The Media Leader Podcast

This episode was produced in partnership with News UK.
News UK’s The Sun is one of many titles to embrace video in recent months.
According to the publisher, its videos have driven 60m views and a 110% increase in returning viewers. Its movement into video has also helped secure new sponsors, including Allwyn, DAZN, Betfair, Cardfactory and 32Red.
Owen Griffiths is the commercial revenue director of The Sun.
At the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity last month, The Media Leader's content director James Longhurst sat down with him to discuss The Sun’s video strategy, what makes the publisher’s output unique, and how the World Cup is driving growth this year.
Highlights:
1:25: Takeaways for publishers from Cannes: Positioning journalists as creators
2:15: Expanding video for editorial and commercial purposes
6:00: The Sun's first "video-first" and AI-powered World Cup
7:29: Is AI a threat to publishers, or an opportunity?
8:37: How do journalists feel about becoming creators?
9:54: H2 plans: New video experience in beta, expanding membership, growing in the US
Related articles:
‘Place as many bets as possible’: Behind The Sun’s hybrid paywall strategy
‘The division between church and state isn’t sustainable’: Journalists weigh-up life as a creator
Why do publishers struggle to find their social voice?

The New York Times is something of a rarity in contemporary news publishing: a legacy giant that is seeing double-digit revenue growth and consistent readership growth.
It's no surprise, then, that many commercial leaders at other publishers here in the UK have pointed to the Gray Lady as having developed a model they want to emulate.
So to kick off our publishing week in focus here at The Media Leader, it was a pleasure to sit down with Tom Armstrong, The New York Times’s VP of global advertising.
Host Jack Benjamin spoke with Armstrong in sunny Cannes about how NYT’s “solar system” strategy of surrounding its reporting with verticals like cooking and games has driven commercial opportunity, the publisher’s strategy for international expansion, and how NYT is embracing multimedia journalism.
Highlights:
1:19: What's driving NYT's growth: Portfolio transformation, subscription-first strategy
4:59: Is NYT not just a news company anymore?
6:52: International growth strategy
8:23: Why it's important for publishers to be sought out by name in the new era of AI search
12:07: Pivoting to video (again) - opportunities and pitfalls
Related articles:
‘We are a destination’: NYT’s global ads chief talks the Gray Lady’s international ambitions
New York Times publisher warns journalism faces its ‘Napster moment’
‘The division between church and state isn’t sustainable’: Journalists weigh-up life as a creator
Publishers advised to be ‘niche at scale’ amid the winding road to Google Zero

This episode was produced in partnership with Channel 4.
At Cannes this year, The Media Leader sat down with several members of Channel 4's commercial leadership team to discuss how the TV company is looking to drive new commercial growth now that Universal Ads is live in the UK and Channel 4 is integrated with a new slew of demand-side platforms.
On an previous episode of the podcast, host Jack Benjamin spoke with commercial chief Rak Patel about the latest news, and in this episode, he sits down with members of his sales team to discuss their commercial strategy in greater depth.
David Amodio is head of sales at Channel 4, and Jay Kassam is head of business operations and revenue innovation at Channel 4.
The trio talked sales strategy, how the broadcaster is making progress with mid-market advertisers, and how they are applying learnings from their time with tech platforms to the TV market.
Highlights:
2:31: Channel 4's evolved leadership team
5:24: Taking a 'platform mindset' to the TV market
9:20: What an 'advertiser-first, agency-led' strategy entails as Channel 4 embraces the mid-market
17:11: Channel 4's new CEO and hopes for H2 2026
Related articles:
Universal Ads is live in the UK. Now what? With Channel 4’s Rak Patel
Universal Ads goes live in UK, providing TV with ‘easy button’
Leading Questions with Rak Patel – Channel 4 Sales
Meet the Media Owner: Channel 4 adopts a platform mindset
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Meta is growing at a remarkable rate. Already one of the world’s biggest global advertising businesses, the tech giant’s revenue grew 33% year-on-year to $56.3bn in Q1 alone.
But while its dominance over the ad industry has crystallised, so has scrutiny into its business practices – and advertisers’ role in funding online harms through its platforms.
Separate court cases in the US this year found that Meta has designed harmfully addictive platforms, and that it has misled users about platform safety and facilitated child sexual exploitation.
A report from Reuters last November found that Meta knowingly earned 10% of its global turnover in 2024 from fraud and scam ads. At the LEAD conference in London this year, a spokesperson for Meta disputed the figure, but acknowledged that revenue from fraud and scam ads “might” have accounted for 3-4% of turnover – still equivalent to between $5bn and $7bn.
And now there are concerns over the privacy implications of its line of smart glasses, which the company has positioned as the future of consumer electronics. Wired reported in June that Meta had quietly added facial recognition code into the product, before removing it after the publication of the reporting.
All this comes as Meta has increasingly launched tools aimed at automating creative and media decisioning for advertisers, calling into question the role of agencies in a future dominated by tech platforms, their data, and their AI tools.
It’s a lot to unpack. At Cannes this year, The Media Leader put questions on all these topics and more to Meta’s EMEA vice president, Derya Matras.
In the interview, Matras notably claimed that Meta has invested $30bn into addressing issues of ad fraud, scams and "other integrity issues". She said, "it's not like we knowingly have bad ads" and that Meta is "incentivised to take action on this" because it is "not good for us."
But, since recording the interview, an investigation by the BBC found that Instagram has been running paid ads in India that promote child sexual abuse material on the messaging app Telegram.
When one of the ads was reported to Meta by the BBC, Meta reportedly initially responded that the ad did not violate its community guidelines. Meta later told the BBC it had disabled several of the ads and suspended the accounts posting them.
A spokesperson for Meta told The Media Leader: “Meta has a zero tolerance policy for soliciting or sharing CSAM, including in ads. We use advanced AI technology to proactively detect violating content and individuals, but we are in a constant battle with criminals who hide among our 3.5bn users and try to evade our detection. That is why our expert teams are constantly working to improve our defenses, develop new technology to root out predators, block links to violating websites, and share intelligence with other companies so they can take action too."
A full transcript of the conversation is available on The Media Leader, edited for length and clarity.
Highlights:
3:27: Reaction to social media bans for under-16s, criticism of failure to address online harms and addictive design
11:58: Advertisers want more transparency of where their ads show up on platforms
13:29: Why is Meta knowingly earning billions from fraud and scam ads?
17:15: Meta is automating creative and media decisioning. Should agencies be concerned?
27:04: Are smart glasses still the future of commercial technology? What about privacy implications?
30:21: Meta's growth depends on providing good user experience. Is it getting worse?
Related articles:
Molly Russell charity CEO: Social media’s user safety efforts have been ‘performative’
‘Right diagnosis, wrong prescription’? Adland torn as Starmer announces under-16s social media ban
‘Are we monetising addiction?’ Ad industry faces reckoning following social media addiction lawsuit verdict
Snap is betting on smart glasses. Should brands?

This episode was produced in partnership with Channel 4.
For the second year in a row, the UK's commercial TV companies made a splash at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
After unveiling Universal Ads — the broadcasters' marketplace for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — last year, Sky, ITV, Channel 4 and Comcast officially launched the product on Tuesday.
And on Monday, Channel 4 announced it had partnered with 5 demand-side platforms to make advertising with Channel 4 more accessible to advertisers.
During the week, in partnership with Channel 4, host Jack Benjamin sat down with Channel 4's commercial chief, Rak Patel, as well as members of its commercial leadership team, Jay Kassam and David Amodio, in separate interviews.
He asked Patel, Kassam and Amodio about the latest news, the state of the UK TV industry, and how Channel 4 is balancing the need to reduce enough friction to make TV easy to buy, while retaining enough friction to make it a trustworthy medium for advertisers.
The Media Leader will be releasing the episodes in two parts, the first with Patel and the second with both Kassam and Amodio.
"You can be easy to buy, but retain your superpower," Patel said. "Broadcast is an oasis... The tech giants are a data warehouse, we are a dream factory."
Highlights:
1:43: Changes at Channel 4 over the past year
8:46: Taking a platform mindset to future-proof Channel 4
12:38: 'Turn down the toxic' hasn't happened yet. What will move the dial?
14:12: Universal Ads is live. What it means for broadcasters, what the UK has learned from the US, and how the product will evolve
20:21: What is the go-to-market strategy for reaching SMEs?
25:30: 'The wind of change'
Related articles:
Universal Ads goes live in UK, providing TV with ‘easy button’
Leading Questions with Rak Patel – Channel 4 Sales
Meet the Media Owner: Channel 4 adopts a platform mindset