About Our Guest
On episode #25, we’re excited to welcome Jackie Goldstein, the VP of Commerce at the New York Post. Jackie brings over a decade of experience in the commerce space at publishers, and she’s here to share her journey with us. From her early days interning and growing through the ranks at Curb Network to playing a pivotal role during the acquisition by Vox Media, Jackie has seen it all. Tune in as she delves into how she carved out invaluable opportunities in podcasting and commerce, propelled initiatives into seven-figure successes, and made the leap to her current role at New York Post. Outside of her day job, Jackie is also known for her passion for horror movies and her involvement with the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. Get ready for an insightful episode filled with valuable takeaways on navigating transitions, seizing opportunities, and driving performance in the dynamic world of marketing.
Summary
Based in the bustling heart of New York City, Jackie Goldstein is a renowned figure in the world of media commerce. As the accomplished vice president of commerce for the prestigious New York Post, her influence extends across the iconic publication as well as its popular affiliates, Page Six and Decider.com. With an impressive tenure of over a decade, Jackie has become an integral part of the publishing landscape, navigating it through the ebb and flow of commerce innovations and evolutions.
Amid the buzz of her high-profile career, Jackie’s passion takes a rather thrilling detour into the world of horror. Her enthusiasm for the genre transcends mere spectatorship, as she is a key figure in orchestrating the spine-tingling Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. Jackie encompasses a blend of sharp commerce acumen and a love for the macabre, marking her as a distinctive presence both in the boardroom and the darkened theater halls celebrating cinematic tales of terror.
Transcript
Marshall Nyman [00:00:02]:
Hello and welcome to the performance marketing Spotlight. I’m your host, Marshall Niman, founder and CEO of Nymoenco. Each episode, I will be bringing you someone with deep experience in the performance marketing space where they will highlight their experiences within the industry. Today I have Jackie Goldstein, who is vp of commerce at New York Post. Welcome to the podcast, Jackie.
Jackie Goldstein [00:00:23]:
Hi. It’s great to be here.
Marshall Nyman [00:00:25]:
Excited to have you on.
Marshall Nyman [00:00:26]:
Let’s get right to it. Would love for you to introduce yourself to the audience.
Jackie Goldstein [00:00:29]:
All right. I am Jackie Goldstein. As was previously established, I am based in New York City, and I’m currently the vice president of commerce for the New York Post. So I work with the New York Post, page six, and decider.com as well. And I’ve been in the space at, you know, with commerce at publishers for probably a little over a decade. At this point, I’ve sort of lost track because some of the early moments are a bit murky. But it’s been great ride so far. Excited to keep learning as things, you know, are changing and innovating and yeah, outside of my day job, I think a lot of people actually, or not a lot, but some people know I am very passionate about horror movies and help run a horror film festival called the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Jackie Goldstein [00:01:23]:
So always like to promote that when I can, just in case anyone comes out of the woodwork and wants to sponsor the festival or attend or is secretly a horror lover, and I can just chat about what movies we’ve seen.
Marshall Nyman [00:01:38]:
That sounds like a good time. Well, we’d love for you to share with us how you got your start in 2012 with Curb as their editorial operations manager.
Jackie Goldstein [00:01:45]:
Absolutely. So my time at Curb network was very, very exciting. I joined the company actually from an internship, so I was hired and I actually did start as an editorial assistant, but then was quickly promoted a couple of months later. And basically Curb network was very small. So we had three websites that we were operating, but we also had local versions of each website. So eater is still around, still quite popular. You know, many local eater websites exist too. And then we also had curbed, which is still sort of operating under the New York magazine umbrella now, and then racked, which, rest in peace, but still many fans out there.
Jackie Goldstein [00:02:32]:
And basically I was, you know, in my editorial operations focus, really kind of doing all sorts of things, like basically anything that was not straight up writing, even though I did a little bit of that sometimes as it was necessary. And then, you know, I was not focused on straight up sales either. So I really found myself doing a lot of work focused on formatting, product, optimizing the sites. You know, I helped with our syndication partnerships. A bunch of random partnerships got put on my plate. I was working really closely with the CEO, and so basically things that, like, he had on his plate that he felt comfortable passing to me, that happened. And it was an amazing, amazing experience because I was able to really learn so much about publisher operations, business, you know, kind of all the pieces of how the sausage gets made and, you know, really, really valuable experience just to have, especially early in my career, to really kind of see, like, all these different pieces and, you know, sort of have the freedom, I think, especially in, within a startup, to, you know, lean in a little bit more in certain areas I was a little bit more interested in. And then in, what was it? I think, like late 2013.
Jackie Goldstein [00:03:55]:
So, you know, just a few years at Curb Network ago, we were acquired by Vox Media. So that transition was, it ended up being amazing. It was definitely a little rocky in the beginning, as I’m sure others who have been part of an acquisition can maybe speak to. But with me basically joining a much larger organization where I was coming from, this role where I was kind of just doing little bits of everything, my role just didn’t exist. I luckily got to stick around and, you know, find my footing and really what I was sort of figuring out because, you know, sort of, unfortunately, my boss was kind of in the same position, really kind of figuring out his own new role. And, you know, I felt a little bit abandoned is way too intense of a word. But, you know, I was kind of just trying to figure it out a little bit on my own. So basically what I ended up doing was really just, like, finding opportunities where people were not already owning initiatives or pieces of initiatives.
Jackie Goldstein [00:05:06]:
And what I basically quickly discovered from a month or two of just, like, observing and absorbing was there was a lot of podcasting going on, but no real thoughtfulness around it. Like, we didn’t have. Some of the podcasts were hosted on Soundcloud, others on more professional podcasting platforms. There was a lot of just, like, chaos, and none of them were really being monetized. So that was, like, the huge thing. And, like, all of our editors and chiefs were spending, like, hours doing these podcasts weekly. So, you know, that was a great project for me to kind of take on. And then at the same time, commerce, you know, basically we had, like, many publishers, a Skimlinks auto tagging script in the background and a relationship with Amazon Associates.
Jackie Goldstein [00:05:55]:
But it was very passive and starting to understand take a closer look at the types of content that our websites within the portfolio were doing and also looking at the data we had available to us, starting to work with the teams to really start to set up that business. And both basically were kind of focused around setting up operations and setting up revenue generation and figuring out how to make the most out of these. And once they both scaled to the seven figure mark, that was basically when I ended up full time aligning with commerce. I was able to do a little bit of hiring at the time. And yeah, from there, just kind of rocking and rolling, building the business, expanding relationships, expanding, you know, hiring more writers to lean in. You know, we’re really focused on the websites within the portfolio. The Verge, Polygon, SB nation, we were doing a bit with as well, and curbed and also a little bit eater. So kind of, you know, most of the sites.
Marshall Nyman [00:07:18]:
So you had quite the run there with curb and then getting integrated into Vox and figuring out which direction you should head in. So then you ultimately switched over to New York Post. You were at curb for a couple of years, at Fox for about five years. So seven or eight years for one company. Pretty good run.