Product Management and Media Companies

When I was younger, I nearly took my career in a radically different that likely would have taken me out of media. I was working at an industrial directory doing SEO and was bored out of my mind. Manufacturing, really? I’m more mature now and see why that’d be exciting. But at the time, I just wanted out.

And so, I got close to getting a job at ZocDoc. This would have taken me out of the world of slow, privately owned b2b ad-based companies and into the fast-moving world of VC-backed companies. In my first place, keeping revenue flat or not shrinking by a lot was a win. At ZocDoc? The goal would have been to snowball.

I didn’t get that job; a year later, I launched my first job board, getting a taste for product development. And six months after, I got promoted out of SEO and into the product org.

Why do I give my life story in a piece about the role of product at a media company? Because the product and engineering team was gold at ZocDoc or many of the exciting, VC-backed startups from the early 2010s. These were the people who built the thing that users used.

It’s different at media companies. Unlike Facebook, where the primary product is the platform, a media company’s primary product is the content. That means that the rock stars at a legitimate media company are the editorial members. These people create great content (I hope) and drive the necessary audience with said content to monetize.

But while that might be the case, it doesn’t make product teams any less critical than many of the other functions at a media company. Sure, the content team might be putting out what people actually pay for, but product teams are integral in how that content is ultimately valuable for the business and the audience.

So, I want to break down how companies should think about their product teams because there’s a right and wrong way. Sadly, most media companies fall in the wrong.

What is product?

To ground the conversation, let’s define what a product team is and a couple of different roles that might sit within this organization.

1. Program/Project Manager
2. Product Manager

Julia Beizer, CPO at Bloomberg Media, told me in an AMO podcast that when people think of product managers, they think of someone to “get stuff done.” The problem is that product managers are so much more than that. What these media companies actually wanted to hire was a program/project manager. These are people who are responsible for the delivery of certain features or initiatives. For example, want to roll out a new pop-up to acquire newsletter subscribers? That’s probably a program manager doing that. These features or initiatives might be more tactical in nature.

Now compare that to a product manager, whose responsibility is to sit at the intersection of competing business interests. The sales team is worried about revenue; editors are concerned about interesting storytelling capabilities; marketing is interested in audience needs; finance is interested in resource allocation. So how do you bridge those competing interests?

That’s what a product manager helps with. They come in, collect all the feedback (often called requirements gathering), synthesize all these ideas and information, and then present the best thing to do.

Remember, stakeholders are myopically focused on what they care about. Most sales orgs care about money. Period. End of story. We wouldn’t have sound on video ads if they cared about the audience. But audience development hates sound on video ads because bounce rates increase. So product managers can look at these competing interests and develop a strategy.

Most media companies are not in a position to support product managers. Most are candidly looking for people to “get stuff done.” But as Julia said in the interview, “everyone can get stuff done.” Where opportunity presents itself is when you can pull from this product team to help elevate the business.

How to work with product

If you think about it, product teams are like arbitrators. Their job is to understand what everyone wants and deliver a recommendation in the business’s best interest. Not in the best interest of an individual department, but in the business’s best interest.

The problem is that media companies often forget about the product team until the 11th hour and then pull them in to fix mistakes. As an executive at a media company, I’ve done this. I can say with an abundance of confidence that most media companies do this. It’s not intentional; we’re not looking at the product team and flipping them off. But because the content is our primary product (unlike a tech company where the platform is the product), we are biased toward that.

That means bringing them in sooner rather than later. For example, if you’re thinking about a new ad product, get a product manager in from the getgo. Don’t say, “Hey, we want to create this new ad type.” That’s too late. Instead, say, “hey, our partners are asking us for ads that can drive more leads; what should we do?” Now we have a problem that the product team can help devise a solution for. Instead of being prescriptive, they can be curious.

Working with product is about clarifying the problem you’re trying to solve and then working with the product team to devise that solution. Too often, companies come to the product team with a solution in mind which limits the possible outcomes. If you do that, you want the product team to “get stuff done,” which means, you need project/program managers.

Product can be your neutral party, and that can help unlock legitimate innovation for the business. And so, one of the simplest ways to work with product is to bring them into new problems from the beginning.

But product doesn’t just help create a new thing and then move on. Let’s go back to that new ad example. Once the ad is out in the market, the product team can help improve it iteratively. The reason it’s called product management is that there is a sense of ownership. As product teams scale, individuals can begin to specialize. And so, if the initial goal was to drive 100 leads per 10,000 visitors with V1, the company should incentivize that product manager to develop a strategy to push it to 110 leads per 10,000 visitors for V2.

Product managers should be thought of as mini-operators. They collect data and information from disparate sources and then make recommendations on how to improve things. Today’s improvement becomes tomorrow’s baseline for the next improvement.

The real sweet spot is when the product team can come to you with ideas. So, in the above example, the revenue team comes to product and says, “we want to create a new ad.” As the product team becomes more deeply integrated with the company, it should be able to come to the revenue team with ideas as well. The best product-oriented businesses have a balance of tops down and bottom-up ideation. But for that to occur, the product team needs to be involved and truly understand how things work. Efficient product management entails breaking down silos.

Obviously, the product team shouldn’t be involved in everything. If it’s a new story experience and the edit team has been given the go-ahead to publish, product shouldn’t be the arbiter of that. They’ve developed the tool, and now the primary stakeholder (edit, in this case) needs to use it. But, going back to the example above, product teams can help make it even better by using real-time data to see where users might drop off or where the company is seeing more conversions.

Here’s the truth… Most media companies are not going to hire true product managers. They’ll say they are, but they’re not. They’re not at a stage where they can think about things tops down and bottom up. Instead, what they’ll bring on is a program/project manager to just get stuff done. And that’s okay.

And even if many would want to hire a robust product team, the reality is that most media companies can’t. You’re competing with the Facebooks and Googles of the world for great product talent. And so, the people that you do hire tend to be ultra passionate about content. They believe in the vision. They could be making more at other companies, but they believe in the mission. However, bringing on great product people, but then just treating them like “doers” is going to result in burnout.

If your business does reach a point where you’re hiring true product managers, the most important thing you can do is bring them in early on and let them help you pressure test ideas, synthesize information, and give you what you need to make decisions. Because ultimately, decision-making rests with the operator. You can get everything you want from the product team, but someone has to make the decision. But at least you’ll be making a decision that is unbiased and not from myopic teams.

A great product team can change a business. It’s not for every media company, but when you get it right, the impact is significant.

Thanks for reading. If you have thoughts, hit reply or join the AMO Slack to discuss. Have a great weekend!