It’s incredibly cool to look back over the past few years in podcasting and see the swell of new products and services available to the business side of the industry. And even more exciting that so many of those products have flourished, with very few faltering, and even more new products popping up in categories generally new to our industry.

I’m fortunate that a big part of what I do at Sounds Profitable is to be hands-on with these products, to understand why they were built, who they’re for, what problems they can solve today, and which ones they could solve tomorrow. And I’ve got to tell you, that’s fun for someone who has been incredibly excited about technology his entire life.

But not everybody gets to do that.

I spent a lot of my career on the receiving end of managers who wouldn’t even let me in the pitch meeting for a new product that would “solve all my problems”. So when we started Sounds Profitable, a big goal of mine was to share my experience with the products and services available in the industry, so that even the most junior person at a company could find the value in the product and ideally feel informed enough to bring solutions to their boss to solve their needs. This led to our Product DeepDive series, which is about to enter its third year.

This year alone, we had the opportunity to work with 10 companies to make accessible walkthroughs of their key products and services, which we’ll recap toward the end of the article. But right now, I’d like to share our 2023 plans with you!

DeepDive 2.0

Reflecting on the 25 DeepDives we’ve done so far, I realized that some of my favorites were the second, or even third ones from the same company. And when multiple videos were planned from the start, we were able to keep the length down and the content focused, knowing we could touch on whatever we didn’t get to in the next video. Which is why we’ve decided to switch up the format from a single DeepDive per month from twelve partners, to collaborating with ten partners in releasing a new DeepDive for their suite of products every single quarter.

I’m excited to announced the following companies have signed up for 2023, with two spots left:

• Flightpath
• Soundstack
• Artsai
• Frequency
• Libsyn
• Sonnant
• Podscribe

Tom and I have hinted at some redesigns coming to our website and newsletter, and a big part of that is to showcase our webinars, podcasts, and especially content like our DeepDives, reducing the overall length of the newsletter. We’re incredibly excited to share this all with you soon.

Sound Metrics

Tom Webster is a phenomenal researcher and an even better presenter. The effort and care he put in to help establish Edison Research’s tentpole studies is crystal clear, and he continues to do that every single quarter with our research here at Sounds Profitable; like this week’s Safe and Sound.

Which is why, starting in 2023, Tom will be starting his own style of DeepDive called Sound Metrics, specifically to promote research, data, and white papers from leaders in our industry that we believe are more than just sales pitches, but rather advance the entire space.

I’ve learned firsthand how difficult it can be to have great data, but struggle to craft a solid story. Tom’s goal with Sound Metrics is to actively collaborate with partner companies in every step of their research process. From reviewing methodology, to appropriately weighting the results, and finally, my personal favorite, co-presenting the research with the partner.

We’re laying the groundwork with some of our amazing partners to aggregate data that will help everyone show the value of this industry, and reference metrics that will steer them toward more education decisions. And we believe that by collaborating with specific partners to present data which can independently benefit the entire industry, will only make this space better.

Based on the time commitment for Sound Metrics, we’re limited in how many partners we can collaborate with on this, so please let us know if you’re interested.

2022 DeepDive Series

Looking back on the amazing companies and products we had a chance to walk through this year leaves me feeling incredibly proud. Before you take your much-deserved holiday break (and I hope it’s extra long this year!) I’d love for you to check out the DeepDives below!

Measurement & Attribution

• Claritas – I spoke with Chase Miller from Claritas about the importance of device graphs, identity graphs, and good data.
• Veritonic – Chase Bernhardt guides us through the new Veritonic Attribution platform, a robust product with self-service features expanding on their Brand Lift offering.
• Also, this month I’m recording our final DeepDive of 2022 with ArtsAI, an audio measurement company focused on the podcast space. We’ll talk about their use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which drives how they approach everything from their device graph to modeling. They’re approaching attribution from a different angle than their peers, offering an interesting take on a very competitive landscape

Competitive Intelligence

• ThoughtLeaders – Elsie Bernaiche guides us through the ThoughtLeaders Partner Intelligence Solution. We discuss an increasingly cookie-less world, creating engaging content, and helping brands support their advertising.
• Triton Digital – Daryl Battaglia breaks down Triton’s Podcast Metrics tool. In collaboration with Signal Hill Insights, this comprehensive tool provides accurate metrics to make buying media even easier.

Operational Efficiencies

• Libsyn’s Advertisecast – Dave Hanley guides us through Libsyn’s AdvertiseCast Marketplace. This hosting-platform agnostic marketplace enables publishers to collaborate with Advertisecast to list their show, sell their inventory, and manage the entire workflow. With buyers also benefitting from a wealth of information and wide variety of publishers to buy from.
• Frequency – Pete Jimison lays out all of the benefits of Frequency’s campaign and creative management tool, allowing you to produce creatives, deploy them via VAST, and measure your campaigns all from one efficient dashboard.
• Adori Labs – Nathan Iyer and Jack Oliphant walk me through how Adori Labs helps podcasters enhance their video offering.

Adserving

• Triton Digital – Triton is back, and this time Isabelle Lleres shares the latest developments with Triton’s Advertising Platform (TAP) and its brand-new 2.0 release.
• SoundStack – Jon Stephenson and I break down the three pillars of SoundStack, an audio-as-a-service company. Each video emphasizes a different facet of this entirely customizable and white label ready offering to take your technology directly into your own hands.

Voice AI

• Veritone Voice – Fisher Robison walks us through the process Sounds Profitable experiences every week as we translate our content and synthesize my voice to deliver Spanish-language content. We explore the possibilities that AI voice solutions have to offer podcasting.
• Adthos – The Adthos platform is an end-to-end production tool that handles everything an advertiser will need, “bridging the digital divide between digital and traditional radio.” From shortform content creation to delivering the creative into a VAST tag, the Adthos Creative Studio has tools to help you do all the work in one space.

Wrapping It Up

Staying up to date with the latest and greatest of the podcast industry can be daunting, but we’re working hard to provide you with a path to do that. It’s our goal to highlight information that is important to you today, so you can dive in fully and learn all about them. Or setting it up for easy access at a better time for you to dig back in. We’re incredibly excited to share more about our new redesign, which will make all of that far more accessible, and to show you first-hand the value of all this information, now available on demand, when it works best for you.

Market Insights with Magellan AI

This week we are highlighting Uncommon Goods, a seasonal advertiser that Magellan AI has been tracking since late 2019. Uncommon Goods is a notable advertiser because of its consistent spending habits, specifically in Q4.

In October Uncommon Goods ran host-read campaigns on Betches Media and Acast, targeting the News and TV & Film genres. This is consistent with what we detected in October 2021 with similar buys being made on Acast and the TV & Film genre. If the trend holds we can expect to see similar spending in November and December.

Interested in more insights like this? Sign up to join the 15-minute monthly market update on December 22nd.

Anatomy of an Ad with ThoughtLeaders

Sponsoring brand: Blissy

Where we caught the ad: Nobody Told Me!

Who else has sponsored this podcast? Ritual, Gladskin, BetterHelp, EverlyWell

Where else has this brand appeared? Well-Fed Women, AsianBossGirl, Good For You, Strange and Unexplained with Daisy Eagen.

Why it works: The hosts of this podcast, mother-daughter duo, delve into important topics and bring their two-generational outlook into the discussion. Interestingly, they also bring their different outlooks into their ad-reads. For example, while one of the hosts focused on how Blissy’s pillows ensured she woke up tangle-free and wrinkle-free, the other one put a spotlight on getting better sleep and always finding a cooler section of the pillow. This helps a wider audience connect with the product and the brand.