People Inc. Ramps Up Social Video as Google Traffic Fades

At the end of 2024, InStyle editor-in-chief Sally Holmes and Jonathan Borges, one of her top deputies, pitched an idea for a social video series in which a chaotic intern joins the magazine and wreaks havoc on its staff. The team shot a pilot on an iPhone, using the office as the set and staffers as the cast. Less than two years later, The Intern has now run 15 seasons and more than 87 episodes, which have collectively drawn over 107 million views, according to InStyle parent company People Inc. Its most-watched season, which features the actress Madelyn Cline, brought in 17.1 million views, and the show has already spawned one spinoff, The Boss, with two more on the way. The show has since become the template for a broader bet at People Inc., according to Leah Wyar, president of Beauty, Style, and Entertainment at the company. The company now runs seven serialized social shows across People, InStyle, Byrdie, Travel + Leisure, and Entertainment Weekly, up from one last year. While the formats differ, most feature a rotating cast of People Inc. staff and a celebrity cameo. “The camera turns on, and they turn into larger-than-life versions of themselves,” Wyar said. “This generation comes out of the womb knowing how to turn it on.” Sponsorship revenue from these social-first franchises has grown 625% year over year, according to the company, which expects its overall social ad revenue to grow more than 25% in 2026. The publicly traded company declined to provide further financial specifics. The investment in the episodic social series is part of a broader initiative at People Inc. to cultivate audience and revenue growth unrelated to the open web, which has seen stark declines in traffic due to disruption from artificial intelligence. Google now accounts for only about 20% of all traffic to the People Inc. portfolio, according to the company. The publisher buckets this off-site revenue into its “non-session-based” category, which grew 16% year over year in the second quarter, to $125 million. As a whole, the sector, which also includes D/Cipher, licensing, and newsletters, now represents 43% of total revenue. People Inc. is not the first brand to create television-quality short-form video—J. Crew and Away both recently launched similar campaigns that spiked into virality. But it is one of the few digital publishers to do so. Social media television Social media platforms have been reorganizing around exactly this kind of programming. On Monday, Instagram launched Series, a hub on the app designed to house short-form shows, and Features, which are horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long. The Meta property also launched its TV app on Apple TV. YouTube recently rolled out a similar tool that lets creators organize Shorts into episodes and seasons. For publishers, recurring shows solve a problem that one-off posts cannot, according to Rachel Karten, who writes the social media newsletter Link in Bio. Publishers posting about the same cultural moments are largely interchangeable in a feed, she said, while a show gives viewers a reason to come back to a specific brand. “One of the hardest things for brands to build right now on social media is retention,” Karten said. “So instead of playing a one-off game, they’re building retention through a show.” After airing about two dozen unsponsored episodes, The Intern has since seen a windfall of advertiser interest. Last August, Fossil became the first sponsor of the series, but the publisher has since signed nearly 20 partnership deals, including three with first-time advertisers. Brands now sit in the writers’ room, and episodes are built around their goals. A five-part L’Oréal Paris series, for instance, followed the team to the brand’s fashion show. Packages range from a single episode to multipart series, are bundled with web media and event presence, and run from six to seven figures, according to Wyar. To accommodate the demand, People Inc. is both hiring and reallocating staff toward the shows, and is in the process of adapting rate cards for native content to reflect its evolving business, according to the company. As the series become more popular, the publisher might need to consider using talent contracts, according to Karten, who previously worked at the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen. Currently, the majority of the viewership happens on TikTok and Instagram Reels, but the company is in talks to bring the shows into the living room through YouTube and other platforms. The timely news from Instagram, too, could prove another tailwind for the emerging format, per Karten. “I would imagine InStyle would be very excited about something like [Instagram Series],” Karten said. “Brands that have created habitual viewership are well suited in this moment.”

Social Media

People Inc. Ramps Up Social Video as Google Traffic Fades

The publisher's series The Intern, which features the InStyle staff, has become the template for a new kind of format that has netted nearly 20 sponsors

UNLOCK FULL ACCESS

Mark Stenberg

Media

Anthropic Goes for the Public Markets as Revenue Jumps Nearly 15-Fold

As Search Traffic Falls, Motherly Bets on Social Video and Live Events

Advertisers Pull Meta Ads That Had Unwanted AI Glow-ups

Tilly Norwood Tells All

Meta Beats Q3 Expectations With Strong Earnings

Stagwell Snaps Up Freestar to Bolster Owned Media Ambitions

Substack Brings Dynamic Ad Insertion to Podcasts

Pitch Deck: Cuttable Raises $20M to Turn Brands’ Photos and Videos Into Meta Ads

Semafor’s Upcoming Tech Summit Is Already an Eight-Figure Business