Partnership enables Newsweek to provide readers with contextually relevant podcast episode recommendations to grow and monetize their listenership
Headliner, the easiest way for podcasters to grow their audience, announced it was selected by Newsweek for its AI-powered Disco product that provides readers with contextually relevant podcast recommendations. Newsweek, the modern global digital news organization, is using Disco by Headliner to convert website visitors into listeners of its podcasts by recommending relevant episodes next to articles they are reading.
According to an April 2023 Pew Research Center survey, roughly half of U.S. adults reported listening to a podcast in the last year, including one-in-five who report listening to podcasts at least a few times a week. However, just one-in-five listeners say they listen to a podcast that’s connected to a news organization. Many top publishers and traditional news outlets have launched podcasts to expand their reach and grow their audience. Despite the massive opportunity, challenges persist around discoverability and marketing.
“At Newsweek, we are committed to provide readers with thought-provoking news and opinion. This includes leveraging the power of audio through a variety of news, political, and pop-culture themed podcasts that we launched over the years,” said Jesse Edwards, Director of Radio and Podcasting for Newsweek. “Disco by Headliner enables us to convert our website traffic into podcast listens, support new revenue streams, and connect with a new generation of highly-engaged mobile audiences that prefer audio and video-based storytelling and news consumption.”
Headliner has a long and proven track record with content recommendations and discovery. Co-founders Neil Mody and Oliver Wellington previously founded and sold nRelate, a content discovery platform that helped thousands of publishers increase traffic and user engagement through targeted article recommendations. Since 2018, Headliner has helped creators market their podcasts on social media and has since launched several products, including Disco, that enable creators to optimize and promote their podcasts across the web.
“Podcast discovery continues to be a major hurdle, especially for traditional publishers and news sites,” said Neil Mody, Headliner CEO. “While YouTube, Spotify, and Apple are the leading podcast platforms, there is a great opportunity for Disco to fill the discovery gap for forward-thinking publishers like Newsweek, and is something that no media outlet with a podcast should overlook. Most publishers aren’t taking advantage of their core web audience yet, which Disco was built to do. For many of our publishers, we drive more audience than Apple and Spotify, combined. We’ve done that by unlocking the audience that was always there!”
“Disco has helped drive a 10X increase in audience immediately. Before we implemented, we were doing about 100K downloads a month, now we are doing over 1 Million. In addition, it helped boost our Apple/Spotify downloads by about 10 percent month over month, so helping make our audience aware and get a taste of the podcast has been great for all our metrics,” added Jesse Edwards.
To learn more about how your podcast can benefit from Disco and Headliner’s other products, visit: https://www.headliner.app/
About Headliner
Headliner is the easiest way for podcasters and media companies to find and grow their audiences. Over 1.5 million podcasters along with the world’s largest media companies have relied on Headliner to create shareable videos, reduce video production costs, increase content discovery and engagement, and win on social media. Founded in 2018, the company is headquartered in New York City. Learn more at https://www.headliner.app/.
About Newsweek
Newsweek is the global digital news organization built around the iconic 92-year-old American magazine. Newsweek reaches 100 million people monthly with its thought-provoking news, opinion, images, graphics, and video delivered across a dozen print and digital platforms. Headquartered in New York City, Newsweek also publishes international editions in EMEA and Asia.
