Decoder with Nilay Patel
00:24:35 · Matt Strauss, S6, S7, Nilay Patel
We're We're using graphical overlays to show the trajectory of the ball. We're putting the names over the players heads just so it's a little bit easier so you can kind of follow what's going on. And you're not changing the core production, you're enhancing it. The enhancement of it, whether it's something like Performance View, whether it's something like I'm describing with SNL, whether it's, again, rethinking the windowing of the content, I think it's all of these types of tactics and features that are allowing us to kind of reach new viewers, but also allow them to consume the content on their terms. And the way you watch may be different than the way I watch. And we're just trying to give viewers different choices to enhance their experience. [00:25:28] S6: This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed Sponsored Jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. [00:25:58] S7: The people of the great nation of Texas have not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988, but this year, that might change. James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian school teacher, self confessed, cringe progressive [00:26:11] S4: Yes. I was doing it maybe in in an annoying way.
00:26:11 · Nilay Patel, S7, Matt Strauss, S2, S8
[00:26:11] S4: Yes. I was doing it maybe in in an annoying way. [00:26:14] S7: Is leading in most polls. His opponent, republican attorney general Ken Paxton, is facing two headwinds, the price of gas and everything. Also, Paxton has done some very, very bad stuff. So Republicans have been trying some messaging, questioning whether Talarico is man enough for Texas. [00:26:30] S5: Low tea Talarico, Too weak for Texas. [00:26:34] S7: Tofu Talarico? They're questioning some other things too. [00:26:38] S2: I love you too, sir, in a totally platonic way. To be clear, I'm the vice president, not James Talarico. [00:26:47] S7: Memaw would be appalled, but what do Texans think? Are they buying it? On today explain from Vox, we pay a visit. [00:26:54] S5: Born to be a cowboy. [00:26:57] S7: Today explain drops every weekday. [00:27:00] S8: Hey, y'all. It's Esteb from America Actually at vox.com. We know that you have big questions about the world, and so do we. At Vox, we focus on covering the things that matter in your life and the things that make you curious, whether that's the big politics questions of the day, climate solutions that might actually work, or hopeful news in cancer or Alzheimer's research. We believe that journalism made for the everyday curious person can make a difference in making a better world. And if that sounds like something you wanna be a part of, Vox now has a brand new app, and it brings all of our journalism together in one place. Go to vox.com/app to download today.
00:27:00 · S8, Nilay Patel, Matt Strauss
[00:27:00] S8: Hey, y'all. It's Esteb from America Actually at vox.com. We know that you have big questions about the world, and so do we. At Vox, we focus on covering the things that matter in your life and the things that make you curious, whether that's the big politics questions of the day, climate solutions that might actually work, or hopeful news in cancer or Alzheimer's research. We believe that journalism made for the everyday curious person can make a difference in making a better world. And if that sounds like something you wanna be a part of, Vox now has a brand new app, and it brings all of our journalism together in one place. Go to vox.com/app to download today. [00:27:49] S4: One one thing I always think about in terms of distribution is every distribution channel, the monetization is more or less lucrative. So I can make a million Instagram reels today, and they will make me $0, but more people will see my face and then maybe I will sell them a Verge subscription or the Decoder book or whatever it is in the future. And that's the creator economy. [00:28:08] S5: Mhmm.
00:28:08 · Matt Strauss, Nilay Patel
[00:28:08] S5: Mhmm. [00:28:09] S4: Right? It's a it's a 10,000,000 little ad agencies and Instagram doesn't pay for the content, and they all have to monetize it some other way. Then there's, I don't know, Peacock or Netflix where I pay a subscription fee and the content is there, and there's that monetization model. Then there's, I don't the movies. You can go and pay to watch one movie one time, and that's gonna be very lucrative for Christopher Nolan, maybe nobody else, but it's very lucrative for Christopher Nolan. Which one is most valuable for you? You're describing everything, but it has to be that some make more money than others and some attract more new audience than others and you're trying to bring people from the biggest audience to the most revenue. [00:28:45] S5: Yeah and so this is really I want to give a lot of credit to our ad sales team. Mark Marshall who oversees ad sales because several years ago we recognized that if you really want to have this kind of a strategy and vision, like I said about content first, platform second, you need to become almost agnostic around where the consumption is happening. And so we made the decision that we actually sell as one portfolio. And so when you're buying advertising, we are combining the audiences across broadcast, cable, streaming, digital. And that's how we sell it and go to market. And that's actually been the way that we've been doing this now.
00:28:45 · Matt Strauss, Nilay Patel
[00:28:45] S5: Yeah and so this is really I want to give a lot of credit to our ad sales team. Mark Marshall who oversees ad sales because several years ago we recognized that if you really want to have this kind of a strategy and vision, like I said about content first, platform second, you need to become almost agnostic around where the consumption is happening. And so we made the decision that we actually sell as one portfolio. And so when you're buying advertising, we are combining the audiences across broadcast, cable, streaming, digital. And that's how we sell it and go to market. And that's actually been the way that we've been doing this now. [00:29:29] S4: Is advertising the number one line of revenue here? Because on cable, when you were part of Comcast, I'm sure the rates were not as high as you we should get now that you're split. But Comcast just paid you carriage fees.
00:29:40 · Matt Strauss
[00:29:40] S5: Yeah, so we are a dual revenue stream business. Advertising is very much a material part of the overall revenue stream, not just of NBC and cable, of Peacock. And again, if you remember, this was a big part of our strategy when we launched Peacock six years ago because the streaming market specifically was very focused on ad free, binge viewing, scripted dramas, grow subscribers at any cost. That was the future. And we zigged while the rest of the market zagged. We believed the white space was actually going to look more like broadcast television. And so instead of trying to build a standalone streaming business, from the beginning, we always saw Peacock as an extension of the broadcast business. And if you look at it through that lens, that has influenced all of our programming decisions around live events and sports, around why we wanted to have movies and scripted but also unscripted and news because the belief was that streaming was going to look a lot more like television. And if the viewership moved to streaming, well then why wouldn't the advertisers move to streaming? And so 80% of the subscribers on Peacock are on our ad tier, which is a higher mix of advertising subs than I think almost any other streaming service. But that's because of decisions that we made six years ago. The platform that we built for Peacock was designed for live. And so when you see something like an exclusive NFL playoff game or the Olympics or the NBA tip-off, The reason why our platform scales and why you're probably not talking about pixelation or buffering or long latency or high app crashes is because we spent years doing nothing but just wanting to harden the platform because we believed that we needed to build a platform for scale for live. And so all of this kind of compounded itself to your question around whether you're watching something on NBC or Peacock, we sell it as one. And that has allowed us to go to market in a way that really does allow us to, I think, punch above our weight when it comes to the advertising and the monetization. And it's a critical part to our strategy. If you were to I think about 30% of our advertising revenue came from sports and streaming six years ago. Now it's probably closer to 60% of our of our advertising revenue is is coming from streaming and from and from sports.