Unlocking the Potential of Creator Networks

[00:00:00] Nilla: But once the Internet becomes infiltrated with that content, all of a sudden, the only way to compete is just a volume game, and it's pumping out as much of that content to basically become the one that captures as much share of attention because that's what the algorithms prioritize.

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[00:01:21] Speaker3: Go.pietrastudio.com/futurecommerce.

[00:01:31] Brian: Hello, [00:01:30] and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Brian.

[00:01:36] Phillip: I'm Philip. And, Brian, kiss me at the intersection of culture and commerce. That's what

[00:01:41] Speaker3: I need to do.

[00:01:42] Brian: Right. That's, uh, we need, like, an apron that says that. I feel like that would be

[00:01:49] Phillip: You know what? Let's make an apron.

[00:01:51] Brian: I love merch. If it's, like, a really nice, like, uh, I don't know. I I we I really want a leather apron [00:02:00] that says that. I feel like a really nice

[00:02:01] Phillip: Leather apron. A leather aprons have a whole different connotation in my mind. Uh, you know, uh, Claire Saffitz, actually you wanna talk about, like, culture and commerce. Claire Saffitz, uh, formerly Bon Appetit, that sort of, like, media brand. Wow. They fell off big. Uh, but she did a collab not too long ago with Alex Mill, which is, uh, mix Mickey Drexler's son's brand, and did, like, this rad apron collab. I think we need more of that in the More apron collabs. [00:02:30] We need more apron collabs.

[00:02:31] Brian: What it comes down to. You know what? Aprons should be the new merch. That's what I think.

[00:02:36] Phillip: I love it. I love this, uh, for the futurist cookbook type among us, uh, to to make a prior reference. Anyway, uh, speaking of culture, commerce, media, uh, today, we have a very special guest, friend of the pod back again. The biggie. I can't believe it's been way too long since we've had her on. Also to, uh, give us a little bit of an update on [00:03:00] her career arc, uh, after her time at BuzzFeed. And maybe, uh, Brian, if we can call her, uh, ask her to, um, what's the word, pay penance for the sins of all media. Uh, no. I'm just kidding. But, uh, we can we can talk a little bit about the evolving narratives

[00:03:17] Brian: In media.

[00:03:17] Speaker3: Where you,

[00:03:18] Brian: Like, have to beat yourself on the back? Oh, flagellation. Yeah. There you go.

[00:03:22] Speaker3: We're not gonna we're not gonna

[00:03:22] Phillip: Do no. No. No. We would never do that. Uh, but we we are welcoming our very good friend. Uh, welcome back to the show, Nila Ali, formerly [00:03:30] of BuzzFeed. And then you you have

[00:03:32] Brian: You've been

[00:03:33] Phillip: On your own arc for the longest time. Welcome back to the show. We haven't talked in ages.

[00:03:37] Nilla: Thank you so much for having me. I thought you're gonna say speaking of aprons, we have Mila Ali on the show.

[00:03:43] Phillip: Speaking of aprons. Not even. What have you been up to?

[00:03:48] Nilla: I've been up to so much. So as you said, I was at BuzzFeed for five and a half years leading their commerce business. Towards the end of the time, I was leading the retail sales organization, um, and then I actually left to join a start up, [00:04:00] uh, focused on building creator tech. So that was completely new world, learned about all things, creator, social media, just different forms of content.

[00:04:09] Phillip: Sure.

[00:04:10] Nilla: Uh, was there for 2 years. We built a great product. As things go with the, uh, VC backed start up space, our funding structure changed, and, um, I had to kinda move on. Learned a lot from the experience. But in that time, realized that there's, like, a massive opportunity with creators that I do think is still a lot of untapped potential. [00:04:30] Um, so I've basically now focused on building out a a content network, working with a smaller group of really, like, kind of premium creators, still working with some publishers. And I'd say I'm on, like, a discovery phase of my journey. I think we all see it. Like, media is going through, for better or worse, a revival. I don't know if that's even the right word. Yeah. Um, so I frankly don't know what's gonna happen next. So I'm really taking this time to, like, work with as many creators as possible, work with publishers, even work on the brand [00:05:00] side to start developing, like, the thesis of what's next in all things commerce. And part of me thinks it's not very, um, positive or optimistic, but I think sometimes with challenges come a lot of opportunities. So so, yeah, that is where I'm at. It's been 4 crazy years.

[00:05:16] Phillip: Wow. And, I mean, in in many respects. Brian, there's a lot of narratives from my arc of my career. When I first started in the agency space in the commerce ecosystem, [00:05:30] this was the thesis. It was like commerce was gonna save media. Um, I did a lot of work early on with, uh, Hurst, uh, built the Harper's Bazaar experience in that whole marketplace. I did work with Refinery 29. Like, the content to commerce era was like a good decade. But I don't know. Nila, was it more in was it was it narrative? Or I think you were doing, like, real transformational work, and you you yourself built a pretty huge business, uh, [00:06:00] over there at BuzzFeed.

[00:06:02] Nilla: Yeah. I mean, I've as you said, the last decade has been transformational for content to commerce for media. I started at Time Inc. And Mhmm. When I started at Time Inc, there was frankly, like, very few publishers, maybe Gizmodo and Gokber at the time doing commerce through their content. And in those 10 years as a Time Inc, then I moved to BuzzFeed. What commerce meant for content really evolved. Initially, it was just links and content. It was a lot of skim links, kind of a passive strategy, no [00:06:30] active optimization. We then went to, like, building out commerce editorial teams dedicated to creating content around shopping. Mhmm. Data teams behind those editors really helping them understand what's working. At BuzzFeed, we had the opportunity to do more, like, content innovation where we had native check or not even native checkout, but actually through the Tasty app with Walmart, you could buy groceries as you were shopping for browsing recipes, which that was, like, one of my favorite projects, um, I have worked on. We're testing live [00:07:00] shopping. We did do date of checkout for certain shopping pieces of content. So a lot of innovation testing and, like, the content digital experience itself. And, yeah, a lot of learnings is, like, what does and doesn't work. A lot of learnings around why media companies are and aren't operationally set up to do this effectively. But I think it was, like, a really exciting 10 years, but I also think there's a lot of larger headwinds that affected not just commerce, but broader media. Obviously, there will be lots of discussion for this [00:07:30] podcast. Um, but, yeah, needless to say, a lot of work in the commerce space.

[00:07:35] Brian: Yeah. And I think, you know, forgive my uneducated point of view here, but it feels like what what happened is that there were certain things you could measure in that world. Right? There were certain things you could measure, but perhaps those things that you could measure weren't the actual things that you should have been measuring. And my my, like, 10,000 foot, like, quick summary level of, like, what happened is that bean counters [00:08:00] got involved, found the thing that they could glom onto and measure, and then optimized everything in the whole business towards that that thing that they could measure, And Being counted. Wrong thing.

[00:08:11] Phillip: That's a loving phrase. Tell us how you really feel.

[00:08:15] Brian: No. I I I, like, I hate this. I think this happens in so many businesses when someone who thinks that, you know, they're who wants to, uh, prove out a a point, like, grabs grabs data that they feel like [00:08:30] is, like, something that they can measure and, like, hold on to and call firm, but it's the wrong thing. Gerrymandered.

[00:08:36] Phillip: Gerrymandered. It's not even gerrymandered.

[00:08:40] Brian: It's the only data available. This is the, like, when it's the only, like, really good piece of date like, trackable piece of data or, like, that's the the thing that their software outputs or the thing that they can, you know, they can easily measure, that's gonna be the thing that they use as the way to drive, like, where the dollars go. [00:09:00] And if you're measuring the wrong thing, that can be disastrous.

[00:09:04] Phillip: Well, you can't measure love, Brian.

[00:09:06] Brian: Yeah. Or can you?

[00:09:09] Phillip: Nila, what say you?

[00:09:11] Nilla: I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think it's funny because the arc of commerce to me is reflective of the arc of society, which sounds really deep and a little maybe too negative, but I think it's just like we're feeling the strains of capitalism where it was, like, a really great idea. We were building really awesome content for an audience who wanted it, but we [00:09:30] wanted to just juice it as much as possible in a way that over optimized something that actually had potential. And to your point, like, measurement is a huge part of that problem. In that, it was an effective strategy. It was generating revenue at companies like BuzzFeed. It was also generating revenue in other areas and as tends to be the problem in large organizations, the direct correlation between what commerce was driving in terms of things like securing larger strategic partnerships or generating more traffic to the site that was ultimately [00:10:00] monetized through things like programmatic ads. Like, it was one part of the business that was generating value in other parts of the organization, but there wasn't always that direct correlation between the two, uh, size of the organization. So I think measurement from, like, internally challenges, but also then for retailers, like, they were seeing the value of content, obviously, compensating create or publishers do things like commission on sales that they were generating, but doing it with broken attribution models [00:10:30] like last click. It's like if you're being featured

[00:10:32] Speaker3: Right.

[00:10:33] Nilla: Through a publisher, people are seeing this content, they're ultimately shopping from the brand. You know that you're generating brand awareness, but you're only rewarding a publisher if, like, someone clicked on the link and then was, like, the last click before they bought something. Totally. It's just it's the biggest challenge in all this, I think, is, like, not seeing the full picture of value that's generated, um, which, again, doesn't make it a viable business, um, both, like, to sell internally within an organization, but also in terms of the partnerships that are needed [00:11:00] to to keep the business going.

[00:11:02] Phillip: So I don't wanna well, this is my bag is over spiritualizing everything. So here we go. But when you think about, like, the capital models, right, like, this is not the content arc the content to commerce arc can't be something that plays out over 10 or 15 years. Right? If if if a certain growth metric wasn't the, uh, uh, it didn't have to prove out in a certain time frame and you could just build content that people love, [00:11:30] maybe it gets there over a longer period of time. But that is not what the capital model dictates. At the end of the day, like, it kinda all comes down to how much capital did you take, in what time frame, and in what era, and that is your outcome. You can't you like, that is almost every business falls prey to those three factors is you have most freedom when you've not taken any capital, but you have you are exposed to a slower time [00:12:00] frame for growth maybe over centuries. Like, it's a and this is the thing I think gets lost a lot, especially when we're in a very heavily venture backed ecosystem in the commerce space where a lot of technology is built on, you know, businesses whose capital models demand a certain kind of scale of growth at a certain time frame. What like, is that do you think the ultimate decider of things like goals, outcomes, investments, teams? Like, what is or am I being a little too

[00:12:29] Brian: In public [00:12:30] markets, they're included in this. Right. Right.

[00:12:32] Nilla: I mean, I think it's exactly that of time span, but even I think what what is the potential for growth beyond a certain scale? Like, I think that is the challenges. Buzzfeed's a great example. We built the commerce business. We were generating $500,000,000 in sales for retail partners. Like, that's a lot of volume and obviously translated to a meaningful business for the company, but there's only so much traffic a media company has. So scaling beyond that, that's when you start to straighten the business because you're having to [00:13:00] buy traffic Mhmm. Or the quality of traffic starts to diminish. Like, I think there's just certain business all businesses have, like, constraints that you have to operate within, and I think the venture backed model assumes hockey stick growth forever or until a certain point. So I think that's the bigger challenge is, like, scaling within a time frame is, in some cases, realistic, assuming you're, like, operating within, uh, like, realistic, uh, operating within realistic expectations.

[00:13:29] Speaker3: Mhmm. [00:13:30]

[00:13:30] Nilla: But then there's, like, a point of scale that has diminishing returns. And from my perspective, that's where the business has to pivot, where if you're focusing on generating scale for a long time, once you hit that scale, okay, now let's focus on, like, building more audience loyalty or going deeper with the customers that we have, in which case from every view that you're getting, you can generate more return. And I think that's oftentimes where businesses struggle is, like, the scale part is easy. You kind of do the same thing on autopilot. It [00:14:00] really pays off. But then once the business dynamic shift, that requires a completely different skill set and different teams, and it requires risk. And I think what happened in media is risk requires failing a bunch of times to understand, like, what's an effective strategy. Mhmm. And when the business is under so much pressure, when it becomes a public company, when traffic is down, when social media algorithms are changing, if you test a strategy and it doesn't work for a month, everyone's like, that's never gonna work again. We have to stop. But [00:14:30] from from my perspective to build an effective strategy, like, you gotta keep going. And if you have a hunch, like, the time span to prove what is the next strategy requires, like, patience and learning, and you can't speed up that process. So I think that is a lot of the challenge with media is larger industry headwinds is what media companies face that were outside of commerce. It required a very different approach to a business that was successful, but I think there wasn't as much appetite to kind of weather the storm [00:15:00] and try a different approach. And I think doing the same thing in a different environment is not gonna have the same payoff, and that's a lot of what caused the demise. There's so

[00:15:08] Brian: Many ways I wanna go with that. I think you're you're dead on. One one way I'm I'm gonna take this, but I I there's so many other things I wanna say, uh, is Just

[00:15:16] Phillip: Say it, Brian. There's, like, an hour here.

[00:15:18] Speaker3: Just say

[00:15:18] Brian: It now. K. The I how does this affect the content itself? I think what you just talked about is, like, there's a huge danger in creating content [00:15:30] that performs in the here and the moment or here and now in in the moment, and and therefore, like, can prove out a 30 day, like, window of return. Um, and, like, uh, friend of the pod and, uh, writer, uh, Luke Burgess talks about thick desires versus thin desires, and, uh, it seems like and this is, again, just my my take. I think the type of content that started to get generated as a result of that cycle is that a whole bunch of content [00:16:00] that would, like, be candy, uh, and people would just burn through it really fast and got really used to content in a specific style and a specific way, but really, it was not, uh, a, like, ongoing. Like you mentioned, like, you have to retool for loyalty in the future, but if you've built your whole system on just, like, dopamine hits, uh, that result in, like, very quick cycle and churn on what someone's engaged with, seems like there's [00:16:30] no possible way to flip to, like, a more loyal, a more risky cycle in the types in terms of, like, what you're saying and what the content actually is.

[00:16:40] Nilla: Totally. I think, like, the benefit and pitfall of the Internet is everyone can see what's working, and they the barrier to entry to replicate it is very low. So I think it's very easy for great things to become quickly commoditized. And I think that's what happened with a lot of the shopping content is, like, these listicle roundups with reviews. Like, [00:17:00] the format is very repeatable, and any other publisher could do it, any other small creator or someone could spin up a website and replicate the same sort of content. So when BuzzFeed was doing it early days, it was very novel. You weren't really seeing a lot of this content. It resonated a lot with audiences because it is great content. Like, our writers did take a lot of time scouring the best very bizarre product on Amazon that people actually wanted. But once the Internet becomes infiltrated with that content, all of a sudden, the only way to compete is just a volume [00:17:30] game, and it's pumping out as much of that content to basically become the one that captures as much share of attention because that's what the algorithms prioritize. So I couldn't agree more that it's like it started it's funny because what the content is today was actually the same content it was when BuzzFeed kind of started this trend. And at that time, I would argue it was quality content. Like, I actually do think it was different and something that the audience wanted. But I think as it's become commoditized, the only way to compete [00:18:00] is a volume game, and that's where the quality started to finish.

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[00:18:57] Brian: Right. Which means that in media, you constantly have to be involving, [00:19:00] like, format and content if you wanna remain in the forefront of, like, what what content's actually compelling and interesting and and important in people's lives, um, which is hard. It's hard.

[00:19:12] Phillip: Audience capture, though, when you get to a certain scale, the audience demands a certain thing of you and seeing a disengagement as you try to, like, modernize or pivot as we've seen a lot of these media brands do, especially, like, with the redesigns. I think that I I always reference is, um, you know, the the sort of, like, redesign of the [00:19:30] blog uh, style and, um, you know, the verge had this, uh, wild wackadoo redesign last year that got largely panned. It's funny. A year later, YouTube has a very similar redesign on on the horizon. It's putting comments, uh, above the headline. Um, I think that that's like, you kinda have to take a couple steps forward to take a step back and play a longer game, which is really hard to do in a data driven business. Also hard, Nila, let's let's shift to the creator conversation. You're [00:20:00] competing with the entirety of of, like, in the ingenuity of solo creators now who can also tap into a certain type of a scale. And in mass, they're all achieving way more, uh, at volume than any one brand, you know, maybe has a loyalty, uh, and owned audience around. And so how does that change the calculus a little bit? Because I I know you went on the creator arc.

[00:20:24] Nilla: Totally. I mean, I was starting to see that BuzzFeed where share of attention on social is, like, [00:20:30] majority taken up by creators. And I think it comes down to the quality of their content is much higher than the

[00:20:37] Speaker3: Quality of content that publishers are producing. And I think that has

[00:20:37] Nilla: To do with, like, any one And I think that has

[00:20:39] Speaker3: To do with, like, any

[00:20:39] Nilla: One person. Like, the volume game for an individual creator, I think, is tough, and, obviously, the algorithm doesn't really reward that. So they're spending a lot more time creating, like, one really great TikTok video that goes out, and their expectations around scale, I think, were different than publishers, and ironically, they eclipse publishers. [00:21:00] So I think that, like, says a lot about how effective that strategy can be. And Brian alluded to this in our earlier discussion, but Substack has been a platform that I've been watching because in my last startup, as we were powering commerce links for creators across all platforms, I frankly could not believe the volume of transactions that were coming out of Substack. Wow.

[00:21:21] Speaker3: And when

[00:21:21] Nilla: You look at the content that's generating sales, it's like super, super long form, uh, newsletters that just have a ton [00:21:30] of hyperlinks, sometimes, like, 25, 30 outfits that are shopped out with different product recommendations. Like, putting together that piece of content takes a full week. Most publishers aren't willing to put the time in to create that level of content, but for a creator, creating 1 substack with that much thought generates a meaningful enough revenue that it's, like, a meaningful business for them. But for for a publisher, they'd, like, laugh at the numbers. Like, they

[00:21:53] Phillip: Think it's

[00:21:54] Nilla: Too small scale. Um, so yeah. So I think creators are I think creators are winning [00:22:00] partially because the platforms wanted them to. Like, I think it's easier to be a platform that has, you know, platforms wanted them to. Like, I think it's easier to be a platform that has, like, infinite amount of content being generated, so you wanna reward that. And the best way to do that

[00:22:05] Speaker3: Is open it up to the world. Mhmm.

[00:22:06] Nilla: Um, but I also think creators their to the world. Mhmm. Um, but I also think creators, their concept of scale is different than a publisher, so they take more creative liberties in the content they're creating, and they spend more time on each piece of content. And that ultimately rewarded them in a way that actually eclipse the sort of traffic and engagement that publishers are receiving. I also the last thing [00:22:30] I'll say is I think not necessarily the case for BuzzFeed, but I think for so many publishers, their businesses were just built to optimize for Google, which is why all publisher content literally looks the same. Like, I don't even notice articles anymore because I'm like, okay. Same exact thing, just a different banner. So, yeah, I think it's just like the pitfalls of trying to optimize for platforms.

[00:22:51] Phillip: Isn't that a as as, like, the the legacy nature of the I legacy with air quotes if you're not watching on the YouTube feed. But, like, the [00:23:00] legacy nature of a business means that you kinda have to grow into or you capture a lot of attention in a specific channel, but now you have to become, like, sort of omnichannel or omnimodal. Like, you have to be everywhere where attention is in order to keep the growth coming. And that I don't know that a Substack creator is thinking like that necessarily. They might be creating another platforms, but that's they're investing very heavily in one. Um, that's why I think that there's a at some point, a lot [00:23:30] of folks will get very you said we have a lot of, like, TikTok burnout and Instagram burnout. I think at some point, this division of labor has to, like, aggregate, reaggregate into the modern media business, which is pulling together a bunch of these creators at scale. And maybe every was a little too early. Maybe there's, like, examples of this that we'll see coming in the future. Um, but, you know, we do this all all day every day at future commerce. It's exhausting. And I don't know how you can run an events business, uh, [00:24:00] a digital products business, digital media, or always on media, uh, in audio and video, written word, continue to have insights, build a professional network, have ad products. Like, it's

[00:24:12] Brian: And make sure you stay monetized the whole way through. I think that's the other thing.

[00:24:16] Phillip: That's why everybody presses the capital button. I I that's it's it's it seems easier, especially in the early days. Like, we have the unfair advantage. It's a interesting side journey. We were moonlighting for, [00:24:30] like, 8 years to get this thing to where it is. Maybe that's the new normal. I don't know. Maybe that's what all the sub stackers are doing. You know?

[00:24:38] Nilla: I mean, I couldn't like, to me, I think the content space will go through the same cycle that we went from, like, cable to subscription TV back to, like, bundling because there's too many options. Because it's like the flip side of the coin is I do think creators struggle with scaling their audience beyond the initial growth. Like, so many of the platforms prioritize getting a creator from, like, 0 to a100. And then after that, [00:25:00] they kinda dump them and focus on the next scaling creator. So, one, I'm very passionate about creators not heavily relying on one channel exactly as you said. That was a lot of the kind of thesis of the last startup was helping creators launch their own platform where they could grow their audience, like, kind of whether any changes in algorithm and algorithms and use social more as like a marketing channel versus a place Mhmm. To build their entire business because we've all seen that Instagram, you wake up one day, everything changes, you're [00:25:30] getting fed different content. I think it's a great platform, but to solely build your business in one place, we all know there's, like, a lot of risk that comes with that. But even if you launch your own platform, there's going to be a constraint in scale. So I think this concept of, like, content networks backed by, like, really great content creators is what I think the future will hold, which frankly is not that different than, like, print magazines and having contributing writers that had their own following.

[00:25:56] Nilla: But I think building these almost, like, content banners that there's contributing [00:26:00] creators to, I think, allows for that scale that you were talking about of how do you operationalize that as a business, how do you have a sales team and, like, the tech team to power the experiences. Um, but I think what media will have to come to terms with is how do you compensate those creators fairly. That's something else that I've realized, like running a sales team, working within a media organization. Like, companies pay sellers a lot of money. They pay content creators, frankly, nothing. And media organizations [00:26:30] cannot exist without content creators, so I think those dynamics should be completely shifted. Like, if you had an amazing media organization with great content, in theory, it should sell itself. Obviously, I don't wanna minimize a seller's job like I was a seller, but I just I think we're putting our dollars in the wrong place, and I think, hopefully, the future looks like better incentivizing the content creators because that's how I think content will be able to prevail.

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[00:27:55] Brian: Wow. Hold on. So are you saying that creative collectives [00:28:00] in the future, creative groups will look more like law law firms than they will technology companies? Because that's what I think I I just heard you say, where, like, effectively, it's gonna be a bunch of, like, really high performing creators who sort of have to run a book of business and, like, their reputation and their content will drive that business by itself. Is that that Yeah.

[00:28:27] Nilla: I love that. I think you put it better than I did. [00:28:30] And I it's like that concept exists to some extent. Obviously, there's creator agencies that represent talent. The challenge I found in that space is a lot of those agents don't have a media mindset. Like, they're literally just talent agents, and they monetize them through brand deals. And that's, like, as far as the kind of strategic, uh, thought goes around how to grow a creator's business. So it's almost exactly what you said, that model, but I think what's going to make it successful is having someone who understands how to how a media business should operate. [00:29:00] And to me, a creator should be making money from subscriptions and brand deals and sponsorships and affiliate. Like, it should be a diversified revenue model or revenue mix in the way that a media company is, but that requires them having the operational pipes to do so.

[00:29:14] Brian: One of the things that's I see as a challenge to some of that, and I think those deals can help drive, like, more audience, is, like, sometimes you have to remonetize the same audience over and over and over, and that can get taxing. Um, and so I like [00:29:30] taxing on both the creator and on their audience. Do you think that there's, like, inherent, like, limitation as a result of having to remonetize the same people?

[00:29:42] Nilla: I mean, I think, obviously, there's, uh, diminishing returns. I think the again, like, you see it with Substack. It's like these creators are monetizing through subscription and set, like, a portion of their revenues coming from the paid, uh, the newsletters they have behind [00:30:00] a paywall. But then those newsletters with the paywall also have affiliate links, and they're generating revenue from any transactions that are happening. And then if you think about it, the advertising space or advertising industry isn't, like, category specific. Like, you can monetize fashion and beauty and food and travel. And so many of these creators and their audiences are multifaceted. That, yes, I do think there's, like, a point of, like, monetization fatigue. And I do think that's where, at some point, monetization fatigue. And I do think that's where at some point scaling beyond your current audience is important. But [00:30:30] I think that's no different than the challenges that media companies have had. And I think Yeah. There's enough revenue to go around. It's just you have to be strategic about building your audience and content in a way that can tap into each of those different revenue buckets.

[00:30:44] Phillip: But that's it's yeah. This is, uh, it's funny because it feels like we're doing a post mortem on something that's still in the midst of dying. It's like in hospice. We're not we're not quite there yet. But I I think there's an interesting tie [00:31:00] into the narrative around livestream because it you know, well, you can monetize anything. But it turns out there's only 2 or 3 categories that really do well with livestreaming. And uh, absent this sort of gen alpha, you know, nativity to that channel, I do see, like, a lot of weird gambling behavior, like opening Pokemon blind boxes on live streams for kids dropping, you know, digital coins. I think that's a weird dynamic. That's a little bit of an outlier. But, hey, [00:31:30] apparel, fashion, beauty, wellness, these things seem to do really well on things like live streaming. Everything else isn't the panacea that we were promised. Maybe. I don't know. What what's your perspective on that?

[00:31:43] Nilla: I think it all like, live streaming is an interesting one because, obviously, we tested it a ton, and it goes back to my earlier comment of I don't think you're gonna figure out live streaming in a quarter. Like, it's just not gonna happen. I think it's a many year venture to understand the content and the category and the distribution that would [00:32:00] make it an effective strategy. I totally understand from some media companies, you just don't have the luxury of time or money to solve kind of these new areas of innovation. I personally think relative to the overall spend of a media organization, investing in innovation is always the right answer. Like, brands love it. You potentially are unlocking something that wasn't like a business in the past. Like, I think there's benefit. But so from my own experience, like, live shopping didn't significantly move the needle, [00:32:30] but we were starting to see what things are effective. Like, live shopping doesn't really make sense unless there's a sense of urgency. So if it's a product that's gonna sell out or if there's a product that has a deal, the likelihood of someone feeling like they have to convert on it is a lot higher.

[00:32:44] Nilla: Or some products or categories are just not that great for impulse buying because you don't wanna buy something that comes in in a size that doesn't fit yours. And if you like, doesn't fit you and if you can't return it, like, that's a big risk. So I think it's like, yes. I do believe that not [00:33:00] all content is created equally and all like, depending on what you're selling and how you're selling it, the medium matters. Like, sometimes written form is best, sometimes video is best, sometimes live streaming is best. Um, so I think just because something doesn't apply to all categories or product doesn't make it a bad medium. It just means it's not right for selling that thing. So, yeah, the I I'm so bullish on live shopping. I don't think it's gonna be the thing that changes the industry. I think that was also the big miss as everyone thought media was gonna, like, turn [00:33:30] around and all of a sudden become this huge growth business because of live shopping. I think that's mismatched expectation, but I think it's an interesting medium. I don't think anyone's really cracked how to do it effectively at scale and do it, like, consistently.

[00:33:44] Brian: Yeah. I think another thing you you said this earlier, and I wanted to get into it, but you said sometimes things don't work in a specific context. And when you try to transfer context, uh, maybe they will work, maybe they won't. But, like, contextually, um, we saw a lot of, like, success with this in China, and that [00:34:00] context that Philip always says, like, it didn't necessarily translate to the US in the way that we thought it would. That doesn't mean it won't in the future at some point, and then like you said, it doesn't mean that it won't in specific context and specific for specific mediums, for specific products in specific ways, but certainly not, uh, like, the sort of savior of of commerce and media together. Totally.

[00:34:22] Phillip: The Has anything ever.

[00:34:24] Brian: Has anything ever. I well, future commerce.

[00:34:28] Nilla: Well, one thing too. Sorry to interrupt [00:34:30] you. But as as I said this, I was like, wait. Like, also live shopping. Like, HSN and QVC were, like, one of the largest, like, content networks and a really effective medium for shopping. So that's always ironic too is, like, we've had versions of this that have worked in the past. Totally. I think translating it to a new digital or young audience has been a challenge. Um, but, again, it's like, yes, obviously, the scale in in China is something that

[00:34:55] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:34:56] Nilla: The US markets aspire to get to. But I think we have nuggets [00:35:00] of proof points that it can be effective if there is, like, the right format to make it work.

[00:35:06] Phillip: Yeah. I think that's the interesting narrative around like, there was definitely a time that I grew up in around, like, there's a specific kind of a person that is shopping on QVC or HSN that seems to be, like, a conspicuous consumer that is I don't know, kind of othered in some ways. Unless you're on Shark Tank, and your whole goal is [00:35:30] to try to get a deal with Laurie so you can be on QVC. Like, it wasn't necessarily seen as a, uh, uh, as the prestige place to be to to be shopping or to be found. It's like for people who are just, like, can't get enough of that kind of content, um, which is its own which, hey, maybe performance marketing is, like, purpose built for that sort of thing too in the modern era. Um, but, yeah, I think it's interesting.

[00:35:55] Brian: This is interesting. I I allow me to, like, go into the theory, like this [00:36:00] idea like, larger ideas there, but China in many ways was, uh, is like sort of lagging behind the US in terms of where it was in in, like, industrialization, and it may be it's odd. Uh, we hit a specific era in, like, shopping and, like, cultural connection to physical good at a specific time in media, which was TV. Um, but they may have hit that same cycle in our digital era and actually, Phil, to your point, like, maybe in [00:36:30] the next generation of shoppers, they'll look back on, like, the live stream shoppers as, like, and and sort of other other them as well. It's quite possible. Like, things change in cultures. That's that's how it works. Things evolve, and it's what used to be a really, like, cool way to shop or maybe not so cool way to shop, but a way that a lot of people did it. Change like, changes to it really, like, uh, not so cool, like a really chewy way to shop. Chewy. I just said

[00:36:59] Phillip: Chewy. [00:37:00] Oh my gosh.

[00:37:01] Brian: I pulled that in. I pulled it on purpose. Wow. Uh, and so I think the the the the these are cycles that meet the moment of communication and vibe and, like, people you know, like, if if you don't, uh, uh, if you aren't able to communicate in the language of the moment, then you're yeah. I think the the that that actually is the way to know what's gonna succeed is understanding, [00:37:30] like, what the language of the moment is, uh, and being able to speak in that language. I yeah.

[00:37:37] Phillip: Have the right partners maybe. Maybe that's where Mila's new venture comes in. Um, last I'll say about this too is we like, we're really bad at self identifying behavior. Um, for instance, my kids the other day called one of their friends. She's a total iPad kid. And I'm like, say what? I was like, you were an iPad kid. [00:38:00] Like, what are you talking about? You grew up with an iPad in your your hand too. And you're like, not us. Not us. Yeah. You. Anyway, um, Mila. Yeah. Tell us about the the new venture. Tell us tell us a little bit about what your, uh, what maybe you helped solve in all of these, uh, binding webs.

[00:38:18] Nilla: Yeah. So like I said, I started working with creators during my last venture, and the idea was to help power, uh, creator owned platforms. And my goal was basically, I [00:38:30] think creators will be the next media companies, but in order for them to get there, they need their own platforms because, I mean, there's one so many limitations on social just in terms of the risk of not owning your audience. But beyond that, as we were talking about earlier, the medium through which content is presented has a big impact on conversion. So when I think about social, like, posting something on stories with one link, like, the chances of getting someone to convert or understand the context behind that product [00:39:00] is so limited. And one thing with Substack that I was realizing is, again, yes, these creators are doing a bunch of long form content, but, like, why that content works is because they're using that long form kind of inventory to explain, like, how do you style a product? What are alternatives? Why is this thing great? So to me, when I think of, like, why should a creator have their own platform, it's to create better content and content that has a higher chance of conversion. So like I said, the new agency is effectively like a I would like to call it a content [00:39:30] network. We have about 10 creators that we work with.

[00:39:32] Nilla: Some of them are actually publishers, and the idea is that we're helping them create more high conversion content. You continuing to use social as a place to, like, market and grow their audience, but making it really easy for advertisers to tap into this content network, monetize with these creators through affiliate, through brand partnership deals. Again, kind of replacing, frankly, the inventory that publishers used to have, um, being very discerning about who we work with. Like, from my perspective, [00:40:00] a creator that has the highest potential is, like, an expert in the category that they're speaking about. If like, one of our creators, her name's Amanda Murray. She's based in New York. She's a stylist, like, very prominent in the fashion space. We just launched a website for her. Her content, if you go on her website, is a mix of, like, she just interviewed Ashley Graham, and she's also doing, like, roundups of her favorite pieces. So intended to be, like, some not all content is built to drive conversion. Like, some content is just intended to be kind of an engagement driver to help her grow her audience, [00:40:30] but it creates another place for advertisers to work with her where it's not just limited to social and it's not limited to, like, one story post where only so much context can be shared.

[00:40:42] Brian: That's cool. That seems like it's it's a a really smart strategy, diversification.

[00:40:49] Phillip: Sounds like what we need. I don't know. It sounds like something we could use at

[00:40:52] Brian: Deepgram. Nila, do

[00:40:54] Phillip: You wanna work with us?

[00:40:55] Brian: You should

[00:40:55] Nilla: Work with us. Have a little more story.

[00:40:57] Phillip: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:59] Nilla: Definitely should talk to that. [00:41:00] No. I mean, like I said earlier, the agency is intended to be a way for, 1, like, I think it's a promising business in itself, but I also just think this industry is at the cusp of a lot of change, which I think we all know to be the case of just reading the news and experiencing it ourselves. So coming off of a start up, I think there's still opportunity and room to build solutions that better service the space, but frankly, I don't know what that looks like. I think there's a lot of risk that media face in [00:41:30] terms of, like, all things AI make me very nervous. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of positive use cases, but I think the negative strongly outweighs the positive, and I think media is gonna be an industry that feels it first. So I'm personally apprehensive to be like, this is the next thing to build because I think there's a lot of changes that are going to be happening in the next 1 to 5 years. So I think this is a good way to kind of see where the most obvious opportunities and risks are in the industry.

[00:41:59] Brian: Did you just say the industry [00:42:00] we're in is, like, really risky? I think that's what I just heard. It is.

[00:42:04] Nilla: And I think I'm a masochist because I love working in, like, difficult spaces.

[00:42:09] Speaker3: But,

[00:42:09] Nilla: Like, it's fun to solve problems, but I think it's hard to solve them when it's everything is kind of changing constantly. And it's but, like, I feel like in our space, both commerce and media, the 2 industries I love to operate in, I feel like since the pandemic, it's just we haven't had a year of stability. So

[00:42:26] Brian: That's true.

[00:42:27] Nilla: And I don't see that happening, frankly, um, in the coming years. [00:42:30]

[00:42:30] Brian: It's only gonna accelerate. I think you mentioned AI as as one of those things, and it I I think you said it would be more bad than good, like the risks outweigh the benefits. Um, I I and I see that. I definitely see that. I think there could be some really, like, crappy content that gets produced and but maybe that content will be easy to make, and we'll be able to focus

[00:42:52] Speaker3: On things.

[00:42:53] Phillip: We've had that. That's evergreen. Crappy content's evergreen. But Crappy

[00:42:57] Brian: Content's evergreen. But, like, smaller [00:43:00] teams will be able to make all the crappy content, and, like, maybe the creators will be able to focus on the things that matter to them more. Like, that's that's the hope, at least.

[00:43:12] Nilla: Well, my is I might not be able to articulate it as well as it is in my brain. But I think my issue with content and AI is, like, AI generated content right now has the potential to be good content because it's working off of decades of amazing content being [00:43:30] generated by humans who have expertise and who are being monetized in some way for the generation of their content. But as soon as we start to rely on AI generated content only, I think there's gonna be, like, a cliff of there's no more good content for AI to train against. And I'm a believer that, like, humans are the best producers of content because we experience life and, I mean, machines, maybe in the future, they'll be able to experience life in the way that we do. But I think I personally think, like, AI generated content will have a cliff of where that content [00:44:00] stops to be relevant, and that's when people will crave more human generated content. And maybe that's a good thing, and the industry will bounce back. Um, but that's my thesis is everyone will clamor to it for, like, a short term gain, and we're just gonna live in a world of awful content.

[00:44:14] Phillip: Agree. I agree with that. But I think it's it's easily filtered by creating enclaves of Yeah. Like, we we we like to talk about, like, curation. In reality, I think we we will wind up having some UI [00:44:30] standards in the same way that certain things have emerged in ecommerce. Like, we find certain patterns that will call out what is AI, what's not. We can put on our, like, rose colored glasses, pretend like everything's not AI. But I think there will be places that are, like, we do not allow AI generated content or imagery of any kind on this outlet, and that's what will make it special. We do it the hard way. And doing it the hard way is what some people want. That means, like, you're necessarily opting out of a certain type of a scale or frequency, and [00:45:00] you're you're trying to, like, yeah. Does everybody wanna scratch kick in kit does everyone want to eat from a scratch kitchen? Probably not. Right? The because things take longer and, like, you'd, uh, but that's that'll be a taste that I think some people develop. Yeah.

[00:45:18] Brian: It's a really good way to put it, Philip.

[00:45:20] Phillip: It's a new medium. I I think that the the AI piece is a new medium, and we don't really have the paradigm yet. We don't really know what it is.

[00:45:27] Brian: The narratives might look different too, like, eventually. [00:45:30]

[00:45:30] Phillip: Well, AI is a narrative right now just in every industry, and that's what's kind of propping up a lot of the the challenges that we all see is, like, well, maybe there's something on the horizon that gives us all, you know, the productivity boost or, um, things like existential dread. Yeah.

[00:45:45] Brian: One thing that I I I think I I realized about AI, and to your point, Mila, like, it there's a lot of there's a lot for it to, like, go through and and consume because there's a lot of human created content. I wonder if people realize the more [00:46:00] distinctive and long running, the the voices that they have like, the training data, like, more distinctive and long running those are, the better the output of the AI is. Like, I ran a little, like, blurb, uh, against my own voice recently, and what came out was pretty ridiculous. It was like a character character of of, like, of my voice, uh, and it was like but but I but I was actually better than, like, me trying to [00:46:30] run against a bunch of other things that I've tried to run AI against, and it was just it was it was interesting because there's a I have a lot of public writing that's, you know, got a pretty strong narrative to it. And so I think when you have those those training data, like that kind of training data, I I wonder publishers will you realize, like, we need a few human voices that are very, very strong that need to keep producing, and the rest of what we make [00:47:00] can run off of just a few extremely strong narratives.

[00:47:04] Nilla: Yes. Like junk in, junk out, basically. So as as long as publishers recognize that the quality of the input is as important as the quality of the output, I think there's a potential that it could lead to a better com or better media operation. I'm not so bullish that that's frankly how we'll end up operating.

[00:47:24] Speaker3: Yeah.

[00:47:25] Nilla: I think, like, the best parallel example is the food industry, which sounds like not [00:47:30] as relevant, but it's like fast food in theory was, like, amazing. It's quick. You can eat really like, it had a lot of benefits in terms of, like, efficiency and convenience, but the ultimate result was, like, really poor quality food that's making all of us sicker now. And in order to keep up the fast food industry and, like, the scale of production, our quality of food continued to be depleted. And, again, it's why when you travel to Europe, you feel amazing. When you come back to America, you're like, why do I feel bad and sluggish all the time? Like, I think that I think the world [00:48:00] operates with constraints, and I think so many of these industries are trying to break how the world's order should work. And I think it just results in, again, trashy outputs. And I think it's like if if these changes are inevitable and they have to happen, I'm a big believer in just, like, regulation could be a big solver of the potential problem. Um, but I think the pessimist in me, I just don't foresee us putting the right kind of constraints in place or guardrails, [00:48:30] but hopefully, that that's not the case.

[00:48:33] Phillip: Yeah. I I'd like to be optimistic about it too. Um, what's what we've seen in commerce and, you know, and it took 20 years to get there, but, uh, you know, the European Union and other sort of, uh, heavy regulatory regions tend to dictate the lowest common denominator of experience. So if you have something like GDPR, you wanna do if you wanna be a global business, you [00:49:00] wanna do business in Europe, you have to abide by the rules of the road for that. And maybe you don't. You've decided you don't want that. Too bad. Google now is gonna require that you have a cookie policy, and so you have to have the cookie policy. You don't want it? Too bad. You wanna be on the Internet? These are the rules of the road. And maybe these things kinda get upended a little bit where we are going to have less, uh, uh, what I what I've been calling sort of, like, monocultural experiences. Like, maybe I [00:49:30] don't see every website the same way everybody else does because I've decided that I don't want to opt into the monocultural experience. That is the website. Maybe something new comes and maybe that's what AI gives us. I don't know.

[00:49:43] Nilla: The digital hipster is the era that we're entering.

[00:49:46] Phillip: I you know what? I miss being a normal hipster

[00:49:52] Brian: Love those leather aprons.

[00:49:56] Phillip: There you go. Full circle, Brian. I like that.

[00:49:59] Brian: I did. I will. [00:50:00]

[00:50:00] Phillip: Callback. Uh, Nila, what's, uh, what's new and interesting for you, and, uh, what you know, who are you working with, and how can they get in touch with you?

[00:50:08] Nilla: Yeah. So like I said, we have creators, everyone from Amanda Murray. We work with Pia Barangini. We work with Claire Holt. Like, big names, large following, like, very much touching a lot of different categories. We even work with publishers like The Newset. So we'd love any and all advertisers who think they're a fit in working with them, whether it's affiliate or brand partnerships. Like [00:50:30] I said, we're kind of trying to reshape the creator economy where it's like everyone still thinks of creators as just existing on social, and I think social is an important channel, but not the only channel. Mhmm. Um, so we'd love to work with brands who are looking to kind of reimagine what creator plus media looks like. So, yeah, please reach out. Our website is gonecreative.com. My email is mila@concreative.com. So we'd love I love anyone interested in innovation. That's very much [00:51:00] the mindset that I'm in right now.

[00:51:02] Phillip: Yep. And we'll, uh, link all of that up in the show notes and, uh, the YouTube description. And, uh, man, we need to have you back on a more frequent basis. Every other year is not cutting it at this point.

[00:51:12] Nilla: I would love to. This is so much fun.

[00:51:14] Phillip: Nila, the the absolute best. Uh, and you're in New York area. We'll be back in, like, September. We should do something, uh, around that time. I'm I'll forecast it.

[00:51:22] Nilla: I would love that.

[00:51:24] Phillip: Yeah. I love it. And, uh, I love, uh, when we get to spend time with people like Mila, and you can find more episodes of this podcast [00:51:30] and other brilliant people at futurecommerce.com. Uh, email us at hello at futurecommerce.com, and don't miss it. We're about to drop the date and location of our Vision Summit LA coming in the fall. Uh, that lineup is gonna be absolutely ridiculous, and the venue is incredible. Uh, can't wait for you to go and come see what we've got in store at the future, um, of, uh, sort of media and commerce summit. It's called Vision Summit, and you can find out more about that at futurecommerce.com. And that's it. Uh, thank you for listening. [00:52:00] And future I don't know. What is the future? It's the intersection of aprons and something this week? I

[00:52:06] Nilla: That sounds alright.

[00:52:08] Phillip: Thank you for for checking it out. Bye.

[00:52:11] Speaker5: Wake up every morning at a quarter to 10. Like, am I dying? Is this real? Alright. It's this again. I'm awoken by my daughter and she jumps in my bed. I'm only kidding. I don't have a kid. I'm crushing your skin. Am I just dressed? Stressed? It's an