Digiday editors on Trump administration picks and the impact on the ad industry

Reading Time: 3 minutes

By Kimeko McCoy • November 19, 2024 •

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Since the U.S. presidential election was called, the advertising industry has been parsing through the tea leaves, trying to understand exactly what a Trump presidency means for business. That picture is starting to come into clearer focus as Trump continues to announce cabinet picks and assemble the incoming administration. For example, last week, Trump picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has called for pharmaceutical ads to be banned, to potentially be named Secretary of Health and Human Services.

On this week’s episode of the Digiday Podcast, executive editor, video, audio, Tim Peterson and senior marketing reporter Kimeko McCoy are joined by senior marketing editor Kristina Monllos and senior media reporter Sara Guaglione to talk about the incoming administration’s ripple effects on publishing, marketing and media.

Below are highlights from the conversations, which have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Revisiting the Trump Bump

Guaglione: If you remember in 2020, the winner of the presidential election wasn’t called until, I believe, Saturday. Whereas this time around, by Wednesday morning, we all knew that Donald Trump would be president. So in some ways, that’s a bit disappointing for some publishers because there was less of that crazy news cycle. I remember in 2020, all of us were just constantly checking the needle and all the votes coming in and what that meant. That just wasn’t the case this time.

Guaglione: What’s really interesting — something that I noticed was that even though the presidency was called, Donald Trump was named the president a lot earlier this time around — a lot of publishers were using that moment as marketing. I noticed in a lot of email outreach, communication to readers, banners on new sites and things like that, asking for readers to subscribe or to donate, join memberships. A lot of that language was about supporting these news outlets, which is really interesting and sounds like it’s worked —

Peterson: — at least for some, because Slate reported the day after the election a big jump in subscribers, paid subscribers.

Getting it wrong

Peterson: Kristina, you talk a lot with marketers and agency side of things. Are they already trying to adapt to any shifts in audience behavior?

Monllos: The biggest thing that I’ve heard from people so far is they’re curious if they got it wrong, understanding their consumers, and if they should be investing in more research and all that sort of thing in the way that a lot of publishers got it wrong.

Monllos: I don’t think there’s anything just yet because it’s been a little over a week. [There’s no] “We’re going to move our budget this way or that way just yet.” But there is a sense of, “Where are we getting it wrong? Who should we be talking to and how should we be talking to them?”

Wins in the new administration

McCoy: If you’ve got an administration who’s lax on [corporate regulations], I would imagine that, again, you’d have a brand that would want to be quiet [in regard to brand purpose] because they stand to benefit from being in that space.

Peterson: Wall Street Journal just had an event where they had primarily marketing execs speaking. The president of JetBlue was talking there. Trump administration naturally came up and the president of JetBlue was saying, “If there’s more lax regulation, that will be good for us.” They were talking about how Biden’s policies being pro-consumer were more burdensome for airlines like JetBlue. So then, the idea being more lax regulation, then JetBlue can be more customer-friendly.

Peterson: It doesn’t quite add up in my mind, but this was an executive who basically was acknowledging less regulation is better for the business.

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