While putting together a recap of last year’s most popular podcasts, what I realized was that in 2018 we talked a lot about the shift in media from traditional to digital. It’s not like it wasn’t already happening before, but 2018 was the year that big companies, big media companies, realized that they didn’t have a choice anymore. At this point, you had to go for it, and I think 2018 was also the year where we saw people starting to see that independent media an independent creators really had gained a large reach an influence compared to previous years.  

Joe Rogan is a good example.  Joe Rogan is one of the biggest podcasters in the world and it is one of most popular entertainers in the world with millions and millions of listeners but I wanted to compare him to traditional media because before he launched his podcast, he was primarily a comedian.  And if you were a comedian before, the path was to try to get a good 5 minutes demo reel and see if you can get invited to be on Jay Leno or back in the day Johnny Carson or David Letterman or one of these late night shows.  After that, the good and lucky ones, would get other gigs after that. 

But now, if you are a comedian, and you just become a guest on Joe Rogan’s show, you’re going to get 10 times the amount of people watching your comedy special or listening to your comedy podcast or whatever than you would ever gain from little 5 minute bit on Conan or Jimmy Fallon or whatever show you’re invited to.  Because at this point,  Joe Rogan has more people listening to his podcasts than these late night shows have viewers.  Not to mention that you’re not getting this little 5 minute segment that’s bookended with commercials and it’s at 11 o’clock at night when most people are half asleep not paying attention.  Now you’re getting around 2 to 3 hours of an exclusive interview sitting down with the guy that people already trust. 

And that’s just one example.  You know, I’m a big fan of sports and radio podcasts and I like to listen to a lot of stuff.  And if you look at sports podcasts, there are two up and coming independent  media companies, one is barstool and the other is The Ringer. 

The Ringer was started by Bill Simmons who used to work at ESPN which he left, and Barstool was started by a few guys with little media experience. Basically you have these 2 independent sports media companies if you look at the top 10 sports podcast right now there is one ESPN podcast and one Fox Sports podcast, the rest are all The Ringer, Barstool or other independent media creators. 

If you would have said 10 years ago that out of the top 10 sports radio/TV talk shows only 2 are ESPN and Fox Sports, and the rest were going to be independent non-network, non-mainstream you would have called me crazy.  I would have called you crazy too if you told me that, but that’s the reality we live in today.  And I think that’s just another example of the decentralization of the media and the power of podcasting. 

Now that I’m giving examples, look at Will Smith’s resurgence in social media.  He is gone very much into Instagram and YouTube especially his vlog that now he’s very much promoting. He’s one of the many celebrities that use their vlogs as a way to start their own mini media companies online.   Will Smith realized that yeah he’s big with older generations but he was getting a bit sidelined with the younger generations.  So what did he do? He used his name obviously and his reach to start his own show and then he started collaborating with other major youtuber’s and Instagram influencers that have millions and millions of followers.

I think we are only going to see this trend continue.  The only thing that really hasn’t completely shifted yet is the actual advertising dollars.  I think the consumer shift to non-traditional media has already happened and it just keeps growing, however, the we’re still seeing major companies having a hard time accepting it as they continue to spend billions and billions of their advertising budget on TV commercials and print another older media formats that, I’m not saying that they’re bad and methods of advertising, but for the price, they are so much more expensive than say Facebook or Instagram or a lot of digital media.

Especially in the business to consumer advertising, if you look at Instagram right now, if I was a business to consumer company, I would spend it in 90 percent of my money on Instagram and Facebook and that’s it.  I have a little bit here and there for maybe some PPC branded search so that when people search my name, I’m at the top.  Maybe some display retargeting if they’ve already visit my website but almost all of my money would go to Instagram and Facebook.

There’s just no better value for your advertising dollar if you look at consumer advertising which is what most TV commercials and print ads are targeting.  You’re talking about spending 10, 20 or 30 times more CPM on those channels while by comparison, Facebook or Instagram only cost around $10 CPM for a much more captive audience.  Add to that the fact that TV and print results are very difficult to track, it’s also very difficult to really give a call to action. 

I guess you could say it’s almost all branding on Facebook Instagram. You can have someone just swipe up or click or whatever and you can track them and you can then capture their first party data and retarget them.  You can’t do any of that with the traditional media and yet the traditional media is still charging way more than digital. 

I think that’s really the last stage of the shift and very soon, we’re going to see a lot of these ad dollars that are still going to traditional media,  move over in the next probably year or two into the digital marketing arena.  You can already see how a lot of celebrities are already making the shift themselves and making the move from old media to newer advertising channels. 

So that’s kind of my preface for this episode.  Basically I’m going to play a few clips on the topic.   This first clip is actually from all the way back in February.  This is one of the first episodes that we made and it’s about basically the manifesto. It’s about why every company should become a media company and how the transition will happen sooner or later for all businesses.  Take a listen…