Men’s March Madness ad inventory is all but sold out by Alyssa Meyers
According to Warner Bros. Discovery’s EVP of ad sales, both CBS Sports and TNT Sports are basically sold out of ad inventory for the men’s side of March Madness. This year’s NBA March tournament is breaking revenue records for WBD as the two entities are covering all 67 games across TBS, CBS, TNT, and truTV, with the added bonus of CBS-aired games also streaming live on Paramount+ while the rest stream to Max. For those brands still looking to get in on the March Madness action, this is a casual reminder of the substantial number of well-performing sports podcasts with engaged audiences and available inventory. There’s still plenty of opportunity to take advantage of March madness audiences over here in podcasting. [Source]
5 charts on how third-party cookie deprecation will change ad buys by Meaghan Yuen
EMARKETER analysts remain confident Google will not be pushing back its deadline to retire third-party cookies, and the deprecation is coming. According to Q3 2023 data from 33Across, cookied inventory still accounts for most programmatic activity. ID5’s State of Digital Identity 2023 shows the top solution considered most viable as a replacement for third-party cookie data is first-party data and contextual. Proximic’s 2024 State of Programmatic reaffirms this with contextual data and first-party dominating the average budget allocation across data types for targeting. Podcasting remains uniquely positioned for a post-cookie world as the industry has always primarily used first-party data, and has excellent contextual targeting capabilities. [Source]
Teens use YouTube on a daily basis more than TikTok by Sara Lebow
According to Pew Research data from their Teens, Social Media, and Technology 2023 report published in December, 38% of respondents aged 13 to 17 use YouTube several times a day. 16% say they use it “almost constantly” while 17% say “about once a day.” A stark contrast to Facebook, which only has 3% of teens using constantly, and 8% checking several times a day. TikTok only scored 32% for several times a day, and only edged out YouTube by one percent for users who are constantly engaging. YouTube has momentum and a massive user base, and this data reaffirms that YouTube is a great place for podcasting to leverage Gen Z’s attention on both full episodes and promotional shorts/clips. [Source]
While advertisers are playing it cool, they’re hesitant to unleash their budgets on TikTok by Krystal Scanlon and Seb Joseph
TikTok finds itself in a precarious position after the House of Representatives fast-tracked a President-endorsed bill last week that, if passed by the Senate, will ban TikTok in the U.S. if parent company ByteDance does not divest ownership to a U.S. owned company. Currently the controversial bill is not being fast-tracked through the Senate, though if it were passed it would start a 165 day clock for TikTok to be divested or cease operations in the U.S. In response, some advertisers are jumping ship. One agency exec told Digiday advertisers are giving mandates to pull all investment in TikTok campaigns within 90 days. Others are taking a slower approach of simply winding down spending on the app while its future is complicated. Regardless, there’s now a significant chunk of ad spend budget no longer committed to TikTok. For those considering where to put that money, we humbly present the wide world of podcast advertising. [Source]
Amazon sees opportunity amid the demise of third-party cookies by Seb Joseph
Once cookies are phased out, Amazon will become one of a small group of large platforms where marketers will be able to target and measure advertising. And with the company’s focus on in-house solutions like Amazon Audiences and Modeled Conversions, they’re future-proofed for the impending cookie-pocalypse. In addition to ad tech for the digital side of advertising, Amazon also has farm-to-table podcasting capabilities with Wondery producing content, Art19 for the enterprise-level hosting side, and Amazon Music for distribution and listening. [Source]
…as for the rest of the news:
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Veritonic has integrated with measurement and analytics company Adjust for audio attribution on mobile devices,
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Headliner debuts Podcast Promo to distribute podcast previews to target audiences in the Headliner Publisher Network,
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Blubrry Podcasting has announced Vid2Pod, a tool that converts YouTube channel playlists into audio podcasts,
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French adtech company Audion has continued its international expansion with the new addition of Belgium
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Magellan AI has posted their February movers and shakers in podcast advertising, including a 311% podcast spend increase from PepsiCo and 761% from Etsy.
