Podcasting’s Share of Audio, GenZ Pays for Premium, & More

Edison Research Share of Ear Q4 2023 Analysis: Podcasts and Radio on the “Audio Clock.”

Among the topics covered in Edison Research’s Q4 edition of their Share of Ear Study, one section of the study broke down how much share of a listener’s average day was divided between different forms of audio. Cumulus Media and Westwood One have visualized this by grafting the data onto a clock representing a typical hour of ad-supported audio. AM/FM radio takes up the largest section of the hour at 41 minutes, while podcasting comes in second with 12.2 minutes. More than ad-supported Pandora, Spotify, and SiriusXM streaming combined. [Source]

iHeartMedia Celebrates The Best in Podcasting During The Sixth Annual iHeartPodcast Awards: The Winners

This Monday the iHeartPodcast Awards took place at SXSW, bringing together a rogues’ gallery of big names in the podcasting industry. Now the full list of winners is available, covering every category from Best International all the way to the Innovator award. Podcast of the Year went to New Heights, which eagle-eared Download listeners will remember is the sports chat podcast hosted by NFL brothers Jason and Travis Kelce. A podcast that had a meteoric rise in popularity in 2023 thanks to the latter Kelce publicly dating Taylor Swift, bringing an injection of famously dedicated Swifties to the show’s fanbase. An example of a podcast that saw what could have been a momentary bump of traffic and harnessed it effectively. [Source]

Gen Z is willing to pay more than any other generator for websites and apps.

According to IAB data from their January Free and Open Ad-Supported Internet study, the average amount of money respondents would pay for websites, app, and online services if they were no longer free is $163.50. In stark contrast, when filtered for just respondents falling into the Gen Z age range, the number becomes $229.14. In the overall study, 69% of consumers said it’s a fair trade-off to be served ads in exchange for free services. All of which is good news for podcasting. Audiences have had well over a decade of precedent set by free podcasts being ad-supported in some way, and the rise of methods to pay for premium podcast experiences will not just be delegated to older demographics. Gen Z very much contains consumers willing to pay for a premium experience. [Source]

WTF is server-side ad insertion? By Ricardo Bilton

The newest entry in Digiday’s “WTF is” ad tech explainer series tackles server-side ad insertion, also known as ad stitching. In years past, the video side of advertising has commonly used browser-side solutions to deliver advertisements, simply pausing a video and overlaying an ad. With the rise of browser-based ad blockers, server-side is picking up popularity in the video world as well, stitching advertising content into the video file itself. If that sounds familiar, it’s because podcasting has been using the term dynamic ad insertion. With the death of cookies and mobile device IDs pivoting the wider world of advertising back to IP and contextual methods (two areas where podcasting thrived), ad blockers drive the medium towards replicating methods podcast tech has used for years. A move that further normalizes everything adtech has fought for and achieved in podcasting. [Source]

The AdNews Agency Map 2024 is here

Australian news outlet AdNews has published a bird’s eye view of the industry, in partnership with Cartology. The map curates over 250 Australian agencies sorted by whether they specialize in media or creative, local or repping a global holding company, or an independent. The map serves to give an at-a-glance reference guide to the shape of agencies across the Aussie ad industry, valued at 2.1% of the country’s total GDP for 2022. For a podcasting equivalent of the agency map, we humbly suggest checking out the Podscape, maintained by Sounds Profitable and Magellan AI. [Source]

…as for the rest of the news: