This means that it is up to the podcasts, and their hosting companies, how they monetize their shows, rather than just leaving it up to Spotify or YouTube. The topic can get a bit technical, but Barletta explains it well here.
“So when the platform that started it all reinforces to podcasters that the center of their universe should be their hosting platform, along with supporting their rights to manage their own distribution and advertising flow, it’s a big deal,” he writes.
4. Brew Media Group is looking for more acquisitions
In 2015 we got Morning Brew, in 2024 it became Morning Brew Inc., and on March 3 Brew Media Group joined the world. The media firm launched the holding company earlier this month after it acquired the real estate events company Bisnow.
While Brew Media Group CEO Robert Dippel declined to share specifics on the tie-up, he reiterated that Bisnow is a 165-person company and profitable. But with Bisnow now under its ownership, the company realized it made sense to launch an umbrella organization to house a portfolio that was growing increasingly diverse.
More interesting still: Dippel tells me that MBG is actively looking for new acquisitions. Something must be in the water at the Axel Springer headquarters, as the German media company, which owns Brew Media, just dropped $765 million on The Telegraph earlier this month.
5. Breaking and Entering and Growing
The social-first creator duo Breaking and Entering were omnipresent at SXSW, a feat made more feasible by the fact that their team has grown from a lean two to a sprightly five, according to cofounder Geno Schellenberger.
The group, which just launched its thrice weekly live-stream, was on the ground for the first time alongside its management firm Smooth Media, another friend of the newsletter.
6. With Scout, Yahoo sits across the answer engine ecosystem
On Sunday morning, I watched Feed Me founder Emily Sundberg interview Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone about Scout, a new answer engine from Yahoo.
Beyond the broader resurgence of Yahoo, which Lanzone claims is profitable and growing, what I find most interesting about the company is its unique position in the advertising and media sector.
It is a prolific publisher, thanks to properties like Yahoo Finance and Sports, but it is also in the ad-tech game, thanks to its demand-side platform Yahoo DSP. It is also an aggregator of other publishers’ content, and now, with the launch of Scout, it has re-entered the search game.
Intriguingly, it is also part of the launch group for Microsoft’s content marketplace, meaning it will nominally pay the publishers whose data it uses to power Scout. But because it is also a publisher, it will also be paid by answer engines when it provides them content.
I cannot think of any other media company that is publisher, aggregator, demand-side platform, and answer engine all in one.
7. The era of experiential spectacle, even at South by Southwest, is over
There were fewer activations at this SXSW, and the ones that were there were somewhat lackluster. (The ADWEEK team ranked the available pop-ups, giving them between one and five tacos, here.)
