Gatehouse Media's Bill Church sums it up nicely. "Editors have become more receptive to the idea that content has an audience but we have to figure out a way to connect with it."

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Nylon's Evan Luzzatto says, "One pitfall is not knowing whether to build [an event] and sell into it or build it only if it gets sold."

Complex Media President Christian Baesler: "Once you become comfortable, balancing the need to grow the company is only possible by so much without totally selling out."

The short answer is yes, although there is room on occasion to work with agencies. But one of the challenges in working with an agency is that payment can be withheld too long.

When a woman posted a photo of her boyfriend eating a Kit-Kat candy bar whole, Dictionary.com had to define the word "break," as in the brand's tagline, "Break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar."

Rooster Teeth is coming out in January with "Gen:Lock." Its broadest audience is on third-party platforms, "the audience of our audience," said Evan Bregman.

"Video way too expensive. Journalists want to use every medium to talk to viewers and listeners in every way possible. You can't pull every lever. It's hard to walk away from. It's a great medium for journalists. Having to say no to this to invest in another medium is hard."

"Consumer Reports" is moving from a transaction brand into a more experiential space, to be more of an affinity, with a series of emotional connections that says "we're there for all of life's moments."

"We don't want to dictate what our editorial team writes. But we do have data and we can see where this story, this section is doing very well. But coming back to church and state, we want to advertise their product, not have our advertising tell them what to produce."

Bill Allman, chief digital officer at Smithsonian Enterprises, asked his fellow panelists, "How do you match up your media audience with your product? I've just come woke on these things." Addressing the audience, he drew chuckles when he said, "All you vendors, come tell me but there's a thing on my head written, "I don't have any money."