of those types of things.
Speaker:And I think we need to go back to what assets does the publisher have.
Speaker:What utility can the AI u be used for, for your audience?
Speaker:And you know, we were, you know, talking some about this yesterday, but
Speaker:I think these utilities, particularly in some markets about connecting
Speaker:like-minded audience members.
Speaker:So, one idea that we discussed, and you and I talked about this
Speaker:a bit, but you know, if I am on entrepreneur.com and, and, you know
Speaker:who, who, who, we know very well.
Speaker:and I am a small business owner.
Speaker:And I wanna network with other entrepreneurs or small business
Speaker:owners in my type of industry.
Speaker:Can I go to that site and ask it a question?
Speaker:Hey, help me find Brian.
Speaker:And Brian has opted in.
Speaker:Hey, hey.
Speaker:I'd love to talk to you, James, on these types of things.
Speaker:I think there's ways to utilize AI for a utility that isn't just the, like,
Speaker:the functions of what we have, today in chat, DBT, and I know we are just
Speaker:trying to, everyone's experimenting with this, but I would, I would
Speaker:challenge our, our, the folks in the media companies to think about.
Speaker:The, the utility that AI can bring to your audience and less about, trying to just
Speaker:re recopy what you see, open AI doing.
Speaker:I think there you can use the tech in a different way.
Speaker:What that might, you know, come out for, I'm not sure yet.
Speaker:but I do worry we're just gonna kind of repeat the sins of the past.
Speaker:Just, you know, it's just not gonna be used If I need a chat, you know, I ask,
Speaker:I wanna go Google something or chat something or whatever, or ask questions
Speaker:and have a debate with something.
Speaker:I might just use chat ccb t but I'm gonna go to this website
Speaker:for this specific thing.
Speaker:how that transpires, I don't know, but I, I do, I do worry we're heading
Speaker:down at that, that path again.
Speaker:So how do you bake it into the omi?
Speaker:A platform though?
Speaker:Like, I mean, is it more, is it like, I don't wanna say just, but it, you know,
Speaker:is it, are you looking at using it on, you know, when you log into omi a, you
Speaker:know, you just do natural language.
Speaker:you know, saying, Hey, this is what I want to do.
Speaker:And like, and then to spin that forward is how much of this is going
Speaker:to become, quote, unquote age agentic.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So, which is, which is always the dream, I guess, unless it's
Speaker:your job that the agent is doing,
Speaker:then it's a
Speaker:for the ome up for what we're doing?
Speaker:Yeah, we, we obviously as a platform that manages audience.
Speaker:you know, we don't have a, the website, the publishing
Speaker:website, but yes, absolutely.
Speaker:We are, very shortly here launching, the environment where you can, interact
Speaker:with that data in a more chat like experience within Alomeda, which
Speaker:would then also obviously continue to drive, you know, agentic, campaign
Speaker:building and agentic, pricing and paywalls and things along those lines.
Speaker:and what I see it as kind of this, you know, mission control,
Speaker:operating system for the publishers.
Speaker:And that's just from the day-to-day sort of activation of, of the, the audience
Speaker:data working within the OMI platform.
Speaker:What we're also launching and building here is what, you know, folks who are
Speaker:following this is an MCP layer, which will allow publishers to also build their
Speaker:own agents on top of the audience data.
Speaker:And this is where I think it does get interesting.
Speaker:There's gonna be, you know, you think of it almost like
Speaker:the app store in a sense like.
Speaker:OMI helps organize all this data in a single platform.
Speaker:You know, we have an email system subscription and CDP all in one solution.
Speaker:If I can layer in kind of that MCP layer, I can start to expose some abilities for
Speaker:our publishing community to do really interesting things with the audience
Speaker:data that OMI has helped organize.
Speaker:I don't know what those might be.
Speaker:I don't have the, obviously the insight into the individual markets and verticals
Speaker:that the publisher has, but I can at least help them organize the data.
Speaker:And then give them an access to it so they can build their own unique
Speaker:agents on top of the dataset that OMI can help organize for them.
Speaker:that is, so there's two sides to that, that we are, we are, have invested in.
Speaker:And also we'll be, you know, putting into market here in 2026.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So I mean, do you see agents like moving to like the decisioning, like
Speaker:layer in that like, 'cause I mean, I think that is the big question.
Speaker:'cause I was doing one on like more of the ad tech side, right?
Speaker:Like in at CS and, you know, yes.
Speaker:Workflow and efficiency.
Speaker:And that's where a lot of, AI has been pointed,
Speaker:Sure I do see it in terms of, so the short answer is, you know, it depends.
Speaker:Brian, obviously, I think there's a, there's a, but I do think there is a,
Speaker:optimization, you know, you have an event coming up in the next, we'll stick on
Speaker:the event industry in the next 90 days.
Speaker:You have an event coming up.
Speaker:I would like my OMI agent to find the right, audience members who might
Speaker:be most interested in this event.
Speaker:And I want to create the proper flow that they are most likely to engage.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:So you might get five emails and an SMS, I might get an SMS and a popup.
Speaker:And so the campaign creation that's optimized for the marketer, I do
Speaker:think that is something that can be agentic, in the sense of helping that.
Speaker:Now the content, I do think that's a piece that obviously we,
Speaker:we've already seen that ability.
Speaker:There's some nuance there.
Speaker:I think when you get into editorial, obviously that's a
Speaker:different, entirely different beast when we're sending newsletters.
Speaker:I do think send time optimization and sort of optimizing when you receive
Speaker:that newsletter, could be of interest.
Speaker:I think the connecting the advertiser with the right newsletter content
Speaker:is something agents can help with.
Speaker:but the writing of the newsletter and the content, obviously I'll
Speaker:leave that to the newsroom.
Speaker:But we are gonna provide the tools to, for, for media companies to
Speaker:decide how far they want to go with that agentic experience.
Speaker:Additionally, when you think about pricing, right?
Speaker:I have a paywall, I have a red wall.
Speaker:When should you put that paywall or red wall in front of the right folks?
Speaker:And what price should that be?
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:you know, can I charge you Brian significantly more than anyone else?
Speaker:because you have successful and you've shown, you've shown.
Speaker:amazing interest in my product.
Speaker:Is there elasticity to your pricing that I'm able to push and that the agent
Speaker:is able to then put in front of you?
Speaker:That's something else.
Speaker:So, you know, I don't wanna get into necessarily the airline pricing model
Speaker:and, you know, that gets people, you know, a little ticked off.
Speaker:But I do think there's ways to optimize and drive revenue and value, through
Speaker:those types of things from there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:one person's revenue optimization is another person's price
Speaker:discrimination, I find depends on which side of the transaction
Speaker:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:okay, so last thing, James.
Speaker:I haven't been, actually, I don't think I was invited last year.
Speaker:Maybe I did get invited.
Speaker:You came two years.
Speaker:maybe my invitation got lost in the mail.
Speaker:But you got a user event co coming up and I actually, I, I liked,
Speaker:your user event quite a bit.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:That's, that's, that's
Speaker:high praise coming.
Speaker:That's high praise coming for you.
Speaker:You,
Speaker:Well, I've been to a lot of events, so
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:No,
Speaker:I
Speaker:thank
Speaker:you.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:No, we, and, and I think this goes back to the connections piece, right?
Speaker:We.
Speaker:We pride ourselves.
Speaker:We, we do care about this industry.
Speaker:I will, you know, say that, I grew up in it.
Speaker:I've, you know, that's my background is media.
Speaker:we care about this industry and one of the things that we've, we did,
Speaker:nine years ago is we started our, our, our client conference, user
Speaker:conference, the O Mediad Exchange.
Speaker:This will be our ninth one coming up in April, 27th and 28, 20
Speaker:seventh and 29th here in Chicago.
Speaker:we get about 300, folks, media professionals.
Speaker:we have use, folks from all over the industry presenting ideas.
Speaker:we introduce, you know, partners.
Speaker:Our, our partner ecosystem is there.
Speaker:And obviously we also do a, a really great, event too every year where we
Speaker:show people the, the sight and sounds of Chicago, and everything it has to offer.
Speaker:So, anyone listening who, would like to, to come, please, you
Speaker:know, shoot me an email on my team.
Speaker:We'd love to have you.
Speaker:Have you join us there.
Speaker:It's been, it's great.
Speaker:You were, you were there.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You interviewed Jessica Sibley there, couple years ago, uh,
Speaker:for your podcast, CEO of Time.
Speaker:and it, it has become a, it obviously we, we show a lot of things we're, we're
Speaker:gonna be releasing this year, but also build the community and the connections
Speaker:because I think it is important we learn from each other, on this and.
Speaker:See how things are shifting and going.
Speaker:I, I'm, I'm very bullish about this industry.
Speaker:We sometimes are very good at our beating ourselves up.
Speaker:and, but I do think, you know, we all, there's an altruism that
Speaker:exists, hopefully amongst media professionals, that gets us up every
Speaker:morning to, you know, do what we do.
Speaker:And, and I'm, I'm proud to support that, and, and provide the, the
Speaker:services and software to do that.
Speaker:Yeah, a hundred percent.
Speaker:Like, and Chicago is a, is a great American city,
Speaker:It is a great American city.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:It really is.
Speaker:It, it's, I've lived here for 10 years.
Speaker:again, originally from Atlanta, but it's, it is a really great American city.
Speaker:I, I really have enjoyed, my time here.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:All right, James.
Speaker:Thanks so much.
Speaker:Appreciate it.
Speaker:Brian.
Speaker:I.
