Podcasting 🤝 OOH, Spotify Launches Partnership, & More

This Week in the Business of Podcasting

It’s Friday once again, podcasting. I celebrated the autumnal milestone of turning the thermostat from COOL to HEAT for the first time in many months, I’ve got comfy slippers on. It truly is the season of warm soups and cool temperatures. Grab a nice hot beverage and let’s get into what’s happening in the business of podcasting.

Transparency. Performance. Automation.

How Podcasting Could Make People Say OOH

This Wednesday, Sounds Profitable’s Tom Webster invited podcasters to touch grass in the name of the craft. Finding and developing your audience can feel like it mostly takes place online, where podcasts live, but a key guarantee of a podcast’s success is whether people are engaging with it- i.e. listening on the go and talking about it with friends and family- in the real world. Taking your podcast advertising game to the real world, in relevant places like local movie theatres for a movie podcast, or sports bar restrooms for a sports recap podcast, can draw already-interested audiences to your show at places where they’re not already being bombarded by online ads.

A quote from Webster:

“The great thing about this kind of advertising is that you don’t have to eat the elephant all at once. If your brain flashed to what it would cost to buy run-of-toilet ads for Buffalo Wild Wings nationwide, this is not a thing you have to do. Start local—again, if your show is ready for the Grand Opening sign, you just need to start somewhere. If twenty-five people try your show after a weekend of sports bar advertising, and those new listeners tell their buddies, you are on your way. In fact, local advertising, period, is underused in podcasting.”

From a booth at your local festival to finding ways to engage your own community at home, Webster suggests starting local.

Spotify Rebrands Podcast Platform, Launches Partnership Program

This Thursday, Spotify for Podcasters is being rebranded to Spotify for Creators, which includes a new monetization program. The Spotify Partner Program, currently available to creators in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K., opens monetization options for podcasts that reach the threshold. The program has been heavily compared to YouTube’s creator monetization features, suggesting Spotify is continuing to get serious about supporting video podcasting.

According to Podnews reporting, the program requires at least 12 episodes, 2,000 unique Spotify users interacted in the past month, and 10,000 streamed hours in the past month (for comparison, YouTube’s partnership program threshold is 1,000 all-time subscribers and 4,000 streamed hours in the past year). Creators in the SPP earn a share of revenue whenever Spotify plays an ad on the content at designated timecodes the podcaster chooses. Video podcasters in the program will have their content presented ad-free for Spotify Premium users, with the podcaster paid for watch-time instead of direct ad revenue. In addition to the new monetization, Spotify for Creators comes with the ability to add thumbnails and promotional clips to podcast episodes.

Other companies popular in the podcast industry are already jumping on board with tools to support this launch, such as Headliner debuting new resources for making video clips on Spotify.

M&A Activity Increased Across 2024

This Wednesday, Digiday reported on this past quarter in the merger and acquisitions (M&A) world, which saw significant growth, with the overall volume of M&A increasing 13% quarter over quarter. A trend in the M&A of later is “rationalization” deals that aim to consolidate or expand the purchaser into new markets. With companies like SambaTV and Integral AdScience both exploring purchasing options, Q3 2024 was a huge quarter for growth in the adtech industry.

Michael Seidler, CEO of M&A advisory firm Madison Alley, told Digiday, “Many companies didn’t perform well last year and took a little while to get back on track this year. Now that you see companies getting close to 12 months of good performance behind them, things are starting to happen.”

Podcasting is no slouch in the M&A game, such as the recent Insignia Capital acquisitions of Lower Street Studios and Veritone One, which will eventually merge the two companies and bring podcast advertising to a previously podcast-less Insignia portfolio.

Kantar Looks at Podcast Advertising KPI Effectiveness

This Thursday, international market research company Kantar took a look at the claims of podcast advertisements’ effectiveness. Key findings include podcast ads driving brand KPI (key performance indicators), with a 1.7x increase in purchase intent, 2.4x brand favorability for high-ticket categories (such as automotive), and a particular “sweet spot” for respondents 35-44 years old with higher purchase intent and overall brand favorability due to podcast ads.

Lee notes that key to podcasting’s substantial and increasing reach is an authentic and natural style, used to both attract guests that boost the show’s profile and maintain a parasocial relationship with fans. According to Lee, “…consumers globally point to podcasts ads as trustworthy, relevant and useful. In the US, the fact that they ‘capture my attention’ is also more pronounced. As podcasts are increasingly viewed as a trusted source of information, whether that be for life advice, news updates, candid conversations, etc., brands must understand how to leverage that trust and engagement to increase consideration”.