News

Monica Austin has been appointed the new chief marketing officer at gaming publisher Blizzard Entertainment.

In the role, Austin oversees the marketing teams for all titles at Blizzard, including the popular franchises Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch. Blizzard Entertainment is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, which was acquired by Microsoft in October 2023.

Before joining Blizzard in June 2024, Austin was the chief marketing officer at Linktree, which offers link-in-bio tools. Austin was previously the global head of marketing and communications at Calm. She also led the global content expansion go-to-market strategy at Netflix for titles including Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why and Orange Is the New Black and worked at Meta during the launches of Instagram Stories and the Oculus Rift. She has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Ad Age 40 Under 40 and as a Business Insider CMO to Watch.

“Though it has only been a short time since beginning my...

Quick Links What Is The Incredible Dr. Pol About? Dr. Pol's Supporting Cast Is Hard to Beat Why The Incredible Dr. Pol Is a Perfect Antidote to Reality TV

Launched in 2011, Nat Geo Wild's The Incredible Dr. Pol is a feel-good reality TV show that provides alternative entertainment for the nasty, cutthroat reality competition series that relies on scripted conflict and backroom dust-ups. With 24 seasons and counting, the popular series follows the kindhearted Dr. Jan Pol, a Dutch veterinarian practicing in Michigan since 1981. Dr. Pol runs a mom-and-pop operation called Pol Veterinary Service in Wiedman, Michigan.

After 24 seasons of The Incredible Dr. Pol, the spin-off The Incredible Pol Farm premiered in January 2024. The series traces Jan Pol's son, Charles Pol, as he and his family open and operate a 350-acre Michigan farm. While both shows are uplifting and provide a different type of reality TV format, The Incredible Dr. Pol...

Linktree has delivered the 2023 edition of its annual Creator Report. The link-in-bio company pulled data from its 40 million users to highlight the content strategies, websites, and ventures that have trended up over the past year.

Though Linktree is a notable name in the creator economy, its latest report devotes more space to a different ecosystem: The so-called “attention economy.” Approximately 200 million creators are competing to get the attention of viewers who feel more overwhelmed then ever. Linktree reported that 40% of people are “overwhelmed” by the amount of choice on the internet, and the average attention span is one-third as long as it was in 2004.

Naturally, Linktree sees itself as an antidote for the overstuffed viewer experience. Its link-in-bio service connects multiple platforms in one convenient location, and creators are using that tool to bring together more than 7.5 million websites. The 2023 report states that only 25% of the 100 million Linktree links that...

Calm, the Los Angeles based mental-health focused company and eponymous app, has hired Netflix’s Monica Austin and TikTok’s Greg Justice as VPs of, respectively, marketing and content.

They will report to co-founders and CEOs Michael Acton Smith and Alex Tew as Calm continues to invest in original and editorial content.

Calm, launched in 2012, became the first mental health unicorn (a privately held startup valued at over $1 billion) in early 2019 and has over 100 million downloads to date, averaging 100,000 new users daily.

Last summer, HBO Max ordered A World of Calm, a ten-episode series narrated by Kate Winslet, Priyanka Chopra Joas, Mahershala Ali, Idris Elba, Oscar Isaac, Nicole Kidman, Zoë Kravitz, Lucy Liu, Cillian Murphy, and Keanu Reeves. The streamer has a set an October debut for the series, which builds on Calm’s Sleep Stories – bedtime stories for grown-ups.

“As two proven leaders, Monica and Greg’s experience with...