January 12, 2024 • 37 mins
Produced on the ground at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Variety’s Cynthia Littleton and Todd Spangler and Variety Intelligence Platform’s Andrew Wallenstein and Audrey Schomer analyze the trends, rumors and surprises that emerged during the tech industry’s annual gathering. Also, highlights from Variety Entertainment Summit conversations with Roku’s Charlie Collier, TikTok creator Leenda Dong, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, TalkShopLive’s Bryan Moore and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with
industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety. Today's episode
was recorded on the ground at the CES Conference in
Las Vegas. As always, going to CES is an eye
(00:28):
opening and even overwhelming experience. For the past decade, Variety
has partnered with the Consumer Technology Association to produce an
entertainment focused track of programming. Our day long Variety Entertainment
Summit on January tenth served up a powerhouse slate of executives, entrepreneurs,
(00:50):
movers and shakers, and even a bona fide TikTok star.
When we come to CEES, we are on a mission
to help the entertainment industry make sense of the whirlwind
of change that is all around us. This episode starts
with a group chat among myself, my Strictly Business co
host Andrew Wallenstein, Variety's Business editor Todd Spangler, and Audrey Schomer,
(01:16):
analyst and data editor for the Variety Intelligence platform that
Andy heads from There will segue into highlights from some
of our sessions at the summit. It was hard to
choose just a few, which is a good problem to have,
and for that we have to thank our longtime colleague, Susannahl,
Variety's VP of Event Programming, who works NonStop, year round
(01:40):
to make all of our events as strong as possible.
That's all coming up after the break, and we're back
with a special Cees edition of Strictly Business. Well here
(02:00):
we are in the bowels of Cees at the Aria Hotel,
where Team Variety has just wrapped a very successful Variety
Entertainment Summit, a day long affair of talking about streaming
and content monetization. We had everyone from top leaders of
the biggest entertainment companies on the planet to rising TikTok
(02:22):
sensation Linda Don who charmed the audience. I'm Cynthia Littlton,
co editor in chief. I'm here with my partner in
crime on Strictly Business, Andy Wallenstein, President of Variety Intelligence Platform.
We're also here with Variety's Business editor Todd Spangler and
Variety Intelligence Platform media analyst and research editor Audrey Schomer.
(02:43):
Although we're all tired, we are posted up in the
hallway here, so forgive a little overhead music and perhaps
some clean up activity. But we are going to chop
it up here for a little bit about what we
learned and what was interesting and exciting today. I found
this to be probably our best CEES conference yet and
we're about eight years into this, Andy, What did you think?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, I've been to quite a few of these, and
I thought it was right up there. So many learnings
throughout the day.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
For me what stood out.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Sorry to be a little self serving here, but I
got a chance to interview the CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, who,
to be honest, don't know didn't know going into it
that much about Reddit. It was a real learning experience
for me. But this is a company with a real
story to tell in more ways than one. I came
(03:35):
in a little skeptical about how a company like this
competes with much bigger companies like Meta and Alphabet for
digital advertising dollars, and also came in with some skepticism
about the only thing people really want to know, as
they've wanted to know for a long time now, is
when's the IPO going to happen? And of course I
(03:57):
asked that question didn't get anywhere, But where I did
get some somewhere was on the notion of how this
company plans to stand out, and I kind of understand
why they really are distinctive. What they're here at CEES
talking about is what they call contextual relevance, and what
(04:19):
it really boils down to is that what makes this
company stand out, that is sort of their differentiator that
all these other bigger companies don't do. Is what it
comes down to it they're not a social network. It's
a place where community offers recommendations about the products that
(04:43):
advertisers who of course that's how they make money. That's
what is not done by these other companies. And so,
you know, Ready To is filled with these communities where
people are endlessly debating, you know, going very deep into
the on all sorts of products, whether it's you know,
the entertainment stuff that people come to read about in
(05:05):
variety or really any sort of product in all sorts
of categories. And that is what they're sort of staking
their claim on. That's what they're hoping advertisers are going
to reward them for. And they've had some progress over
the years and they're hoping that's going to take them
to the next level. We'll see if that's what stands
(05:25):
out for them in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I think Reddit is an interesting example of you know,
their interface is basically low tech. Yeah, it looks like
it's you know, ten, twelve years old, but clearly their
audience loves it, and you know, I know, on the
news side, I mean, Reddit is a place to go
if there's something rumbling, if you're you know, everything from
a celebrity breakup to you know, more substantial things like
(05:51):
you know, some company is going to be sold, or
there's going to be some M and A activity. There's
a lot of people that feed Reddit anonymously, and it
is it is really a source of you can sort
of gauge trends, but that's also it also can be
a news source. Audrey, what stood out to you?
Speaker 4 (06:08):
I moderated a couple of a couple of different panels,
and one focused on how brand marketers are reaching fans.
The other was focused on what content is breaking through
to modern audiences. And I was really struck by specifically
how across both panels people were referring to the popularity
of roadblocks and the importance of roadblocks among other platforms,
(06:31):
but in particular, numerous people referred to the sort of
breadth of breadth and depth of partnerships and and other
kinds of interactions on the platform for young people in particular.
The other interesting thing that came out from the content
panel was referring to the notion that we're facing a
(06:54):
more budget constrained development environment, and really the learnings that
I think came out from all of the panelists there
were that content development decision making going forward over the
next few months or throughout the year is going to
be driven by a deeper understanding of what has worked
in the past, whether that's IP that's already been proven
(07:16):
out through another format, or because it's a franchise that's
being extended through another medium, or simply paying attention to
data that they may have access to.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I was struck by on your panel. I believe it
was a Lionsgate exec who said, people, you should know
that your teenagers spend about two hours a day on roadblocks,
and he and she also made the point that it's
not just playing games or interacting, but just hanging out.
It's it's a it's basically a you know, right, sort
of a digital watering hole for the for those that
(07:53):
can't drink or shouldn't be drinking anyway that this is
what I love about this event is because you can't
like that in and of itself isn't a story, but
it's the kind of thing that sticks in your head
that you recognize it. And I think also on the
content side, you can you definitely got a sense of
the great retrenchment that people are talking about, that it's real,
(08:16):
but you definitely I definitely got the sense that, you know,
the turn of the page from twenty twenty three to
twenty twenty four, there's something of a reset. And yes
they may not go forward go forth in green Light,
a drama series that's going to cost twenty million dollars
an episode, but there's definitely there's definitely win behind the sales,
I think, and after all the doom and gloom of
(08:37):
twenty twenty three, that's kind of been heartening to hear.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
It's interesting to me to hear how optimistic the people
in the room were, you know, after the strikes of
last year, and you know, macroeconomic headwinds across the board
affecting advertising and businesses in all sectors. Really, you know,
there's and maybe maybe it's just the new year turning over.
(09:02):
People are prone to be optimistic. But I did sense that,
you know, there was some feeling that you know, a
couple of people said like, hey, streaming isn't cannibalizing our
TV business. It's additive, you know. Twenty twenty four seems
to be people seem to think that the things will
(09:23):
be back on track. So that that was the one thing.
The other thing to your point about you know, Lionsgate
commenting pretty in pretty significant detail about a platform like roadblocks.
I heard this in a number of speakers. It's just
you know, this professionalization of you know, savviness about digital
(09:45):
platforms how to work with them. Because when I first
started had variety of twenty thirteen that it was almost
an afterthought studios networks, would you know, like sort of
have somebody halftime doing their social media or posting stuff
to YouTube, something like that. And today it's it's it's
(10:06):
very it's very much a discipline, and it's very much
a business. And and I heard that several times.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Today, utterly ingrained in everybody's everybody's plans, not just as oh,
here's the marketing adjunct, but this is part of it.
And I mean this is not just at this conference,
but you know, TikTok is such a paradigm shift where
it's where content companies, please please take my content and
change it up or put put something on it. You know,
(10:34):
don't pirate the whole thing, but please take take my show,
because that's that's become the gauge of is this thing,
is this show?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Is this title?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Is this star resonating? How many you know the metric
of TikTok videos?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
And it's crazy what a contrast that is to when
Viacom filed a billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube. If you
remember that, they said, hey, you're stealing our our Comedy
Central content. You know, you're posting South Park clips without
our permission, and take them down like it's a It's
a big sea change from that from those days.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Well, clearly Viacom strategy of suing their way to success
that was that was a bang up job. We're actually
going to talk about that in a minute. But I
also just in general, of course, you can't walk around
here without hearing ai ai ai. That is Audrey's areas
of expertise as a as a virtual luddite. I will
(11:27):
say that this time around, I'm starting to I'm starting
to talk to people that are talking about a specific
thing that an AI tool can do, and I'm you know,
they're building this specific platform to create low cost television
advertisements or there's more specifics around it. So for my brain,
it's easier to get my head around.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Okay, that's that's what it could be used by.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
It feels slightly less menacing, although that could change in
a minute.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Well, a lot of the panels today that at least
that I witnessed, you're hearing a lot well, some of
the experts. Anyway, we're speaking to machine learning applications. I know, Todd,
you spoke to someone who was talking about the applications
of machine learning that is years and years old for
(12:19):
content recommendations on platforms, and that's not necessarily new, but
it is it does matter essentially for the success of
any content business. But what's new, of course, is generative
AI and some of the applications there. My takeaway from that,
among other things, was just that some of these tools
(12:42):
where they're used for let's say like VFX Superstars VFX
or film production use cases in general. And then there
was another expert, I think the CEO from Entertainment Arts,
referring to just the the huge acceleration of using generative
(13:06):
AI in game development, and some of those processes really
just making things that much faster for game development, all
the way from ideation through production processes and testing and
some of those kinds of applications really starting to emerge.
Uh and the idea that some of those processes that
(13:27):
now take you know, something like six months in a
development phase now could take six weeks and and could
further accelerate to take only just a few days. So
there there were references to things like that, but on
the on the flip side, there were references to the
idea that this kind of ubiquitous access to some of
(13:49):
these generative AI tools will have repercussions broadly for humanity.
We're not talking just about like each other, you know,
film and TV production or business use cases. While those
will be actually a little bit more sanctioned or circumspect
(14:11):
people will be paying attention to how regulators are taking
charge of these things, and they won't necessarily want to
go out of certain bounds. But at the same time,
once everyone has access to these tools, there's a democratization
effect that some of the panelists were referring to, and
(14:33):
how potentially challenging that will be for everyone to deal
with them.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Yeah. Yeah, there continues to be this real conspicuous dichotomy
about sentiment toward AI.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
On the one hand, Wow, we can really make our
ad targeting better, it can make our content recommendations like
super precise ideally, or it could you know, to your
point about democratization, like it can let people who don't
have access to a two hundred person visual effects team
(15:06):
create something really amazing. But it's also you know, like
any technology, like the Internet, right, there's pros and there's
cons There's some bad stuff that has come with the Internet,
for sure, right, but it's also been extremely beneficial and
created brand new industries. Same with social media. Right, It's
(15:28):
been a great thing for a lot of people to
connect and a great thing for media companies to connect
with their audiences. But it also has a lot of
there's a lot of negative stuff there. So I think
AI is really and generatively, I you know, in particular,
is very much in that inflection point of like, boy,
(15:50):
we're scared to death of it, but we're really excited
about what it could do.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Well. While we were talking and waxing a little bit
about AI on the East Coast in Congress, there were
some people We're making a very strong case, the New
York Times and other media companies making a very strong
case that, hello, AI platforms, you can't just ingest every
article that we've ever produced that's not really cool. And
so the tension here is just this is definitely going
(16:17):
to be one of the stories of the year. So Audrey,
you will have no shortage of things to write about.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
By the way, Joe Biden. President Biden said that he
was inspired to issue the executive order, saying they were
going to create a framework for regulating AI after he
saw the latest Mission Impossible movie, where it's one of
the central plot points. Not to give anything away, but
it's this autonomous sentient AI thing that has the potential
(16:47):
to subvert all governments in the world, and of course
it's Tom Cruise flick, but it scared Biden enough that
he was moved to act.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
On Tuesday of this week, at the AFLCO and SAG
after I have for years hosted a labor conference that
kind of piggybacks on CEES and the idea. Their Their
vision is let's put people and labor at the center
of technology and in that discussion. It was very it
was very removed from our discussion, and there is a
(17:17):
there's a focus on union and labor leaders, on putting
parameters and guard rails around AI. And I don't don't
in the slightest mean to be dismissive or diminishing what
many people see as the threat to jobs. But as
I as I sat and listened, I just it felt
to me like putting toothpaste back in a tube, like,
(17:39):
how do you really effectively do those guardrails? Well, Congress
and the federal courts and the best lawyers that everybody
can buy are going to start those out in the
next couple of years. Well, I know we all have
things we want to do. It's it's Las Vegas, and
we've all worked hard, so we're going to go have
a little fun. But the last thing I do want
to just riff on a bit. Is there there's also
(18:00):
you can't escape. There's a lot of m and a
chatter in the marketplace right now. People that were you know,
media folks that were at our panel. We're talking about
Paramount Global, NBC Universal, and Warner Brothers Discovery and the
fact that no the path for any of these companies
is not entirely clear, is makes it makes it a
(18:22):
very fraught time.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, I mean, it's all everyone is talking at about here.
But I'll tell you something though, to be a little
bit jaded, I can't remember a CEES when it's not
like this, and that I'm not chasing these rumors down.
And so I mean, of course I'm not going to
bet against especially given we're literally talking having this conversation
(18:46):
just hours after we're seeing news about sky Dance, you know,
literally going forward to make a move on paramount. Clearly
M and A is in the air in a big way,
but I cannot remember it CEES where I have not
been chasing down rumors about M and auh and that
(19:06):
taking place in previous years where the air was thick
with speculation, and yet nothing would happen in those years.
And so CES is always a time for me to
and I'm talking more broadly than just M and A
where I kind of have to put a check on
myself about hype about trends. I mean, I think last
(19:27):
year I was here and people were talking about the
metaverse and NFTs, and here we are a year later,
and it's like those things disappeared.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
There are certainly arguments for and against industry consolidation. It
does seem like something is going to happen. What form
and shape that takes means to be seen. And you know,
there's a lot of debate over the strategic rationale for
any of these kinds of combinations. You know, for years,
(19:58):
Like to your point, Andy, like, when is a big
tech company going to buy a media company? We haven't
seen that, right, It's it's that's kind of been in
the wind for many years. Who knows, Right, does Apple
need to buy a big content library to bow up
Apple TV Plus? Yeah, that makes sense. Will it happen?
(20:19):
I don't know. They certainly have enough money to do it.
And that's the one thing that you know, industry analysts
are saying is, you know, would make that an attractive
potential deal is that they've got very clean balance sheets
for the most part, and a lot of cash. And
(20:40):
the media companies would be it would certainly be able
to pay down their own debt if they took some
of that cash.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
It's been interesting to see the fortunes, the fortunes of
media and big tech kind of converge and change. And
all I know is as soon as we write definitively
that Apple will never buy a studio the next day,
that's when it's good. That's when it's going to happen.
I think one thing is interesting is that to your point,
they really is usually an M and A. You know, bankers,
(21:07):
everybody stands to make a little money. Everybody's cheerleading it. Yes,
you know, they really want to push it forward. This
time around. The response to the chatter about is Warner
Brothers Discovery looking at Paramount Global? Is Warner Brothers Discovery
looking at Paramount Global to get NBC Universal to the
dance all of that stuff, And the reaction has kind
of been to what end? I mean, people have thoughts that,
(21:29):
you know, this would be better with that, or that
that would be a better fit with that, But there
hasn't been like, oh, that's obvious. That makes sense now.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
In the stock prices that both companies were down right
after the initial reports.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Once again, our crystal ball might just be a little hazy,
but we do our very best and work hard and
cover this business to the best of our abilities. Don't
go anywhere. You don't want to miss the highlights from
Varieties Entertainment Summit at cees'll be right back after this
(22:01):
pause for monetization, and we're back with highlights from Varieties
Entertainment Summit at CES twenty twenty four. First, we'll start
with a panel that got a lot of attention because
we brought together the advertising chiefs of Disney, Warner Brothers, Discovery, Netflix,
(22:25):
and NBC Universal for a candid discussion about media monetization,
something everyone in Hollywood should care about. We'll hear first
from Disney's Rita Ferro, followed by Warner Brothers Discoveries John Steinloff,
NBC Universal's Mark Marshall, and Netflix's Amy Reinhardt. Where is
(22:46):
the money? Where is the advertise?
Speaker 5 (22:49):
Where are the sound like? My boss?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Well, there you go, I must be Then that's a
hitting on a good question. No, But in all seriousness,
obviously it's been. It's been just in terms of pure
We're going to talk about other forms of monetization, but
just in terms of pure where the rubber meets the
road on advertising sales. It's been a tough couple of quarters.
I think everybody everybody would agree that it's been a
tough couple of quarters. So what is your hunch? Are
(23:17):
there marketing dollars that are being expressed in other ways,
in other small slices rather than traditional, traditional, old fashioned
spot television. Is it being expressed in other experiences or
do you think that marketers are just holding their powder
for another time to you know, for a time later
when they feel like maybe consumers the recession clouds whether
(23:40):
there will be or won't be when those part a
little bit and consumers are ready to spend. Would really
love your thoughts on where you think the money is
that doesn't seem to be flowing through the ecosystem like
it has been.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
I'm happy to start.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
That's cool.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
Yeah, great, So I think thank you, Mark. I think
what you have seen is there are pockets where the
money has flowed. Sports is a great example of that.
We saw growth in sports. I think every one of
us on the stage would agree to that. I think
the other area is you're seeing that this past year
you've had how many fast channels launch in the marketplace,
(24:16):
and so there's this bifurcation of all these new products
and services that are available for partners to come in
and spend money on. But we're seeing growth and streaming
advertising dollars as well. Where you are seeing absolutely a
compression of pricing as well as demand is in the
linear businesses. And when you have a portfolio like ours,
(24:37):
where it's at scale, branding and performance, we're able to
move those dollars to the platforms that matter. And I
do think, yes, the first three quarters of the year
were really tough, but I would also say probably you're
going to hear from this group that you saw a
slow comeback in Q four twenty three, and I think
we're starting to see some momentum in the areas that
(24:57):
really matter from a global perspective, around and sports continuing
to be strong this year.
Speaker 7 (25:04):
The marketplace for US as three connected markets, Sports, streaming,
rest of linear, and in our case, rest of linear
at WBD means cable networks and sports is up and
it's a linear business and it's up, which is really
saying something. Streaming is way up and the rest of
(25:26):
linear is where we're challenged and we're working to try
to reverse that. But there's a lot of headwinds in
the rest of linear world. And to answer your question
about where is the money going, we're a big advertiser too,
and we're a top twenty Warner Brothers, Discovery is a
top twenty advertisers. So we look at this all the
time with our agencies, and you know, we think interest rates,
(25:46):
you know, being up as high as they've been, they
went up so quickly last year. I think a lot
of marketers CFOs are saying, maybe we're better off holding
our money for a while. Now we see them coming down,
so we're hoping for better. Twenty four.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
The first time that the first Summer Games were Peacock
will have every event live and so that's about seven hours,
seven thousand hours of programming. So to put that in context,
you basically have about ten and a half months of
content that happens, you know, within seventeen days. So there
are obviously brand opportunities within that. But these games being
(26:27):
over in Paris, it's also interesting. As much as we
enjoyed South Korea, Tokyo and Beijing and the last two
with no fans in the audience, the fact that we're
gonna get to go to Paris and Paris will be
the backdrop. It will be part of the storytelling opening
ceremonies with the teams going down the Sene River into
(26:47):
the stadium, having beach volleyball next to the Eiffel Tower,
equestrian at vers I, You're gonna have surfing in Tahiti.
It's going to be a phenomenal backdrop to be able
to tell the story. And I think in our country
and probably the world, the Olympics is that one thing
that kind of brings us all together. So whether you're
(27:09):
a Detroit Lion or Bills fan doesn't matter. We're all
fans of the Olympics and the US team.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
As we get to the Olympics, Amy, can you talk
about what I know Netflix has gone to market with
its kind of a different fashion and has different metrics.
Can you talk about what is important to Netflix and
how they've been received by Madison.
Speaker 8 (27:29):
Yeah. Sure, Look, I think we're very fortunate to be
able to kind of take a long term perspective on this,
right so we've been very vocal that's sort of member
choice and member experience is very important to us. So
scaling our business is absolutely our biggest priority right now,
but we want to make sure that we're doing that
(27:50):
in a meaningful way for the member. So to your point, yes,
we have made the choice on sort of ad loads
that we will have a lighter ad load experience and
We're all about we know there's a lot of work
to do on our side, but we're all about learning
and iterating and working with our advertising partners to figure
out how do we grow this business in a meaningful way.
How do we keep our members engage, How do we
(28:12):
keep the focus on the content because we think we
bring a lot of great content to the platform, and
how can we just continue to uh to learn and
grow off of that experience.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Andy Wallenstein did a one on one with Reddit chief
Steve Huffman. Huffman outline growth plans for the brand that
is more than just a website but not quite a
social media network. Here, Huffman explains how Reddit is pursuing
growth through e commerce.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
We're this recommendation centric, contextual, relevance centric strategy. How does
this play in this world that we're in now in
terms of this, uh the demise of the cookie era,
Does it have a special place there?
Speaker 9 (28:56):
Absolutely.
Speaker 10 (28:57):
The idea is if you're using con text to make
those connections to do the targeting, you don't need cookies
and so on Reddit, we target with first party data.
When you're on we see your behavior on Reddit, and
we use that so we don't have to cookie you
all over the internet and watch what you're browsing and
reading and searching for all of those things. It's your
(29:18):
explicitly expressed interests on Reddit and so I think you
know that the cookie transition that the industry is going
to go through, it's it's you know, it presents some challenges,
but I think the platforms that will do best through
that will be the ones that rely on on first
party data, and we're one of those.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Speaking of e commerce, one of the most interesting sessions
for me was Todd spangler sit down with talk Shop
Live founder and CEO Brian Moore more confidently declared that
the future of retail is media. I think he's right.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
You told me that you created branded content unit last
year and you're working with companies like never Experimount to
do shoppable series, Yeah, as well as Walmart Connect. I
think is in your program? Yeah, what does that look like?
How is that different from the sort of talent led.
Speaker 11 (30:11):
So the talent led, you know, our gateway categories were
books and music. People are coming on. They were selling
between three and nine times their online preorders right then.
When we started working with the retailers and really driving
products and really driving you know, you know, affinity for
brand connection, brand awareness, brand loyalty, and as as these
(30:32):
advertisers started, you know, driving into retail media and investing
in retail media, the next step was how are you
creating the actual experience behind that? And that's where what
we've done by you know, our branded content division has
been exploding over the past year, right, because we service
all of these retailers and these brands in a way
(30:54):
which is really making them content creators, you know, creating
content like I think I was reading some thing on
LinkedIn the other day from Todd Kaplan, CMO of Pepsi, right,
and he was talking about how it's so critical now
right to break through the noise with true content. And
I think as we look to the future, you know,
you as someone that covers digital but also works in media,
when you look at the future of retail as media
(31:17):
and you start to think of like, Okay, in a
few years, retailers will be having their own programming. You know,
people will be going there to watch a cooking show
and shop from the cooking show right there, but also
distributed everywhere.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
So your model, I mean, it's not stovepiped where you
do fulfillment and order transaction processing. You can do that,
We can do that.
Speaker 11 (31:39):
And well, the thing is with Talkshop Live, we're integrated
with our retail pinners, so every product available at those
retailers can be available within his talkshop.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Lib Todd also spoke with TikTok comedy star Linda Dong.
Here she explains how her seventeen point seven million followers
and counting help her turn TikTok videos into cold heart,
hard cash.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
So, so you tell me how do you approach brand deals?
And just to let the audience know, there's a link
in your TikTok Bioddominoes, which is which is a paid
sponsorship right? Yes, okay, yeah?
Speaker 12 (32:12):
With brand deals, I am under a management click Now
we've been together for nine years and so with any
business or brands, they kind of come to them and
they facilitate the whole branding and whatnot.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And that's and that's where you generate your income, right
through those kinds of deals. What what kinds of deals
do you turn down? Or what are off brand? Have
you turned any down?
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I have?
Speaker 12 (32:38):
I'm trying to how do I like, what where do
I say it?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
So it's like if it's if it's inauthentic.
Speaker 12 (32:44):
Yeah, just anything risky.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Oh.
Speaker 12 (32:46):
I'm like, no, I don't know if I could do
that for my audience because I have I have a
young audience as well. I don't want to like have
anything to I don't know, make them feel uncomfortable. Yeah,
and I'm being being very but I don't want to,
like to say too much.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Audrey steered a panel of marketing mavens, who also weighed
in on what it takes to build a brand from scratch.
These days, we'll hear from Mike Stein, executive VP and
head of Television and Audio for Kevin Hart's production company Heartbeat.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
We're basically living in an era of unlimited content choice,
and so my question would be, is it possible anymore
for any content to be created that reaches a broad
audience or that you know, you know, automatically achieves that
when it's released, or alternatively, how could you see that
(33:37):
niche content becomes a bigger a bigger possibility in the future.
Speaker 13 (33:43):
I mean, look, I think it's important to do both,
you know. With Heartbeat, you know, we obviously strive for
the broadest, you know, possible audience. In a lot of cases,
you know, we got Lift coming out on Netflix, you
know this week. That's you know, hopefully going to be
a very big global hit. Right at the same time,
we produce a show called Dave raph Facts, which you
know has been incredibly successful, a ton of critical acclaim,
(34:04):
does extremely well for Effects, extremely well for Hulu. You know,
that is a fairly niche show, but it hits that
audience in.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Such a way that it really resonates.
Speaker 13 (34:12):
And so I think, you know, across the board, as
you know, the audience has become more disperse, you know,
I think it's important to kind of like play on
both sides of that spectrum.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Our keynote speaker this time around was someone I have
known for a long time, Roku Entertainment President, Charlie Collier.
I asked him to give the elevator pitch for why
Roku stands out in a sea of streaming options.
Speaker 9 (34:35):
Here's the deal. If you turn on your television, here
go with me and say you believe television now is
an experience. It's not just you turn on your TV
and go to your show or go to that network.
Actually you mentioned Food network. In the world of cable,
there was only enough bandwidth for one food network. So
once you made basic cable, think about how easy it
was to market a brand. In the world of basic cable,
(34:56):
there was only one food network. So guess what food network? Well,
was the one or Home and Garden or ESPN. In
the world of the Internet, there's no bandwidth constraints. So
as I showed you, our job is to if you
want to watch Hot Ones, which I did, and somehow
it knew I got to go watch the Pete Pete
Davidson episode of Hot Hot Ones and it was sitting
(35:17):
next to I was watching Next Level Chef, which is
Gordon Ramsay, and it said do you want to continue
watching her do this? And so all of a sudden,
it's an event for me as the viewer to go
find the shows I want and it could sit next
to We have a show coming up. We announced it
today you all fast It's called what it's called Chain,
and it's it's really exciting production. Think about this in
(35:41):
the context of what we just showed. So Chain, which
is produced by a company. Guys sitting over there, Davis
and Kraft bj Novak from the office is behind Chain,
And think about this. We all have our favorite fast
food chains imagine if they took your favorite dish from
your favorite fast food chain and put it in the
hands of a world class chef, what would do with it?
And these guys, because pop culture is everything, it doesn't
(36:04):
just happen on the show. Chain fest which you referred to,
became a who's who events. So there was John Legend
and Christy Tiegan, and there was you know, Chris Pratt,
and they were all sampling the dishes of Tim Hollingsworth
and who yeah, who used to work at French Laundry.
And he's putting you know, maple bacon on a donut.
(36:24):
It's really it's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
There you have it, listeners, I hope you enjoyed this
quick tour of Varieties CEES Entertainment Summit as much as
we loved hosting it. Our thanks to all of our
panel participants and the sponsors who made the day possible
the Trade Desk, Amazon Ads, Talk Shop Live, Deloitte, e Y,
Nagra and Samsung Ads. And thank you as ever for
(36:56):
tuning in to Variety's strictly business
Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with
industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety. Today's episode
was recorded on the ground at the CES Conference in
Las Vegas. As always, going to CES is an eye
(00:28):
opening and even overwhelming experience. For the past decade, Variety
has partnered with the Consumer Technology Association to produce an
entertainment focused track of programming. Our day long Variety Entertainment
Summit on January tenth served up a powerhouse slate of executives, entrepreneurs,
(00:50):
movers and shakers, and even a bona fide TikTok star.
When we come to CEES, we are on a mission
to help the entertainment industry make sense of the whirlwind
of change that is all around us. This episode starts
with a group chat among myself, my Strictly Business co
host Andrew Wallenstein, Variety's Business editor Todd Spangler, and Audrey Schomer,
(01:16):
analyst and data editor for the Variety Intelligence platform that
Andy heads from There will segue into highlights from some
of our sessions at the summit. It was hard to
choose just a few, which is a good problem to have,
and for that we have to thank our longtime colleague, Susannahl,
Variety's VP of Event Programming, who works NonStop, year round
(01:40):
to make all of our events as strong as possible.
That's all coming up after the break, and we're back
with a special Cees edition of Strictly Business. Well here
(02:00):
we are in the bowels of Cees at the Aria Hotel,
where Team Variety has just wrapped a very successful Variety
Entertainment Summit, a day long affair of talking about streaming
and content monetization. We had everyone from top leaders of
the biggest entertainment companies on the planet to rising TikTok
(02:22):
sensation Linda Don who charmed the audience. I'm Cynthia Littlton,
co editor in chief. I'm here with my partner in
crime on Strictly Business, Andy Wallenstein, President of Variety Intelligence Platform.
We're also here with Variety's Business editor Todd Spangler and
Variety Intelligence Platform media analyst and research editor Audrey Schomer.
(02:43):
Although we're all tired, we are posted up in the
hallway here, so forgive a little overhead music and perhaps
some clean up activity. But we are going to chop
it up here for a little bit about what we
learned and what was interesting and exciting today. I found
this to be probably our best CEES conference yet and
we're about eight years into this, Andy, What did you think?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, I've been to quite a few of these, and
I thought it was right up there. So many learnings
throughout the day.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
For me what stood out.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Sorry to be a little self serving here, but I
got a chance to interview the CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, who,
to be honest, don't know didn't know going into it
that much about Reddit. It was a real learning experience
for me. But this is a company with a real
story to tell in more ways than one. I came
(03:35):
in a little skeptical about how a company like this
competes with much bigger companies like Meta and Alphabet for
digital advertising dollars, and also came in with some skepticism
about the only thing people really want to know, as
they've wanted to know for a long time now, is
when's the IPO going to happen? And of course I
(03:57):
asked that question didn't get anywhere, But where I did
get some somewhere was on the notion of how this
company plans to stand out, and I kind of understand
why they really are distinctive. What they're here at CEES
talking about is what they call contextual relevance, and what
(04:19):
it really boils down to is that what makes this
company stand out, that is sort of their differentiator that
all these other bigger companies don't do. Is what it
comes down to it they're not a social network. It's
a place where community offers recommendations about the products that
(04:43):
advertisers who of course that's how they make money. That's
what is not done by these other companies. And so,
you know, Ready To is filled with these communities where
people are endlessly debating, you know, going very deep into
the on all sorts of products, whether it's you know,
the entertainment stuff that people come to read about in
(05:05):
variety or really any sort of product in all sorts
of categories. And that is what they're sort of staking
their claim on. That's what they're hoping advertisers are going
to reward them for. And they've had some progress over
the years and they're hoping that's going to take them
to the next level. We'll see if that's what stands
(05:25):
out for them in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I think Reddit is an interesting example of you know,
their interface is basically low tech. Yeah, it looks like
it's you know, ten, twelve years old, but clearly their
audience loves it, and you know, I know, on the
news side, I mean, Reddit is a place to go
if there's something rumbling, if you're you know, everything from
a celebrity breakup to you know, more substantial things like
(05:51):
you know, some company is going to be sold, or
there's going to be some M and A activity. There's
a lot of people that feed Reddit anonymously, and it
is it is really a source of you can sort
of gauge trends, but that's also it also can be
a news source. Audrey, what stood out to you?
Speaker 4 (06:08):
I moderated a couple of a couple of different panels,
and one focused on how brand marketers are reaching fans.
The other was focused on what content is breaking through
to modern audiences. And I was really struck by specifically
how across both panels people were referring to the popularity
of roadblocks and the importance of roadblocks among other platforms,
(06:31):
but in particular, numerous people referred to the sort of
breadth of breadth and depth of partnerships and and other
kinds of interactions on the platform for young people in particular.
The other interesting thing that came out from the content
panel was referring to the notion that we're facing a
(06:54):
more budget constrained development environment, and really the learnings that
I think came out from all of the panelists there
were that content development decision making going forward over the
next few months or throughout the year is going to
be driven by a deeper understanding of what has worked
in the past, whether that's IP that's already been proven
(07:16):
out through another format, or because it's a franchise that's
being extended through another medium, or simply paying attention to
data that they may have access to.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
I was struck by on your panel. I believe it
was a Lionsgate exec who said, people, you should know
that your teenagers spend about two hours a day on roadblocks,
and he and she also made the point that it's
not just playing games or interacting, but just hanging out.
It's it's a it's basically a you know, right, sort
of a digital watering hole for the for those that
(07:53):
can't drink or shouldn't be drinking anyway that this is
what I love about this event is because you can't
like that in and of itself isn't a story, but
it's the kind of thing that sticks in your head
that you recognize it. And I think also on the
content side, you can you definitely got a sense of
the great retrenchment that people are talking about, that it's real,
(08:16):
but you definitely I definitely got the sense that, you know,
the turn of the page from twenty twenty three to
twenty twenty four, there's something of a reset. And yes
they may not go forward go forth in green Light,
a drama series that's going to cost twenty million dollars
an episode, but there's definitely there's definitely win behind the sales,
I think, and after all the doom and gloom of
(08:37):
twenty twenty three, that's kind of been heartening to hear.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
It's interesting to me to hear how optimistic the people
in the room were, you know, after the strikes of
last year, and you know, macroeconomic headwinds across the board
affecting advertising and businesses in all sectors. Really, you know,
there's and maybe maybe it's just the new year turning over.
(09:02):
People are prone to be optimistic. But I did sense that,
you know, there was some feeling that you know, a
couple of people said like, hey, streaming isn't cannibalizing our
TV business. It's additive, you know. Twenty twenty four seems
to be people seem to think that the things will
(09:23):
be back on track. So that that was the one thing.
The other thing to your point about you know, Lionsgate
commenting pretty in pretty significant detail about a platform like roadblocks.
I heard this in a number of speakers. It's just
you know, this professionalization of you know, savviness about digital
(09:45):
platforms how to work with them. Because when I first
started had variety of twenty thirteen that it was almost
an afterthought studios networks, would you know, like sort of
have somebody halftime doing their social media or posting stuff
to YouTube, something like that. And today it's it's it's
(10:06):
very it's very much a discipline, and it's very much
a business. And and I heard that several times.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Today, utterly ingrained in everybody's everybody's plans, not just as oh,
here's the marketing adjunct, but this is part of it.
And I mean this is not just at this conference,
but you know, TikTok is such a paradigm shift where
it's where content companies, please please take my content and
change it up or put put something on it. You know,
(10:34):
don't pirate the whole thing, but please take take my show,
because that's that's become the gauge of is this thing,
is this show?
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Is this title?
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Is this star resonating? How many you know the metric
of TikTok videos?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
And it's crazy what a contrast that is to when
Viacom filed a billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube. If you
remember that, they said, hey, you're stealing our our Comedy
Central content. You know, you're posting South Park clips without
our permission, and take them down like it's a It's
a big sea change from that from those days.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Well, clearly Viacom strategy of suing their way to success
that was that was a bang up job. We're actually
going to talk about that in a minute. But I
also just in general, of course, you can't walk around
here without hearing ai ai ai. That is Audrey's areas
of expertise as a as a virtual luddite. I will
(11:27):
say that this time around, I'm starting to I'm starting
to talk to people that are talking about a specific
thing that an AI tool can do, and I'm you know,
they're building this specific platform to create low cost television
advertisements or there's more specifics around it. So for my brain,
it's easier to get my head around.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
Okay, that's that's what it could be used by.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
It feels slightly less menacing, although that could change in
a minute.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
Well, a lot of the panels today that at least
that I witnessed, you're hearing a lot well, some of
the experts. Anyway, we're speaking to machine learning applications. I know, Todd,
you spoke to someone who was talking about the applications
of machine learning that is years and years old for
(12:19):
content recommendations on platforms, and that's not necessarily new, but
it is it does matter essentially for the success of
any content business. But what's new, of course, is generative
AI and some of the applications there. My takeaway from that,
among other things, was just that some of these tools
(12:42):
where they're used for let's say like VFX Superstars VFX
or film production use cases in general. And then there
was another expert, I think the CEO from Entertainment Arts,
referring to just the the huge acceleration of using generative
(13:06):
AI in game development, and some of those processes really
just making things that much faster for game development, all
the way from ideation through production processes and testing and
some of those kinds of applications really starting to emerge.
Uh and the idea that some of those processes that
(13:27):
now take you know, something like six months in a
development phase now could take six weeks and and could
further accelerate to take only just a few days. So
there there were references to things like that, but on
the on the flip side, there were references to the
idea that this kind of ubiquitous access to some of
(13:49):
these generative AI tools will have repercussions broadly for humanity.
We're not talking just about like each other, you know,
film and TV production or business use cases. While those
will be actually a little bit more sanctioned or circumspect
(14:11):
people will be paying attention to how regulators are taking
charge of these things, and they won't necessarily want to
go out of certain bounds. But at the same time,
once everyone has access to these tools, there's a democratization
effect that some of the panelists were referring to, and
(14:33):
how potentially challenging that will be for everyone to deal
with them.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Yeah. Yeah, there continues to be this real conspicuous dichotomy
about sentiment toward AI.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
On the one hand, Wow, we can really make our
ad targeting better, it can make our content recommendations like
super precise ideally, or it could you know, to your
point about democratization, like it can let people who don't
have access to a two hundred person visual effects team
(15:06):
create something really amazing. But it's also you know, like
any technology, like the Internet, right, there's pros and there's
cons There's some bad stuff that has come with the Internet,
for sure, right, but it's also been extremely beneficial and
created brand new industries. Same with social media. Right, It's
(15:28):
been a great thing for a lot of people to
connect and a great thing for media companies to connect
with their audiences. But it also has a lot of
there's a lot of negative stuff there. So I think
AI is really and generatively, I you know, in particular,
is very much in that inflection point of like, boy,
(15:50):
we're scared to death of it, but we're really excited
about what it could do.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Well. While we were talking and waxing a little bit
about AI on the East Coast in Congress, there were
some people We're making a very strong case, the New
York Times and other media companies making a very strong
case that, hello, AI platforms, you can't just ingest every
article that we've ever produced that's not really cool. And
so the tension here is just this is definitely going
(16:17):
to be one of the stories of the year. So Audrey,
you will have no shortage of things to write about.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
By the way, Joe Biden. President Biden said that he
was inspired to issue the executive order, saying they were
going to create a framework for regulating AI after he
saw the latest Mission Impossible movie, where it's one of
the central plot points. Not to give anything away, but
it's this autonomous sentient AI thing that has the potential
(16:47):
to subvert all governments in the world, and of course
it's Tom Cruise flick, but it scared Biden enough that
he was moved to act.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
On Tuesday of this week, at the AFLCO and SAG
after I have for years hosted a labor conference that
kind of piggybacks on CEES and the idea. Their Their
vision is let's put people and labor at the center
of technology and in that discussion. It was very it
was very removed from our discussion, and there is a
(17:17):
there's a focus on union and labor leaders, on putting
parameters and guard rails around AI. And I don't don't
in the slightest mean to be dismissive or diminishing what
many people see as the threat to jobs. But as
I as I sat and listened, I just it felt
to me like putting toothpaste back in a tube, like,
(17:39):
how do you really effectively do those guardrails? Well, Congress
and the federal courts and the best lawyers that everybody
can buy are going to start those out in the
next couple of years. Well, I know we all have
things we want to do. It's it's Las Vegas, and
we've all worked hard, so we're going to go have
a little fun. But the last thing I do want
to just riff on a bit. Is there there's also
(18:00):
you can't escape. There's a lot of m and a
chatter in the marketplace right now. People that were you know,
media folks that were at our panel. We're talking about
Paramount Global, NBC Universal, and Warner Brothers Discovery and the
fact that no the path for any of these companies
is not entirely clear, is makes it makes it a
(18:22):
very fraught time.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, I mean, it's all everyone is talking at about here.
But I'll tell you something though, to be a little
bit jaded, I can't remember a CEES when it's not
like this, and that I'm not chasing these rumors down.
And so I mean, of course I'm not going to
bet against especially given we're literally talking having this conversation
(18:46):
just hours after we're seeing news about sky Dance, you know,
literally going forward to make a move on paramount. Clearly
M and A is in the air in a big way,
but I cannot remember it CEES where I have not
been chasing down rumors about M and auh and that
(19:06):
taking place in previous years where the air was thick
with speculation, and yet nothing would happen in those years.
And so CES is always a time for me to
and I'm talking more broadly than just M and A
where I kind of have to put a check on
myself about hype about trends. I mean, I think last
(19:27):
year I was here and people were talking about the
metaverse and NFTs, and here we are a year later,
and it's like those things disappeared.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
There are certainly arguments for and against industry consolidation. It
does seem like something is going to happen. What form
and shape that takes means to be seen. And you know,
there's a lot of debate over the strategic rationale for
any of these kinds of combinations. You know, for years,
(19:58):
Like to your point, Andy, like, when is a big
tech company going to buy a media company? We haven't
seen that, right, It's it's that's kind of been in
the wind for many years. Who knows, Right, does Apple
need to buy a big content library to bow up
Apple TV Plus? Yeah, that makes sense. Will it happen?
(20:19):
I don't know. They certainly have enough money to do it.
And that's the one thing that you know, industry analysts
are saying is, you know, would make that an attractive
potential deal is that they've got very clean balance sheets
for the most part, and a lot of cash. And
(20:40):
the media companies would be it would certainly be able
to pay down their own debt if they took some
of that cash.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
It's been interesting to see the fortunes, the fortunes of
media and big tech kind of converge and change. And
all I know is as soon as we write definitively
that Apple will never buy a studio the next day,
that's when it's good. That's when it's going to happen.
I think one thing is interesting is that to your point,
they really is usually an M and A. You know, bankers,
(21:07):
everybody stands to make a little money. Everybody's cheerleading it. Yes,
you know, they really want to push it forward. This
time around. The response to the chatter about is Warner
Brothers Discovery looking at Paramount Global? Is Warner Brothers Discovery
looking at Paramount Global to get NBC Universal to the
dance all of that stuff, And the reaction has kind
of been to what end? I mean, people have thoughts that,
(21:29):
you know, this would be better with that, or that
that would be a better fit with that, But there
hasn't been like, oh, that's obvious. That makes sense now.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
In the stock prices that both companies were down right
after the initial reports.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Once again, our crystal ball might just be a little hazy,
but we do our very best and work hard and
cover this business to the best of our abilities. Don't
go anywhere. You don't want to miss the highlights from
Varieties Entertainment Summit at cees'll be right back after this
(22:01):
pause for monetization, and we're back with highlights from Varieties
Entertainment Summit at CES twenty twenty four. First, we'll start
with a panel that got a lot of attention because
we brought together the advertising chiefs of Disney, Warner Brothers, Discovery, Netflix,
(22:25):
and NBC Universal for a candid discussion about media monetization,
something everyone in Hollywood should care about. We'll hear first
from Disney's Rita Ferro, followed by Warner Brothers Discoveries John Steinloff,
NBC Universal's Mark Marshall, and Netflix's Amy Reinhardt. Where is
(22:46):
the money? Where is the advertise?
Speaker 5 (22:49):
Where are the sound like? My boss?
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Well, there you go, I must be Then that's a
hitting on a good question. No, But in all seriousness,
obviously it's been. It's been just in terms of pure
We're going to talk about other forms of monetization, but
just in terms of pure where the rubber meets the
road on advertising sales. It's been a tough couple of quarters.
I think everybody everybody would agree that it's been a
tough couple of quarters. So what is your hunch? Are
(23:17):
there marketing dollars that are being expressed in other ways,
in other small slices rather than traditional, traditional, old fashioned
spot television. Is it being expressed in other experiences or
do you think that marketers are just holding their powder
for another time to you know, for a time later
when they feel like maybe consumers the recession clouds whether
(23:40):
there will be or won't be when those part a
little bit and consumers are ready to spend. Would really
love your thoughts on where you think the money is
that doesn't seem to be flowing through the ecosystem like
it has been.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
I'm happy to start.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
That's cool.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
Yeah, great, So I think thank you, Mark. I think
what you have seen is there are pockets where the
money has flowed. Sports is a great example of that.
We saw growth in sports. I think every one of
us on the stage would agree to that. I think
the other area is you're seeing that this past year
you've had how many fast channels launch in the marketplace,
(24:16):
and so there's this bifurcation of all these new products
and services that are available for partners to come in
and spend money on. But we're seeing growth and streaming
advertising dollars as well. Where you are seeing absolutely a
compression of pricing as well as demand is in the
linear businesses. And when you have a portfolio like ours,
(24:37):
where it's at scale, branding and performance, we're able to
move those dollars to the platforms that matter. And I
do think, yes, the first three quarters of the year
were really tough, but I would also say probably you're
going to hear from this group that you saw a
slow comeback in Q four twenty three, and I think
we're starting to see some momentum in the areas that
(24:57):
really matter from a global perspective, around and sports continuing
to be strong this year.
Speaker 7 (25:04):
The marketplace for US as three connected markets, Sports, streaming,
rest of linear, and in our case, rest of linear
at WBD means cable networks and sports is up and
it's a linear business and it's up, which is really
saying something. Streaming is way up and the rest of
(25:26):
linear is where we're challenged and we're working to try
to reverse that. But there's a lot of headwinds in
the rest of linear world. And to answer your question
about where is the money going, we're a big advertiser too,
and we're a top twenty Warner Brothers, Discovery is a
top twenty advertisers. So we look at this all the
time with our agencies, and you know, we think interest rates,
(25:46):
you know, being up as high as they've been, they
went up so quickly last year. I think a lot
of marketers CFOs are saying, maybe we're better off holding
our money for a while. Now we see them coming down,
so we're hoping for better. Twenty four.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
The first time that the first Summer Games were Peacock
will have every event live and so that's about seven hours,
seven thousand hours of programming. So to put that in context,
you basically have about ten and a half months of
content that happens, you know, within seventeen days. So there
are obviously brand opportunities within that. But these games being
(26:27):
over in Paris, it's also interesting. As much as we
enjoyed South Korea, Tokyo and Beijing and the last two
with no fans in the audience, the fact that we're
gonna get to go to Paris and Paris will be
the backdrop. It will be part of the storytelling opening
ceremonies with the teams going down the Sene River into
(26:47):
the stadium, having beach volleyball next to the Eiffel Tower,
equestrian at vers I, You're gonna have surfing in Tahiti.
It's going to be a phenomenal backdrop to be able
to tell the story. And I think in our country
and probably the world, the Olympics is that one thing
that kind of brings us all together. So whether you're
(27:09):
a Detroit Lion or Bills fan doesn't matter. We're all
fans of the Olympics and the US team.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
As we get to the Olympics, Amy, can you talk
about what I know Netflix has gone to market with
its kind of a different fashion and has different metrics.
Can you talk about what is important to Netflix and
how they've been received by Madison.
Speaker 8 (27:29):
Yeah. Sure, Look, I think we're very fortunate to be
able to kind of take a long term perspective on this,
right so we've been very vocal that's sort of member
choice and member experience is very important to us. So
scaling our business is absolutely our biggest priority right now,
but we want to make sure that we're doing that
(27:50):
in a meaningful way for the member. So to your point, yes,
we have made the choice on sort of ad loads
that we will have a lighter ad load experience and
We're all about we know there's a lot of work
to do on our side, but we're all about learning
and iterating and working with our advertising partners to figure
out how do we grow this business in a meaningful way.
How do we keep our members engage, How do we
(28:12):
keep the focus on the content because we think we
bring a lot of great content to the platform, and
how can we just continue to uh to learn and
grow off of that experience.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Andy Wallenstein did a one on one with Reddit chief
Steve Huffman. Huffman outline growth plans for the brand that
is more than just a website but not quite a
social media network. Here, Huffman explains how Reddit is pursuing
growth through e commerce.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
We're this recommendation centric, contextual, relevance centric strategy. How does
this play in this world that we're in now in
terms of this, uh the demise of the cookie era,
Does it have a special place there?
Speaker 9 (28:56):
Absolutely.
Speaker 10 (28:57):
The idea is if you're using con text to make
those connections to do the targeting, you don't need cookies
and so on Reddit, we target with first party data.
When you're on we see your behavior on Reddit, and
we use that so we don't have to cookie you
all over the internet and watch what you're browsing and
reading and searching for all of those things. It's your
(29:18):
explicitly expressed interests on Reddit and so I think you
know that the cookie transition that the industry is going
to go through, it's it's you know, it presents some challenges,
but I think the platforms that will do best through
that will be the ones that rely on on first
party data, and we're one of those.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Speaking of e commerce, one of the most interesting sessions
for me was Todd spangler sit down with talk Shop
Live founder and CEO Brian Moore more confidently declared that
the future of retail is media. I think he's right.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
You told me that you created branded content unit last
year and you're working with companies like never Experimount to
do shoppable series, Yeah, as well as Walmart Connect. I
think is in your program? Yeah, what does that look like?
How is that different from the sort of talent led.
Speaker 11 (30:11):
So the talent led, you know, our gateway categories were
books and music. People are coming on. They were selling
between three and nine times their online preorders right then.
When we started working with the retailers and really driving
products and really driving you know, you know, affinity for
brand connection, brand awareness, brand loyalty, and as as these
(30:32):
advertisers started, you know, driving into retail media and investing
in retail media, the next step was how are you
creating the actual experience behind that? And that's where what
we've done by you know, our branded content division has
been exploding over the past year, right, because we service
all of these retailers and these brands in a way
(30:54):
which is really making them content creators, you know, creating
content like I think I was reading some thing on
LinkedIn the other day from Todd Kaplan, CMO of Pepsi, right,
and he was talking about how it's so critical now
right to break through the noise with true content. And
I think as we look to the future, you know,
you as someone that covers digital but also works in media,
when you look at the future of retail as media
(31:17):
and you start to think of like, Okay, in a
few years, retailers will be having their own programming. You know,
people will be going there to watch a cooking show
and shop from the cooking show right there, but also
distributed everywhere.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
So your model, I mean, it's not stovepiped where you
do fulfillment and order transaction processing. You can do that,
We can do that.
Speaker 11 (31:39):
And well, the thing is with Talkshop Live, we're integrated
with our retail pinners, so every product available at those
retailers can be available within his talkshop.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Lib Todd also spoke with TikTok comedy star Linda Dong.
Here she explains how her seventeen point seven million followers
and counting help her turn TikTok videos into cold heart,
hard cash.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
So, so you tell me how do you approach brand deals?
And just to let the audience know, there's a link
in your TikTok Bioddominoes, which is which is a paid
sponsorship right? Yes, okay, yeah?
Speaker 12 (32:12):
With brand deals, I am under a management click Now
we've been together for nine years and so with any
business or brands, they kind of come to them and
they facilitate the whole branding and whatnot.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
And that's and that's where you generate your income, right
through those kinds of deals. What what kinds of deals
do you turn down? Or what are off brand? Have
you turned any down?
Speaker 1 (32:35):
I have?
Speaker 12 (32:38):
I'm trying to how do I like, what where do
I say it?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
So it's like if it's if it's inauthentic.
Speaker 12 (32:44):
Yeah, just anything risky.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Oh.
Speaker 12 (32:46):
I'm like, no, I don't know if I could do
that for my audience because I have I have a
young audience as well. I don't want to like have
anything to I don't know, make them feel uncomfortable. Yeah,
and I'm being being very but I don't want to,
like to say too much.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
Audrey steered a panel of marketing mavens, who also weighed
in on what it takes to build a brand from scratch.
These days, we'll hear from Mike Stein, executive VP and
head of Television and Audio for Kevin Hart's production company Heartbeat.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
We're basically living in an era of unlimited content choice,
and so my question would be, is it possible anymore
for any content to be created that reaches a broad
audience or that you know, you know, automatically achieves that
when it's released, or alternatively, how could you see that
(33:37):
niche content becomes a bigger a bigger possibility in the future.
Speaker 13 (33:43):
I mean, look, I think it's important to do both,
you know. With Heartbeat, you know, we obviously strive for
the broadest, you know, possible audience. In a lot of cases,
you know, we got Lift coming out on Netflix, you
know this week. That's you know, hopefully going to be
a very big global hit. Right at the same time,
we produce a show called Dave raph Facts, which you
know has been incredibly successful, a ton of critical acclaim,
(34:04):
does extremely well for Effects, extremely well for Hulu. You know,
that is a fairly niche show, but it hits that
audience in.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Such a way that it really resonates.
Speaker 13 (34:12):
And so I think, you know, across the board, as
you know, the audience has become more disperse, you know,
I think it's important to kind of like play on
both sides of that spectrum.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Our keynote speaker this time around was someone I have
known for a long time, Roku Entertainment President, Charlie Collier.
I asked him to give the elevator pitch for why
Roku stands out in a sea of streaming options.
Speaker 9 (34:35):
Here's the deal. If you turn on your television, here
go with me and say you believe television now is
an experience. It's not just you turn on your TV
and go to your show or go to that network.
Actually you mentioned Food network. In the world of cable,
there was only enough bandwidth for one food network. So
once you made basic cable, think about how easy it
was to market a brand. In the world of basic cable,
(34:56):
there was only one food network. So guess what food network? Well,
was the one or Home and Garden or ESPN. In
the world of the Internet, there's no bandwidth constraints. So
as I showed you, our job is to if you
want to watch Hot Ones, which I did, and somehow
it knew I got to go watch the Pete Pete
Davidson episode of Hot Hot Ones and it was sitting
(35:17):
next to I was watching Next Level Chef, which is
Gordon Ramsay, and it said do you want to continue
watching her do this? And so all of a sudden,
it's an event for me as the viewer to go
find the shows I want and it could sit next
to We have a show coming up. We announced it
today you all fast It's called what it's called Chain,
and it's it's really exciting production. Think about this in
(35:41):
the context of what we just showed. So Chain, which
is produced by a company. Guys sitting over there, Davis
and Kraft bj Novak from the office is behind Chain,
And think about this. We all have our favorite fast
food chains imagine if they took your favorite dish from
your favorite fast food chain and put it in the
hands of a world class chef, what would do with it?
And these guys, because pop culture is everything, it doesn't
(36:04):
just happen on the show. Chain fest which you referred to,
became a who's who events. So there was John Legend
and Christy Tiegan, and there was you know, Chris Pratt,
and they were all sampling the dishes of Tim Hollingsworth
and who yeah, who used to work at French Laundry.
And he's putting you know, maple bacon on a donut.
(36:24):
It's really it's pretty great.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
There you have it, listeners, I hope you enjoyed this
quick tour of Varieties CEES Entertainment Summit as much as
we loved hosting it. Our thanks to all of our
panel participants and the sponsors who made the day possible
the Trade Desk, Amazon Ads, Talk Shop Live, Deloitte, e Y,
Nagra and Samsung Ads. And thank you as ever for
(36:56):
tuning in to Variety's strictly business
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