Back in 2017, the New York Times was under daily assault from President Trump to rebrand the Times as “fake news.” During that time, the Times launched its first brand advertising campaign in over a decade and in 24 hours, the paper reportedly garnered more subscribers than it had in the prior six weeks. This proved to be a valuable lesson for the media industry for the next several years: Redefining yourself for the Trump era makes for good business. But now, the Trump moment -- a boon for TV ratings, web traffic and journalistic purpose -- could be ending at a perilous time in the media business. Read more below.

• In place of Trump, the defining story of a media generation, would likely be a much more conventional and comparatively “boring” situation: President Joe Biden.
• For Digiday+ members, fake ad jobs were a problem prior to the pandemic, but now, with agencies laying off thousands of employees due to the coronavirus, those allegedly fake positions are even more insidious.
• Redirect tracking offers an alternative to the third-party cookie and web browsers are clamping down on it.
• Many high-end and designer brands have hesitated to dive deep into e-commerce —until now.
• Also for Digiday+ members, new Digiday research found that the racial gap remains wide at agencies and they have a long way to go before being able to claim they are diverse and equitable places of employment.