Twice a year Magellan AI and Sounds Profitable publish an update to The Podscape, an infographic designed to provide a bird’s-eye view of the podcasting industry at large. The deadline for submitting any changes or new companies for the end-of-year update is Friday, November 29th. Submitting to the Podscape is free and open now!
Fox Sells Out Super Bowl Ads at ‘Record Pricing’ by Bill Bradley
During Fox’s latest earnings call, CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced the company has sold out of Super Bowl 59 ad inventory at ‘record pricing,’ with Fox reportedly seeking a minimum of $7 million for a thirty second ad spot. While the big game is already booked up, it’s worth noting sports podcasting has experienced consistent growth in recent years, has plenty of inventory open for the Super Bowl period, and more affordable for the same reach $7 million gets on February 9th, 2025.
Tracking Podcast Tracking (Multiple Sources)
Rain News has covered the announcement that Libsyn Ads will no longer publish their monthly report of podcast ad CPM (cost per thousand impressions), which has been running since 2020. On the subject of podcast tracking, Adam Bowie is back with further coverage of Podtrac debuting new podcast trackers for various countries around the globe. This time, Bowie looks at Australia’s Podtrac charts in comparison to Triton Digital’s Australian podcast ranker for the same period. While Triton Digital’s data also operates on an opt-in basis (leaving some shows like The Joe Rogan Experience out of AU charts), the majority of major publishers in AU are accounted for. Meanwhile, Podtrac’s tracker has several noteworthy differences and gaps, such as ABC News Top Stories not appearing at all in Podtrac’s ranking despite being the third highest ranked podcast on Triton (likely due to it being an hourly podcast largely distributed via smart speaker). Libsyn’s monthly reports provided a rare consistent glimpse into the state of podcast advertising, even if limited to the scope of Libsyn Ads’ inventory. Incomplete or limited sources of data can have value if presented well, but multiple incomplete pieces of data – or data only participated in by just one company – can cause more issues than benefit.
Brand Vs. Performance Marketing: Lessons from Advertising Week New York by Anthony Chiaravallo
A noteworthy panel during Advertising Week New York was Brand as Multiplier: Why We Need to Rethink Brand vs. Performance, focusing on the wider conversation about reframing brand marketing and performance from competing ideas to tools working towards the same goal. The two work better in tandem than when one is preferred over the other, with brand advertising working best to create equity that can then be leveraged by performance marketing at the bottom of the funnel.
eBay Data Shows How Holiday Ads Influence Consumers by Laurie Sullivan
A new trend report from online sales platform eBay shares findings from a Censuswide survey conducted in early July of this year, surveying 3,005 holiday shoppers. 21% of overall holiday shoppers say they find advertisements help them find the best gifts. When filtered for respondents aged 25-34, t hat climbs to 28%. 46% of the overall crowd say they are open-minded and advertisements help spark gift discovery. As studies like The Medium Moves the Message show, podcast advertising is great at lower-funnel performance, making podcasts logical inclusion for holiday campaigns promoting products and deals for last-minute shoppers.
As for the rest of the news…
- Tom Webster appeared on Right About Now with Ryan Alford to discuss the podcast industry’s evolution
- Acast has posted their Q3 earnings report, citing a 3% decrease in listens year-over-year (attributed to iOS17’s auto-download correction) while average revenue per listen is up 36% y-o-y.
- Spotify shares its growth stats after the launch of SAX, including the proportion of video ads in its sales
- Kids podcast Dorktales has joined audio platform Yoto with its new “Hidden Heroes of History” collection
- Sonnant has released their Programmatic Marketplace Platform for audio ad buying across multiple major platforms
