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Last week, Nielsen delayed their release of the February gauge.
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That prompted State of Streaming to release our very first unified streaming power index, which you can find linked below in the show notes.
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I really encourage you to check that out because today's conversation is with Todd Nicolini, who spent over two decades leading research and insights at the Washington Post.
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We're diving into the streaming landscape, the creator economy, AI slop, and the massive question everyone's trying to answer.
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How do you actually measure attention?
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If that's the sort of thing you're trying to figure out, well then today's episode is for you.
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Enjoy.
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Todd, I'm really excited to have a conversation about research.
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There is so much data.
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There are so many headlines.
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How you make sense of all of it is, I mean, it's almost a full-time job.
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And for two and a half decades, you led research and insights at the Washington Post.
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So I'd love to learn kind of what that process looks like.
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But then also, what's on your radar?
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Todd, welcome to the show.
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Thanks a lot, Tim.
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It's really good to be with you.
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Uh, and as you said before, I have over two decades worth of experience working at the Washington Post as a key member of the research and insights team.
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And what my primary responsibility was was to monitor research and information out there in the market and really connect that information to stakeholders throughout the company.
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So when I say, you know, stakeholders throughout the company, it's not just for one department.
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While primarily the advertising team was who I supported the most, it also ranged to the digital subscriptions team, content licensing, and even ideas and you know general information for the newsroom as well.
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So to keep Oh, really cool.
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Yeah.
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So it wasn't just like researching or covering one specific area.
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It was more broadly how do we connect insights across the organization to make all of the pieces work better?
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Right.
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And that's one of the things that I think a research and insights professional can really benefit from.
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You have the ability to get sort of a 360-degree view of what the company's working on, what their initiatives are, and what the key data points are that can really help move the business forward.
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When I first started in that role, it was primarily in support of our advertising team, which makes sense.
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You know, we post would generate, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in print and digital ad revenue.
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But one of the things that I noticed was that there were some gaps in terms of other business units at the company, what they were working on, and the research and information that we readily had access to.
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So what I would implore both myself and my team to do would be to really go on these listening tours where we would meet all of these other business units throughout the company, learn what they're working on, and try to connect their initiatives to data and information that we either had access to readily or that we would have to dig a little bit deeper to try to find a little bit more information on.
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But as a result of that, it may sound like a lot of work and it may sound like a lot of, you know, information that's kind of coming at you all the time.
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But if you listen and do things proactively, you can really break through a lot of the noise that that that's out there and really provide structured insights to stakeholders to really aid in their decision making.
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And just having that kind of universal lens because we're we're all each in our own little silos each day, right?
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Like working really hard on the thing that we're working hard at, but we may lot we may lack that broader context of well, how does that connect to these things?
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And how does that one insight from over here unlock something over here that these two things aren't even related to one another on the surface?
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That's really interesting.
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And your focus now is you you've been spending a lot of time.
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I that's one of the ways that we've connected, is researching and sharing those insights about sports media, about media more broadly, about the creator economy, a lot of the kind of hot button issues.
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What is that research leading you to find?
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What are what are you most uh interested in these days?
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What are you what are you studying?
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Well, the one thing that I can say is that it's all kind of connected, right?
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I think technology kind of connects all of these different platforms and all of these different user behaviors, but but the problem is how can we synthesize everything in ways that can be used proactively to sort of move business ideas and business initiatives forward?
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I think the streaming landscape is probably the most fascinating because it kind of engulfs everything that's out there, right?
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If you pay attention to what's going on, you know, obviously the Paramount Warner Brothers Discovery merger, one of the first, you know, topics of discussion after that deal finally closed was okay, well, what's going to happen with HBO Max and all of that, all of that content?
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How are they gonna merge the two streaming platforms and create sort of like this broad walled garden that advertisers will just flock to?
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And then you look at sort of the bigger player out there being Netflix, right?
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I think Netflix, the way that they handled that pursuit of Warner Brothers Discovery was very smart.
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I think that they had their price and they they knew exactly what they valued in the Warner Brothers Discovery potential acquisition, and they weren't going to go any higher than that.
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But what they did do was they kind of got their toe wet in terms of the acquisition game.
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So now I think that they have a little bit of a better understanding in terms of what they may want to go after as a result of this.
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I mean, if you think about what they're currently doing, they're really challenging YouTube as sort of this global, you know, entity that pulls in all different types of media.
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The distribution deals that they have with Spotify currently for the video podcast, that's sort of their angle to pull in, you know, the audio content right now.
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What I think is going to be most interesting is sort of how they better leverage their existing audiences to grow a little bit more through gaming.
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You and I were talking about this offline a little bit, about who they may want to go after in the years to come from an acquisition standpoint.
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I think one company that I would really look at is Roblox.
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I think why is that?
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I think because that so so like the gaming infrastructure, how you know, from from a technological standpoint, who that industry really markets and tailors to in terms of young audiences.
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I think making a potential purchase for them, for Roblox specifically, can rope in a whole nother group of you know gamers that will that can live within the Netflix ecosystem.
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Just my two cents on that.
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But that's definitely one way that I think you need to think about how streaming is sort of engulfing all of these different, you know, platforms, mediums into one walled garden ecosystem that can benefit consumers of all kinds.
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And you and you see that actually just out in the news uh this week was Roku announcing their partnership with Texas AM and releasing Howdy to all of the students at Texas AM.
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And you can see obviously where Roku is thinking, hey, we need to now disrupt down the value chain.
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We've kind of taken over streaming, and now we can move down and start thinking about customer acquisition more long term through places like Academics.
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And Roblox makes a ton of sense for a lot of the same reasons bringing in younger audience into the ecosystem, getting them introduced, hooked on the Netflix experience at a younger age while doing it ethically, obviously.
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I think that becomes kind of the bridge in this conversation, which is the creator economy.
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We're hearing a lot about short form vertical video, Disney releasing verts.
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Peacock released some some research recently that 20% of Olympic viewership that started on vertical ended up on a living room television.
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So there's clearly a connection between the way that younger generations are consuming media, creator economy, streaming where it's all going.
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Do you have thoughts on that?
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Yeah, I do.
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I think you know, fragmentation in media is best defined these days by the creator economy.
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So working for the Washington Post for over two decades, we kind of saw firsthand sort of how, you know, journalists and media personalities in general sort of saw the value of their own individual brand and decided to sort of move out and go on their own, start their own newsletters, video podcasts, things like that.
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I think the creator economy, though, one thing that should not go unmentioned is that while technology makes it easy for creators to start creating their own content, newsletters, you know, podcasts, things like that, the individual creator still spends an exorbitant amount of time producing content, right?
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And one of the things that should not go unmentioned is that the value of legacy media, you know, outfits like the Washington Post, like NBC News, you know, some of these other entities that have been around for a long time, they're still the foundations from which the creator journalist and you know creator media personalities um sort of go to for fact-checking and verification.
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So let's, you know, kind of keep that in mind.
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If you know an independent creator is out there talking about specific content and everything, if they're a serious person who values truth and doesn't go the misinformation route, they still need to verify this information with legacy media outlets that have the resources to sort of do that for them.
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But what I will say though is that the creator economy is set to really explode over the next five to 10 years because of technology and specifically AI.
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I think what you'll find, the research that I recently summarized from the influencer marketing factory is they spend a lot of time editing videos, video production, things like that.
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But with the application of AI, that software and that technology, it can kind of streamline that information moving forward a little bit quickly.
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And now technology will also enable the creator economy to, you know, produce those short form videos and post them all over different platforms simultaneously instead of having to do it individually, you know, across individual accounts and things like that.
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So it's still very important from a consumer perspective to pay attention to who you're following, what those people are saying and what their backgrounds are, because I think we do have a responsibility to seek out factual information.
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And the creator economy does provide us with an opportunity to do that in a different way through different formats, but still pay attention to who you're listening to and who you're following and what that person's background is, because that's sort of the responsibility of a responsible citizen right now.
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And I I couldn't agree more.
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And I my hope is my hope is that the AI actually enables us to do more human work, more high-agency things that only a human being can do.
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That's what I've personally found.
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Adopting AI into the workflows is it's not replacing the human thought.
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It's replacing all of the things that you just said, all of the hours of production and the kind of brain-draining work that prevents you from net new creation or thinking harder about an idea or just asking one more good question, getting another another reference or resource pulled into that work.
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So I'm excited for those same reasons.
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There's a lot of concern, on the other hand, though, about AI slop.
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And I know that YouTube is doing some things using AI to identify AI slop.
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Did you find anything in the research about the quality of content or maybe how AI is influencing that?
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Well, I definitely think that AI slop is going to be a huge problem, especially for YouTube.
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I think, you know, if you look at you know short form videos nowadays, you you can just see the stuff that's that that's out there, right?
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The short form content, especially is that's what the younger generation is really spending time consuming.
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I mean, I I do my fair share of Doom Scrolling too, so I can't really act like I'm not experienced to it, right?
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But what that does mean, though, especially for the legacy media companies, is that IP is going to become even more valuable as time goes on.
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If YouTube is going to be heavily populated with just all of this YouTube nonsense, then I think that these legacy media companies that have this valuable IP, this valuable legacy IP, that's gonna be a huge revenue generator for them.
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I mean, we see that you know Disney already licensed some of their um, you know, characters to open AI, I believe it was, so that they can, you know, use those images in AI video creation and things like that.
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And I think you're gonna see a lot more of that as time goes on.
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And I think personally, I think that these social platforms, specifically YouTube, need to be a little bit better at labeling these AI slot videos so that consumers can sort of see right away what they're looking at.
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And that's that may be where you see the federal government get involved.
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I know that, you know, the White House is gonna come out pretty soon with sort of an overview of their AI regulations and what and how they think the industry should kind of go forward.
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It's gonna be a long, arduous process because that's just the way government works.
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But I really feel like to protect the consumer, which is what I think that this is really about, I think that that content needs to be labeled very clearly and very succinctly so that it forces the consumer in that instance to make a choice.
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Okay, do I want to go forward with this or do I want to seek something a little bit more real or you know, a little bit more natural?
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Now, the one thing I will say though is that some of those things are really funny, you know, and when people go online and you know, to watch short form video, they want to be entertained.
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You know, that's that's kind of the thing.
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So in the right context, I think it's fine, but within the information ecosystem that we live in, knowing real from fake is going to be even more important going forward.
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Even more important and adding to the value, as stated, of the IP.
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And we see that just the the fight for IP, for rights, for distribution.
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It's it's all about that.
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The ad tech is almost secondary.
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It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll we'll build the things that need to be built, but this is a land grab.
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We need to build walls around these resources and and thus the the walled gardens.
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This it sounds too like it could be an opportunity.
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We we saw Australia ban social media for under 18, that obviously impacting YouTube.
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There's been a lot of conversation about Section 230 here in the States and how some of that content is influencing society more broadly.
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I think it maybe is an opportunity for platforms to drive some adoption of their mobile apps.
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And hey, we've got a refined, curated, really thoughtful, intentional content experience.
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If you just want to consume this, spend more time in our apps.
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And even thinking about Netflix, we should we have a piece out uh this morning and it it references Netflix and how they use their TikTok.
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Netflix has 50, we'll call it 51 million followers on TikTok, and they're mostly just sharing trailers for the content that's on Netflix.
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So thinking about how we use social, thinking about short form, just pressing a little bit harder on that.
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And then that brings us to the the hardest part of all this, Todd, which is quantifying it, measurement, right?
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Quantifying attention.
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Nielsen is uh Nielsen's getting a lot of flack recently, and probably rightfully so, having a hard time navigating the transition, I guess, between measuring linear broadcast and cable, kind of the core customer set, too, and now obviously serving streaming.
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Do you have thoughts on that?
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The the the challenge of quantifying attention?
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So that's that's the$200 billion question, I guess you could say, is you know, what company is going to be able to sort of quantify the value of user behavior across all of these platforms?
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You know, I think this is just my opinion from over, you know, 20 years' worth of experience.
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I don't know if the industry is going to ever be able to get a hundred percent grip on it just because of how fast everything changes.
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But I think what platforms need to really focus on, and I think what they're you know doing is they need to offer consumers different options in terms of the viewing experience that they want to entertain.
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So the the streaming platforms, you can go 100% ad-free for a higher cost, or or you can get you know an ad supported tier, which I think is great.
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But what I would also want consumers to really understand is that in order for these companies to really best understand you and understand your viewing preferences, what you would like to see so that they can funnel uh more relevant content to you, there is there does have to be a value exchange there, right?
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And I think consumers are gonna have to understand that they are going to have to you know allow these companies to know a little bit more about them individually if they want to be able to have a hundred percent, you know, tailored, personalized experience.
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So I think what the real value for these streaming platforms is, is being transparent and being open about the benefit and the trade-off of the personal information of the user and the experience that that they can provide as a result of it.
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And then how do these platforms you know aggregate it and quantify it?
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I mean, you know, we had we had talked last last week about you know having the ability to to you know having access to look at all the all the personal data that that Roku has and maybe all the personal data that Netflix has and all that stuff.
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But then there also has to be the ad tech stack available to be able to fully, you know, analyze it and understand it so that insights can be produced that can really lead to the more personalized experience that I think everybody is looking for.
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So what I would say in terms of measuring attention is that the consumer has to understand the value of their personal data and know the limits that they're willing to go up to.
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And how do we exchange that in a meaningful way that can show value back to the consumer, right?
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You know, nobody wants to give up financial information or any of that stuff.
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But if you're willing to give up your birthday, you know, some other, you know, demographics and content interests.
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Yeah, just triangulate some of the data to make it, okay, this is about uh how old this person is and about generally, and now we can all agree this is a middle ground and we can get a directional, a directional sense of what the truth is.
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Right.
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So that would be my 10,000 foot view of how to best measure attention is sort of getting the consumer to understand the value exchange that kind of needs to happen in order to move that ball down, you know, down the line a little bit.
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I love that.
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Well, Todd, we're certainly here for it.
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We're subscribed.
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If folks want to learn more about you, follow along with your research.
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Where are the best places to go?
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Where are you most active on socials?
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So I'm most active on socials on X and on LinkedIn.
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You know, if you just search for my name on LinkedIn, I post about four or five different things a day specific to, you know, everything from data center construction to the streaming platforms to, you know, just general changes in consumer demographics.
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I think, as we talked about early on in the podcast, the real value of a research and insights professional is the ability to listen.
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If you can listen to what people are most interested in and then connect that with data and research that's that's out there in the market, you will you have a much better chance of breaking through the noise and getting them to focus on the information that can help aid in their decision making.
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So, you know, send me a message on LinkedIn about specific things that you're interested in and working on.
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I feel like I've got my ear of the ground in terms of the best, you know, resources that are out there.
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You definitely do.
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And I can even, you know, provide some insight to you if you're working on specific things, like, hey, look at this website every day, follow this company on social media.
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The one thing that I will say though, and Tim, we talked about this a little bit last time as well.
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If you know what you're looking for, like you're probably thinking, well, how how am I gonna sift through all of this stuff?
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Like, I just I just don't know how I'm gonna be able to gather all this stuff.
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If you know what you're looking for, and if you have a general interest in it, specific words will jump off the screen.
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So if you see streaming, subscriptions, churn, trust, these words just have a way of jumping off the screen and really capturing your attention.
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It may take you a couple weeks to sort of come up with a general process, but I can be of great help to that, especially if I have the ability to talk to anybody about what they're working on.
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I can definitely help synthesize a lot of the information that's out there and let them know where they need to go on a daily basis to learn about that specific topic.
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You definitely can.
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We'll make sure to link to both of your socials so it's easy to get in touch and follow along with the great content that you're sharing.
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Todd, thank you so much for being here.
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Thanks a lot, Tim.
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Take care.
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Absolutely.
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And if you found this conversation to be helpful, share it with a colleague or a client.
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We'll see y'all next time.
