Behind the Numbers: The Future of Digital in 2025—A media time spent slowdown, and who will benefit the most from the digital economy?

Audio by Marcus Johnson, and Max Willens | Jan 10, 2025

Episode Transcript:

Max:

Publishers have been able to say with a straight face that they do deliver immense value to their audiences, but it's been really hard to kind of tell that story in a consistently convincing way to advertisers.

Marcus:

Hey, gang. It's Friday, January 10th. Max. Geoff and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an eMarketer podcast. I'm Marcus. Today, I'm joined by two folks. Let's meet them. Let's start with our senior analyst, covering everything digital advertising and media. He's based in Philadelphia. It's Max Willens.

Max:

Yo.

Marcus:

Hey fella. We're also joined by the Chief Revenue Officer for Vox, based in New Jersey, but works across the water in the city in New York. It's Geoff Schiller.

Geoff :

Hey everyone.

Marcus:

Hey, Geoff. Welcome to the show. All right, when we have external guests on, we quickly get to know them with a speed intro. There's 60 seconds go on the clock. Let's do it. Geoff, you are based in New Jersey as I just said, but where are you from?

Geoff :

I grew up in a town called West Orange, New Jersey, home of Thomas Edison.

Marcus:

All right, Max. It's going to be a tough to outdo that, but you're based in Philly. Where are you from?

Max:

New York City.

Marcus:

Yes, indeed.

Geoff :

Yeah, it did.

Marcus:

Geoff, what do you do as a sentencer?

Geoff :

As Chief Revenue officer of Vox Media, I look after our advertising organization across a multitude of functions.

Marcus:

Okay, and Max?

Max:

Max. I help people like Geoff and people that he works with make smart decisions about where they spend their time in budgets.

Marcus:

All right, Geoff. Morning drink.

Geoff :

Dunkin Iced coffee. Don't listen. Anyone from Starbucks, you know, purged what I just said, but Dunkin Iced coffee. All seasons, four seasons.

Marcus:

Four seasons? That's tough in the summer. Max, oh, I think I know this, but go on. Tell the people.

Max:

Black coffee, as much as I can carry up to my office.

Marcus:

Such a bad choice. And back to you, Geoff, for your go-to karaoke song.

Geoff :

Living in New Jersey my entire life, it's got to be Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi.

Marcus:

It has to be. Well played. He's back. Max, how about you?

Max:

Very impressive. I am really pretty terrible at karaoke, so I usually hide in the bathroom until everyone leaves, so I don't have one. If you have suggestions for a baritone voice, I will take it. I welcome all suggestions.

Marcus:

Well, they're the two guests we have for you today. Let's go to today's fact. Why are the New York Knicks basketball team called the Knicks? I know Max is a fan of the Knicks. Geoff, you two, maybe?

Geoff :

I grew up a Nets fan, but obviously-

Marcus:

Of course.

Geoff :

... There's nothing more electric than being in Madison Square Garden, watching a Knicks game.

Marcus:

Yeah, it's true. Even if they haven't won in 50 years, but going to NBA.com, in 1809, legendary author, Washington Irving, solidified the Knickerbocker name in New York law when you wrote the Satiric, A history of New York from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch Dynasty, under pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker. Irving's book introduced the word Knickerbocker to signify a New Yorker who could trace his or her ancestry to the original Dutch settlers from the 1600s. With the publication of Irving's book, the Dutch Settler Knickerbocker, character became synonymous with New York City.

It was known as Father Knickerbocker, had a cotton wig, three-cornered hat, buckled shoes, and knickered pants that the Dutch settlers who came to North America wore that ended just below the knee. At the same time, the term Knickerbocker became in indelibly linked to anything and everything New York. And so when the team was founded in 1946 by Ned Irish and Company, all those folks, him and his team, put some name options in a hat, and the Knickerbockers, late in the Knicks, was chosen by most people in his group, so that's why it's called that.

Max:

I would love for them to bring back. There's a Father Knickerbocker mascot and look for the team. They used it very briefly. I think it looks pretty sweet. I don't know why they don't go back to it. Jim Dolan must really love the 90S kind of diamond thing that they have going on, which I like too, but the father Knickerbockers is pretty sick, and I hope they bring it back.

Geoff :

Yeah. I think they should just go with a sphere mascot. Call it a day.

Marcus:

Anyway, today's real topic, the future of digital in 2025. All right, so we're talking about future of digital for this year. Let's start by looking at how much time we're all spending in this digital world we're going to be talking about. According to our forecasts, internet users spent 8 hours and 44 minutes per day using digital media last year, 2024. This year we'll all be adding about 11 new minutes of digital time to our digital diets, bringing that total to just shy of 9 hours per day, which is a lot, but it's just a 2% growth in digital media time that we're expecting this year. That's compared, to context, to a 15% spike that we saw from 2019 to 2020 pandemic. When we all added about an hour of new, digital time per day. So Geoff, I'll throw this to you first. What do you make of this slowdown in time spent with digital media growth?

Geoff :

I think it's definitely emblematic of a post-pandemic settling. If you think about that time period, and people being quarantined and relegated to being in their house, of course they're going to spend more time on digital platforms. I think we're in a spot now, and you see this in the travel industry, where everything has bounced back, and I think it's healthy to have balance, so I think part of what I look forward to this year is less of a tether to growth slowdowns being indicative of something negative, and more so a lift in engagement, a lift in community, a lift in quality, which will bear a lot of great fruit across a variety of consensuances in the industry.

Max:

Yeah. I think that what you were saying about kind of the heightening of engagement is pretty on point. I do feel like, as far as the slowdown, if you widen it out a little bit and include traditional media, I feel like we are running out of incremental headroom here. If you include traditional media, we're closing in on, I think, 13 hours a day, which I am good at multitasking, but I am sure my bosses, if they were listening, would not like for that number to climb any higher, lest it cut into my productivity.

But the end result of this too is that, because we are running out of incremental time spent growth, we're entering or beginning to enter the zero-sum phase of this game about 30 years after the first banner ad was sold. For people that preside over really top shelf brands or, really, communities with scaled audiences, this is potentially really great news, but for the people that don't have those who maybe have not so big audiences or not so great brands, this is potentially not very good news at all. So, we're thinking about as we look ahead over the next 12 months.

Marcus:

Yeah, yeah. This is certainly going to mean different things to different people and some of those well-established folks are going to be much better placed than others. I was also looking at what that means by activity, because just because slowing down across total digital doesn't mean it's slowing down across all the activities, and when you zoom in on digital activities that we're doing and where that time's going, time spent using social networks, for example, is going to fall by a minute per day next year. Time spent with digital games, flat. Digital audio, flat, but time spent watching CTV is really one of the only digital activities that is growing, users adding an extra 10 minutes of CTV time to each day in 2025.

The other part of this as well, Paul Werner wrote Our Future of Digital 2025 report, linked in the show notes he was writing about this. Even though you've got a slowdown in growth of time spent on digital, digital ad spend continues to do really well. At 10 to 12%, basically, over our next couple of years, digital ad spending growth is going to be outpacing the digital time spent growth, which we've been talking about, which is closer to that two to 3%. So that's kind of the backdrop of what we're expecting in terms of time spent in the digital realm, but Geoff, as you look to this year, what are some of the more and most important trends that you are watching that are going to layer on top of that world?

Geoff :

Building on what I said a couple of minutes ago, I do think the measuring stick for our portfolio at Vox Media, for general IP driven businesses, will be, "Is it a real community? Does it serve a purpose? Does it add value?" I think that for those brands, and obviously saying this in a self-serving way, I believe that all of our brands do and all of our podcasts do as well. There's going to be a shift in investment, a shift in interest to those types of brands. The era of raw scale, the era of MFAs, all of those tricks and smoke screens that have plagued the industry, I think that Bill has come due, and this year will be a race to quality, if you will.

I also think the other piece, when we think about community and the right to exist is, how do you prove it out? And so, you can prove it out through consumer revenue through. If we make a recommendation, does a consumer take action, affiliate revenue? We can leverage the brands and the equity that we offer our brand partners and just by way of traditional direct sales. There's a bunch of ways to measure it, but I do think the measuring stick will not just be one revenue stream. It'll be how real is your brand and how strong of a business is your brand? And so, I think those will be really, really prevalent themes in this year, in the coming months.

Marcus:

When you say, how can you tell if it's a real community? When you say real community, what does that mean to you?

Geoff :

Absolutely. So it means time spent, it means comments, it means earned media, love. You take a brand that like ours, Eater, that is ubiquitous, for a good reason. It's the Eater Heat Maps, the Eater 38. All of those things go into really affecting the day-to-day lives of the Eater community, and the way that we prove that out is when a restaurant is put on the Eater 38, and we receive inbound from said restaurants saying, "Reservations just spiked." That is how you prove out community, but I would say, generally, not every brand has that ability. It's really driven through time spent engagement community. The Cut is another great example. If you watch the cut on Instagram and you scroll through the comments, it is unbelievable to see the community that they've cultivated, so I would definitely say that there are telltale signs that can measure brand health through the lens of community, but those are a few.

Marcus:

Yeah. Max, what do you make of this trend that Geoff's leading to?

Max:

Yeah. I mean, I think that everything that Geoff said is on point. One thing that I think is going to be a big thing to watch this year is just sort of how commerce media and web publishing interact with one another. I mean, I think that one of the things, everything that Geoff said about community is absolutely correct, but one of the other things he said was, do you have a role to play as a brand? Do you deliver value to your readers, your listeners, or your viewers? I think that, for really long time publishers have been able to say with a straight face that they do deliver immense value to their audiences, but it's been really hard to tell that story in a consistently convincing way to advertisers.

But as advertisers get more and more focused on results, proving things out, and driving outcomes, I think this kind of cracks the door open a little for a certain kind of publisher to tell that story in a way that's sort of freshly convincing. It's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out, but it's something that I'm excited to watch as well, especially because we're also, I think, going to have a lot of really interesting stuff happen. On the measurement front this year. There's been a lot of movement in 24 around more attention being paid to things like attention metrics and also just kind of modifying affiliate programs so that a publisher that maybe makes a recommendation, but doesn't drive the last clicks, can still get a taste of the commission, and all that stuff potentially rolls down into the publishing community in a way that could be advantageous if things go a certain way.

Geoff :

Building on what Max just said, I think that one of the things that I think is going to happen with greater frequency going from where we're at now into second half is more of a balance. Now, when I say balance, I don't mean 50/50. I think outcome-based media, absolutely, will continue to play an outsized role, but I do think marketers, based on the conversations that I've had in the last few months, and I'm sure will continue at CES and other industry conferences and gatherings, is that being in an echo chamber for too long leads to brand irrelevance, and one of the biggest buzzwords that I've heard is culture.

How do you put your brand at the forefront of culture? And that is where creators, publishers, content creators, writ large, play a role that commerce media simply can't and probably shouldn't, so I do think there will be, as opposed to the last five, six, seven years of just straight line hockey stick growth in commerce media, I don't think it's going to have a sort of reverse moment where it goes from 80 miles an hour, to dead stop, to then going backwards, but I do think there's going to just be a little bit more of an opening for top-of-the-funnel activation, so that's something that I think a is something for us all to watch, especially in the coming months, but again, with sort of greater emphasis as we go into second half.

Marcus:

Yeah. I mean, you told us about putting the brand at the forefront of culture. Tell me a bit more about what that means to you and some of the things you've heard around that theme.

Geoff :

Yeah, absolutely. So whether it's a creator or a podcast host that can essentially stop time, you highlight examples over the last year, Rogan with Trump or Shannon Sharp with Cat Williams, that stops time. A cover of New York Magazine that is particularly provocative stops time. A creator doing a live with a product drop that people have been waiting months for, that stops time. And so, when we think about those moments of culture catalyzation, it really is more on the IP side and less on the brand/commerce side. For us, in particular, again, you can measure it by what I call blast radius. So, there's an article that goes live on The Cut or on New York Magazine, and you go onto social and you see how much derivative content is created.

So, that could be, any given day, the cut is putting out long form that sparks conversation, and you see just the amount of chatter across every single platform. That's culture creation. That's really what we're talking about, and brands want to be at the forefront of that because they want to drive net new consumers. Commerce Media is great for maximizing the customer experience of an existing customer, learning more about them, giving them the best possible experience, serving them the right ads at the right time, but it's really hard to speak to that consumer and get that person to tell a friend, whereas if you can start at the top of the funnel, you can absolutely do that at scale.

Marcus:

Yeah. Let's turn to Geoff, to some of the groups you think are going to benefit the most from the digital economy this year, because there are a lot of folks who could stand to benefit from everything going on, planning to go on in 2025, some more than others. Who's top of your list in terms of beneficiaries, and maybe there's someone towards the bottom of the list who you think might struggle more than others?

Geoff :

I think podcasters are going to be the winners, so hopefully you'll get to benefit from that.

Marcus:

Good answer. Moving on.

Geoff :

Yeah, exactly. But I would say podcasters, they have a different definition than they ever had. They truly are creators, because we're talking about audio, video, and live event and product recommendation, product development, all the things that a traditional creator would do, but a traditional creator may be personality driven only, meaning it's like their daily life, whereas a podcast is very reminiscent of traditional TV, that whole model of, "I tune into this show, and I'm going to watch the experiences of these people on this show," so I think podcasters will be one of the biggest winners, but creators writ large as well.

Max:

The podcasting thing is really interesting, because you think it's so much about the amount of time spent with a brand or content as a good proxy for the value that they have to the audience. By that measuring stick, it's kind of hard to find a publishing creator or entity that can beat them, frankly, I, as an early middle-aged, mid-brow guy, who likes movies and sports, probably spend close to eight or nine hours a week with shows that The Ringer puts out, and that's more than any television show. It's more than any magazine, maybe one website that comes close that I read for work reasons, but there are plenty of people that if you get a show out once or twice a week and people listen to you all the way through, you can say with a straight face, "People spend dozens of hours a year with me."

That's a powerful message to bring to any advertisers doorstep. I also think too, not that anybody asks, but I think that publishers that have a clear role in the purchase journey are going to wind up doing really well this year, and that can mean an awful lot of things, right? That can be someone who sets a cultural agenda and really can bring awareness of certain kinds of brands, or it can be something as simple as, "We tested 75 hand creams, and this is the one that's best, but there's also this one that costs under $20 a container," but the folks that have really sketched that value prop out, even though they took their lumps last year, I think that they're going to wind up having a good year in 2025.

Marcus:

Yeah. It's an interesting answer. I was at podcast movement conference last year, and Stephen Bartlett, who is the founder of Diary of A CEO, he's on the UK version of Shark Tank or Dragon's Den, and he was talking about this idea of podcasts, it being quite an outdated word, and really, the way he refers to it, he doesn't refer to it as a podcast anymore. It's a show, it's content, and because of video, it's evolved what people think of when they think of podcasts, but it really, the heart of it, is just content, and people are spending more and more time with some of their favorite shows. That time, Max, to your point, does start to add up after a while. Let's end with this quickly. Geoff, what, when you think about the digital world, is there something that keeps you up at night? Is there something, as the chief revenue officer of Vox, where you're looking at the digital landscape and you think, "Okay. This area of it does concern me more so than others"?

Geoff :

First of all, I never sleep, so no, I'm kidding. Everything keeps me up at night, to the point of not sleeping at all. No. Yeah, of course, we are constantly trying to stay ahead of the curve and understand when trends are bubbling up, when they're red-hot, when they're a little long in the tooth, and I would say the most consistent thing that, I wouldn't say, again, keeps me up at night, I have just been doing this for 25 years and it's become normalized, is that the only constant in media is change. And you will see something bubble up in three months that just was not on your bingo card. I go back to the best way for you to weather that turbulence is to just know why you exist and have a plan to clearly communicate that to the market. As long as that those two things are true, you can weather the storms, whether it's AI, and I'll give you the example of AI. When you think about things that AI can and can't do, AI can't review a movie, AI can't review a meal experience.

There are certainly utility based things that AI can do and should do, but when you think about the sort of value proposition of why our brand, pick any one of our brands, exist, it clearly checks the box of its personal taste from respected premium journalism and the journalists that we have. You see this outside of just our walls. You see this with the personality based journalism that's prevalent with companies like Puck, but point of view matters, and so if you know, going back to the two points, like why you exist and you're clearly communicating it, then you can weather any storm, but that example of AI has been, from a 24 perspective, the big question that marketers in the industry just have written endlessly about. What will it mean? It'll mean a lot, but I think going back to Max's point, like anything, there will be winners and losers, and if you have relevancy and if you offer a point of view or a service that can't be replicated, then you're going to be okay.

Marcus:

It's going to be a thing that we plug into and it's something that a lot of people are going to use. It's not going to be, "They have it, we don't," and it's kind of what you do with that, that's really going to matter. I like that idea of what AI can't do though, and thinking about the other side of the coin, which I think is probably a useful exercise for a lot of things that come along, and we think they're going to change our lives today, but when you slow down and really think through what they can't do quite yet, but maybe can in the future, the change is there, and it's always going to be there bu it's not as seismic as perhaps the headlines would have us believe. That's where, unfortunately, we have to leave the conversation. Gents, we could keep going for much more than the time that we have done already, but that's where we have to leave it for today. Thank you so much for my guests for being on and with me. Thank you to Geoff.

Geoff :

Thank you.

Marcus:

Yes, sir. Thank you to Max.

Max:

Always a pleasure, Marcus. Thank you.

Marcus:

Absolutely, and thank you to our whole editing crew, Victoria, John, Lance, and Danny Stuart, who runs the team, and Sophie, who does our social media. Thanks to everyone for listening in. We hope to see you on Monday for Behind The Numbers, an eMarketer Podcast.