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Lou pascalis is the chief strategy officer for ad Fon uh media he knows ex CEO Linda rakino quite well in a recent
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weeks was one of the number of AD Executives encouraging to resign advising her to do so uh before her
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reputation is damaged he said he also wrote a really interesting piece about it uh I've known him for a long time
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he's been a big mover and Shaker in the ad industry uh We've recently talked quite a lot about how advertisers are
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not buying into news which I want to get to at the end but first welcome Lou thank you car it's a thrill to be here
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with you and Scott bucketless event for me so nice you're you're a nice fan um you've always been really nice about
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pivot um so let's talk first about Linda you've known her for a long time you were close to her you even were very at
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the time she went to Twitter when I said oh no no this isn't going to end well you said oh come on Cara I'll give her a
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chance she'll do a good job um uh when you texted her about resigning that was before elon's dealbook interview uh H
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have you been in touch since and obviously you wrote that piece um what what's the state of play right now she's
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sort of Allin it seems she is all in and uh I've texted her a number of times without reply which is you know
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unfortunate because normally we you know had a great you know exchange very quickly but I think she's bunkered in I
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think she's really focused on staying on the mechanical bull as long as possible
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um and uh you know I I I think that this is very consistent with her DNA where quitting equals failing and
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unfortunately that's a sort of short-term outcome in this context whereas the long-term outcome is she
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probably has or maybe had the best reputation of any sside senior executive in the advertising industry it was built
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over a quarter Century always doing the right thing high integrity you could rely on her you know her word was her
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bond and I think she's now cashing those chips in for Elon in a way that I don't
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think he's capable of reciprocating yeah so after the interview she as you said she sent a
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memo to ex employees saying mus quote shared an unmatched and completely unvarnished perspective and vision for
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the future this is after he cursed out advertisers uh she also which was shocking to me she also said in the post
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about X standing at the unique and amazing intersection of free speech and Main Street which was possibly one of
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the worst metaphors I've ever heard do you actually think she believes this stuff or is she just determined what is
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causing this I think she believes it now I think she actually believes it I maybe
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not I I I don't find her to be a particularly cynical person over the time I knew her I think she wants to
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believe it and I think she's searching for arguments to make it believable and I think it's resonating with a certain
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audience on X uh that you know has really consumed the Kool-Aid you know every time I I get
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interviewed dude I get hared by these people who are you know accusing me of hating Free Speech which I I find
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laughable given you know uh my side hustle to save news so I think she's slowly building what um um Walter
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isacson would have described as a reality Distortion field when you know in the book jobs uh
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and I think she probably sees the counterargument but she's making the case as best she can because she's
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tenacious as hell and she's going to make her argument okay last question Scott have a question when I predicted
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when I wrote that Linda was going to be the CEO um you responded to me on Twitter saying she would be my first
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choice and my only choice to save the platform from the hands of its owner you also noted I still cannot understand why
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she'd subject herself to Elon Musk however um you did think it could work correct
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correct at the beginning I did because I thought it was rather self facing of Elon to recognize that he was never
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going to be able to change his behavior in such a way way as to appeal to advertisers and there were all these
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incidents that happened before the last influence Council which was a legacy of Twitter which was a shocking meeting
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where he basically said advertisers were going to have to create a distance between how he himself acted and buying
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the platform uh which is not a possibility when you work in Corporate America how
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the CEO speaks is you know is representative of the platform's values but I thought she could influence him I
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thought it was a moment where Elon said okay for me to be successful I'm going to have to learn from others and I'm
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going to go and buy the best person I can but he didn't Empower her it was very evident when the name change was
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affected that she was not part of the comm's plan which I found shocking having grown up in Corporate America she
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was basically behind a parade uh cleaning up the elephant poop and saying rahah this is great but it didn't feel
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like she had a meaningful role in it and it it it seems like she's not being allowed to exert the kind of influence
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that he paid to get and that would have helped him and and now that's affecting her ability to help him even if he were
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to change his behavior Scott good to see you Lou um likewise Scott so it it's not that they've registered a
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50 or 60% decline in advertising Revenue that's surprising it's that they still have 40 or 50%
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so make the bull case for advertising on Twitter what do you think her pitch is you're you're in this business give us
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the pitch your NBC NBC Universal or NBC UI whatever it's called her old employer
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that's actually stopped advertising what's the pitch to come back on the platform right
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now Scott I really struggle with that because you know I think as you know in it's Heyday I was an enormous supporter
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of Twitter and I was a huge Advertiser on Twitter news broke on Twitter culture broke on Twitter Sports is better with
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Twitter the only use case I personally have anymore is during Formula 1 races which
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is a very International Community and I'm a huge Formula 1 fan is I connect with the people that I'll never meet all
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over the world and we watch in real time and we snark in real time I think it's different if you're activating in sports
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if you've got a league sponsorship there are immediate plays to extend that you know keep your eye on the NFL deal will
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the NFL continue to endure being associated with Twitter in in coming years um I think that's one um they
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don't have a good uh performance product they never did it's always been their weakness to Achilles heel so that limits
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their ability to appeal to DTC and you know they're pivoting now to small and mediumsized businesses you're going to
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need an awful lot of those to make up for the companies that walked away and so as she walks into Corporate
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America I I don't really know what argument that she has other than to say activate Your sponsorship and I just
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read an article this morning that uh you know people are moving their Super Bowl
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sponsorships was which was always the biggest week on Twitter from a revenue standpoint and they're moving them to
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Tik Tok they're moving them elsewhere where it's much harder to activate but they just don't want to take that risk
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and that's where the margins are it's those big Brandy plays not those you know directed consumer small uh direct
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response plays I I wouldn't know how to begin to sell that platform to any well-governed company wow not anything
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you're an ad guy are you been and you've been you've heard every ad guy trying to
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get you to spend money yeah and and and woman person absolutely and you know it's it's really hard for me to say this
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I loved the platform before Elon bought it I'm a huge fan of Lindy acarino I don't see a path forward with
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advertisers and I think that's why Elon made the statement he did at dealbook I think he went there wanting to deliver a
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message like he did I think he knew that after his you know post October 7th unfortunate retweet that the path
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forward with advertising was dead to him because you know anti-Semitism is the third rail and I don't think there was
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recovery and so I think his approach was very much like Cortez when he landed in
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the New World in 1519 the first thing he did was burn the boats so nobody was going back I think he burned the boats
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to advertising Lind is going to keep trying but he's moved on to another Revenue model that he has in his head
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that I am not smart enough to understand but the man's a genius and you know we'll wait and see if he's got something
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up his sleeve that the rest of us aren't seeing but just to just to follow up on
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that if you think he's moving to a non-advertising based Revenue model what does she bring does she survive as CEO
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she doesn't have any background in AI doesn't have any background in payments she's an ad
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salesperson I think it's a fair question I think that you know maybe what he's learning although I would say in a in a
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in a not so you know preductive way is that before you jump to the new thing you need to still continue to nurture
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the old thing right uh he doesn't have a good track record of doing that um I you
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know I what I do know is that you know there there's few people that are better than Linda at figuring it out at being
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able to to Pivot to adapt whatever and you know she does have relationships above the CMO level where some of these
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new Revenue model that he's thinking about some of these new businesses bolting on content deals yeah content
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deals you know she's kind of hinting at sponsorship uh which you know again it's
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got the same set of issues I think uh but you know I I I think she'll be around for a while I think in the
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relative scheme of things she's not that expensive considering what he's trying to do and she can still knock on doors
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and get in rooms even if she's not getting add money as a result um what do what so when the advertising Community
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are they going to come back is there it never worked before I it never worked for us it never you know why would they
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are they going to come back or is this just a is it a pause or it's like that's enough of this because better to put
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their money correct I this one is really clear to me and you know I put myself in
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the context of having run ad buying operations for major brands for three and a half decades there is no scenario
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that's going to cause me to go to the management team and say you know what we've looked at what x has to offer from
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an advertising perspective and we're going to go back up on the platform and you're just going to have to ignore the
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risks of Elon Musk his current and future Antics I don't know if the management team would laugh me out of the room or
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have me escorted out of the room but I know I'd be out of a job in 24 hours because part of the job is risk
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mitigation a big part of the job when you're a Fortune 500 company is saying do the risks offset the rewards and the
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risks are usually well we reach the Right audience does the platform have enough scale does our creative resonate
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against this audience this is will our customers boycott us if we go up on uh on Twitter will the board call the CEO's
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judgment into question could I get my CEO fired these are risks that have no offset whatsoever from an advertising
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value and so I would never make that recommendation I can't imagine people wanting to come back from that and my
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bigger concern isn't the gfy comment that he said to um Andrew r i don't want listen I leave
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that to you guys I leave that to you guys it was [ __ ] yourself okay when he said when he said go [ __ ] yourself twice
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to advertisers there you got me to do it um I'm actually less concerned about that than what he did immediately
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afterward hi Bob this is what corporate communication functions fear most of all
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and I have to tell you guys and it's a topic for another day marketing has been suborned in most major companies to
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corporate community Communications these are risk averse people who are really there to promote the CEO and his talk
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track right and the minute that he singled out Bob Iger every one of them said that's it I'm not going near that
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because God forbid we go on the platform and then choose to come off again at a later date we might get singled out and
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I'm not getting my CEO singled out and neither is the media guy so I think he slammed the watertight door he's dogged
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it down and he has moved on and advertisers on the air side of it are not pushing on that door at all I I
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think it's a parting of the ways and I really doubt you're going to see major well-governed companies come back wow
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well there it is let me ask you um I want to ask you one more questions about this so and you think she's staying no
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matter what she doesn't she's staying no matter what where could she is she ruined her career or can she recover if
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no you know I still look at this as the biggest virtual intervention in history the entire ad Community people who do
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what I do uh all of whom you know we know each other it's a yenta Fest we all yeah we
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go to the same events we have the same conversations for we're trying to run an intervention for her to get her out
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there's a million things she could go do she could run Amazon's ad platform she could you know she can recover from this
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the only thing that you know you have to give her a mulligan on is the Vox interview which was a whole another
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thing that you guys have talked about before which was just on her best day but she's so well respected in the
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industry everybody would like well she tried we kind of thought it wasn't going to
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work because of him it didn't it's not her fault and now she's going to end up somewhere else so I think she's got run
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yeah but she's I know dou she's doubled down but she's doubled down against climbing Mount Everest where a lot of
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people fail and you know I said on an interview last week you know that Hill went from steep to Vertical now because
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of his behavior but she's she's not going to let go of it but the the advertising Community will give her a
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break the question is you know will people who don't know her but who seem to have formed opinions of her in the
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last couple months also give her that break and that is you know unknown all right Scott last question then I have
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just one more about a different topic so Lou you sit at sort of the Helm of the Bob slud looking at flows of advertising
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Revenue just more broadly speaking um and by the way just a quick comment as someone who didn't know or
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anything about Linda before I think this has been a total disaster for her to me
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she just looks not not knowing how impressive a person she is and I trust your judgment and and Caris has said
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very complimentary things of her coming into this with a clean slate she strikes
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me as the worst CEO of the Year hands down if time had said worst CEO of the year it would have been this individual
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is just being mocked and made a fool of and every day just looks worse and worse
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but anyway um the you sit at the you get you have a bird's eye view into capital
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and advertising flows across the major platforms and major mediums I just love your sort of Cliff Notes on which
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platforms are doing better than people think not as well as people think like what are you seeing out there in the
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ecosystem you know I think there's really a search for Quality engagement and the places that you get the kind of
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quality engagement have bifurcated based on the audience that you're going after
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uh you're seeing certainly um one social platform emerge as the you know the sort
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of killer app and that's Tik Tok marketers have to work really hard to get quality engagement there but when
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they get it right they really get it right so there's a lot more effort being put in there there is this symbiotic
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ecosystem between what are called retail media networks these are the Walmart the
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Walgreens the Albertson uh the Kroger of the world that are now in the ad business who have
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great first-party data Scot but they don't have the kind of scale that they really need and so they're forging
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alliances with c TV CTV is also login that's the Netflix of the world the ad supported sides of Hulu etc etc um and
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they're trying to build an ecosystem where there's Rich first-party data there's quality engagement there's up
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and down funnel uh and I do think in a broader context uh we're seeing some really interesting green shoots we just
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did some research at adones media with Civic science which showed that young people are now turning back to Quality
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news platforms um for their news and away from social media because they feel like they were
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duped in 2020 so jenz yeah JZ and Millennials they're now saying we're not going to get duped and I mean it's a
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sign of hopefulness it's a sign that people are kind of taking the rein back in so I think accountability
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transparency and Trust are kind of coming back in and that quality publishing and general will do well but
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you know there are not it's not without headwinds as you know a more pointed question what's the easiest platform to
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sell for you right now to an Advertiser look if I'm if if I'm an Advertiser where I'm going to start
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where I get the best targetability the best addressability the best scale of addressability and that is pretty much
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any AD supported CTV platform and then I would augment it with linear and then I
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would go into addressable digital um so what's old is new again uh there's so much headwind Scott on programmatic
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right way right now that Ana just dropped their full study the other day uh which full disclosure I worked on
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which just said that one in five one in every five dollar that's being spent in the 88 billion doll programmatic
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industry globally uh is going to Bad actors either made for advertising sites that
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deliver a terrible experience or these uh really lowquality Publishers that say you know if you have these three
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symptoms you might be dying a fungus which have no basis in reality and so I think we're seeing a flight to Quality a
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lot of that quality is from established companies I think you're going to actually see a little bit of a bump uh
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in really old school stuff like I'm not kidding terrestrial radio linear TV things that have measurability to them
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that give you scale and then addressable that's accountable and I think that's what you're going to see and I think
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there's going to be a whole lot of skepticism about programmatic moving forward which is a huge part of the
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digital ecosystem now um I have oh sorry I have a oh sorry I have a last question Lou um you have
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been pushing for this for for people to buy into news advertisers which they don't want to do even though they
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willingly go into more controversial platforms like ex um can you very briefly because we only have a little
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bit of time why is this important you and I had a great talk about this at uh in in France at con lion so we're living
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through an era where there's a war on truth and I mentioned this to you when we talked you know I it was eight years
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ago when kellyan Conway was standing on the lawn of the White House and answering a reporter's question by
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saying that the reporter that the president was using alternative facts and I naively googled that I thought
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that was a thing well now it is a thing and the only people who are defending the truth and the war on truth are
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journalists it's allowing for all sorts of zoning and Schoolboard issues that lead to the burning of books which you
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know sounds like Germany in the mid 1930s to me uh because you don't have local reporters there calling it out and
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marketers are uniquely called out in the uh uh first um Amendment of the Bill of
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Rights um in their their role to support journalism to keep politicians on track
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and we've got to do more there and and Cara it's not just an eat your vegetables message about it's your civic
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responsibility to support journalism it delivers enormous return on Advertising spend it delivers enormous unduplicated
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reach these are the things that advertis ERS crave and they're ignoring that because of unfounded fears about getting
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caught up in the cultural Wars which again are being driven by corporate Communications and have no basis in
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fact yep so people should advertise with news news it's so much more dangerous elsewhere it's so funny that they just
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they probably want to keep up with the young people in any case go ahead sorry I was say I know we're at time but what
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they're doing is ironically they're moving their money unbeknownst into mfas these bad M made for advertising sites
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which are engineered to appeal to that money and appear to be brand safe when in fact they're not and they're actually
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taking the money away from journalism and that 10 billion dollar slice of pie that's going to mfas if that went back
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into journalism in the United States you would see robust newsrooms and robust local reporting we're the real deal Lou
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that's right so are you I really appreciate it thank you so much so insightful um and fair I have to say I
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know you like Linda and I know you were very close to her and this I I hope she listens to you because
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you're thank you guys you're a better friend than she realizes I think I appreciate you saying that it's an honor
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to be on with both of you thanks Lou