Today in the Business of Podcasting
Digital Ad Spend Showing Promising Recovery from Recession Fears.
After many months of recession woes and economic uncertainty throwing advertising for a loop, signs point toward the industry healing. Booster’s 2023 Media Ad Sales Trend Report and Operative’s H1 2023 Benchmarking Report both show publisher digital advertising revenue is recovering from the advertising decline that started last year. Hearst Magazines also reports an upswing. EVP Lisa Howard told the Digiday Podcast she’s seeing more requests for proposals from advertisers for 2024 than this time last year. According to AdExchanger coverage of a recent Magna forecast, U.S. media advertising sales increased 4.4% in Q2, beating June expectations by .8%.
Magna has revised their 2024 ad spend forecast from 5% growth to 5.6%, with a potential for up to 8% thanks to the U.S. elections and 2024 Olympic games. AdWeek does note that while marketers in travel, pharmaceuticals, retail, and consumer packaged-goods delivered strong spending in Q2, spend was flat or slightly up for automotive and entertainment. Financial and tech sectors are still down year-over-year in the Magna data. As Adweek suggests, the digital ad sales pulling out of a trench might not be pulling traditional media back up with it. [Digiday Source] [Digiday Podcast] [AdExchanger Source] [Adweek Source]
IAB launches foundational industry training programs
IAB Australia has published two training modules for free, available to the entire ad industry. The modules are Foundations of Digital Audio Buying and Foundations of Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home Buying. The Foundation of Digital Audio course covers the basics of podcast platforms, building compelling ad creative for podcasts, and leveraging measurement techniques. While the browser version is an audio-visual experience, the digital audio course specifically has also been built to be consumed as an audio podcast by ad agency Eardrum. [Source]
2024 will see the highest political ad spend of all time: report by Jasmine Sheena
According to ad tracking company AdImpact, the 2023-2024 U.S> election cycle is forecast to bring in $10.2 billion in political ad spend, a 13% increase from the 2020 election cycle. The prediction budgets $2.7 billion to the presidential election, $2.1 billion to Senate races, and $1.7 billion to House representative elections, with the spare change going to gubernatorial and other downballot elections. Connected TV is projected to make up about 13% of political ad spend this election cycle. $1.2 billion of the predicted overall budget is expected to go to digital, and $361 million is expected to go to radio promotion. [Source]
The State of Video Monetization Report
The new report is built from a survey of 165 publishers with the intent to capture the publisher’s perspective on the state of video advertising. According to the new report, a new smaller ‘pivot to video’ storm might be brewing. 46% of respondents said their video businesses are growing, but only 19% said video accounted for more than 25% of their overall revenue. The phrase “pivot to video” marks a period in publishing so infamous it has its own Wikipedia page. It’s understandable why one would be gunshy about video given the past eight years. The Rebooting’s report concludes on the sentiment that smart investments and not overspending on infrastructure are a way forward. Better to mix internal and external resources in a way that works than burn all internal resources attempting to achieve everything at once. [Source]
…as for the rest of the news: SXM Media CEO Jennifer Witz teased the upcoming revitalized version of the SXM app during an investor conference, and AdWeek breaks down why it’s difficult for SSPs to filter out made-for-advertising content.
