Coca-Cola on Open Web, International Brands on Podcasts, & More

Acquired, Zuckerberg, and Your CEO’s Favorite Podcast [Multiple Sources]

Last week Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal’s Acquired hosted a live recording at the Chase Center in San Francisco, bringing in an audience of reportedly nearly 6,000 to see Mark Zuckerberg interviewed (along with surprise cameos from Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang). Brian Morrissey argues the rise of shows like Acquired has led to them becoming more influential in tech circles than traditional media outlets, with multi-hour podcast conversations appealing more to CEOs than traditional journalistic interviews. Media that emulates the feel of journalism, but without the restrictions or potential for unexpected or challenging questions.

Top 5 international brands investing in Australian podcasts

Australian broadcast company ARN has partnered with Magellan AI to create a biannual list of the top intentional direct response brands investing in the country’s podcasting industry. The list is built from AI analysis of episodes from over 400 of Australia’s most popular podcasts. The top five, in ascending order, are Vanta, Shopify, Manscaped, Wise, and BetterHelp.

Coca-Cola commits to ‘critical’ open web advertising through curation by Seb Joseph

Despite open web advertising getting a reputation for low-quality inventory with a risk of fraud and bad placement, Coca-Cola has become one of the strategy’s open advocates. That said, their continued investment in open web advertising outside the walled gardens of larger platforms come with safeguards. Coke focuses on using fewer, higher quality programmatic marketplaces, and investing in ad tech to curate their own version of the open web that doesn’t rely on third-party signals.

Meet the company brokering partnerships between celebs and brands by Erin Cabrey

As advertising evolves beyond the classic one-off celebrity endorsement commercial for a CPG (consumer packaged good) brand, so does the relationship between brands and celebrities. One result of that evolution is the advent of companies like Parallel, a creative partnership studio that provides a hands-on approach to setting up partnerships between brands and creative talent. A methodology that might bode well for bringing podcast-skittish brands into the fold. Over the last four years, podcast advertising has shifted from fully hands-on, to attempting to fully automate the process, and has since leveled out to a healthy middle ground. Hands-on deals augmented with tech to streamline the process.

5 key market shifts you need to know this holiday shopping season by Cal Donnelly

The new Hottest Holiday Season Ever report from Rokt shows some key trends developing for this year. One of the biggest being the concept of “Black Fall,” a term to canonize the way Black Friday sales have broken the boundaries of one day to create a general season of promotions designed to kick-start holiday shopping. Deals that could be promoted with up-to-the-minute accuracy in podcast campaigns.

As for the rest of the news…