As Gen Z increasingly finds products through social platforms instead of search, Emily Jackson has had to rebuild how Forbes Vetted makes money. She explains how the team protects editorial independence from the monetization side, why last-click attribution stopped making sense, and how branded content and video are picking up the slack left by affiliate commissions.
Behind the Expert
Emily Jackson is Senior Vice President of E-Commerce at Forbes, where she leads Forbes Vetted, the product-recommendation arm she helped launch in early 2020. Before Forbes, she built commerce experience at Condé Nast, another media company working out how a trusted editorial brand extends into product recommendations and monetization. At Forbes, she oversees a team of editors and writers doing hands-on product testing and research across categories — from workhorse "best of" content like espresso machines to lifestyle recommendations aimed at what she calls "today's visionaries and tomorrow's leaders" — while keeping that editorial team structurally separate from the business side that negotiates monetization deals.
The Quick Hits
- Forbes Vetted was built to combine two things Forbes already had — a 100-year trusted-publication reputation and an under-monetized lifestyle content history dating to the 1990s — into a dedicated product-recommendation business, launched in early 2020.
- Editorial and monetization are organizationally separated: the team recommending products doesn't own the deals that drive revenue, so a product can get featured as a "best" pick even when Forbes can't monetize it — which Jackson says is essential to protecting the authority that makes the recommendations trustworthy in the first place.
- Gen Z's shift to discovering products via YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram — 40% of Gen Z, by Jackson's numbers — rather than Google search has forced Forbes Vetted to create platform-native content, not repackage SEO-optimized "best of" articles for social and newsletters.
- Last-click attribution, the affiliate industry's traditional monetization model, breaks down for content further up the funnel. A high-consideration purchase researched over a week or two doesn't reduce to a single click, so Forbes is pushing advertisers toward funding branding and awareness budgets alongside performance dollars.
- Forbes is diversifying monetization beyond affiliate commissions into branded content, display, video, and commerce-led activations at Forbes's live events, as social platforms erode the "click off site, get the commission" affiliate model.
- On AI answer engines and shopping agents: Jackson expects the mechanics of shopping to change fundamentally, but argues trustworthy, human-tested product recommendations stay necessary regardless of whether a human or an agent completes the purchase — the harder open question is how that value gets monetized when an AI platform is the one summarizing it.
- Internally, AI is used for efficiency — content-strategy analysis across large data sets, faster meeting summaries and deck reviews — but Forbes draws a hard line at content creation itself, which stays human-written and human-tested, since that's the core of what "premium journalism" means to the brand.
From lifestyle section to Forbes Vetted
Forbes is best known for its lists — 30 Under 30, the billionaires rankings, 50 Over 50 — and for business and political coverage. Jackson points out that a lifestyle thread has run through the brand since the 1990s, first as a section of the print magazine and later expanding into digital, well before it became a dedicated business.
Launched in early 2020, Forbes Vetted combined that built-in trust with a large team of editors and writers doing extensive research and hands-on product testing — everything from best-espresso-machine roundups to recommendations aimed at, in her words, "today's visionaries and tomorrow's leaders."
Keeping editorial and monetization separate
Jackson describes a deliberate structural line between the editorial team recommending products and the business team negotiating the deals that monetize those recommendations — a separation she says most serious commerce publishers maintain for the same reason.
Meeting Gen Z where they actually search
Jackson traces a generational shift in how people find product recommendations — from millennials' Google-search habits to a very different pattern among Gen Z.
That's meant building platform-native content rather than reformatting what already works in search — a shift she says has been a major undertaking over the past year.
Why last-click attribution is breaking down
The affiliate industry, Forbes Vetted's primary monetization source for years, is built on a last-click model — a structure Jackson says stops working as content moves further up the funnel and audiences discover products on social platforms rather than clicking a link on-site.
For a high-consideration purchase researched over days or weeks, she argues, a single last click was never an honest measure of what actually drove the sale — which is pushing Forbes toward asking advertisers to fund branding and awareness budgets alongside pure performance dollars.
New monetization: branded content, video, and live events
Beyond affiliate commissions, Jackson describes Forbes building out branded content, display, and video monetization — plus a channel most commerce publishers don't have available: Forbes's live events business.
What AI shopping agents mean for Forbes Vetted
Asked to set aside her Forbes hat and consider where consumer shopping is headed, Jackson said the mechanics will change, but not the underlying need her team fills.
On whether AI platforms like GPT or Perplexity will fairly compensate publishers for the value they're summarizing, Jackson was candid that the industry hasn't figured it out yet.
AI internally: efficiency yes, content no
Inside Forbes, Jackson describes AI as a genuine efficiency win for her content strategy team — accelerating analysis across large volumes of engagement data without changing what gets published or how it's made.
But that efficiency mandate stops at the content itself, which she frames as inseparable from what makes Forbes Vetted's recommendations trustworthy in the first place.
Sound Bites
- “Every single year there's a survey that talks about how the U.S. consumer plots the most trusted publications, and Forbes is consistently in the top five. We knew we had the authority in the space, and it was a natural extension of our lifestyle coverage — that's how Forbes Vetted was born.”
- “There is a very distinct line between our content team and our business team who are out cutting the deals that drive monetization. First and foremost: is the product good quality? Is it going to stand up to the test of time? Even if we can't monetize that, we're still going to feature it as the best product.”
- “40% of Gen Z are using YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for their product recommendations. That's a massive shift from the way a lot of publishers have been thinking about creating content — how do we make sure we have content on those platforms that's still trusted, still credible, for a different generation who want to consume content on a different platform.”
- “The affiliate industry is built on this last-click model, and that doesn't do incredibly well on social platforms. You can have LTK and ShopMy, but it doesn't convert as well as being on a site, clicking off to a link, and being the last click. It's kind of breaking the entire system a little bit.”
- “We have a massive live events business, and that's somewhere we have very deep knowledge into who that audience is. That can match well with advertisers who want to get products into the hands of those people — it's another way to stay core to our methodology, but take it offline.”
- “I think the way people shop is going to fundamentally change. Whether it's you doing the shopping or an agent doing the shopping, there's still a need for product recommendations you can rely on. That's the big challenge: how do we adapt while still delivering on humans doing hands-on testing and independent review, and ultimately how does that get monetized — we can't do this for free.”
- “Premium journalism is forever going to be rooted in human journalism — trusted, credible, human-led journalism. We'd love to use AI all day for data analysis, content strategy, speeding up meeting minutes and deck reviews — but the content that we create needs to be driven by humans.”
The Chord take
Forbes Vetted's whole model rests on treating trust as the actual product being sold — to readers deciding whether a recommendation is worth acting on, to advertisers deciding whether a click is the right way to measure value, and increasingly to AI platforms that summarize Forbes's work without (yet) paying for it. What makes that trust durable, in Jackson's account, isn't a stated value or a brand promise — it's a structural choice: editorial and monetization are organizationally separated, so a product can be named "best" even when Forbes can't make money on it. That separation is what lets Forbes credibly tell advertisers "trust us, but understand this is an investment" instead of promising pixel-perfect attribution it can't deliver. The same discipline shows up in how Forbes is handling AI, both as a threat to search traffic and as an internal tool. Jackson doesn't resist AI broadly — she's enthusiastic about what it's done for content-strategy analysis and workflow speed. But she draws one hard line, at content creation itself, for the same reason the editorial/business split exists: the thing Forbes Vetted is actually selling is human-verified judgment, and anything that quietly erodes that erodes the entire business, not just one team's workflow. Whether the "last click" is a customer's or an AI agent's, her bet is that the harder, slower, human part of the work is the part that doesn't get automated away — because it's the part actually being trusted.
Put it to work
- 1Audit whether your best-performing "trust" content is protected by an actual structural separation between the team creating it and the team monetizing it — not just a stated editorial policy.
- 2Before repackaging SEO content for social or newsletter, treat each platform as needing content built for how people actually behave there, rather than a reformatted version of search-optimized copy.
- 3If your business still runs primarily on last-click attribution, model what a full-funnel package — branding and awareness dollars alongside performance — would look like for your highest-consideration products or categories.
- 4Look for monetization opportunities beyond your primary channel (affiliate, in Forbes's case) — branded content, video, live or offline activations — especially as that primary channel's mechanics stop matching how newer platforms actually convert.
- 5Decide explicitly which parts of your content or workflow AI is allowed to touch (data analysis, content strategy, meeting summaries) versus which must stay human-authored, and communicate that line clearly rather than leaving it implicit.
- 6As AI answer engines and shopping agents grow, don't assume the need for trusted recommendations disappears — start planning for how your trust and authority get captured, and eventually monetized, inside agent-driven discovery, not just organic search.
Full transcriptShow ↓
Emily Jackson
People generally think about Forbes as a brand. They think about a business publication, top billionaires. A lot of times people don't really think about Forbes as a lifestyle brand.
Bryan Mahoney
This type of content, like product recommendations from trusted sources, is going to be more important than ever.
Emily Jackson
Actually, 40% of Gen Z are using YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for their product recommendations — how do we make sure that we have content on those platforms?
Bryan Mahoney
It's like we're trying to leverage AI where we can take advantage of efficiency gains but do so in a brand-safe way.
Emily Jackson
Premium journalism is forever going to be rooted in human journalism — trusted, credible, human-led journalism. The content that we create needs to be driven by humans.
Bryan Mahoney
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Brilliant Commerce Podcast, where I have an opportunity to sit down with some of the brightest minds behind iconic brands — or, as I like to say, next-to-be-iconic brands. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Emily Jackson, who's the Senior Vice President of E-Commerce at Forbes. Emily, thanks for being here today.
Emily Jackson
Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian.
Bryan Mahoney
We talked about this in the warm-up — traditionally, someone sitting in this seat would be an operator or a technologist behind a well-known consumer brand, and I like to refer to those as iconic brands. But Forbes definitely checks the box as an iconic brand for me. And where you were before, at Condé Nast, you've had the opportunity to work at some incredible brands, but ones most people wouldn't necessarily think of as a traditional consumer brand. So I'd love for you to help me situate what it means to be in e-commerce at a publisher, or at a brand like Forbes. Maybe let's start there — set the table for us.
Emily Jackson
Yeah. So obviously Forbes is an incredibly well-known brand all the way back to its print days — Forbes is actually over 100 years old, so just so much time in this space. And while people generally think about Forbes as a business publication — we're obviously incredibly well known for our lists, 30 Under 30, the top billionaires, 50 Over 50, a lot of entrepreneurship, a lot of business, some politics thrown in there — a lot of times people don't really think about Forbes as a lifestyle brand. But lifestyle has been running in the veins of Forbes since back in the day, in the 1990s.
Emily Jackson
We started off having kind of a lifestyle section within the print magazine, and then that really expanded into digital. So having Forbes Vetted, which is our product-recommendation arm, has just been an incredibly natural completion of Forbes as a brand. As you think about lifestyle and how we've delivered it over the years, we've been kind of delivering this idea of lifestyle tailored toward more affluent — how you spend wealth. But as we've entered into this era, there's a real need for trusted product recommendations coming from a space of authority.
Emily Jackson
One of my favorite things about Forbes is that every single year there's a survey that goes out and gets published, and it talks about how the U.S. consumer plots the most trusted publications across the U.S. — and Forbes is consistently in the top five. We know that people trust Forbes, trust our point of view. So when we thought about launching Forbes Vetted — we launched it in early 2020 — we wanted to make sure we could combine those two things: that people could continue to trust us through these product recommendations. We knew we had the authority in the space, and it was a natural extension of our lifestyle coverage. That's really how Forbes Vetted was born.
Emily Jackson
So we have a large team of editors and writers who are tasked with extensive research, deep reporting, or hands-on testing of products in order to recommend products in any given category for consumers. You're going to see that across multiple categories, but also in the way that we slice and dice that content. Yes, we're going to go out and test the best espresso machines, because everybody needs coffee — but we're also going to think about what today's visionaries and tomorrow's leaders are really using to live their most successful lives.
Emily Jackson
That's really how we think about plugging our editorial team into that mission — this idea of trusted product recommendations for living your most successful life. So that's a little bit of the background of how we ended up with this commerce team within a traditional media publication like Forbes.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah, no, I think it's fascinating, and it just goes to show how wide the aperture for commerce actually is, and what defines it. I think about a traditional approach to e-commerce as identifying who your audience is, figuring out what channels they're going to be on, how do I recruit them into what we're building, and then how do I keep them engaged throughout that journey. Is that the framework that still applies, would you say, to the work you all are doing at Forbes with Vetted?
Emily Jackson
Yes. When you think about the content we're creating, the idea around it is to build audience and build authority — that really is the foundation of every commerce team, or at least it should be. It's how we thought about building commerce at Condé Nast, and it's certainly how we think about building commerce at Forbes. The content needs to be created for the audience, it needs to meet the audience on the platforms they're on, and it also needs to nurture them down a conversion funnel. Some of the content we're creating is going to be our tested best lists.
Emily Jackson
For a long time, people were going to organic search — usually Google — looking for something like best Bluetooth headphones. We'd have a roundup of the best Bluetooth headphones we'd tested, capturing people where they're fairly high intent, so they're high-converting, lower-funnel. But we also do a lot of content around product launches or introductions to new brands — introducing our audience to new products, and bringing those people down the funnel to the point of conversion. So very similar echoes to the traditional e-commerce operating practice.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah, so I'm super curious here — as I think about the behaviors that power shopping, maybe 40 years ago, or even more recently, you'd go into a store, you'd likely walk into a store of a brand you ultimately trust, and establish a relationship with the associate there, who's trying to meet you where you are and understand your needs. And you could say, what's the best version of this that's in the store now? Fast-forwarding to today — and I put myself in this category — when I search for something like what's the best headphone, or I'm looking for a certain review, I'll be honest, I think it's—
Bryan Mahoney
—sometimes it's difficult for me to cut through the noise. The first five results being returned to me don't feel authentic, I don't necessarily trust it. It takes a while to get to a place where, oh, actually, here's an article by a reviewer I actually want to unpack — they've spent six months with this thing, and I can ultimately trust them. And I think that can be balanced by this whole movement toward influencers creating their own content. But now the same dilemma appears there — is this a source I can actually trust? Is this authentic?
Bryan Mahoney
Or is this someone just being paid to say a certain thing — and how do I cut through that noise? I'd imagine this is somewhere a platform with the credibility Forbes has can help with that authenticity. But I'm curious — how have you stayed on top of that? How has the introduction of AI summaries on top of search, as an example, impacted the role you're trying to play in this space, and staying at the top of that authority-trust tree?
Emily Jackson
I think it's a really good question, because right now — and even if you look back three or four years — there was still a lot of white noise, a lot of people doing product recommendations. Being Forbes, we did have that built-in credibility, but it's something we don't take lightly. We've put in a lot of time, energy, and effort to make sure, A, that we can continue to show users we're trustworthy, and B, that we do a good job communicating why that is.
Emily Jackson
One of the things we try to do well is talk through how a product is tested, how we came to recommend it — and even in the operations of our team setup, there's a very distinct line between our content team and our business team, who are out cutting the deals that drive monetization. Most commerce publishers will tell you the same thing. It's really important to have a team of editors and writers who are recommending products regardless of the monetization opportunity. First and foremost — is the product good quality? Is it going to stand up to the test of time?
Emily Jackson
Is it a good match for our audience, in terms of what we think they're looking for? Even if we can't monetize that, we're still going to feature it as the best product — and that's something we have to continuously stand behind, again and again, to keep hold of that authority. To your point about how influencers have picked up on this, doing product reviews and recommending products — it ties into this overall shift in how different generations are searching for and getting product recommendations, online and even offline. If you think ten years ago about how someone would walk into a store, that was kind of the millennial generation.
Emily Jackson
They were very much focused on, okay, we go to Google, we search for this product, we get a recommendation. Now, with Gen Z, it's very different — such a good stat was that 40% of Gen Z are using YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram for their product recommendations. That's a massive shift from the way a lot of publishers have been thinking about creating content. It's certainly an area worth investing in — how do we make sure we have content on those platforms that's still trusted, still credible, that still shows the work we're doing behind the scenes in terms of testing, research, and reporting, but for a different generation who wants to consume content on a different platform.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah, I think that's super fascinating, and it's a good lesson for a lot of brands too. You can get stuck and wedded to channels that worked for you five years ago, even though the writing's on the wall that those channels aren't performing the way they used to, or your audience is shifting. And that's also, I'd imagine, the advantage of having brand credibility like Forbes — it makes it easier to explore channel diversification, or show up in a way that's authentic. But I'd be curious, because I think this is a good lesson for anyone in consumer — how do you stay on top of that?
Bryan Mahoney
How do you figure out what the right channels are? How do you say yes to some channels and no to others, given this evolution you described in terms of audiences?
Emily Jackson
Yeah, I think about it in two ways. First, what are the platforms that are going to drive audience? Second, we also have to think about the monetization element — what platforms are going to give us monetization opportunities? The first thing is making sure we're on platforms where we feel we can build and nurture audience well, and that's just a lot of testing. Historically, we've had this idea of creating content specifically for on-site — people come to us, we monetize through affiliate, we monetize through ads.
Emily Jackson
Now we're saying, okay, if people are going to TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, or want a more personal relationship with you within a newsletter, the content we create for those platforms is wildly different from the content we'd create to show up in the SERPs. The repackaging and reformatting of that content has been a big shift for us over the past year — what are we putting in a newsletter? It can't just be a repackaging of what we'd create to show up in search. The second side of it is really the monetization opportunity, and we have to look a lot more holistically about monetization than we did before.
Emily Jackson
If you'd asked me four or five years ago, our primary source of monetization was affiliate commissions. Over time, as we've shifted to different platforms, as our audience has gotten wider, and as we've created content further up the funnel, that monetization mix has changed drastically. We do some branded content, we monetize from a display perspective, we're trying to monetize video, there are ads and newsletters. So really thinking more strategically about what platforms give us monetization opportunities outside of affiliate commissions — because the affiliate industry is built on this last-click model, and that doesn't do incredibly well on social platforms. That's not the way people generally interact.
Emily Jackson
Yes, you can have LTK and ShopMy, and a lot of influencers are able to leverage that. But it doesn't convert as well as being on a site, clicking off to a link, being the last click, getting the affiliate commission — so it's kind of breaking the entire system a little bit.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah. Attribution is such a hot-button topic for us — we work so hard on our attribution models, always trying to give more visibility into it. But I think the more channels we're seeing, the reality is there's no one model that's going to give you a true picture of attribution. And I imagine that's a pretty interesting challenge for what you all are working on at Forbes. I'd love to talk about attribution — how you're thinking about it, how you've seen it change over time, where the opportunities are, and what's keeping you up at night.
Emily Jackson
One of the most interesting things about attribution is that publishers in the commerce content space have primarily been pegged as bottom-of-funnel — we've done well from a last-click attribution perspective, and that's generally been where we've been able to monetize. But as the ecosystem changes, with different platforms and categories, that's elongating the consideration part of the journey for consumers. You may see something on social, or interact with a piece of content further up the funnel — Forbes as a brand may still be influencing you to buy that product, but the conversion isn't happening immediately. So you're not getting that last click.
Emily Jackson
I can definitely see a world where publishers doing commerce content are trying to access more of those branding, influence, and awareness budgets — because that's still a massive part of the value we bring, instead of just the last click, yes-we're-driving-this-person-to-convert model. That's been a slow churn, and I don't think we're even quite there yet in terms of how those dollars get divided between top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel.
Emily Jackson
But it's definitely something we're having many conversations with advertisers about — what does it look like to create a campaign that's more focused on branding and awareness, while also knowing we can do the bottom of the funnel too. So a bit more of a full-funnel approach.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah, I'd love to be a fly on the wall for some of those conversations with advertisers, because I think one of the issues with last-click attribution is it creates an almost adversarial relationship — everyone wants to claim credit for the order. And because it's more and more difficult to ascribe 100% attribution to something, or there's a longer consideration cycle — say you're focused on the best AR headset, and these are $2,000 purchases — it's not going to be, I saw an ad and I clicked. It's, I read something, I'm thinking about it, I maybe watched a video, I came back and read something else.
Bryan Mahoney
It might take a week or two to decide whether I'm going to buy. And the content you're creating is going to influence that purchase to some degree. I'd hope advertisers are increasingly becoming open-minded about where they're spending money, and thinking about ROI differently — because it'd be a real shame to turn off a channel because you didn't get last-click attribution, thinking the data told you to, and then suddenly your revenue drops and you realize you have to consider the whole picture, even if it isn't giving you the same signal performance marketers have gotten used to over the last five or ten years.
Bryan Mahoney
I need it to be pixel-perfect — and you're like, well, we can't make it pixel-perfect, that doesn't mean we're not delivering value. So I'm curious, not tricks exactly, but how has the narrative within Forbes evolved to continue to meet advertisers, bring them along, or evangelize this more holistic view of where they're spending their marketing dollars?
Emily Jackson
Yeah, I think it really starts with our audience. Over the years we've been in operation, we've built an audience that's generally in-market for shopping, who comes to us for product recommendations — that's such a value to advertisers. And if you take the broader Forbes audience ecosystem, you have a lot of influential people, high household income, high net worth. One of the things we're really trying to work on with advertisers is what it looks like to bring commerce into other spaces outside of pure commerce content — a good example is commerce-led activations at some of our live events.
Emily Jackson
We have a massive live events business, and that's somewhere we have very deep knowledge into who that audience is and what type of people they are. That can match well with the types of advertisers we're talking about, who want to get products into the hands of those people, want activations in front of them. It's another way for us to stay core to our methodology and our value — trusted product recommendations — but take it offline, in different directions, outside of just the well-packaged, tested best list people find via organic search. Initial conversations with advertisers — they've been excited about this opportunity.
Emily Jackson
I think it's going to take some reimagining of how attribution works, because historically, when you work with performance marketers, their first question is, how do we track this? Sometimes that's not easy to do. So there are always going to be elements of a campaign where we can directly track attribution, and other areas we have to rely on that branding, influence, and awareness to fill in the top of the funnel — which is still incredibly important for e-commerce brands.
Bryan Mahoney
It brings it back to trust, in a funny way, which is where we got started. Do your readers trust Forbes? Because you've been around for 100 years, you're this trusted voice in the space — and when you're talking to advertisers, it's not that you're hand-wavy about it and say, well, you can't track it, just trust us — you have the credibility to say, we're going to do the best we can to deliver ROI in a way you can measure, but you have to understand this is an investment. It's not like an out-of-home campaign, but in some ways it's becoming like one. So how do you think about those blended marketing dollars?
Emily Jackson
Yeah, I also think it's opening up the possibility for us to deliver something full-funnel. Before, Forbes Vetted was very focused on what we could do at the bottom of the funnel — how can it be only performance marketing dollars? But now we actually have the ability to come to the table with something full-funnel — okay, we need branding and awareness over here for this specific product category, but we're really focused on shifting products in this other category. How do we blend the two? That's really exciting for advertisers.
Bryan Mahoney
I think it's such a great example of an obviously iconic, heritage brand like Forbes not being stuck — just because you did a certain thing that got you to a certain place doesn't mean you can't be nimble and act like a startup to some extent, continuing to evolve, bringing the good parts forward, but also recognizing the opportunities and where the commerce market is going.
Emily Jackson
Yeah, speaking of.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah, go ahead, please.
Emily Jackson
We really do try to ground our coverage in the core elements of Forbes. We want to make sure that when people come and read commerce content on Forbes, it has a Forbes point of view — that it's connected to the knowledge, inspiration, and connections you need to drive success. So there's going to be some more workhorse content, like the best espresso machines — but successful people also need espresso machines. It really is a mix of both.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah, I don't know how to segue into AI, but I'm going to do my best. So let's talk about those best espresso machines — as I think about who a Forbes reader is a year from now, two years from now, are these folks searching for the best espresso machine shopping for themselves? Or am I to believe they're just going to have AI agents that have figured it out for them? Taking your Forbes hat off for a second — is that the future you imagine for consumers?
Emily Jackson
I'll say this — I think the way people shop is going to fundamentally change. We're very much in the early-adopter stage of this, so we're starting to see ripple effects of searches going to AI answer engines versus traditional organic search. We're starting to see changes even in how people interact with results within Google. So one thing I know for sure is it will fundamentally change. What still remains is that whether it's you doing the shopping or an agent doing the shopping, there's still a need for product recommendations you can rely on — that still needs to fuel the information people want to capture.
Emily Jackson
How people capture that information, and how they interact with it, I think is going to be vastly different — and that's going to be the big challenge for us and a lot of publishers in the space. How do we adapt and evolve in this new industry while still delivering on the core message — that we still have humans doing hands-on testing of these products, giving independent review and recommendations? Again, how that information gets passed on to a consumer, and ultimately how it gets monetized — which is a really key element, because we can't do this for free — that's going to be fundamentally different.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah, the monetization is a real challenge. They asked the question in kind of a cheeky way earlier — if I'm shopping for an espresso machine, the last thing in the world I want is an agent doing that shopping for me. I'm a romantic when it comes to consumer — I like to touch and feel things, get to know brands, become an advocate for them once I've discovered or rediscovered something. But I do think this type of content — product recommendations from trusted sources — is going to be more important than ever, because I can imagine a scenario where an agent makes the work easier for me.
Bryan Mahoney
It's finding the ten things — like, I actually think you're going to like this, but then I want to go do it myself. I might let agents shop for the things that are unsexy — for me, totally fine. But as a consumer, and if we look at what's fueling the economy, it's consumer — I think it's going to be really difficult to imagine a scenario where we're suddenly not shopping anymore, or that we've completely trusted agents to do that. But this content — everything I've seen in the search landscape, and how that's changing — matters more than ever. I've always been thinking about it from the point of view of a brand and how they need to shift their content strategy.
Bryan Mahoney
But the challenge for someone like Forbes, thinking about the monetization model — yeah, I can't really wrap my brain around that yet. So I'm happy to hear you all are working on it.
Emily Jackson
I don't think we really know what the future of that is yet. There's still so much to be seen in terms of how the likes of GPT and Perplexity think about monetization, and how that includes or doesn't include publishers. We have a long way to go to figure out a clear path forward for how to do this.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah. And what is their responsibility in all of this? There's monetization, but there's also the training that they're doing, and I know that can be somewhat controversial in this moment — the monetization can't, in my opinion, accrue entirely to them. They're sort of helping to summarize the value, but they're not delivering all of that value. So, yeah, it's an interesting time.
Emily Jackson
It is.
Bryan Mahoney
What about AI you might be using internally — is your team, or the team at Forbes, finding some unexpected value from tools you're leveraging today? Or on the other side, have you been recently disappointed by the ineffectiveness of some, despite all the sizzle of AI? I'd be curious to hear a point of view on either one.
Emily Jackson
I'd say for me personally, I've continuously been impressed — not only by the opportunity it presents, but by the way our team has been able to leverage it to drive efficiency. That's really how we're thinking about rolling it out across the organization. A really good example is our content strategy team — they're helping drive what our audience needs at any given moment, how pieces of content fit together, and what's working well on different platforms. Remove even the revenue information from that and just think about the ecosystem — how are people engaging with this, is it working?
Emily Jackson
The amount of work we've been able to do to speed up analysis and recommendations for things like that, with massive swaths of data, without going line by line in a spreadsheet — getting a lot of thematic recommendations — has been incredible. That's an area I could really see us continuing to leverage, where it brings the most value. My answer is that I'm impressed, and I think there's a lot more to do. I can see people's roles changing — we're already doing a lot of training on different tools to see how we can implement them into our workflows. I think we're on a very fast rocket ship in terms of what the future of that can be.
Bryan Mahoney
Yeah, yeah, I'm hearing similar things — the term efficiency comes up a lot. It's not full transformation, it's not that the way we worked before is fundamentally different today — it's more, we're unlocking an awful lot of efficiency, and there's a lot more there we ultimately want to keep pulling on. I'm also hearing there's this rocket ship, certainly, but the more iconic heritage brands leverage AI, the more I'm also hearing from leaders that we're trying to be cautious — trying to leverage AI where we can take advantage of efficiency gains, but do so in a brand-safe and data-safe way. I'd be curious if those are some of the conversations you and the team are having at Forbes.
Bryan Mahoney
Like, yes, this is something super powerful — but how do we make sure we're leveraging it in a way that's brand-accretive to Forbes and trust-accretive, as opposed to taking on risks that just harness the rocket power?
Emily Jackson
Yeah, yeah. And I think because we've been so focused on efficiency versus anything related to our content, that's where we're very cautious as a premium publication. Premium journalism is forever going to be rooted in human journalism — trusted, credible, human-led journalism. That really is at the core of everything we do at Forbes and Forbes Vetted, and that's kind of the line we've drawn. We'd love to use it all day, every day for data analysis, content strategy, speeding up meeting minutes and deck reviews and summaries — but the content that we create needs to be driven by humans. I think a lot of publishers will say the same thing.
Bryan Mahoney
That's a fantastic place to wrap us up, and I'm thrilled you said that, because I'm 100% in that category. More content is just more content — I don't want it to be a race to the bottom. I want to read something that really resonates, that I know a human being took the time to test the product and give me an honest interpretation of it. I'm here for efficiency, I'm here for summaries, I'm here for analysis — but I never want to lose that human connection. I think that's super important in consumer and all things commerce, and it's certainly what makes me still excited to work in the space after 30 years. So thanks so much for sharing your perspective, and thanks for being here today.
Bryan Mahoney
I liked taking this alternative view on commerce from someone with the opportunity to work behind the scenes at a brand I have a ton of respect for. So yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much.
Emily Jackson
Yeah, thanks for having me, Brian.