Today in Digital Marketing - The End.

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

The final episode.Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's Todd and I have some news. About four and a half five years ago I started the Today in Digital Marketing podcast. It was a complete ripoff from a great podcast called the Tech Meme Ride Home. It was every day I wanted to report on the headlines of what was happening in the world of digital marketing. Then I started publishing the scripts as a newsletter. The newsletter itself grew to more than 10,000 subscribers and it was fun to do. Yes, I am speaking about it in the past tense because today I am announcing that we are closing both the podcast and the newsletter effective basically now. Now we are not being sued out of existence this is my decision it's for a couple of reasons. The first is that the the project the podcast newsletter had always sort of consumed a side of my

desk you know one of those side of desk projects It always consumed the side of my desk But that side was growing larger and larger and it was forcing me into ad sales and areas that Just wasn't my comfort zone. The other thing is it was mostly taking time away from our core business here Which is a social media engagement and moderation agency. We handle the responses and replies on behalf of medium to large size brands. The company is EngageQ.com. That's my

core business. And so the podcast and newsletter, as fun as it was, was taking time away from that and we've got a couple of new clients that were on boarding and have just been getting busier and winning some awards as well So that's one reason another is my health I turned 55 a little while ago, and I'm at age where things are falling off and falling apart and

Not working as well, and I have a couple of big major health things coming up that I need to rest up for so That's that. Also, on the revenue side, it's been kind of getting shittier lately. So two things really happened that changed the numbers for us. We used to be quite profitable. And then on the podcast side,

Apple changed the way it counted downloads. I won't get into it, you can Google it if you want, but basically it meant that the reported number of listeners that we actually had, all of a sudden overnight got cut by like 75%. We're getting a quarter of the listeners that we had. Now, to be fair, it wasn't it was actually a more accurate representation of the numbers we actually had. The previous version that Apple was reporting was grossly inflated, and they fixed it,

which is good for everyone, including advertisers, especially for advertisers. But you know, that meant 75% of the revenue from the podcast was gone. The second reason is on the newsletter side, AI just ruined everything. In the last six months especially, there are now hundreds and hundreds of AI newsletters where someone has somewhere in the world has written a prompt that basically says find the top 15 stories about marketing today and write a one you know a six sentence summary and send it via Zapier to this newsletter provider and send it out. It happens all automatically and I've subscribed to a lot of them and they're all terrible. They are all terrible. They're not written by humans. They miss

the point of the stories. They don't they don't know what an API is. They don't know what it means to the industry. But they've diluted the ad market. There are so many of these things now that they have diluted the ad market to a point where it's not tenable. You know, we were making X number of dollars and we are now making probably less than a fifth of X number of dollars and we are now making probably less than a fifth of X number of dollars. That's how much that it's gone down. So a couple of things. I'll tell you a bit about what's next for me and what's next for us at the agency in a second. I first want to talk about Steph though because Steph has been the guiding light of this whole operation for the last few

years. You know her as the associate producer of the podcast. She has been the guiding light of this whole operation for the last few years. You know her as the associate producer of the podcast. She has been the guest host for me when I've been busy or sick. She's also been the writer of the newsletter, by the way. I know it has my byline on it. It's a lie. She's been writing it most of the time, almost all of the time. And she is a fantastic writer. And it has been an absolute joy watching her grow as a writer in terms of just the quality of the work that she's been doing.

So it has been an absolute pleasure working with Steph and that is one of the things I'm gonna miss the most about this. So what's next for Todd? A few things. One is I'm gonna take some time off to rest, obviously. Not a ton of time because I still have the agency stuff to do. What's next for Todd? A few things. One is I'm going to take some time off to rest, obviously. Not a ton of time because I still have the agency stuff to do, but a little bit of time. My wife and I are going to Australia to visit family and so on in the summer. And then I have two websites for you. If you want to follow along, you're welcome to. The first is Just For Fun.

It's me playing video games while live streaming. It's on Twitch. You can find it at loweffortdad.com. That is my username on Twitch is loweffortdad. Don't worry, I'm not taking it seriously. I'm not going to become a Twitch streamer full-time or anything like that. It's just there for fun if you're a gamer. The other is that somehow in this whole last few months,

I've somehow also become a Canadian influencer on Canadian culture and identity. I don't know how, but it happened. So I have a little side project. Canadian influencer on like Canadian culture and identity. I don't know how, but it happened. So I have a little side project. Probably knowing me in four or five years, it'll consume more of my desk than I want it to and I'll close it down too. But for the time being, you can check it out at farandwide.news. It's called From Far and Wide.

It is a little podcast. It's a YouTube channel. It's called from far and wide. It is a little podcast. It's a YouTube channel. It's a newsletter So it's far and wide dot news and the game streaming thing is just low effort dad.com So that is the news Sorry for it being so abrupt That's just kind of the way it happened Thank you so much for being a part of this. Thank you for listening if you were a premium member

Thank you so much for your support of the work. It really did help. In addition to financially, just it helped us realize that people did rely on it, did use it. And that's a great feeling. So if I don't see you on far and wide, if I don't see you in the Twitch stream, then I hope to see you again at some other time. Thank you again for reading and for listening and for sharing. And I will see you again somewhere else on the internet.