🚨LAST CALL🚨: Sounds Profitable is hosting a webinar tomorrow, Wednesday, March 12, at 2 PM Eastern. Tom Webster will be joined by Liz Hames from JAR Audio and special guest Andrea Marquez from Amazon as they present The Power of Branded Podcasts, featuring new research from Sounds Profitable and a key case study from Amazon. Register for this free event here and be the first to receive the report!
The Creator Economy at SXSW
A lot happened at SXSW concerning podcasters and content creators in general, here’s some of the coverage. Today’s Marketing Briefing from Digiday covers why marketers should take note of the increased presence of content creators at the conference, as advertising and entertainment at large start to catch up to the culture’s embrace of individual creators. Variety covered the live taping of their Awards Circuit podcast, featuring Hot Ones host Sean Evans, Mythical Entertainment’s Rhett & Link, and Waveform Podcast host Marques Brownlee. A panel that touched on the recent canonization of their content in awards consideration, with Hot Ones in consideration for talk series in the 2024 Emmys. Rhett McLaughlin highlights a spending discrepancy that podcasters will be all too familiar with, highlighting how much brands invest in something like The Tonight Show compared to how much engagement his own daily talk show, Good Mythical Morning, gets on YouTube. He proposed series like GMM being in consideration for Emmys legitimizes them to brands who look to organizations like the Academy for what counts as canonized, cool entertainment. Meanwhile The Information covered video podcasting’s presence at the conference, as well as the front-runners for who might buy TikTok if a sale is pressured by the administration later this year.
Layoffs in Audio
AdWeek has covered the report that this Monday SiriusXM made staff cuts, which reportedly primarily impacted the product and technology group within their overall operations department. Meanwhile Rain News covers a recent round of layoffs at Audacy, following the end of their bankruptcy process at the beginning of the year. Sources disagree on the exact number, with the average being between 200 and 300 positions impacted. As mentioned in previous moments like this, we want to remind anyone in the business of podcasting looking to hire new faces, or in search of a job themselves, that the Sounds Profitable job board is fully free to use and updated daily as new positions come in.
Contextualist Targeting from AdExchanger’s Optimizing the News
In an unexpected Venn diagram overlap between B2B ad tech and Hollywood, Bloomberg Media has debuted a three-part package of ads directed by Brady Corbet, director of The Brutalist. The series, cheekily titled The Contextualist focuses on the importance of context in the current information landscape, dovetailing with the Bloomberg marketing motto “context changes everything.” AdExchanger points to a comment by New York Times Chief Advertising Officer Joy Robins at The Trade Desk’s FWD25 event last month regarding how news publishers sell themselves. While there is an argument to be made about advertising on news being the noble and just move for brands, as a healthy fifth estate props up a healthy democracy, news publishers are better off selling news’ ROAS capabilities and contextual data opportunities.
Does America’s Biggest True Crime Podcast Share True Crime’s Biggest Problems by Aja Romano
A deep dive into the last ten years of true crime podcast through the lens of chart-topper Crime Junkie, including several big controversies. While Crime Junkie specifically has caught flak for using biased sources, hosts making ‘hot take’ judgement calls about legal cases, and spotty citing of sources leading to accusations of plagiarism, none of them are unique to the show in particular. Instead they’re more representative of a wider issue with the True Crime genre: a lot of sizable shows don’t have a single trained journalist involved, opening up the productions to more ethical issues than usual due to a lack of professional understanding of the field hosts are using to make compelling narratives.
As for the rest of the news…
- Coming next Tuesday, March 18th, a free webinar hosted by Quill CEO and cofounder Fatima Zaidi and The Creativity Business’ Steve Pratt. From You, Not About You will feature 25 minutes of discussion on steps to elevate branded podcasts from promotion into “a gift for your audience,” how brands measure success beyond downloads, and building long-term trust.
- Audioboom has expanded their partnership with Triton Digital to allow the network to use Triton’s Sounder on their catalog, enabling advanced contextual targeting capabilities and brand suitability tools.
- BackBeat Media’s MacVoices has published CES 2025 coverage consisting of 51 video interviews filmed both in remote meetings and live on the show floor.
- FastCompany has a piece about the Spotify Partner Program, interviewing both audio and video podcasters about how the new monetization method has impacted their podcasting decision-making.
- Kill Tony, a YouTube podcast consisting of recorded live shows headlined by ex-Rogan producer Brian Redban and roast comic Tony Hinchcliffe, has signed a Netflix deal for three specials on the platform. The deal also includes a traditional standup special for Hinchcliffe, his first sizable booking since drawing controversy for his set at a Madison Square Garden Trump rally last October.
- CBS News Chicago covers the launch of Michelle Obama and her brother Craig Robinson launching IMO, a new video podcast debuting on YouTube (with audio on RSS feed) from Higher Ground Productions.
