Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on AI, the Met Gala & his secret succession plan

11 Jun 2026 · 55 min · 25 chapters

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In short

Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch discusses AI’s impact on media distribution, “Google Zero” (declining Google search referrals), Condé Nast’s business transformation, Met Gala strategy, diversity/sustainability commitments, and succession planning for top editors.

Guests

Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast (in role since 2019; previously not from publishing). Interviewer: Peter Kafka, Business Insider chief correspondent and host of Channels.

Guest backgrounds

Lynch leads a global magazine/media company; he emphasizes data-driven restructuring from separate international/U.S. “fiefdoms” into more connected operations. Kafka is a longtime tech/media reporter and podcast host.

Key claims

Condé Nast is planning as if Google search traffic will be near zero; AI deals should be licensing-based (money plus usage restrictions), not scraping without rights. Direct traffic is growing as search results become less satisfying. Condé Nast is profitable with flat revenue but rising profitability, driven by digital subscriptions, commerce, and events. Diversity is a core value, not a convenience.

Notable examples

Met Gala video views rose from ~2B last year to 3.1B this year; Bezos/Sanchez sponsorship framed as support for the Met museum. Wired and Vogue are cited as examples of brand-specific global/local strategy. Lynch says Vogue shopping “taste” is harder for AI summaries to replicate.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Roger Lynch's Insights on Google Traffic

0:00 to 0:27

Roger Lynch shares his thoughts on declining Google search traffic and its impact.

“Support for the show comes from ServiceNow.”

Roger Lynch's Insights on Google Traffic

0:33 to 0:57

Roger Lynch shares his thoughts on declining Google search traffic and its impact.

Roger Lynch's Insights on Google Traffic

2:00 to 2:43

Roger Lynch shares his thoughts on declining Google search traffic and its impact.

“In the meantime, I wanted to share this conversation between my friend Peter Kafka and Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on Peter's podcast Channels.”

Interview: The Met Gala and Cultural Moments

2:43 to 4:05

Roger Lynch discusses the significance of the Met Gala for Condé Nast.

“From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka.”

Measuring Success of Cultural Events

4:05 to 4:51

Lynch explains how success is measured for events like the Met Gala.

“You are talking to me from L.A., very showbizzy of you.”

Controversies Surrounding the Met Gala

4:51 to 6:35

Discussion about the controversy regarding the Bezos' involvement in the Met Gala.

“How do you measure success for a big cultural moment?”

Transforming Condé Nast's Business Model

6:35 to 8:01

Lynch reflects on changes made to Condé Nast's structure and strategy.

“But how Condé Nast covered it and created content around it, there was opportunity for improvement on that.”

Global Audience Engagement

8:01 to 10:51

Lynch shares insights about audience engagement and content consumption trends.

“Or are you okay saying, yeah, these things come with attendant controversy and that's okay?”

Revenue Streams and Business Growth

10:51 to 14:01

Discussion on revenue growth areas and performance of the business.

“And the reverse is true, which is, we have a huge audience from France or Italy going to our sites elsewhere around the country.”

Revenue Growth Strategies at Condé Nast

14:01 to 20:10

Learn how Roger Lynch is transforming revenue streams at Condé Nast.

“If you look at our big growth areas, certainly digital subscriptions, they grew 29 % last year.”
Show all 25 chapters

Revenue Growth Strategies at Condé Nast

20:16 to 22:19

Learn how Roger Lynch is transforming revenue streams at Condé Nast.

“Support for the show comes from Whatnot.”

Revenue Growth Strategies at Condé Nast

22:23 to 22:37

Learn how Roger Lynch is transforming revenue streams at Condé Nast.

“That's granola.ai slash decoder to get your time back.”

Cultural Shifts and Diversity Initiatives

22:37 to 28:01

Explore how Condé Nast navigated cultural changes and diversity commitments.

“You mentioned cultural stuff inside the company.”

Navigating Media Freedom and Talent Retention

28:01 to 35:06

Learn how Condé Nast maintains editorial freedom and attracts talent in a competitive media landscape.

“But I'm wondering why you make a point of bringing that up in public.”

Navigating Media Freedom and Talent Retention

35:13 to 36:21

Learn how Condé Nast maintains editorial freedom and attracts talent in a competitive media landscape.

“But at T-Mobile, customers had the lowest wireless bills versus Verizon and AT &T over the past five years.”

Navigating Media Freedom and Talent Retention

36:28 to 36:59

Learn how Condé Nast maintains editorial freedom and attracts talent in a competitive media landscape.

“other introducing odoo it's the only business software you'll ever need it's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier crm accounting inventory e-commerce and more.”

The Evolving Role of Platforms and AI in Media

37:10 to 42:05

Understand how Condé Nast navigates relationships with platforms and AI companies to protect their content.

“Talk me through how you're thinking about platforms these days.”

Understanding Search vs. Google Discover Traffic

42:05 to 43:21

Learn why search intent is crucial for subscription conversions compared to Google Discover traffic.

“Google Discover traffic doesn't convert for subscription, doesn't convert for commerce.”

Navigating AI Deals and Copyrights

43:21 to 45:39

Explore how companies should approach licensing arrangements in AI deals to protect their content.

“It's an asset that is probably going to trade hands very soon.”

The Future of Search and Direct Traffic Growth

45:39 to 48:02

Discover how the decline of search is leading to increased direct audience engagement.

“I think it was very effective because it caused people to really think about, how do we generate audiences that have strong intent and strong engagement.”

Brand Authority and the Impact of AI

48:02 to 50:03

Understand the significance of brand authority in the era of AI and how it affects survival.

“And you're essentially building a thing that will put you out of business, which is a recurring issue with all the platforms, but it seems more likely than ever with AI.”

Succession Planning in Leadership Roles

50:03 to 53:01

Learn about the importance of succession planning for key editorial positions in publishing.

“So, seven of your brands all fit in that category.”

The Business of Adaptations and Hollywood

53:01 to 55:55

Explore how Condé Nast navigates the changing landscape of adaptations for film and television.

“It was very clear that this had never been done before it got in ass, and it caused people to be very uncomfortable to start talking about who could ever possibly replace them.”

Rethinking Media in the Streaming Age

56:00 to 57:09

Learn how Condé Nast adapts its business strategy to the changing landscape of media and entertainment.

“How have you rethought the business of getting into Hollywood and television and streaming?”

Roger Lynch's Commitment and Future Plans

57:10 to 57:38

Discover Roger Lynch's thoughts on job satisfaction and his future at Condé Nast.

“And even companies I've started, I've gotten bored after maybe four or five years.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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1:37But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard-earned cash. It feels good to Geico.

1:48Hey everybody, it's Neil live. It's conference season, so I'm traveling across the country and around the world a lot more than usual. I'm out this week, but stay tuned for some very special Decoder episodes we have coming up soon, starting on Monday. In the meantime, I wanted to share this conversation between my friend Peter Kafka and Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on Peter's podcast Channels. Lynch has been outspoken about traffic from Google search declining every single year. He said he's now told teams at Condé Nast to assume that Google traffic will be zero from now on. That's what I've been calling Google Zero for several years now.

2:20And you might recall that I just asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai about Lynch's comments during our recent interview. Sundar has always disagreed with me that Google Zero is real, but I thought you all might be interested to hear Peter and Roger talk about it directly. You'll also hear Roger talk about AI, the growing influence of the creator economy, and more in this excellent conversation. Okay, here's Peter Kafka interviewing Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch on channels. Enjoy.

2:49Peter Kafka:From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Channels with Peter Kafka. That is me. I'm also chief correspondent at Business Insider. And today we are talking about running the last remaining magazine empire with Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch. Except I just looked at the transcript of this chat and lynch only used the word magazine once these days he thinks of condé which for decades was the world's most prestigious magazine publisher probably still is as a portfolio brands that shows up all kinds of places on the web obviously on tiktok and at movie theaters and at the mega glamorous met ball so in this conversation we skip the question i normally ask magazine people which is something like hey what the hell was a magazine in 2026 anyways When we move on to other topics, like what's it like to be the subject of one of the most popular movies in the world?

3:46Peter Kafka:What's it like to run a media business when Google stops sending you traffic? And who's going to replace Anna Wintour and David Remnick, perhaps the two most influential editors in the world? And where is that shortlist? Spoiler, Lynch does not tell me where the list is. But you're going to like this interview anyway. Here's me talking to Condé Nast's Roger Lynch. Roger Loonch, welcome to Channels. Thank you, Peter. Good to see you. You are talking to me from L.A., very showbizzy of you. Speaking of showbiz, you guys just finished the Met Gala. I think it's an enormously successful project for you.

4:22Peter Kafka:It is, yes. It's showbiz, it is commerce, it's philanthropy, it's a ton of celebrity, some controversy. It also seems like the most obvious expression of Condé Nast as a company today. Is that a fair summation? I think it's right, and I think it also showcases what we do best, which is create cultural moments. Events has been a strategy for us, as it is for many media companies. But for us, our events are really around creating cultural moments that really break through the zeitgeist and search algorithms or whatever's happening in the headwinds of the media industry, nothing holds back big cultural moments like the Met Gala.

5:11Peter Kafka:How do you measure success for a big cultural moment? At some point, you're a business, so you're trying to make money from it. You're also raising money for the Met, but it's a big dollars and cents event for you as well. Is that the most important thing? Is the reception it gets online most important? How do you measure it? David Gardner. Look, that event in particular, it's different for each event. For that event in particular, it starts with the Met. That is a fundraiser. This year was immensely successful for the Costume Institute and the Met, and also the inauguration of the Condé MNest Galleries.

5:47We did the ribbon cutting for the morning of the Met Gala. From an audience standpoint, every year it surpasses our goals. We finish the Met and we go, how could we ever do anything like that? Then it grows another 50 % or 60 % the following year. Last year, we had a little over 2 billion total video views of the content we produce around the Met. This year, it was 3.1 billion, another 50-something percent increase year over year.

6:18Peter Kafka:Does that tell you you're getting better at making the content? Or is this audience getting bigger for this stuff? I think that in the earlier years for me, when I joined, we had a lot of room to improve in the content that we created around the event itself. The event itself was spectacular. But how Condé Nast covered it and created content around it, there was opportunity for improvement on that. I think the team has done a fantastic job really increasing the quality and the creativity of the output around it. I think then what compounds on that is that the intrigue around this event just seems to grow every year.

7:03Yes, you mentioned this year there's some controversy. That's fine. That's actually good.

7:07Peter Kafka:Let's spell out the controversy. It's Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez, were sponsors and curators of the event. This event's always been tied to extreme wealth. You've always had benefactors working with you on this project. Were you surprised at the blowback controversy you got from the Bezos' involvement? Well, to be clear, their involvement was in support of the Met, the museum, and the Custom Institute. And the money that they gave went to the museum. So, look, I think there's a lot of reasons you can criticize extreme wealth, and people will criticize. But to actually criticize them for donating money to a cultural institution, to me, was a bit off base.

7:48Peter Kafka:But were you surprised? Because this is going to be a regular feature going forward, as long as you're working on this. You're going to have people like the Bezos' who want to be involved, and they're going to pony up a lot of money. Will that give you any pause? like, oh, do I want to deal with this? Or are you okay saying, yeah, these things come with attendant controversy and that's okay? That's okay. Well put. Let's zoom out a little bit and just talk about Condé as a business. You came in in 2019 as a privately held magazine publisher. In 2019, the future for privately held magazine companies didn't look great.

8:27Peter Kafka:What's the best way to sum up what you have done during your tenure there? Well, I had the distinct advantage of not knowing anything about the business and not having grown up in the publishing industry. So, it enabled me to come in and question everything. And the first thing I questioned was how we were structured. We were structured, you know, first as two separate companies. There was an international business with its own CEO and a U.S. business. They really acted like competitors in every way possible, including the editors competing with each other. There was so much internal competition, we had no time to focus on external.

9:06Even every country around the world where we operate, we're a very global company, operated completely independently from each other. That, I think, was probably a good strategy for many, many decades. It made Condé Nast into a very large, successful global publishing company.

9:22Peter Kafka:A whole series of fiefdoms. People were proud of the fiefdom nature. They were. They were very, very protective. But what I came in and looked at is, I can understand why, in a print magazine business, why that was a successful strategy. But the world has changed. The opportunity for us going forward is really about connecting with audiences in new and different ways, using technology, certainly. And also, audiences have changed. Maybe in part because of technology, But if you just look at how cosmopolitan people have become in terms of their content consumption, when some of the most popular shows you may watch come out of Sweden, or Korea, Israel, wherever.

10:09When I first joined, I started looking at the data about where our visitors were coming from each of our websites. There was something that really struck me, which is, wherever you went around the world, and you looked at the data of our websites, about 40 % of the traffic was coming from outside of that country. So, on my first listing tour, three or four weeks into joining Conde Nast, I'm meeting with editors around the world, and I heard a similar story, which is, oh, audiences in Italy only care about Italian culture and content, and they don't care about what happens, or same as France. And I always ask, well, then explain this.

10:48Why does 40 % of the traffic to the sites here come from outside of the country? And the reverse is true, which is, we have a huge audience from France or Italy going to our sites elsewhere around the country. It's because they are interested in it. We're just not organized in a way to present the content to them the way they want to consume it.

11:05Peter Kafka:And by the way, some of your employees still tell me that this culture, the former culture, is important. and by globalizing things and consolidating brands globally and having shared resources for some of these companies, that you're missing out on what makes a particular title unique and how they do speak to their core audience, whether it's geographic or demographic. And that mushing this stuff together has been a detriment, even though you're going to say it's successful. David Gardner Well, the first thing I would say is, I'll never be someone who just admits that everything we've done is perfect and is right.

11:45I think you can always learn. And what I told our teams when we made all the editorial changes now four or five years ago, the first thing I told them was, assume we got it wrong. Go figure out where we got it wrong, and let's make adjustments. But don't assume we got everything right and wait until we learn a lesson a year from now. Figure it out now. Figure out what we got wrong, what adjustments we need to make. And we'll always be making adjustments to try to figure it out. Some of those adjustments, it's different brand by brand. If you take a brand like Wired, technology is more global. The interests, the factors that influence our lives through technology is more global in nature.

12:25Something like Vogue, there's an element of global fashion, but then local markets, whether it's Japan, China, India, very strong local culture and local fashion. So, there's not a one-size-fits-all for any of our brands. You have to adjust your assumptions based on that brand and the local markets. So, I do feel like we have largely got it right, and the results have been... We take our largest brand vogue. It has grown every year that I've been at the company, and its profitability continues to grow. Its reach grows, and it's more successful than it's ever been under my tenure.

13:04Peter Kafka:So, overall, the business is profitable, which wasn't always the case. Increasing profitability, revenue is basically where it was in 2021. If you were a public company, people would be very upset with you, but you're not a public company. You're owned by the Newhouse family. Is flat revenue and increasing profitability, is that what they want out of this company? Jason Moser - Well, I think if you look at what... We have revenue streams that have declined structurally, and revenue that has grown. Coming in to the company I came into, print advertising, print subscription, newsstand revenues, that was just going to decline.

13:50We knew that. That was by far the majority of the revenue when I joined. The real trick wasn't to change the trajectory of that, because that wasn't going to change. It was to develop new revenue streams at a fast rate so that you can offset the decline that was going to happen in the legacy business. We've done that. If you look at our big growth areas, certainly digital subscriptions, they grew 29 % last year. I think there are not many companies that wouldn't be thrilled to have 29 % growth in digital subscription revenue. Or events. We started the conversation today about events. Our event strategy has really paid off.

14:32Every year, these Big Ten pull events grow more than we expect. If you look at last year, our Big Ten pull events last year grew about 50 % revenue year-on-year. Huge! And these are not small revenue activities for us. This year, our events so far are up 60 % over last year, which was up 50 % over the year before. So, those strategies around leaning into digital subscriptions or our commerce business or our events business has really paid dividends for us.

15:04Peter Kafka:But I guess what I'm asking is, are your owners OK if you come back to them and say, at the end of this year, say, listen, our revenue didn't increase much, or we're still where we were in 2021. 2021. We've had some declining businesses. I've replaced them with growing businesses. And you, the Newhouse family, you get to enjoy X percent more profits. Is that a win for them? Well, let's be clear. Our revenue is growing. Our revenue grew last year, and our revenue already this year is growing again. So, we do have growing revenue. Okay. If we look at the chart, and you're still where you were in 2020, You went down from 2021 and now back up to 2021 rates.

15:42Peter Kafka:I guess what I'm saying is, is the expectation that you're going to surpass where you were at 2021 at some point, or is this the level you're going to be at? Oh, no, we're definitely surpassing. Our business is going to continue to grow. You think it is reasonable to grow revenue and profitability? Definitely, because the trajectory that we had to overcome was, again, the majority of the revenue of the company when I joined, being print advertising and print subscription newsstands, as a declining business. It's a small minority of our revenue today, because all of these other revenue areas have been growing, and they grow every year.

16:19Now, they've surpassed the decline in the traditional business, and they're only going to continue to grow. Our revenue will continue to grow, because these new streams like digital subscriptions and commerce and events and all of that are growing at double-digit rates.

16:33Peter Kafka:If we go back to 2019, does this look like the company you imagined? You were taking over and were going to transform. Is this where you thought you'd end up? I knew that we had some big challenges. Frankly, that's what attracted me to this. I like really big challenges. I like transformation. I like connecting the dots and strategies and then executing against it. But the thing I knew is that there was going to be a big, messy transformation just in terms of the structure of the company, and that those changes were going to be cultural as much as they were organizational, and that we were going to need to do a lot of innovation around creating new businesses and revenue streams.

17:15But what gave me hope that we had that opportunity was the strength of our brands. The No. 1 thing for me when I was considering whether to take this job was to try to understand, were our brands becoming more connected with audiences or less? I asked for a lot of data on that. I wanted to see it principally around digital platforms. What I really quickly realized is they're definitely becoming more connected with audiences. We're growing audiences. Therefore, what we have is really a business model problem that is very solvable. Wait, wait, wait!

17:55Peter Kafka:The traditional line, as you know, for every company going through analog to digital is, you're trading your analog dollars for digital dimes, pennies, whatever it is. It's a business problem that has really bedeviled just about every media company. Jason Moser, That's true. But, Peter, when I joined, it's been widely reported that the company was losing money and not a small amount of money, and today we're profitable. When I joined, we were majority print revenue, and today we're majority digital. Right. What I'm saying is, when you said this is a solvable business problem, now you can point back and say, yeah, we solved it.

18:31Peter Kafka:But in 2019, you had that same level of confidence that we're going to figure this out, where most people have not? Yes. Yeah, I did. I knew it would be tough, but I knew we'd figure it out. Yeah. I mean, your peers don't really exist anymore. It used to be Condé Nast and Time Inc., and Time Inc. doesn't exist. It's been chopped up and renamed a bunch of places. A lot of the most, I think, of all the digital brands that were going to challenge the Condé Nast of the world. I just wrote about basically the end of BuzzFeed yesterday. Vice has gone bankrupt. up Vox Media, who makes this podcast, is splitting itself up as we talk.

19:07Peter Kafka:So, I guess what I'm saying is you did a good job, if you can sit here and say, yeah, we have grown revenue and we've grown profitability while other folks have been falling down. Not really a question, I guess that's a compliment. I'll just say thank you. You're welcome. We'll be right back with Conde Nast's Roger Lynch, but first, a word from a sponsor.

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22:37Peter Kafka:And we're back. You mentioned cultural stuff inside the company. I was going back and listening to our 2021 conversation in the pandemic, sort of post-George Floyd reckoning. And this was a period where a lot of companies, in particular media companies, found their staff very upset with management. And you guys had had to let go of a teen Vogue editor that you'd hire because the staff didn't want to work with her because of her bad tweets. When you look back at that time, the sort of pandemic 2020, 2022 era, do you feel like at any point you sort of overcorrected to accommodate staff? It seems now that the cultural pendulum has swung a lot, and a lot of the stuff that people were complaining about in 2020 and 2021 aren't things they would at least voice publicly now.

Read the full transcript

23:28Peter Kafka:I'm wondering if you look back in that era and go, maybe I overdid it. Well, it really hit us in 2020, and it started right around the time when George Floyd was murdered. I knew when I joined that we had a lot of cultural issues to deal with. And one of the first things that I did, again, because we had all these separate businesses around the world, there was no one company, there was no one even executive team, I wanted to try to find some things that I could get this newly, what was about to be combined company, focused on, some global initiatives. And it can't be like, we're going to be profitable.

24:12That's not inspiring. But what I found talking to our employees was they were really interested in a couple areas. One, what are we doing on diversity? And two, what about sustainability? So I thought, great, these are really two really important issues for us to work on. And what we can do is, even in advance of changing all the org structures or how we do our editorial, I can create teams from around the world of employees who are really vested in this. to help advise the company and help drive forward progress in these areas. So that work resulted in a diversity report and goals that we set in 2020.

24:54And so by the time this hit us, we already had a lot of work underway. But it was work that we needed because I think the company was not showing up well in these areas. And so do I think we overcorrected? No. I don't think we overcorrected. I think we had a lot of room for improvement, and I think we seized the moment. Today, when you see so many companies abandoning these efforts, we just last month published our diversity report again, and we showed the progress that we make. As I stood up in front of our company last month at our company meeting, I said, look, this is a core value of the company, and it's discouraging to see all these other companies dropping these initiatives, but that only says one thing, that it never was a core value, it was a convenience.

25:43For us, it's a core value, and it is a source of competitive advantage for us now.

25:49Peter Kafka:I'll talk to people who run media companies who said they were interested in diversity and now literally can't say that out loud, because the FCC might come after them, or they might get some other kind of blowback in the Trump 2.0 era. They'll say, this is as important to me as it ever was. I just need to phrase it differently. I just can't come out and literally can't say diversity. I can't say any part of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Do you have sympathy for the folks who are running media companies who think they're doing the right thing but can't say that out loud? I think there's a couple of categories of companies that have backed away from the commitments they made.

26:28One is companies that are under threat from our own federal government and the FCC. I certainly have sympathy for the threats that they face. I wish more of them were willing to stand up, because I do believe that the fears that they have are overblown in terms of what the government can really do. There are other companies that but just abandoned them because the winds changed. I have no sympathy for them. None whatsoever.

26:59Peter Kafka:Do you feel like you can make that assessment from the outside, go, oh, these people never believed that they were just saying it, and these people do mean it? Well, I think that companies that aren't under the type of political pressure that you mentioned earlier, who abandoned these, it just says one thing. It was never really a core value. It was a response to a moment. And one of the things I'm most proud of with our company is that we've retained it as a core value. And we report on our progress every year. And every year, we make progress. And we have publicly stated goals, and we track ourselves to those goals.

27:34And I think our employees really appreciate it. And as I said, with fewer and fewer companies doing that, it puts us in a position of, I think, great competitive advantage. Yeah.

27:43Peter Kafka:I wanted to ask you about this. You brought up this idea that you guys have not been buffeted by the second Trump administration like other media companies. And you said, look, we don't have a Warner Brothers deal to get through the FCC. We don't have this issue. We don't have that issue. Certainly, there's an audience of people that I work with who like hearing that. But I'm wondering why you make a point of bringing that up in public. You've talked about it in a couple different settings. What is the point of you saying that out loud? Who is the audience for that? The audience is our own employees and our future employees.

28:21We have a talent brand that is very important to us. And I think if you're a journalist today, I always tell our employees, our journalists, that right now there's fewer and fewer places where you can practice your best work without being either impacted directly by the government or by the ownership group. or whatever. This is one of them. That is a source of competitive advantage. In the seven years I've been at the company, not once have our owners or our board come to me and said, hey, don't publish this, don't publish that. Therefore, not once have I done that to our editors. We have the best editors in the world.

29:04The way to keep the best editors in the world is to stay out of their way and support them. I really believe that that is the key to our success. I'm fortunate that we're owned by a family that believes in that, too. I talk about it publicly because I want people to know, especially journalists who are maybe at places where they don't feel that they have that freedom, that should there be an opportunity to work at Condé Nast, they'd be welcomed here and they would not be interfered with.

29:34Peter Kafka:Thank you for that. I really was curious about that. It leads me to this question. And we talked about this a couple of times before, but now it's a bigger deal than ever. Half of my show is spent interviewing people like you who run media companies, and the other half is spent talking to, we'll just call them creatives. Increasingly, they are people who've left big media companies and created their own business. At the time, the last few times we talked about this, it was mostly theoretical. And now it's a real thing, and it's happening a lot of places. And I'm wondering how you think about two different versions of this.

30:10Peter Kafka:One, how do you work with someone like an Emily Sundberg who's been on this show, who has her own center of gravity, but she's very adjacent to a lot of what you guys are doing and very interested in that world? What do you do for either Emily or someone like her to say, hey, you're off on your own and you're successful, but we think you can work with us? What is that pitch like? The second part of that question is, if you have an Emily Sundberg at Vogue before she becomes Emily Sundberg, how do you keep her there? How do you keep her at Vanity Fair? Yeah. Look, I think that these new outlets for creatives or journalists are very good.

30:52This is an industry that's been under pressure. There are fewer jobs in it than there were five years ago. That trend you've seen year after year. So, new outlets and new ways for journalists or creatives to be able to develop businesses that can sustain them are only good. For us, it does make us think differently about how we operate and how we work with journalists and creatives. We have to be more creative. We have to say, OK, there may be somebody who's got a sub stack who is in an adjacent field that we can work with in some areas, and they'll have their sub stack. It's not necessarily competitive what we do, but it's not part of our business.

31:38And that's OK. I think you'll probably see us do more of that rather than less of that.

31:42Peter Kafka:What does work with them look like? Is that you can freelance for us? Chris Hillman could be, or they could be writing a column for us, as an example. Chris Hillman And what is the upside for, I'll just keep saying Emily Sundberg, but she's a generic stand-in here at this point, for them who produce their own content, get paid well for it, and are profiled in the New York Times? What is Condé Nast giving them by saying, you can now publish in our outlet, too? Well, look, I think for most of them, they may have a sub-statement. Let's take someone like Lachlan Cartwright at Vanity Fair. He has Breaker, which is his own...

32:22And he's been on this show. ...a publication, yeah. And it's great. He does that, but it's a limited audience that he'll reach on his own. Also, working with us at Condé Nast or Vanity Fair gives him access to a much broader reach audience than he would be able to develop just on his own. To me, it's a pretty good model to have, where you can have somebody as talented as he is and connected as he is building his own business, but at the same time collaborating with us in a way that works for both parties.

32:54Peter Kafka:What about the retention idea? Let's say you've got a Lachlan Cartwright on Vanity Fair, and he goes, oh, wait, I could be making 3X what I make if I go off and do my own sub-stack and podcast, etc., how do you convince them to stick around? Or do you say, go off and do your own thing, but we're going to make some arrangement with you? Look, we haven't had a lot of that happen, but I think that the unfortunate case with Substack is there aren't that many that really can make a good living doing it. And I think those that do find that also, it is hard work. You're constantly having to produce, you're constantly having to think about how you grow your business.

33:37For some people, that's exhilarating and can be very successful, and some, it's exhausting. I think there's a limit as to how many people will be able to do that in a way that really supports their lifestyle.

33:54Peter Kafka:Yeah, there's many more than I thought there were going to be five, six years ago, but it's still a limited universe. I think it is. But again, that doesn't mean there's not an opportunity for them to do that and to work with us in certain ways. We'll be right back, but first a word from a sponsor.

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37:09Peter Kafka:And we're back. Talk me through how you're thinking about platforms these days. In the old days, I would say, what do you think about Facebook? What do you think about Apple News? I'm still curious about that. But I want to hear you talk about Google and the AI companies. It looks like you are... You tell me, because it kind of seems like you're washing your hands at Google, but I'm not sure if that's the case. And you're definitely doing deals with the AI companies. And it seems like in all these cases, the platforms have something to offer you, and there's a lot of risk of being dependent on the platforms.

37:40Chris Hilliard, The first thing is, start with our audiences. I've always been a believer in, you have to observe what your audience or your customers are doing and try to craft your business model around that. Audiences are on these platforms. It's very important for our brands to be where our audiences expect them to be. I think TikTok was a great example of that. When TikTok launched in the U.S., we saw a growth of Vogue on TikTok, but not by us. I guess people were producing content under the Vogue name, putting it on TikTok. That was a really strong indication that audiences expected Vogue to be on there.

38:22So, we jumped in a big way. There was no revenue. There was no revenue model that we had for this. But it was important, I felt, for us to be there, because our audiences expected us to be there. We'd figure out, that's been the history of the internet. It starts with engagement, and then monetization figures itself out later. That's what's happened with us in TikTok, because now we have ways to sell ads around our content, and it's become a good business for us. It starts with, where do our audiences expect our brands to be? Let's make sure we're there. Now, your specific questions around AI...

38:57Peter Kafka:Even before we get to AI, though, because it's one thing to say, I want to be on TikTok, or in the old days, it's important for me to be on Facebook or pick your place, and that makes sense. There's a difference between that and saying, I'm going to do a commercial deal where either I'm going to make stuff for the platform and they're going to reward me with traffic, or we don't have a commercial deal, but also they're using all my content and not sending me any traffic. I'm wondering how you think through all that, because you do have to be there, but you can also end up just sort of building a business for someone else and getting very little on the way back.

39:30Always a risk. So, as I mentioned, it starts with the audience. In terms of these platforms, I don't believe that any of these platforms owe us an obligation to send us traffic or customers or audience. I also don't believe that they have the right to use our content to come and compete directly with us. So, if Google wants to change its search algorithms and stop sending traffic to publishers, as we've all seen, the amount of traffic that comes to publishers from search has declined precipitously, that's fine. They can have their business reasons around it. It doesn't give them the right to use our content to then come and compete with us for those audiences.

40:15That's the rub there. And so, for AI, the risk is these AI companies use the content that our journalists create and use it to compete with our core business model. Now, if they want to negotiate with us and enter into license agreements, like OpenAI has done, or Amazon, or Microsoft, or Perplexity, fine. Then we can come to terms on how that will work. Those that don't do that, or worse, frankly, in the case of Google, they tie their scraping of AI content to their search scraping. So, Google's been found to be dominant in search. They don't let you opt out of scraping your content for AI unless you opt out for search, which is very difficult for a publisher to do.

41:06I think that's anti-competitive. I think it's wrong that they do that. But, look, these companies are also our partners. So we can have disagreements in some area of our business and strong alignment in other areas. Again, with Google, we're one of the largest publishers on YouTube. We have a very, very good, strong relationship with YouTube. It's really core to our business and really important for them, too.

41:31Peter Kafka:You've said Google Search is basically going to go to zero, or something close to that for you, or basically stop showing up as referral traffic sooner than later because of the AI summaries they're doing. Google Discover is this hugely important product for publishers that I think most regular people don't know about. That isn't often as big a deal or bigger than Google Search. Are you still working to get your stuff showing up on Google Discover? We do get traffic from Google Discover, but it is very different traffic than search. Search is intent-driven traffic. Google Discover traffic doesn't convert for subscription, doesn't convert for commerce.

42:13You may be able to sell a few ads around it, but it is far less important. Spell out why it's less important. Jason Moser, Because if somebody goes to Google and types Vogue shopping recommendations, there is real clear intent with what they're looking for. If they're going to Google to search for something and they see an article promoted that catches their eye and they click on it, it's much less committed. It's great. We love to get traffic from Google Discover, But that person is much less likely to become a Vogue subscriber, a New Yorker subscriber, or even transact in commerce than someone who shows much more intent through search.

42:55So it is not a replacement. Even though we've seen Discover Traffic grow as search traffic has declined, that's a bad trade-off.

43:04Peter Kafka:When we get off this call, I'm going to slack some people I work for, and I'm going to say, here's what Roger Lynch, the CEO of Canada and NASA, says about Google Discover Traffic. I'll let you know how that goes. I bet you Jim Bankoff agrees 100 % with me. Jim's one of the people I work for, at least as of today. We're recording this on Tuesday, May 12th. Did you take a look at the Vox Media Podcast Network, which is recording this podcast? It's an asset that is probably going to trade hands very soon. Yeah, I'm not going to comment on that, Peter. Fair enough. I'll take that as a maybe. With the AI deals, given that you've now gone multiple rounds with different platforms, and you've seen all the promise and peril and pitfall.

43:43Peter Kafka:What is most important to get out of the AI companies? Is it straight cash, like, you're going to use our stuff, pay us? It sounds like the referrals aren't really a thing, that most people are not clicking through those footnotes and AI results. What is the best-case scenario for you in these AI deals? First and foremost, it is to have a license arrangement, which reflects the fact that this is copyrighted content. You're using our stuff, pay us. Yeah. Not just pay us, but agree to terms on how you're going to use it. Just like when I was in the music industry or we did film and television, these license deals, you can think about two main components.

44:25There's the money, but there's also the use, the grant of rights. How can you use it, and most importantly, how can you not use it? As an example, we would never do a deal with an AI company that says, take all of our New Yorker content and show it verbatim to your customers. That wouldn't be in our interest. We would put conditions around it. The terms of the licensed deals are just as important as the money that's generated from them. We don't think that they will refer traffic anywhere near the rate at which search did. But there's an interesting dynamic that we see. You mentioned that I said search is going to go away.

45:10We chased it for a number of years, and each year we'd do our budget and we'd say, search is going to decline, just because we don't know why, but we know there'll be some algorithm change that will cause it to decline. Each of the last three years or so, we underestimated the decline. So, last year, we said, we're going to take a different approach. I told all of our teams, you need to plan your businesses around there being no search. If you don't have a plan for that, you may not have a business. We took that approach. I think it was very effective because it caused people to really think about, how do we generate audiences that have strong intent and strong engagement.

45:52Now, as search declined, we saw our direct audiences grow. I think it was in part the work that we were doing, but I think it was also in part because people... Think about the example I gave. I said Vogue shopping recommendations or something like that. You type that in a search algorithm. If what you get in return is an AI summary or a bunch of Google links to Walmart or whoever the deal is. That's not a satisfactory outcome. You might just type in to a search bar, Vogue.com, and then find it that way. So, we've been seeing direct traffic grow dramatically, where it's the majority source of our traffic now.

46:29And I think it is, our teams would like to say, oh, it's because we've done such a great job. And I think that is largely true, but I think it is also because people are finding less relevant search results than they used to. And so, where they used to use Google in some ways as a navigation tool, they're finding that navigation. It's very effective, the AI summaries, for answering really simple questions, but less so for things that involve taste. And this is one of the big things that I've seen in the discussions that we've had with AI companies. Three or four years ago, when we started negotiating with them, it was a bit surreal,

47:09deal. One company in particular told us, OK, we need to know how many words you have. It's like, OK, do the words matter? Just any words? Can you tell us how many words you have? Because we pay by the word. We're like, OK, this is going to be a long discussion. But we got through it, negotiated these deals, and then as these services answer engines started to become used more and more, these companies started to realize that our content was being used in their answers much more significantly. So, they started coming back to us like, oh, OK, we see your content really matters in certain areas. And now there's a whole debate about whether AI has taste or could ever replicate taste.

47:55Perfect, right? That is our core business. Creativity, taste. I think that creates much more opportunities for us now in how we can work with AI companies.

48:08Peter Kafka:What about the worry that even though you're getting paid today, even though you have restrictions and limits around how you can use your work, that inevitably what you're doing is building up these platforms, making them more and more useful. and certainly one of the products they might come out with one day is not their own version of Vogue, but just things that deliver enough information to people that's tailored the way they want that they really don't have any need to go somewhere else most of the time. And you're essentially building a thing that will put you out of business, which is a recurring issue with all the platforms, but it seems more likely than ever with AI.

48:46Jason Moser I think it is more likely than ever with AI for brands that don't have the authority that our top brands have. I don't worry about AI putting Vogue or The New Yorker out of business. It just will never replicate what those brands and what the editorial teams can do with those. You mentioned some of the companies that have gone by the wayside. Look, I think they were the darlings of these platforms when they were sending them all the traffic. And they did a really effective job of arbitrage and taking intent-driven searches or video or whatever and turning it into commerce transactions or ads or things like that.

49:33But they were entirely reliant on that traffic continuing. And when that traffic went away, what they didn't have was brands that had the level of authority that, frankly, our brands have.

49:48Peter Kafka:This is what every publisher tells me, how they're going to survive this. Our brands are meaningful. People have relationships with our brand. We're going to create even more direct relationships with our brand. People will come to us because our thing is special. Let's stipulate that you said seven of your brands make 85 % of your revenue. So, seven of your brands all fit in that category. How many other publishers do you think are going to make it through this era? How many publishers do you think realistically have brands that resonate with enough people that they can stay afloat on their own without being disaggregated by AI?

50:23Well, first of all, I wouldn't want to give the impression that it's only very big brands that can be successful. Because we have some very small brands like Pitchfork. You know, it's less than 1 % of our revenue. You fold it into GQ. But it has a high... We put it under GQ, but it has a separate editorial team and operates under its own brand. And has been very successful. It actually has one of the largest direct audiences and now has a subscription product, which is doing very, very well. That's a brand that will do well in this era, because it has authority. It is more niche in its content area.

51:06It's never going to be as big as Vogue. But it has a point of view, and it has a loyal, dedicated audience. So, it's not just big brand, small brand. It really is, does your brand have authority? Does it have connection with audience that is really deeper than search or discover traffic?

51:23Peter Kafka:Another way of putting my question, what percent of existing publishers do you think survived this era? Well, I mean, we've already seen a lot of that damage done today. So, of the publishers that are left, it's a higher percentage that will survive than it was five years ago. But certainly, they're not going to all survive. I think that writing is on the wall, or at least not in the form that they are today. Speaking of the future, one day, Anna Wintour and David Remnick will no longer work for you. They're not young people. They're very good at what they do. And your company seems, I don't know, dependent on them, leans on their authority in a really meaningful way at The New Yorker and then broadly for Anna Wintour.

52:11Peter Kafka:What is the plan when they leave? How are you thinking about who's going to fill those shoes? Well, first of all, for people that are in this field, those are the pinnacle jobs. They really are. and you're talking about two of the most successful editors ever. So it will be very, very difficult to find people who could ever replace them. But guess what? I'm sure the same was said about Grace Mirabella when she ran Vogue for several decades before Anna came in, or Tina Brown, or William Shawn, or any of the great editors that have been attached to these brands over many, many, many decades. Have either of them said, this is who I want to replace me, just don't tell anyone yet?

52:53No, no. It's very funny, because one of the things I also implemented when I joined was succession planning. It was very clear that this had never been done before it got in ass, and it caused people to be very uncomfortable to start talking about who could ever possibly replace them. But we always look to have a broad selection of potential people who could fulfill a role, but you never know whether they're going to be available or what the situation is. We also work to bring in talent specifically with the idea of succession. It's something that we run a really disciplined process every single year.

53:37I report it to my board, we spend time going through, we have our editors.

53:41Peter Kafka:Wait, so what does that look like? You run through a process of, if David Remnick got hit by a bus today, here's who would replace him? Look, the standard process for every company I've run is, you have an emergency successor identified, you have a list of people who could be ready now or in the next year or two, you have a list that could be three to five years, and a list that could be five-plus years. So these lists exist, the files exist, they're on your desk, as Pam Bondi would say. They're not on my desk, they are locked away! And you revise them periodically? We revise them every year. We go through a formal process where we evaluate it every year.

54:21Some names are added and some names drop off.

54:23Peter Kafka:Do Anna and David participate in this process? They do. Okay. All right. Let's find the list, people. Condé and Asmol, send me your stuff. Good luck with that one. Last question for you. The biggest movie in the world, I think, is Devil Wears Prada 2. It's about Condé Nast. They don't call it Condé Nast. They don't call it Vogue. It's about your company. It's owned by Disney. Do you participate financially? I know you guys did a lot of marketing for it. You had Anna and Meryl on the cover of Vogue. Do you participate financially in that movie's success? No, that movie is their movie. It's not our movie.

55:03And we have no direct participation in it, but we certainly have a lot of fun with it. I think Anna and Meryl going on the cover of Vogue, and as you may have seen, Chloe, our editor of American Vogue, had to work hard to convince Anna to do that, because that is not who she is, was fabulous. That cover of Vogue with the two of them was iconic. But what I would say is, that movie has generated a lot of interest, not just about Vogue, but about Condé Nast. It's been good for our business. It's certainly been good for our business.

55:38Peter Kafka:I know for a while, every publisher, and we talked about this, said, hey, we make all this amazing. We make great stories, et cetera. These things are often turned into movies and television shows. You really got to lean into that and figure out ways to get these things made either by ourselves or with partners. And for a while during the streaming boom, the streamers are buying literally anything you guys could make. That does not happen anymore. How have you rethought the business of getting into Hollywood and television and streaming? That business has shrunk as an industry. The number of new shows and films being produced has shrunk, and the time it takes to get something approved has shrunk.

56:20But for us, we had seven shows and movies premiere last year. We sold 11 new ones. So, our team, it's a very small team, but our team does, I think, a really good job punching above their weight with that. But, you know, all of that starts with the IP of our journalism and our content.

56:41Peter Kafka:What's more important for you to figure that out or to figure out, like, TikTok and short video that more people are consuming more often? Well, short-form video is a much bigger part of our business than film and television. In terms of revenue, certainly short-form video is very important for us. Roger Lynch, you've been there since 2019. How much longer do you have? When does your succession plan kick in? You know, I always tell people, I've started a number of companies. Most of the companies I run are companies I've started. And even companies I've started, I've gotten bored after maybe four or five years.

57:15And I know when I get that feeling, like, okay, I'm starting to get bored. Time for me to do something. I never get bored in this job. Honestly, there's, first of all, always really challenging problems to solve. And also the most interesting intellectual people to deal with. So I have no plans on leaving. I really enjoy it. And I'm definitely not bored.

57:36Peter Kafka:There's a bonus. You get to talk to people like me. Roger Lynch, thank you for your time. Thanks, Peter. Thanks again to Roger Lynch. Thanks again to Charlotte Silver, who produces and edits the show. Thanks to our advertisers who bring it to you for free. Thanks to you guys for listening. More media bosses coming your way soon. See you then.

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From the publisher

Hey! Nilay here. It’s conference season, so I’m traveling across the country and around the world a lot more than usual. Stay tuned for some very special Decoder episodes we have coming up soon, starting on Monday. 

In the meantime, I wanted to share a conversation between my friend Peter Kafka and Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch on the excellent Channels podcast. Lynch says he’s told his teams to assume that traffic will be zero from now on — that’s what I’ve been calling Google Zero. Roger also shares his thoughts on AI, the growing influence of the creator economy, and more.

Links: 

Channels with Peter Kafka | Apple Podcasts

Condé Nast CEO: Plan As If Search Traffic Will Be Zero | Search Engine Journal

Sundar Pichai on AI, the future of search, and what’s happening to the web | Decoder

Google Zero is here — now what? | Decoder

Google admits the open web is in ‘rapid decline’ | The Verge

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Decoder is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. 

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
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