What BuzzFeed and Vice's Declines Tells You About Media Businesses

0:00All right. So we are going to talk about what BuzzFeed and Vice. That's a network. So Vice's declines tell you about media businesses. So just to set the stage for this one. BuzzFeed. I believe it's called BuzzFeed News was shut down. And that doesn't mean BuzzFeed was shut down. And then Vice. I don't know if you've seen the stuff around Vice, Neil, where they send journalists into war areas or war-torn countries and really dangerous situations where they're talking to maybe drug lords or maybe they're interviewing escorts and things like that. Just really, they're kind of diving. It's like pretty hardcore journalism and dangerous journalism, I would say, but also very entertaining.

0:40And Vice, who was once valued at$5.7 billion, they're now potentially on the verge of bankruptcy. And so we want to talk about how to think about these media companies and why we think this is happening and what we think they could have done instead. Go for it. Yeah. So if you're seeing declines in things like Google and Facebook and their ad revenue, why wouldn't you see declines in Vice and BuzzFeed? The other thing to keep in mind is we have so many options for media and news and entertainment, whether it's Instagram or TikTok. Possibilities are endless now. there's always a new social network that's popping up.

1:20It's going to take away time and attention from Vice, BuzzFeed, all the other channels. SEO is also becoming more and more competitive. A lot of these platforms were relying on social traffic, which has been cramped down unless you want to spend money, which is hard for them to do because if they spend money, it's hard to arbitrage the ad revenue on their end. And a lot of these guys weren't SEO plays. And even if they our SEO plays, SEO is competitive, it can do well, which is also hurting a lot of these guys' revenue. But when I look at media companies, the big issue with a lot of them is if you don't have the distribution, EX television, movies, magazines, and a lot of eyeballs, and you're taking an omni-channel approach, it's going to be hard for you to survive.

2:09The other thing too is if you are in business right now, creating a media company is a great idea. Creating a media company to monetize like Vice and BuzzFeed is a bad idea. Look at media like the Kardashians or Ryan Reynolds or LeBron James, or even what Eric and I are doing on a much smaller scale to these celebrities. Figure out how to build an audience and sell into something else. Don't monetize the media. monetize a product or a service that you can sell. Not someone else's product or service, because it doesn't convert the same when you're being an influencer. It has to be your own. And it has to be something that really resonates with your audience and what you're known for.

2:55And you care about it. Because if you don't care about it, and you're not passionate about it, the quality of the product and the service is going to be shit. And you're not going to end up doing well. Yeah, we'll keep this one simple. The one thing I'll add here is another good example of Logan Paul and his prime drink. And so I've heard that prime, I've actually never tried it. Neil, I don't know if you have, but it's his sports drink that he's partnered with KSI on. And they're both very popular YouTubers. They're very popular creators. Logan's done really well for himself and he's part of WWE now.

3:25He's got a top podcast and I have a lot of respect for what he's done. But at the end of the day, it's not like his drink tastes amazing. In fact, like his drink, he's just doing a lot of collaborations. He's leveraging his distribution, leveraging other people's distribution. And I remember one of the examples was Kim Kardashian's kid was at a football game, I believe, and Prime was there. I think it was an Arsenal football game. So we're talking soccer here. And the kid tried it. And then from there on, when Paparazzi was taking pictures of Kim and her kid, the kid was holding the Prime. And that's distribution, right?

4:01So at the end of the day, you're listening to marketing school, distribution and attention are key. They say it's the new oil, right? Really data and distribution, I believe are the new oil and gold. And if you want to, we talked about lucrative monetization models. Sure, you can sell ads, but are you really going to beat an optimized machine, a money printing machine like a Google or a Meta? There's even a Microsoft or an Amazon. These are ad platforms that have way more traffic than you. And so if you want to capture more profit, you want to capture more margin, it's in your best interest to figure out how you can go about either taking equity in a company or having your own equity where you're selling your own products or services.

4:40And you don't necessarily even need to have a huge audience. So Neil's been doing this for a while. I've been doing this for less, but still, I've considered it a little bit of a while now. But we don't have nearly the audience's sizes of Kim Kardashian or Logan, but it's the same playbook over and over and over. Anything else, Neil? Yeah, it's and I talked about this in a previous episode. When you're doing this and you're trying to create a media company, it's not about how many eyeballs you're getting. It's about how big is your market. So, for example, if you're in a market that has only, call it, 50 ,000 people, I'm making up the size.

5:17But let's say you're going after something like mesothelioma, right? It's this cancer that people get and the losses are worth an arm and a leg and I hope no one has it. Even though the audience size is really small, the monetization is massive and you can make millions and millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. On the flip side, if you're in a market where everyone, it resonates with everyone, you can have like a million, 10 million followers, but it doesn't monetize well, you're shit out of luck. So don't necessarily, if you're trying to create a media company, worry about the audience size, worry about the market size instead.

5:54and it's called TAM, Total Addressable Market. The bigger the market, right? And the market is defined by how much money is spent, not the people, but the money spent, the better off you are. So focus creating media around a big market from a money standpoint, right? Where a lot of revenue or money is being spent. All right, so that is it for today. Hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe. Maybe we'll read out some of the names as well. Your ratings and reviews have been super helpful. So please keep doing it and we will talk to you later.