Breaking News: Brendan Monaghan, formerly CEO of Megaphone, has announced he is now CEO of Libsyn.
Podcasters’ Message To Ad Buyers: We’re An Industry That’s Growing Up
During panels at Advertising Week New York, podcasting industry experts told buyers of the industry’s evolution and maturation in recent years. Speakers like SoundStack CRO Rockie Thomas and National Public Media senior VP of Corporate Sponsorship Scott Davis charted the early adtech teething troubles, as well as current capabilities (such as dynamic ad insertion reaching audience verticals in a way baked-in couldn’t). Advertisers that shied away from podcasting in its infancy due to aforementioned teething troubles might not recognize podcast’s current advertising capabilities.
Untapped Opportunities for Advertisers in Kids and Family Podcasts
Pinna, the Kids & Family division of Realm, partnered with kids podcast Story Pirates to conduct a survey looking into opportunities for brands looking to reach high-earning families via advertising on Kids & Family podcasts. The survey, conducted over this summer, surveyed over 700 fans of podcasts from Pinna, Story Pirates, Rebel Girls, the GoKidGo network, and other similar properties. Key findings include 71.4% of respondents’ household income reaching at least $100k. When listing who their kids listen to podcasts with, co-listening with parents takes the lead with over 75% of respondents.
Why Vox Media Is Selling Its Podcasts as Multichannel Franchises by Mark Stenberg
As the video side of podcasting grows in popularity, so does the potential for multichannel marketing. As Vox Media’s podcast network onboards content from creators like Kenny Beecham, the focus is less on the specific podcasts and more on franchises and IP. As more personalities and their respective podcasts are signed, Vox Media takes on sales, marketing, and distribution duties, as well as cross-pollinating with editorial crossovers and event extensions. While audio podcasting has its place in the plan, more video content means more surface area for partnership and sponsorship opportunities.
On podcast exclusivity – and public service broadcasting by James Cridland
While attending a recent public service broadcaster conference in Ottawa, James Cridland observed a mixture of opinions regarding the utility of podcast exclusivity. Several public media organizations, soon including Swedish Radio, are pulling their most popular podcasts off open podcasting to sequester them in exclusive app ecosystems. Cridland proposes gatekeeping podcast content is antithetical to the missions of public service. And, as Spotify’s Daniel Ek has pointed out earlier this year in an earnings call: exclusivity deals do not benefit creators as they stifle audience growth.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation ran an experiment to see if generative AI could help solve podcast discoverability issues by generating episode headlines and show notes. The trial used Microsoft’s Copilot to create a standardized title and description suggestion prompt that was then handed to audio teams and used to generate content for new episodes, with staff evaluating quality of output along the way. Overall, the pilot experiment found generative AI tends to output sensationalist, homogenous headlines that have more in common with clickbait content than descriptive headlines written by journalists.
As for the rest of the news…
- Magellan AI has added DMA-level reporting to its measurement dashboard
- Audioboom shares their Q3/24 trading update
- Spotify is launching audiobooks in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg
- ABC has tapped Jessica Radburn as their new Head of Audio on Demand
- AdLarge has added UNBIASED with Jordan is My Lawyer to the fwd. network
