What If Media Companies Could Approach Product-Led Growth Like a Blank Page?

Journalists start every story they write with a blank page. They can organize their facts, quote interview sources, and create a narrative flow however they want. Starting a media company, on the other hand, can feel like you’re working with a template that’s already half-completed.

No matter how broad or narrow an audience you’re targeting, for example, one of your first priorities will be attracting search engine algorithms to rank high in keyword results.

Every word you publish will need to be broadcast on the top social media platforms as well, to reach audiences glued to their smartphones.

As with any other publisher, your fundamental offering consists of words and images presented the same way they’ve been laid out since the internet emerged.

All this conventional wisdom is based on challenges publishers have been tackling for decades. One of the biggest takeaways from WordPress VIP’s 2025 Media Product Forum was how several speakers are writing their own rules—adopting a beginner’s mindset as though they were creating a media company with that proverbial blank page.

Introducing the post-search, post-social publisher

DotDash Meredith is a case in point for taking a publisher with a deep history and leaving the legacy baggage behind. They may be among the largest publishers in America, representing 40 brands, but CEO Neil Vogel said his focus is less about preserving the past and more about becoming resilient and retooling for future growth.

This means not being sentimental about what used to work, and keeping the product at the center of everything the team does.

“You cannot rely on other people for your success,” Vogel said. “You can partner with them, but you can’t rely on them.”

Instead, Vogel said DotDash Meredith is focused on building direct relationships with users and advertisers. Theirs is a post-search, post-social strategy where Google and platforms like TikTok still matter, but don’t determine success. Whereas 60% of their publications’ traffic came from Google three years ago, that number has now dropped to 33%.

Given that DotDash Meredith has recently seen six straight quarters of double-digit growth, the company is clearly on to something. Here are some of the best practices they’re following:

Build products for audiences, not algorithms

A post-social publisher should still be studying social media, particularly how audiences use it. Vogel said DotDash Meredith used platforms like Instagram and TikTok as inspiration for the company’s first dedicated mobile app, which was created by a team of about 70 employees for People magazine.

The same scrolling and swiping you can now do on the People app is also leading DotDash Meredith to reimagine how they present content on article pages. He said the publications’ websites will become increasingly “feed-like” versus relying on the standard headline/share tools/text format.

Designing for modern consumption patterns also means keeping a close eye on other successful media properties, and Vogel said DotDash Meredith has been learning from article pages from ESPN and how they present the latest sports scores in formats that make audiences comfortable with ads.

While some aspects of the future are hard to predict, Vogel said he was certain DotDash Meredith would be continuing to make web pages five years from now.

Simplify content consolidation and self-curation

News is far from the only content audiences crave. They’re often scouring the internet for recipes and ideas to cook their next meal. DotDash Meredith recognized this and has not only acquired several food-related publications but also created digital experiences to help their audiences make better use of them.

This includes MyRecipes, a multi-brand recipe locker that helps consumers easily tag and save food content across leading brands like Food & Wine. 

“Your job is to make things people love and put them in front of them,” he said. 

The lesson? Beyond simply helping audiences find and discover content, publishers should make it easy for them to save content they can use later. According to Vogel, recipes have always been big traffic drivers. Now, they can boost audience loyalty.

Channel innovation into customer-centric solutions

A fresh approach to building a media business should also consider how traditional customers, like advertisers, could be better served. Just as they’re reducing their dependence on search and social traffic, DotDash Meredith realized they needed to offer their brand customers an alternative to third-party cookies.

Instead of accepting whatever ad tech tools were currently on the market, Vogel said the company built their own take on a digital signal processing solution. The result, D/Cipher, can be leveraged as a managed service and uses first-party data targeting to connect with consumers at key moments of intent.  

So far, deals involving D/Cipher are 60% larger than other mechanisms. This allows DotDash Meredith to expand beyond their owned properties to target similar content across the internet.

Take a pragmatic, proactive approach to AI

The threat of decreased search traffic due to AI searchbots may have many publishers wringing their hands, but not DotDash Meredith. The company has formed a partnership with OpenAI whereby they will contribute to its search capabilities. They’ve also taken advantage of AI’s capabilities to develop solutions like D/Cipher.

Vogel also believes his firm’s investments in direct audience relationships and overall editorial quality will offset many of AI’s challenges.

“AI has our data and content, it’s too late,” Vogel said. “Now we have to figure out how to exist in the future.”

A lot of DotDash Meredith’s plan involves how they organize internally and their team’s outlook as they execute. For example, Vogel said the company is looking at setting up product teams dedicated to specific channels and platforms. He also advocated thinking about a “Google zero” scenario, where a publisher doesn’t get any traffic from search engines.

“The only thing that we have is our brands, trust, and experiences,” he said. “If we do all those well, we will be fine. And so far, we’ve been doing great.”