The Sounds Profitable Educational Series continues with a look at the News Podcast audience, in a live webinar featuring Tom Webster and Lamar Johnson, VP of Sponsorship Marketing at NPR’s sponsorship subsidiary National Public Media. This free event will be held on Wednesday, February 26th, at 2PM Eastern – register here today!
Spotify is Booming—Except For Its Ad Business By Catherine Perloff
Spotify has long offered both a paid ad-free subscription tier and a free-with-ads tier for listeners looking to access its content, but some advertisers aren’t satisfied with the results and Spotify’s actions aren’t shaping up to improve it. In 2024, despite recording its first annual profit in the streaming service’s lifetime, ad revenue growth slowed from 15% in the first half of the year to 6.4%. Advertisers have also complained that their ads are no longer reaching enough of Spotify’s audience, especially companies who target a specific niche of consumer. While some have questioned if Spotify even needs ad revenue anymore, their video streaming contemporaries aren’t seeing the same results. Netflix, formerly only supported by subscription tiers, recently launched an ad-supported tier in 2022 as subscription growth slowed, and advertising revenue continues to grow for them. In terms of audience reach, podcasts have proven that targeting niche consumer groups can be incredibly simple, and companies acquired by Spotify were at the heart of proving that out in podcasting, making it difficult to balance the results vs their vocalized goals.
Inside the Fund Investing $60 Million in Creators
Slow Ventures, an early-stage VC fund with a specialty for niche creators and brands, has launched the $60 million Slow Creator Fund. In exchange for 10% equity in the company, the fund is contributing $1-3 million intended to foster steady, sustainable growth as opposed to flash-in-the-pan results. Said program investor Megan Lightcap, “We have a thesis that there’s going to be a subset of creators that are very capable business builders who start to build interesting companies tailor-made for their audience, and they’re going to do so with better cost of acquisition, higher lifetime value, and greater attachment [than the average founder]”. Any audience takes time to build, and engaged audiences that are more effectively advertised to can take an especially long time. Once a niche creator finds their audience, however, the connection and ROI is undeniable.
Spotify’s Partner Program is paying off
After one month of adoption, Spotify’s revamped partner program, which allows podcast creators more opportunities to make money off of streams and listeners, appears to be going well based on the limited data shared by Spotify for just a few shows. The company has shared that “hundreds” of creators are making over $10,000 a month on the platform but has not compared that against their previous Spotify Ad Network revenue or the disruption of publisher-initiated dynamic ad insertion. Video podcasting, which Spotify has especially been pushing in the last year, has seen particular success with on-platform video podcast consumption up 20%. Sounds Profitable Partner Bryan Barletta shared on LinkedIn some important further questions regarding the data, such as: how much of these shows’ catalogues are fully converted and uploaded as video, and how does the program compare view for view against how YouTube pays out? As the race between Spotify and YouTube to capitalize on video podcasting continues, more data is needed besides simply revenue figures.
Small is beautiful By Brian Morrissey
In his newsletter, The Rebooting, Brian Morrissey shared how the tides are turning as big companies look to smaller ones for how to build out their product suites and teams. As The Great Realignment- a larger media and cultural shift prioritizing engaged, niche audiences over widespread reach with surface-level engagement- takes hold, companies are finding that building an audience that is smaller but undeniably leaned-in creates better long-term results. Explained Morrissey, “What interests me is this is a final admission that institutional publishers cannot build big businesses on these platforms. They can use them for marketing and to eke out distribution. Instead, they need to get people to seek them out”. The town square of the internet is dying out, and businesses are looking to direct-to-audience channels, as well as the people who can build them.
As for the rest of the news…
- Vox Media has returned to SXSW 2025 for the second annual Podcast Stage. Said Sounds Profitable Partner Bryan Barletta, “We are incredibly impressed with the commitment to growing podcasting at SXSW, by both Vox Media and iHeart Media. Their dedication has made it even more valuable and created an immense opportunity for the entire podcast industry to plant their own unique flag in this event and benefit from it.”
- The 2025 Ambie Awards nominees have been announced
- ARN has launched ARN Data Match, a new brand solution focused on first-party data matching
- Adweek looks at data showing that half of Americans feel stereotyped by ads
- Business Insider covers how the new administration’s tariffs are affecting influencer marketing, which in turn may affect podcasting
