Media's not dying, it's changing

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In today’s newsletter: 

• How Advance Local grew video ad revenue (Sponsored)
• The breakout success of Acquired and All-In are an indication that media isn’t dying, it’s just changing.
• Why did Google really come to dominate ad tech? The DoJ’s antitrust case, which could set off a seismic shift in the digital ad market, hinges on whether Google won because of the strength of its products or its hardball tactics to make choice illusory.

How Advance Local grew video revenue

Advance Local – a leading media group reaching 52 million Americans across sites like NJ.com, Cleveland.com, and MLive.com – generated unprecedented revenue within 24 hours, thanks to EX.CO’s award-winning online video platform. EX.CO’s secret sauce includes contextual video recommendations using large language models (LLM) to deliver relevant videos in real-time. Learn more.

What the rise of Acquired and All-In means

The rise of this kind of alternative media is a topic on this week’s People vs Algorithms podcast, along with why being extremely online is becoming uncool, and a conversation with Feed Me’s Emily Sundberg. Subscribe to PvA here.

This week, in San Francisco, Mark Zuckerberg sat down for a podcast recording in front of 6,000 attendees at a basketball arena. Meanwhile, earlier in the week in Los Angeles, a tech conference was held that drew an audience of thousands of attendees at ticket prices of $7,500 a pop, and a star-studded lineup that included Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, J.D. Vance, Marc Beniof and more.

The success of both Acquired and the All-In Summit is a microcosm of the shifting landscape of media. Acquired, All-In, Lex Fridman are all more influential in tech circles than most traditional media outlets. Acquired’s deep-dive long form podcasts – the Costco episode clocks in at three hours  – go deep on tech business models. For Zuckerberg, this kind of conversation plays to his strengths and stands in stark contrast to his legendary sweaty flop under heated questioning at the All Things D in 2010 when still a fairly callow CEO with a propensity for panic attacks.  

All-In, a podcast of opinionated VCs, or besties if you must, is possibly the currently most influential tech media property of the moment. You could easily make the case that this is the new Code Conference, the longtime marquee event in this market. It is more influential than the tentpole events from mainstream tech and business publications.

These successes aren’t one-offs. They point to the decentralization inherent in the Information Space, and the rise of new types of media entities that are created outside the journalism industrial complex. For all the media is dying narratives, there are many media properties that are thriving, only they look far different than the typical media company. They’re more likely to be built around personalities. They skip professional journalists in favor of practitioners. They usually have rabid fan bases that are more common to YouTubers. They are conversational rather than inquisitorial. And yes, they tend to attract powerful people who would rather not subject themselves to adversarial interviews, but there’s more to the formula than softball questions.