Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] Welcome to the Rebooting Show. I'm Brian Morrissey. 0:12 This is part of our Media 31 series, where we ask people to take a gander into the future. I don't expect people to have a crystal ball. I certainly don't. 0:24 We just have hypotheses about how things will turn out, hopefully for the better, because a lot's gonna change between now and five years from now. 0:33 So I always think end of the year, people always look back, I wanna look forward. So as part of that, I wanna bring in Mark Zohar. Mark is the CEO of Viafoura, based in Toronto. 0:44 Viafoura is basically you make community tools for publishers to engage with their audiences. That's, that's my shorthand. How do you describe it, Mark? Pretty close. 0:53 I mean, our goal is to help publishers basically build direct audiences, build active communities, and really the big, hairy, audacious goal is, here is how do you reclaim conversations, community, and audiences from social and bring them onto your own and operator properties and build lasting relationships. 1:11 Right. So, you know, we've, we've talked about this a lot over the years and, you know, I, I'm always saying, "Hey, you gotta build direct relationships with the audience," and that's why I do like email. 1:24 Gotta get them to the website, et cetera. You gotta build loyalty. Can't count on fly by night traffic. 1:31 But AI has, has arrived, and I, and I wanna talk about it from starting at it from the distribution challenges, right? 1:40 So how do you think of when I'm reading the Peoplelink results and Barry Diller is saying they're down 70% at over two years. They're replacing traffic wi- with... They've got, you know, a bit of a, a leaky bucket. 1:55 They're replacing it with some. But they're really focused a lot on licensing revenue and, you know, they, they now have a new category, non-session-based revenue. 2:04 Do you think it is still going to be critical to be bringing people to websites in 2031? And if not, like, where will publishers be engaging with their audiences? 2:16 So I don't know about websites and, but I do believe that brands and premium brands like Peoplelink will have a future in, in building relationships with their audiences, and those relationships can, can be on various platforms. 2:33 It could be off platform, but there's obviously the risk that we've all been through that, you know, big tech doesn't care about media. They care about what they need to get done. 2:42 But I do believe that building those relationships and, you know, people will come to brands if they have differentiated value. 2:51 If a brand's value is if, if their product is information and information alone is not differentiated, they won't have an audience. 2:59 You know, it'll be just sucked up by AI tools, and AI will be the interface or the front door for those relationships. Yeah. And maybe you can make some money licensing that. 3:09 But if you have differentiated value, you have expertise, you have a reason for users to come for, you know, people, peers, and, you know, relationships and, and recognition. 3:23 Those three things will bring people to an owned property. Okay, let's go through that because those are... I like, I like the sounds of that because it's more than just- Mm-hmm... 3:33 at first when you were saying, "Hey, if you have expertise" and stuff, I'm like, "Well, I don't know." Like, if people get used to go... AI is gonna be the interface. I'm, I'm convinced that there's going... 3:43 That for most things that, that AI is going to be the, it- the, the new interface. 3:50 I'm not really sure about individual companies, whether they're publishers or even, you know, most commerce sites actually building the AI tools. Like, I think AI is gonna do a better job. 4:03 I think people will spin up their own interfaces to suit their own needs. I was on, I was on Vanguard's app, and they... It's now Vanguard with AI. I was curious- Sure... so I was like, "Okay, let's test it out." 4:16 And so I asked Vanguard, like, how many, like, contributions I had made this year to, like, my retirement account, 'cause, you know, you, you focus on that when you get to your 50s. Yeah. 4:27 And it gave me a list of the different, you know, ones, and I was like, "Well, how many?" And it said, "I can't add them up, but you should get a certified financial planner." [laughs] Right. I was like, "Oh, boy." Yeah. 4:41 But I, so... And I wonder about that, like, 'cause, 'cause to get people to... Look, I think the AI interfaces are gonna be great at removing friction, okay? 4:54 And publisher websites in many, in many cases have lost in the marketplace because they h- they have too much friction in them, whether it's because of their business model or just poorly designed. 5:07 It's probably a combination of both. And there needs to be other reasons to go directly to it. So, so go back to, to your formula a- and let's go through this. 5:17 Let me walk you through what I think is happening and will continue to happen, some examples of actually, I think, working right now at least. So let's start with people, not necessarily Peoplelink- Yeah... 5:28 but- Okay, yeah... us, us as people. I still be- I believe it actually in a world of AI, that human connection is more important and more valuable and more sought after than ever before. 5:41 That can include in real life examples. I can give you lots of examples of here in Toronto, the Toronto Star, one of our customers, is using its digital property to engage users. 5:52 So for example, their film and culture critic runs a live Q&A on, you know- Yeah... new stage shows, new theater. 5:59 They get, you know, users engaged, but then they move them into an in real life situation where that arts and culture reporter brings them into 6:07 This, you know, stage show, this theater show, and gives them premium access and so on. That level of human connection, I believe is going to continue, and I think it's gonna increase in value. 6:19 So if you go back to people, I wanna connect with people that I believe that either have expertise, that I'm fascinated by, that can provide me with value and so on. 6:29 And I'll give you an example from last night during the election. Mm-hmm. So MS now launched their community about, I don't know, two, three, four months ago. 6:39 And during the election and even before, they've been running live Q&A sessions with their talent, and it's a premium experience. 6:45 You can only be there if you're a member, and you're live with Rachel Maddow, and you're asking her questions, and she's answering them to you live and in video. 6:53 And in some cases she's bringing you onto that video to ask your question and get direct access to her. 7:01 In fact, yesterday during the election, MS now was streaming these, these live Q&A's with their member audiences onto... in Times Square and showing it happening in real time. Oh, that's cool. So that's a great example. 7:12 People, links. Yeah. I think it's great. I think it's great for like, for events, you know. Like I think, I think the challenge ends up being how do you, how do you do that, like on, on a r- on an ongoing basis? 7:25 Well, I, I mean, I, I... It can, it can be events- Yeah... but it can be expertise, and it could be fandom, and can be hobbies, and could be passion. I'll give you one of my favorite examples from one of my customers... 7:36 One of our customers. The Portland Press Herald out of Portland, Maine. Local, you know, publisher, again, ran a live Q&A with an expert on birding, right? And it went nuts. 7:50 All these people have- Oh, the bird people, the bird people are very passionate. I know this. Exactly. 7:54 And the br- [laughs] and, and the, you know, the, the bird people there are hobbyists, they're passionate, and they're coming back. 8:00 And what Portland Press Herald proved with that is these people will pay for that type of access. They want to be with peers. So people and peers. 8:09 Like-minded people that I can, you know, challenge, you know, opinions with, or challenge positions, or share insights with. 8:17 And we see this across our, our customer base, where people come for the community in many cases before the content, you know? Yeah. They come to- I think that's right. Yeah. Because like, you know, I go back to, 8:29 you know, Gawker with Kinja, you know. And- Yeah... and Kinja, I thought was, was remarkable in that either through the tech or just because of the brand, they were able to have a... 8:42 And, and I think this showed the way with social media, where the content itself is more of a prompt for interaction, you know. I mean, 'cause like on social media a lot of times- Yeah... 8:51 the people don't read the actual content, you know. They just sort of- Yeah... they wanna go into the co-comments section, and they always wanna like, you know, debate it, so it becomes a, a bit of a prompt. 9:02 You know, I see this like in a little, a social, a social network that we spun up for people versus algorithms where we're sh- it's like almost like a private Twitter kind of thing, but- Yep... 9:14 we, you know, I see that like, you know, the interaction is, is where increasingly a large part of the value is. Not like, you know, finding links to interesting articles. Well, I, I think that's part of it. 9:26 But, you know, going back to the notion of brands, right? I think brands have value. 9:30 I think brands like People and Newsweek and Time and Associate Press and Reuters have existed for, you know, in, in some cases hundreds of years. 9:39 I think those brands and trusted brands have a lot of value, especially in an era where even on social networks you have a lot of bots and AI slop and misinformation, and lack of moderation guidelines and personal attacks, and all of that. 9:54 Being able to create experiences where your trusted brand is front and center with your expertise, with your people, and with peers, I think works. I'll give you another one of my favorite examples. Philly Inquirer. 10:06 The Philly Inquirer, obviously Philly, huge sports town. You know- Less so with the Eagles nowadays, but yeah. Well, you know- Overall, in general... I'll talk about- Historically... 10:14 I'll talk about the Eagles in a second. Historically. But what they saw was, you know, during game day on Sundays their audience would go on Twitter. That was, you know, X, Twitter, whatever- Yeah... 10:24 to talk about the game as they're watching and kind of second screen it on Twitter. 10:28 And they thought, "Well, can we start to reclaim some of that conversation and have habit forming that every Sunday people will come to the Philly Inquirer to talk about the game with their fellow Eagles fans and so on?" 10:41 So they created this kind of custom bespoke experience called Game Day Central, and Game Day Central is on their website, and every Sunday they light it up and before with, you know, plays, with community, with people coming in, and you see every Sunday people coming in say, "Hey, Bob, great to see you," and they talk about the game, and they do this on the Philly Inquirer site. 11:03 So I think if you offer people a trusted brand where you can connect with people and peers and get recognition, like I'm a super fan, super user, those things we see work today. 11:16 I think they will continue to work as long as, you know, that level of r- audience relationship is a main focus. Okay. And what was the second use case that you had? So I talked about people, peers, and recognition. 11:29 In the peers thing, we've got a customer, I won't mention who it is. It's in the UK. They're a broadcaster, and they created this experience where they wanted to have their digital audience 11:41 be part of the broadca- be, be connected to the broadcast. 11:43 And so they live stream their broadcast, and they created this experience where people are coming in every day, and what their questions, their comments are ba- basically being shown live on national television. 11:56 And this has created this daily habit where every day, like, there are like three or four million interactions on this particular page. 12:05 People come in, they greet each other, and again, this, it's created this daily habit where people come for- The community first and the content second, or the content and the community actually intersect pretty closely together. 12:18 Okay. And so then how does the-- where does the recognition... Is that-- That's part of the recognition. You know, recognition can be a number of things. It can be, you know, badges and rewards and gamification. 12:30 It could be being a supporter of the community and answering questions. You know, another great, you know, customer of ours that's a real kind of community-driven publisher is Daily Kos. So their entire 12:44 kind of brand is about community, and people come in and they greet each other and they give each other recognition, and it's turned into like this kind of like family affair where people come to Daily Kos to talk about politics, but to talk about a whole bunch of other things. 13:00 You know, there's [chuckles] lots of people posting pictures of their dogs. And again, we know this has worked traditionally in social media. And I believe trusted media brands can reclaim that and create a place where 13:12 audience relationships are the core of what they offer as value packaged around their brand and their content. Okay, so where do you see when you think about the w- where this is going? Like what do... 13:26 Like how do publishers th- themselves need to reorient their thinking? Because I think one of the things that I think most have like got- gotten over, right? 13:36 Like is the, the traffic era, like produced big numbers, you know. I mean- Yeah... 13:40 the numbers looked a lot bigger, and I think sometimes it can be a bummer to people who are used to big page view numbers, forget how many of those like stayed for like, you know, three seconds- Exactly... or something. 13:52 When they're, when they're saying, "Oh, this is really successful, you know, five hundred and nineteen people showed up." 13:57 Well, I, I think the reality is, and you're right, people may have, you know, PTSD from days of like massive page views and cheap social referral traffic coming from Facebook and Google and elsewhere. 14:09 But those days are gone. But, you know, you move from quantity to quality and from, you know, fly-by users to, to depth. And there's been lots of kind of research done on, you know, this notion of super users. 14:23 Super users are accounting for like, you know, eighty percent of the revenue, both ad revenue and subscription revenue for many of these publishers. And so, you know- Yeah... 14:32 the original s- I, I like to talk about the original sin. The original sin of, of media, I believe, or one of them, is- There's a lot of them. I used to talk about an original sin, but then I got up to like ten. 14:42 Now I'm gonna be- Well- So I switched to like the deadly sins. I was like, well, there's at least several deadly sins. Well, I- I- yeah. [chuckles] The original sin I talk about is the fact that when things are easy, 14:53 you don't invest a lot in the future. You just take what you can get while you can get it, and you don't really build an investment in the future. 15:00 And when things were easy, all this, you know, traffic was coming in, you had this programmatic ads just, you know, inundated people with ads, ruined the UX. Your phone would burn up because you were loading so many ads. 15:14 But they were making money on this, right? 15:16 And then when that, when that fell, when that bottom fell out, they didn't have logged in users, they didn't have a reason for people to come back, and now the, the game is how do I create a lasting deep relationship with a smaller set of users that I can bring back and build loyalty with? 15:33 I mean, it's a kinda simple... Yeah, it's a simple calculation. It's hard to execute, but that's what, that's what publishers need to do. Do you think-- When you think about that and you think about what the open web 15:47 looks like then, 'cause like to me it'll be a bunch of like cul-de-sacs and private communities, like kind of like, [chuckles] you know, gated communities like it's in Phoenix or something. 15:57 Because I mean, we're already seeing like Reddit... And this is how unstable this period is. 16:03 You know, Reddit went from being a big winner when Google decided that, you know, user-generated content from Reddit was what people wanted because they were putting Reddit after their searches. 16:14 To then becoming a, a, a loser [chuckles] like everyone else when Go- when AI overviews stopped Google- Yep... sending traffic to, to their, the, to Reddit. And so now they're going into a logged in experience. 16:28 And when the, you know, one of the largest sites on the internet and, and one of the bulwarks of really of the open web moves in that direction, I can't help but think that in f- five years' time, 16:41 much of, of what we think of today as the open web is gonna be a series of almost like gated communities. Yeah, I mean, I, I think that's, I mean, I think that's possible. 16:52 I think that's happening to some extent right now. We haven't really kind of cracked the, the nut of like federated and, you know, communities and federated content. 17:01 I don't know if that's gonna happen exactly, but, but Reddit's a great example of the realities. Where it's like things were easy. You're getting all this traffic from Google. 17:11 You were early in, getting all this referral traffic. Google decides to make some changes, and then you have to focus on known users, potentially smaller audiences that you can then have deeper relationships with. 17:24 And I think that's just the reality of, of what, where we're at, and I think that brands and media brands have the opportunity to 17:33 create new applications and new experiences outside of core digital publishing using their brand if they can bring those audiences along. 17:41 Like as an example, I mean, people obviously launch their own app and they've got games, and I'm not gonna talk too much about games. Everyone's doing games. 17:48 But you can potentially imagine leveraging the value of the brand to create, you know, commerce applications or travel applications. Why couldn't, I don't know, people create a travel app for, for their... 18:01 So the value of brand and trusted brand I think is, is core. Then you have to figure out how do you bring your audience to that brand and keep them there, retain them there, and give them a reason to come back. 18:12 I mean, it's, it's that simple but again, it's hard to execute. We think that the consumption model, "Hey, here's my content-" Pay for it, that's all you get. That's dead. It needs to be a more participatory model. 18:25 It needs to be one that engages users, creates habits, and, you know, every media company competes against the f- first five things you do when you wake up. 18:34 I'm gonna check my email, I'm gonna check my Slack, I'm gonna check a social network, you know, I'm gonna check something else. Am I the fifth thing that you do? And if I'm not, you know, I could be in trouble. 18:46 And I think this also fits with what you were saying about a small, a small group of, of users are, are really your sort of, like you said, super users, and they're whales at the end of the day. 18:58 I mean, they're also called whales in different markets. Yeah. And a lot of the digital economy, I think much of it is powered by whales. 19:06 You know, I mean, like in, in to- in obviously very different, you know, markets, but OnlyFans is always a- about whales and, you know, sports betting apps- Yep... about whales. 19:20 The gaming industry is all about whales and, and I... That's why I love these decompiler videos that shows how they just s- figure out who the whales are in o- in order to go after them. I think- I mean, I think-... 19:31 in this model you can make it, it's like the thousand true fans. That sounds better than whales. [chuckles] Well, I mean, I think that's the way the world operates. 19:37 You know, it's the, the Pareto principle, the Pareto effect, right? So the 80/20 rule, 20% of your users will generate 80% of, of your value, and it might be even be less than that. 19:46 And that's like the mo- moving from like going deep and finding depth of experience and depth of relationship. That's the future for media. 19:55 [upbeat music] Quick break to encourage you to join our TRB Pro membership program. We are building it around what's working case studies we've been doing at our salons and events this year. 20:07 I found that media is, at its heart, an execution business. Now, on this podcast, I speak to leaders of media organizations about their business strategies, but those strategies live and die on execution. 20:21 We are featuring a series of what's working case studies on therebooting.com to highlight initiatives that are gaining traction and to unpack why they're working through the lens of the practitioners leading these initiatives. 20:35 Our first batch of what's working case studies available exclusively to TRB Pro members are from organizations like People Inc, USA Today, The Daily Beast, Outside, and more. 20:46 TRB Pro members also get invitations to our mixers and discounted entrance to TRB events, like our recently completed TRB Audience Summit. 20:54 We'll also do a series of conversational case studies where you get to discuss the initiatives with those who are leading them. 21:02 And you get access to our private social network devoted to highlighting and unpacking what's working in the market. 21:08 The goal of TRB Pro is to make you better at your job and to enable practitioners to lead the way in creating a sustainable media industry, so please join today. Go to therebooting.com/upgrade. 21:21 A subscription is $200 a year, or if you wanna try it out, a mere $20 a month. I think that's a good deal. So go to therebooting.com/upgrade. 21:33 And I think that ends up calling into question a lot of business models, right? 21:37 Like, 'cause I mean, when you were talking about the previous business model was, I wouldn't say it was simple because it, media has always been like overly complicated, at least in since the analog days, because you're running like several different types of businesses it feels like sometimes. 21:54 But like, you know, creating content, programmatic, it was like, you, you know, you had a playbook y- that you could run, okay? 22:01 And now, you know, just go back to like a People Inc, and I've talked with Neil about it, you know, they have different playbooks for, for every single brand. 22:10 But you have to change the, the, the business models if you're focusing on super users. So how are you seeing business models be adjusted? 22:19 Well, I think, you know, the first pass at that, and still is, is, you know, paywall subscription, memberships, premium experiences, right? 22:29 And so you're, you're intentionally kind of locking out the non-super users from a deeper experience, you know, and trying to convert that handful of folks that will make that, you know, complete that swing. 22:43 You know, become a member, pay $2 a month or pay $20 a month for a subscription. So we've seen that over the last, you know, many years, dynamic paywalls, new membership models. 22:53 Lots of publishers are playing around with that. And then this, this notion of like exclusive access. 22:59 I, you know, I go back to like, you know, the People VIP program, exclusive access to live chats with celebrities and authors. They just did that recently in the People app. So- Mm-hmm... 23:11 that's the first thing you get to is exclusivity, premium access, and then kinda separating the wheat from the chaff. 23:18 And with the chaff, you know, you can do your best to try to monetize them with a few ads and, you know, get them engaged to some extent, but it's really that converted, known, I'll call it super user, that is the future of your business. 23:32 Do you have any hypothesis about how media business models will be different in five years' time? I mean the- You know, I-... weight of them. 23:39 Obviously everyone's gonna be operating in d- with different, different models. Well, I, I don't think there, there are like three core models that, that we know work in one way or another. 23:51 There's a commerce model or affiliate model, right? There's an ad model, and then there's a subscription or membership model, right? 24:01 Those are kind of the three models that we know work, and every publisher will use combination thereof or focus on one or the other. I'm not sure that there's- There's licensing. 24:10 I think licensing's gonna be- Fair enough... a big model. So, okay, so now we're... Now if we talk about like AI and then licensing your content, that's another layer on top of that. 24:18 I think that is one that's, that's gonna be a very K-shaped- Or licensing-... a K-shaped licen-... your brand or licensing your IP or licensing- Yeah... or licensing Unique data sets that you might- Yes... collect 24:33 outside of content. Like, I think when-- I think a lot of the, the... It's like Mars and Venus kind of thing. 24:41 When the AI companies might talk with publishers, they, they think about content, and the AI companies all think about data and unique data, and they are absolutely happy to pay for unique data. 24:52 I mean, they're sh- they're, they're like strapping GoPros on like house cleaners to, to collect data about like cleaning houses for like humanoid robots and stuff. Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. 25:03 And, and by the way, I mean, one of the things about, you know, community experiences and participatory experiences and user-generated content, 25:10 there's lots of clickstream data, there are lots of like page-view level data, and that'll tell you someone clicked on an article or landed on a page. 25:17 But the sentiment data, you know, someone telling you what they feel about birding and what specific birding equipment they wanna buy, that is like high-intent data that has opportunities for, you know, commerce, for sponsorships and so on. 25:32 The other model, by the way, and Complex does this really well, is, as you said, like licensing the brand, creating completely new experiences with the brand, you know, events, fandom, and so on. 25:43 So I think there are opportunities for some brands to get into that space as well. Yeah. So how does that affect your product roadmap? I think we, we're leaning in more and more to 25:57 focus on different audience segments have different needs. Not everyone is going to, for example, wanna comment on an article. 26:04 In fact, we know that vast majority won't, although a significant majority actually are, you know, lurkers and scrollers and, you know, across our network of customers, you know, somewhere in the order of fifteen, sometimes twenty percent of total unique visitors are scrolling through comment sections and community sections. 26:23 But that's a, a small portion will actually, you know, post comments like they would on YouTube or anywhere else. So we wanna go from that to create additional experiences that can engage different types of audiences. 26:35 So, you know, polls and quizzes and polls of the day. Like Newsweek just launched with us a poll of the day. 26:42 "Hey, what's the r- what, what's the main reason you're gonna vote for, you know, you're gonna vote in this election? Four reasons, and then tell me why." 26:49 And what's interesting about that, when we look at the data, the people who are then leaving an opinion or a comment on why they voted have never le- left a comment before. 26:59 So you're attracting a different type of audience, and in order to do that, you're actually converting them to a known user 'cause they have to register to leave their opinion or leave their comment. 27:10 We're seeing things like that. We're seeing things like second screen experiences for broadcasters, right? 27:15 So open up your phone, watch the game, or watch a reality show and have an opportunity to connect with like-minded peers. And then we're moving towards more kind of like... 27:26 I won't talk too much about it, it's a product we're about to launch later this year and into next year. 27:31 But think about creating a Reddit-like experience for publishers where it's not exactly forums, it's integrated into the content experience, and it gives you a persistent place to talk about, to discuss topics of interest. 27:44 Again, focusing on int- interests, passions, hobbies, fandom, leveraging the power of the brand and the power of the differentiated value they have, both in terms of content and, and experts. 27:57 So one of the other things that in addition to changing distribution, I mean, AI like is pretty thrilling for what it can do on a d- from a development perspective. Like you do not need to know code. Yeah. 28:11 We, we built an entire... Troy was the lead. L- let me be real. I just came up with ideas. Mm-hmm. But still, Troy's not a developer, and we've got a, a, a really like highly functioning and performant site. 28:27 I mean, it breaks down podcasts into segments, allows you to mix podcast- Yeah... segments with each other. It has polling. It has a Venn diagram game with it. 28:39 I mean, if anything, it's too feature rich [chuckles] right now. Mm-hmm. How do you, how do you think about that? I mean, I, I'm like, you know, I always have an eye on the SaaSpocalypse talk, right? Yeah. 28:51 And it, it came, it came out... I feel like it died down for a little bit, and now it's back kinda with a vengeance. And you know, these companies like Claude's out there saying it's gonna... 29:03 Y- you know, it's got a $40 trillion TAM. And I use the, the, the Vanguard app, and I'm like, "No, you're just gonna be... You're gonna go back to being a mutual fund provider. I don't need your interface. 29:16 I'm just gonna use... I'm gonna use Claude." Right. "I don't need... You can't add ten, ten rows together [chuckles] or ten rows of numbers together for me." Yeah. But like what... How do you end up thinking about that? 29:27 Because when we get publishers together, you know, I think a year or so ago, I would get like a room full of product people together, and I would ask like a simple... I'm like, "How many of you like use MCPs regularly?" 29:40 And like nobody would. And now they're really building lots of stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Do you end up thinking they're gonna build like their own software? And if not, why not? Yeah. No, I, I think they will. 29:54 I think, I think they should in many cases. 29:57 You know, and I think that, you know, the reality is you now have tools at, at your disposal to figure out what are the things that are really core that I can create a best-in-class solution in. 30:08 If you believe you can create a best-in-class solution using AI tools within your engineering team and product teams, I absolutely think that publishers, like any other organization, will do that. 30:20 I think that's easier said than done because when we talk to customers, and listen, some of them are gonna build their own things, including community experiences and comment boxes and stuff like that, for sure. 30:29 But there's a difference between a feature and kind of a mission-critical application that includes everything under the surface, like I like to talk about as an iceberg. What you see on top is the feature. Sure. 30:41 Bene- beneath it, you've got- Governance, data... governance, compliance, regulatory requirements- Keeping you out of GDPR jail, all that kind of stuff [laughs] Exactly. Data. You have to deal with users. 30:51 You have to have, you know, site reliability, all that stuff, hosting, infrastructure costs and so on. And leaving all that aside, I will tell you this. When we speak to customers, 31:03 they have a kind of a, a, a nominal sense of what a total cost of ownership calculation looks like, but I think they leave a lot things out that they'll find out later is gonna cost them way more. 31:13 And A, one of them is opportunity cost, right? So I've got scarce resources. Is this where I wanna put my resources against? 31:20 Is that gonna g- give me the be- am I gonna come out of this with a best-in-class solution that's mission critical to me that I can maintain, develop, and innovate on? And if the answer is yes, like, go for it. 31:31 Like, you should be doing it. And I think in a lot of situations, that's not the case. The other thing I, I will say, and I've had this discussion, we all know the publishing industry is under a lot of pressure. 31:43 There are restructurings, there are layoffs, there's a lot of- Mm-hmm... you know, movement of people, even between publishers. 31:48 So if you're gonna build your own with your engineering team, and your engineers either leave or get laid off, and now you own a softwa- now you're a software company. 31:58 Well, you need to have talent recruitment for software engineers on a regular basis like a SaaS company does. 32:04 Otherwise, you're gonna have, like, key man exposure where one or two people leave, and hey, who developed this? We now have to find talent to come to a media company or a publisher that's gonna be best in class. So 32:17 I think some will do it. I think some should do it. But I also think that total cost of ownership needs to include a lot of intangibles that- Yeah... that folks don't really think about. 32:26 We had a dinner a couple weeks ago in Chicago, and one of, one of the publishers was, was talking about how, you know, their problem no- one of their problems now is that too many people are building too many things. 32:40 And they're like, you know, they, they're, they're like CTOs freaking out. 32:46 There's like [laughs] you know, there's, there's a lot of security problems, so they're like kind of trying to, trying to corral all that while not... You know, look, it's great that people can get the prototype. 32:57 I think that's one of the things that- Yeah... I've heard a lot that has been a big benefit, is that people can... It, 'cause it just speeds up the process, you know? 33:05 'Cause there's always that, there's always that translation between non-technical and technical people, and I think that's, that's how I always thought of the product role, is basically you- Yeah... 33:15 you're the translator. You know, the... I think that that is being able to, like, come with a prototype is, is very different than coming up with, you know, a loosely formed idea. 33:27 If AI has done one thing which has been phenomenal, it's prototyping, ideation. Anyone can come up with something and say, "Okay, this gives me kind of a roadmap of where we wanna be, and I can test it out. 33:39 It's functional." I think those are fantastic things for product teams, sales teams, marketing teams, whatever it may be. At the end of the day though, I remember Neil said this at people at one point in time. 33:49 Maybe he's changed his mind a little bit. He said, "We're not a software company. We're a content company. That is our core. Anything related to that is what we should be focusing on." 33:58 Now, it's probably changed a little bit with AI, but I would still say are you a software company? And if you're a software company or a SaaS company, then you have to take on all the attributes of, 34:09 you know, under the water iceberg issues, and that's a lot. It's a lot to handle for, for a content company. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot to handle for any company, but when you're like... I think, 34:20 you know, from talking with Troy, who, who has a lot of experience in, in, in [laughs] having one foot in tech and one in media, it's like you're trying to shore... 34:28 You know, media, you always have various things on fire in the best of times, right [laughs]? Right. 34:34 So, you know, you're, you're battling lots of fires, and then you're also trying to, you know, operate an ambitious technology organization. It can be, it can be tough. So do you end up, personally, 34:48 are you like an AI maximalist, or are you, like, a middle of the road? I mean, I don't think you're like, "Oh, this stuff doesn't matter at all." 34:56 But I'm just wondering, like, when you look in, like, five years, look, there's one school of thought. 35:02 Leave aside the, like, the, the, the complete San Francisco kinda thing that, like, we're gonna have universal basic income, and- Right... or maybe if you're, if you're into that. Yeah. 35:11 I don't know if you [laughs] I don't know if you visit those kinda group houses- Yeah... but I don't... I suspect you don't. But I don't know, where do you fall with how big 'cause of a change this is gonna be? 35:21 'Cause I oscillate back and forth, and I'm currently, I'm currently more in, "Oh, this is gonna be really massive," just because I've just forced myself to use this within my own business and I'm like, "Oh my God, this is gonna change a lot of things." 35:36 Just with, just if they stop right now- Yeah... like, the amount that this can be pointed at is amazing. Well, I, I am a maximalist in that regard. Now it's, and I'll tell you specifically how I've... 35:48 What, what, what frightens me. You know, I've got kids entering the workforce, and, like, 35:54 when the internet came around, and I was, you can tell, was [laughs] around for that, and I've been through a bunch of technology cycles. 36:01 And when the iPhone came out, you could kinda predict within a, you know, a margin of error what it would do. 36:09 And, you know, okay, 2007, Steve Jobs stands up and shows you this thing, and you can kinda guess, "Okay, I'll probably get my movies on it. I'll probably get my travel. I'd probably use it for location things." 36:19 Like, you could probably guess where, where we would go. Yeah. It was like Netflix. We're like, we're- I knew that this thing was gonna be streaming. I mean, we were streaming video in 1999. Exactly. 36:28 But we're- It's gonna eventually catch up... yeah, but we're like three, four years into AI, and- Never mind five years to 2031, like go a little bit further. What will it be like in 10 years or 25 years in a generation? 36:42 I don't think... I can't even predict. Like, I have no idea what, what society, what the labor force will be like. I know it's gonna be weird. It's gonna be weird. It's gonna be... But I'll tell you what, it, it... 36:55 There'll be some real changes. I'll give you a, just a very small example. So my daughter had this app that she was using to track her watching movies and tr- and whatever it was. 37:06 And she came back from Europe, and the app all of a sudden disappeared from the App Store. And she goes, "Oh, shit. I was using it. I had all my history on it." It was gone. 37:15 So she decided she's just gonna build it herself with AI, and she does a little bit of coding. So she built her own app, and now she, she's sent it to all of our family members. 37:25 And now we have, like, this hyper-personalized custom app, and I think you're gonna see a lot more of this. 37:31 Everyone's gonna be able to create the thing that is specific to what they want to accomplish and build their own kind of... Talk about small little walled gardens. 37:40 I think we're gonna have these really small hyper-niche- Oh, yeah... applications and experiences because AI can allow you to do exactly what I want. 37:49 The amount of software that is going to be produced, it's just gonna be the same as the amount of, like, tweets that are... or, you know, pieces of content. Like, just like, to me, like, what, 38:00 what AI is doing to, like, software is basically what the internet did for, you know, publishing content, like, you know? Like before, only a few people could publish content, you know, or you wrote letters. 38:13 As of now it's like, it's like a massive volumes of it. And, you know, being, creating your own software is going to be an everyday thing. I mean, I think in the near term, I already see, like... 38:27 And I don't know if you have an opinion on publishers creating their own apps. I see a lot of publishers creating, going back to creating apps. I think I, I, I'm not sure maybe for super users that makes sense. Mm-hmm. 38:42 No, I, I, I think apps are, are important. Uh, it's, you know, you're talking about a much, much smaller audience, but again, super user is loyal. 38:49 The benefit of the app is it can get you potentially into, into the first five things you do in the morning, right? You know, through push notifications, through, you know, that direct access. 39:01 But yeah, I think, I think apps are important part of this. You know, you have to have multiple tools here. You're not gonna just, like, rely on an app or the website or a paywall or commerce. It's like... 39:12 But I think at the core of this is you have to build deep, loyal, lasting relationships and give people a reason to come to your brand. 39:22 Unless you believe that my brand, my own property, whether it's my website, my app, or something else, doesn't matter, and I can just ride the coattails of some other distribution method, which I don't think is a viable, 39:34 you know, a viable model. Even if you can make some money on social video today- Yeah... that rug can be pulled under your feet in, in a second. Yeah, and that's the, [clears throat] not to end on 39:46 a bit of a down note, but I think, you know, the, the carnage that we've seen and that will continue is for, is particularly going to be acute for, for, you know, people that are in some form of arbitrage model. 40:00 I mean, we're already seeing a lot of, like, SEO arbitrage plays and, and I mean, it's like you're creating content, but you're just like you, you don't have a loyal audience. 40:09 I mean, about.com honestly was built on, on a lot of that, and then, you know, the Meredith purchase, which 40:16 again, at the time it looked like they overpaid because, you know, the market went down right after that, but, like, you know, it ended up being probably a great acquisition for them because they needed, quote, unquote, "real brands." 40:29 I mean, no offense to the brands that they kind of created out of the About asset, but they were kind of like, I would call them minimally plausible brands. 40:37 And so, you know, if you don't have a brand now and you don't have... And I think you have a brand if you have, like, a, a real tie to an audience, right? It's gonna be tough. Yeah. 40:47 And, and you know, I go back to the Philly Inquirer example and the Toronto Star. 40:52 You know, local, as much as there's a ton of pressure on local media, maybe even more so than national or regional, but they're in communities. They're in real communities, and they can serve those communities. 41:02 And if you can create those experiences where, you know, you have a game-based central where Philly fans are coming to your site, or you have the Toronto Star and you can connect people into in real life experiences because you engage with them, 41:14 there are opportunities there. It's, it's hard work, and it... You have to change your mindset around volume to value and, you know, shallowness to depth. 41:24 But, you know, there are, there are examples that are working and... 41:27 But you have to get over the PTSD that we're no longer back into, like, hundreds of millions of, you know, referrals and page views coming from, you know, cheap distribution sources. Yeah. 41:38 And within a news, I think within a news organization, you sort of need a little bit of a rebalancing probably because there's a lot of different ways that you engage with an audience that have nothing to do with a news article. 41:51 Yeah. You know, as worthy as the news article is, it's just a starting point, and there's, there's all kinds of different- Yeah... different ways. 41:59 And I think you said it as like, you know, use your content as kind of the first kinda launching pad to create other types of experiences that you can lead people into, right? 42:08 And I think a lot of traditional news publishers have relied too much on the hard news as a way to kind of push forward for engagement where there's lots of other opportunities in [chuckles] 42:18 birding, in softer, in lifestyle and entertainment. We talked about the bird, the birders a lot. I love this- I know... 'cause I, I've just been... You know, I have a theory. I, I'm, I'm now... I'm gonna... 42:26 Actually, next month I'm gonna be 54. I've this theory that every man reaches an age where they become at least curious for a small period of time and sometimes for a long period of time about birds, you know? 42:37 And I think I'm entering my [chuckles] like bird curious phase. Well- Some it, it becomes like a passion, like the ones you're talking about, and some it's just a, a passing, you know, phase. 42:46 So, so now when someone's gonna do, like, an AI summary of this podcast is that they spoke about birding. [chuckles] Mostly about birding. Mostly about birding. Awesome, Mark. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks, Brian. 42:57 [outro music]
