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Over the last few years, marketers have been trying to flip their position in the cultural zeitgeist — making moments themselves as opposed to retroactively marketing around them. That’s why e.l.f. Beauty has built out its own entertainment arm, e.l.f. made, tasked with creating of the moment content around music, movies, gaming and sports. 

Thanks to the short-form content boom, advertisers like e.I.f Beauty have been working to move at the so-called speed of culture. While key agency partnerships remain intact for brand activation, an in-house entertainment arm allows the beauty brand to produce branded content fast enough to keep up with trends. 

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• Donald Trump successfully used podcasts to expand his reach during the 2024 presidential campaign.
• On Election day, Trump ended up boosting his support among men overall compared to 2020.
• A variety of podcast hosts are set to have a substantial level of influence in Trump's second term.

President-elect Donald Trump's love for the media is well-known — just look at how much Trump's early picks resemble a Fox News greenroom.

The president-elect made significant efforts during his campaign to get his message in front of podcasters and influencers. Now that he's set to return to power, these commentators will play a major role in setting and pushing his agenda. Or they'll just stream from the White House.

If Donald Trump Jr., who hosts his own podcast, gets his wish they might even be seated somewhere in the White House briefing room.

'The Joe Rogan Experience'

The UFC commentator and comedian Joe Rogan has become one of the biggest names in the podcast world. Rogan's persona and massive following (14.5 million followers on Spotify and nearly 19 million subscribers on YouTube) have given him the sort of platform that continues to attract a range of high-profile guests.

Trump's appearance on Rogan's podcast in October allowed him to reach a critical audience — which heavily skews male — ahead of an election where the president-elect boosted his performance with men compared to 2020. Rogan's reach is so substantial that Trump took a few hours off the campaign trail to travel to Austin, Texas, to sit in the studio with the podcast host.

Rogan, shortly before the election, endorsed Trump's candidacy, calling him "the biggest there is."

Many Democrats pushed for Vice President Kamala Harris to appear on the program before the election, but scheduling during the frenetic last weeks of the race precluded her from traveling to Austin to do so, according to a campaign statement at the time.

"My sincere wish is to just have a nice conversation and get to know her as a human being," Rogan said in October.

'Bannon's War Room'

One of the more seasoned podcasters in Trump's orbit, former White House strategist Steve Bannon, started his program during Trump's first impeachment. Trump has said he listens to "Bannon's War Room."

Bannon used the program to foment backlash to then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California. And Kash Patel, Trump's pick to lead the FBI, has made countless appearances on the show.

Former White House Trade Council director Peter Navarro, set to return to Trump's second administration, was among a handful of commentators who kept Bannon's show going while he was in prison. Like Navarro, Bannon was sentenced for his defiance of a subpoena from the House January 6 committee.

'Triggered with Don Jr.'

Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect's eldest son, has confirmed he won't be in the incoming administration. But he remains a key voice in his father's ear.

Trump Jr. pushes his message in multiple forms, including on his podcast, "Triggered With Don Jr.," which he has hosted for almost a year. He's frequently hosted some of Trump's congressional allies, along with top aides like Stephen Miller, who will return to the White House.

In a recent episode, Trump Jr. teased how the president-elect's transition team is eyeing ways to bring conservative podcasters into the White House briefing room.

'This Past Weekend with Theo Von'

In August, the comedian Theo Von hosted Trump on his podcast, "This Past Weekend with Theo Von." On the program, Von spoke openly with Trump about his recovery from drug addiction. It may not have been seen as a typical stop for a presidential candidate, but the conversation was heard by many Americans, providing Trump with another connection to a bloc of male voters who don't consume much mainstream media.

Von received a shout out from UFC president Dana White during Trump's election night victory speech in Florida.

'The Charlie Kirk Show'

Charlie Kirk, a cofounder of the conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA, has spent over a decade advocating for limited government and free markets among students on high school and college campuses.

Ahead of the 2024 general election, Kirk used Turning Point Action, the political advocacy arm of Turning Point USA, to boost Trump's bid for a second term and amplify his conservative message. Kirk appeared alongside Trump at campaign events in key swing states like Georgia and Nevada, which the president-elect went on to flip in November.

Kirk hosts "The Charlie Kirk Show" podcast, which serves as an influential vehicle for reaching the sort of young voters who were a key part of Trump's electoral gains.

'Full Send Podcast'

Few shows personify "the manosphere" that Trump spent the summer tapping into more than "Full Send," a podcast started by a group of influencers called the Nelk Boys. Trump has made multiple appearances on Full Send, even stumping with one of its members in Las Vegas. Unlike Bannon and some others on this list, the Nelk Boys are not explicitly political, which made their audience ripe for Trump's 2024 appeals but also means they're unlikely to engage in the day-to-day news cycle.

Adin Ross

Adin Ross, an internet personality and popular streamer, sat down with Trump this past August and in a departure from many interviews — gifted the Republican a gold Rolex watch and a customized Tesla Cybertruck.

Ross became a big name through his livestreams of video games, and Trump's interview with the streamer was one more way that he was able to connect with a male-skewing audience.

'The Dan Bongino Show'

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, is so firmly entrenched in the conservative space that he was selected to replace the late Rush Limbaugh in his coveted time slot. Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and other influential leaders on the right have pushed Trump to name Bongino to run the agency tasked with protecting the president. In the meantime, Bongino has been a vocal proponent of Trump's other nominees and helped lead a pressure campaign to push Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, to back Trump's pick to lead the Pentagon.

'Verdict with Ted Cruz'

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has repeatedly offered his full-throated support to Trump, a stark contrast to the bitter end to his 2016 GOP primary run. Like Bannon, Cruz launched his podcast amid Trump's first impeachment battle. He has since used his platform to shed light on Congress and to discuss the news of the day.

With a 53-47 Republican Senate majority beginning in January, Trump can't afford many defections if he wants to get his agenda through the upper chamber. Cruz is well-positioned to serve as a narrator for a far more supportive group than the one that repeatedly vexed Trump in his first term.

'The Megyn Kelly Show'

Many in Trump's orbit once detested former Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly after she asked him during a 2015 GOP presidential debate about past inflammatory comments directed toward women.

"You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals," she asked at the time. "Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?"

Trump repeatedly blasted Kelly after the interview.

But in the intervening years, Kelly left Fox and was hired by NBC News before a tumultuous departure. She's since become a major conservative voice in the podcast world and interviewed Trump on her show in September 2023.

Ahead of the 2024 election, she appeared alongside Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, voicing her support for his campaign and calling him a "protector of women."

'All-In Podcast'

Key venture capitalists embraced Trump ahead of the 2024 election, including former PayPal executive David Sacks. Sacks and fellow venture capitalists, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg, hold court on their podcast, "All-In," which was launched during the pandemic.

It remains to be seen how involved Sacks will be going forward on the podcast now that Trump has named him his AI and crypto czar. Trump made an appearance during a June episode.

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Programmatic advertising methods like retargeting can be powerful for pushing interested customers over the line into making a purchase. But the approach can lose potency if the proverbial funnel isn’t regularly refilled with new prospective customers. 

“Over time, in order to compete and continue to grow, you need to expand your funnel. Otherwise you risk to optimize yourself to the ground and run out. If you continue to sharpen a pencil, at some point you run out of pencil,” TripAdvisor’s Matteo Balzani said on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, which was recorded live during last week’s Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit in Nashville.

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Podcast recording platform Riverside said Monday that it has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Zeev Ventures, with participation from Seven Seven Six, and angel investor Sam Lessin. The company wants to use this funding to grow its team and build out solutions for the podcast and content creation space. The startup, […]

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• Brittany Broski focuses on community over follower count for lasting influence.
• Broski rose to fame in 2019 with a viral kombucha video and now has millions of followers.
• What she thinks will last in a crowded influencer market is authenticity and reliability.

Social media star Brittany Broski says she has always leaned into building her community over worrying about her follower count.

"What do numbers really determine when you can buy followers, when you can buy a check mark now?" Broski told Business Insider.

"I think the real power comes from community, the people that you can bring together."

Broski, whose real name is Brittany Tomlinson, rose to fame in 2019 following a mega-viral moment in which she tasted kombucha for the first time.

She now has 7.5 million TikTok followers and over 2 million subscribers on YouTube.

Broski, 27, now also has two podcasts: Royal Court, where she interviews celebrities in a free-flowing format, and The Broski Report, where she muses on whatever she is thinking about that week.

She thinks that influencers who are authentic and build loyal communities online will have more staying power, even if that means those communities are niche.

The influencer gap

There's some debate over whether brands still prefer to work with micro-influencers after engagement became the pinnacle in the past few years.

Some surveys and experts think things are going backward, and superstars are being favored once more, leading smaller creators to feel pushed out.

Others, however, see creators with small but mighty audiences thriving again in the near future.

Ultimately, algorithms change, and what is popular today may not be tomorrow.

Broski's advice for creators is to lean into what makes them different.

Broski felt she had been "pigeonholed as a meme" at the start of her internet career as the "kombucha girl," and she wanted to distance herself from this as soon as possible.

Instead, she strived to "build out an identifiable brand."

Community and connection

Community, both on and offline, has always been important to Broski. She told BI that's one reason she partnered with White Claw this holiday season in a campaign that focuses on making quality time with friends and family.

On Broski's shows, she also strives to "share a human moment with people" rather than repeat the same questions celebs receive at press junkets.

"More than anything, people just want to be heard and seen and felt like they're known," she said.

In Royal Court, Broski often asks her guests, including Saoirse Ronan and Daisy Edgar-Jones, to "prove their worth to earn a spot on Lady Broski's coveted small council" and has them dress up in medieval costumes.

"I really like leaning into this sort of silly nature of, I'm going to make you wear a cape and a hat, and you're going to like it," she said. "You get to see that person's personality more than just, let's talk about your work."

Broski thinks what is going to last is "authenticity and reliability."

"Those two words are so overused and so bastardized, but it doesn't take away from the core meaning," she said.

Her advice to creators is that people want to watch someone they relate to, Broski said — someone who makes them think, "She's just like me."

"That's all people want," she said. "So don't overthink it."

The audience also just wants the people they watch to be themselves.

"That seems so cliché, but what else can you do?" Broski said. "If you try to be anyone else, you're doomed to fail."

• Spotify's year-end feature has something new: an AI-generated "podcast" about your Wrapped.
• It uses Google's NotebookLM technology.
• It's neat? But WEIRD!! Very weird!!! No thank you!

One of the indignities inflicted on parents of young children is Spotify Wrapped. Each December, thousands of adults open up their year-end treat to discover the sad fact that they listened to "Baby Shark" more times than anything else.

As a parent, this has been my fate for the last few years. (My Spotify account is connected to our Amazon Echo, which means that in some years, my kids' requests for songs about potty words have ended up on my Wrapped.)

I take very little pleasure in Spotify Wrapped, although I know it's a massively popular thing that many people —presumably those who don't listen to Raffi on repeat — really look forward to.

However, this year, there's a new feature. And I struggle to imagine how anyone won't feel mildly weirded out by it: Spotify uses Google's new NotebookLM AI-powered feature to create an individualized AI-generated podcast with two talking heads discussing your listening habits in a conversational, podcast-y tone. Yikes!

I received a 3-minute podcast with a man and woman chatting about how impressive it was that I had listened to "Cruel Summer" by Taylor Swift — my 4-year-old's current favorite tune, narrowly edging out "Let It Go" this year — so many times that I was in the Top 0.02% of listeners. (I should note here that the podcast said I was in the Top 0.02%, while the main Wrapped said it was 0.05%. Possibly the podcast version hallucinated?)

I can understand why people like sharing screenshots from their Wrapped. It's normal to want to share what music you like — and what those lists say about you and your personality.

But listening to an AI podcast about it? Voiced by robots? I'm not sure anyone wants that.

Google's NotebookLM is a fascinating product — I've played around with it a little, and it is very cool, if not uncanny. You can add in text or a PDF or other kinds of data, and it will create a conversational podcast episode with two hosts — "likes" and "ums" and all.

It's got that factor about GenAI that makes you go "whoa," like trying ChatGPT for the first time to have it write a poem.

It's got the dog-walking-on-its-hind-legs element: It's impressive because the dog can do it at all, not because it's doing it particularly well. The idea that AI could generate a chatty podcast that sounds almost real is, admittedly, mindblowing. But would you want to actually listen to it? I'm not really so sure.

I've wondered what this would be used for — I assume some people find listening to something makes it easier to engage with than simply reading it. You could take the Wikipedia page for "The War of 1812," plug it into AI, and generate an engaging history podcast instead of slogging through dry text.

And in a business setting, perhaps a busy exec could upload an accounting report and listen to it while on the putting green instead of reading a stale PDF. (I tried uploading my tax return and created what may be the most boring podcast in human history.)

But NotebookLM is a pretty niche product so far — and Spotify Wrapped is a massively popular feature on a massively popular app. It's likely that this will be many people's first exposure to NotebookLM's abilities.

I imagine it will be mindblowing for many people! But I urge restraint and moderation. Although seeing a screenshot of your friends' top artists might be fun, no one wants to hear a podcast about it.