Special Screening @ the Sounds Profitable Podcast Movement Lounge
We’ve got something fun to add to your calendar for Podcast Movement in Dallas: director Shaun Michael Colón’s documentary Age of Audio will be screened in the Sounds Profitable Lounge. Sponsored by Transistor.fm, Metacast, Blubrry Podcasting by RawVoice, RSS.com, and Sounds Profitable, the screening will kick off Wednesday, August 20th at 6:30 p.m.
An overview of B2B startups finding success in advertising via podcasts, such as Vanta sponsoring This Week in Startups in 2019. Now podcast ads are a key part of Vanta’s growth over the past six years. One of the most valuable aspects of podcasting’s ability to target niches is, well, appealing directly to niches. The podcasts relevant to B2B might not be the biggest shows in the industry, but their audiences are a concentrated pool of executives who could easily become the second B in a B2B relationship.
YouTube Self-Regulation Isn’t Working by Steve Nathans-Kelly
YouTube is driving a lot of conversations in the world of streaming video as multiple conferences in the near future sport panels about the platform’s continued growth, including in the UK where an IBC spotlight keynote will focus on the story of Channel 4 finding success distributing on YouTube (e.g. all of cult hit comedy game show Taskmaster is on YouTube in full). According to Ofcom’s recent Media Nations report, YouTube is the second-most-watched media service in the UK behind the BBC. A complicating factor of YouTube becoming the successor to linear TV for a lot of households is, now, it’s big enough to draw regulatory attention. In the case of the UK, YouTube is drawing attention of the Advertising Standards Authority, a regulatory body that dictates rules for advertising on UK broadcast TV. The ASA has weighed in with politicians arguing YouTube’s size in the country means its advertisements should be vetted with the same standards as existing broadcasters. YouTube’s response is they aren’t a broadcaster and thus shouldn’t be regulated like one. To summarize Nathans-Kelly’s coverage, in a world where legacy broadcasters are doing everything they can to be like content platforms, and content platforms have as much (if not more) audience than some legacy broadcasters, when does the distinction between “new” and “old” media stop mattering?
Seattle’s audio drama, fiction podcast scene is booming by Gemma Wilson
The Seattle Times covers the growing community of fiction podcasters in the area. A focal point of contemporary audio drama is based in Seattle, such as Atypical Artists co-founder Lauren Shippen. The piece looks at a decade of productions from the area, from Shippen’s critically-acclaimed The Bright Sessions in 2015 to the next wave of producers like Kristopher Kaiyala (Dirt: An Audio Drama) and Lux Radium (Metropolis) who got their start listening to podcasts like Welcome to Night Vale and Girl in Space. Shippen notes she’s seen a new uptick in audio drama production in recent years, potentially signaling a new wave of audio fiction in the near future.
Left-wing podcast MeidasTouch dethrones Joe Rogan: Sign of culture shift? by Lindsey Granger
An op-ed looking at a relatively recent shift in podcast charts. While The MediasTouch Podcast has been a mainstay of podcast charts for quite some time, Granger notes that – at least from June 7th through July 7th – MeidasTouch episodes are pulled in over three times the views of The Joe Rogan Experience. While the article moves on to musing on whether this means the online topic of “the left needs their own Rogan” sentiment is coming true, I wanna focus on a core truth: podcasts are a part of the mainstream. Rogan’s place in podcast charts, the growth of more left-leaning podcast productions, the political utility of podcasts in American political conversation. They’re all storylines that’ve appeared in The Download multiple times over the past couple years. The industry is so embedded in daily lives it’s generating dozens of op-eds and relitigation of topics about individual podcasts. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
As for the rest of the news…
- The Radcast Network has launched their own podcasting platform, allowing full ownership over their advertising and demand partnerships.
- MediaVillage has a piece on how, compared to other mediums, podcast audiences score highest in interest for personalized AI-powered marketing, as well as receptive to AI-based services and branded messaging.
- Podlink now runs a new platform with a slew of upgrades and tweaks, including removing and replacing deprecated platforms and the addition of newly-developed ones.
- PPC Land has a new piece covering Audioboom’s video strategy and how it has found results to the tune of $40.74 RPM in June.
- Edison Research has the 2025 edition of The UK Podcast Consumer up and ready for download.
- Tomas Rodriguez has joined SiriusXM as part of their Programmatic Sales Team, focusing on DSP Business Development.
