My biggest observations of digital media in 2024: - The creator course bubble has popped. - The creator business bubble has popped a little. - Cancel culture has largely disappeared. It looks more like a penalty box vs. a permanent ban these days. - A bunch of Linkedin creator agencies have popped up recently. - A bunch of athletes have launched YouTube channels recently. - Founders continue to try and figure out ways to attach creators to their business for some equity. - Politicians are opting for long-form podcasts to share their message. - SEO isn’t dead, but it isn’t the arbitrage it once was. - Every social platform (other than Linkedin) has officially shifted from social graph to interest graph. - The era of the interest graph means you're only as good as your last piece of content. - Influencer marketing is becoming more important for brands, yet is super painful to scale because there’s so much manual work. - There are 2 main types of creators: Pure-play creators & operational creators. Their needs are very different. - VCs are thinking more and more about how they can be a media company. - B2B media is performing better in a softer advertising market. - There are three players in digital media today: Platforms, Media companies, and Creators - You either have to be niche or you have to be novel to stand out. - The internet is getting more and more fragmented as the long-tail of creators/niches expands. - Media businesses now have 3 customers: audience, advertisers, and creators. - Media businesses are becoming platforms that offer creators resources to create, grow, and monetize. - Growing owned audiences (newsletter, podcast, youtube) becomes harder and harder as competition for a finite amount of attention ramps up. - Creator keyman risk becomes clearer and clearer as the creator economy matures. - Niche to general is a far more proven path to success than general to niche. - OG podcasters had their listens decrease up to 60% since the most recent apple update. - Growing a podcast is really difficult. You have to be part of a network, leveraging video, an A-list celebrity, or a unicorn. - Trust in mainstream continues to degrade. - Media upstarts & creators are filling the void of waning trust. - YouTube is eating traditional & digital long-form video viewing. - Marketers are looking to size up their spend on YouTube headed into 2025.