Hello and welcome everyone back to another episode of the Publisher Lab and joined with
me is someone who's been doing the intros when I'm not putting in the share
I've actually kind of taken his share to some extent. Welcome back, Stan
Thanks for having me, Tyler. This is my, what's the time on the show? Five times? Yeah, five times
No longer the quarterback that you mentioned earlier. Now I'm a receiver, so. Well, next time we're going to have to, we can switch because we can change back and forth
We'll kind of switch. We'll kind of find our way as we go, but thank you for letting in all the different times
This is the original idea of the Publisher Lab a long time ago, was we had so many knowledgeable
people in this building, it doesn't make sense to just listen to one person talk
So, you know, we wanted to go over sort of like the stuff that's important and just kind
of like, yeah, have a group of folks that sort of like, you know, weighed in on these
different things. But, you know, before we kind of get into the news today, you know, kind of looking
back on some of the things that you've had on the shows that you've been hosting and
things like that, what's picked up to you that maybe just sort of like, you know, what
kind of feels like the topic of the moment? I know AI has been big this year, but I guess I underline that
Like what types of things have stuck out to you this year? I think the amazing thing that has stuck out to me is this pace of change
So, for example, we're also in the publishing industry. You know, I guess at the start it was pretty simple
It was just another website, some content. And now it looks like the whole paradigm is shifting
And a lot of topics we have been covering have sort of touched on this paradigm shift
that's happening. So it might come off like, oh, you know, your website is going to lose all your traffic
or, oh, this is, you know, a different way to produce content
And I hope that has always underpinned a lot of what has been on the show, just from a
larger scale perspective. Yeah. And I think, you know, when you think about a lot of publishers, especially the ones that
I think listen to this show, there is always this sort of like, you know, this fear of
you know, we know that innovation, especially in technology, occurs in publishing
It's been a constant as you go back in time. And so it is sort of that feeling of like you know you're, you know, drawn in an island
and you know that the island is kind of sinking. So you're always kind of like keeping your eyes on the horizon to figure out, you know
where's the next, you know, safe place to live. And I think that in our industry as well, you know, I think waiting around until the
island is under water has been traditionally not the best one. So I think your life isn't the greatest change
It's probably accelerating some anxiety through just probably generally in publishing. Yeah
And, you know, when I first came into the industry, one of the first things I heard
was things were bad, things were always changing. You have to always adjust your mindset for whatever is coming
And I feel like what we're seeing now is that speed has ramped up
And because of that, maybe the island is not sinking, but the island is just moving around
a lot faster. Yeah. Excuse me. And because of that, it just takes the person, the person behind that website and do more
ads on their thinking, their planning, on how they're just running their business in general. Yeah
And because of that, since it's a speedy changing, it causes, as you said, a lot of
anxiety, a lot of nervousness. People are worried about their business. And I feel like, you know, anything you can give a publisher to help them navigate this
ever moving and faster moving environment, it's helpful to innovate. Yeah. I agree with that
And I think one of the things that, you know, the positives from innovation in general is
that oftentimes things are thought of as like, oh, well, innovation seems to get more complex
or, you know, there's new technology introduced. And I think that that's not true
I think innovation generally means something that exists today, a problem, usually is solved
in a more simple way. Yeah. And I think when you think about PowerSpace right now, you know, I think for publishers
that make websites and make content, the complexity has been rising. And I think part of the reason for that is because a lot of things in the current environment
have been adapting to a changing publishing environment. Yeah. You know, there was no YouTube 20 years ago, really, that you had to compete with for attention
for an audience. And now YouTube and video is right there next to, you know, written content
And if you think about what it means to be a video publisher now, it's like, you know
20 years ago you were making indie movies or, you know, now you're uploading videos to the Internet
So that got way simpler. Yeah. I think one of the things that's really important is to recognize if you're a publisher that
you know, any time there's innovation, it seems like, it feels like things are moving
away from you. It's not that publishing or content is something that people don't want anymore
I mean, there's more than ever. There's growing demand. Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, keep your eyes out for where is it getting easier
And that's generally where things are, you know, where the innovation is occurring