This Week in the Business of Podcasting
Hey-ho, podcasting. The wind blew slightly and immediately conjured feelings of autumnal joy. While I wait for the summer heat to finally leave and I can start making soup again, let’s look at the news from this week.
Transparency. Performance. Automation.
How Elections are Influencing Creator Marketing
This Monday from Digiday’s Antoinette Siu: With the U.S. election entering critical mass during the final weeks of campaigning, agencies find themselves striking a delicate balance of creator strategies, content types, and what platforms to use.
A major player, according to agencies interviewed by Digiday, is TikTok. Social media in general remains a common choice as consumers seek more politically-charged content from their favorite creators, as well as their favorite politicians becoming content creators themselves.A report from Collective Voice found 76% of surveyed consumers want election content from creators, while 46% of influencers are adjusting their content and partnership strategies to accommodate the election. 45% of consumers say they’re more likely to support influencers who align with their values.
Podcasting is no stranger to politics. The 2024 edition of the Podcast Landscape study found respondents listing getting news or political analysis as a ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ important benefit of podcasting received a +5 percentage point gain from last year. Of respondents who had listened to a podcast in the past month, Political Talk shows scored 29%, tied for fourth place with True Crime and beaten only by Sports, News, and Comedy.
Preserving Podcast Ad Results in the IP Switch
This Wednesday from Podscribe: the switch from IP addresses using IPv4 to IPv6 continues to gain momentum, leaving podcast advertising potentially in a bind. According to Podscribe, up to 50% of ad performance data could be lost to campaigns that run on systems which aren’t tracking IPv6 addresses yet.
To address the issue on their home front, Podscribe has announced an update to their web tag that allows it to collect both kinds of address, ensuring conversions are captured regardless of IP type. Also, they have rolled out a new identify graph that resolves IPv4 and IPv6 addresses into a single household, further solidifying measurement.
The company also urges advertisers to get in touch with their own providers to see if they are already taking in IPv6 data for campaigns, or if they have plans in the near future to implement necessary changes.
Curbing Midroll Madness
This Thursday, Gumball VP of Creator Partnerships Dane Cardiel argues podcasting has a midroll ad problem: the industry has been scattershot to implementation of midrolls, both in deployment and in creatives. While podcasting’s no-rules-just-right approach to things like episode length and pace of content means that technically a midroll can be placed anywhere, said placement is, in fact, vital when getting the best ad results.
A formula for effective midrolls is provided, starting with the first ad break happening 15 minutes into an episode, with another break 15 minutes later as the length of the episode increases (with a cap of three breaks total). Cardiel also recommends host-read ads be capped at two minutes in length.
Putting hard numbers on how many midroll breaks a podcast should have, and how often they appear gives a number other companies can agree with and embrace as a standard. If not, it causes others to challenge the number and start a conversation that leads to a more widely agreed-upon standard. Reaching a compromise as an industry only comes with debate and podcasting’s leaders sharing their take.
Scripps on the Growing Women’s Sports Sector
This Monday from Bill Bradley of AdWeek: The E.W. Scripps company has wrapped up their TV upfront season with low single-digit growth in volume. A growth Scripps CRO Brian Norris says is due “in part to our commitment to women’s sports.”
The company has offered Friday night WNBA games, Saturday night NWSL double-headers, and spotlighted the popular Indiana Fever games (headed by star player Caitlin Clark) in its upfront pitch deck.
And interest in women’s sports continues to grow. ION Television, one of the broadcasters with rights to televise WNBA games, reports the Indiana Fever victory against the Chicago Sky reached 1.6 million viewers, the most-watched WNBA telecast in the two years ION has had WNBA games.
As marketers grow more interested in women’s sports, we humbly point to the growing field of podcasts focused on women’s sports as another avenue for getting brands in front of eager fans.
Podscribe Index
Purchase Rate by Genre, July 2024
In our latest Podscribe Index, notable changes in purchase rates came out from June to July. “Business” replaced “Fiction” for the highest purchase rate in July, coming in on top once again. “TV & Film” came in second followed by “Health & Wellness” which has seen rising purchase rates over the last few months. The biggest improvement was in “Comedy” which came in at #6 making the top 8 charts for the first time in 2024!
Quick Hits
While they may not be top story material, the articles below from this week are definitely worth your time:
- Four Years Strong Sounds Profitable’s Bryan Barletta looks back on four years of the company’s place in podcasting.
- YouTube Develops Synthetic Audio ID Tech by Laurie Sullivan. A breakdown of the new AI tools YouTube is using in its content ID system.
- The State of Audio Advertising – Oxford Road A new report from Oxford Road showing the latest trends in audio advertising..
- Triton Digital’s U.S. Podcast Ranker for August is out now
- Rogers Sports & Media Announces Exclusive Advertisement Sales Agreement with Wondery After Pacific Content changed hands earlier this year, this new deal shows that Rogers Sports and Media is not out of the podcasting game just yet.
