Issues with Third-Party Pod Tracking, SXM’s Podcasting Q3, & More

A New UK Podcast Ranker by Adam Bowie

Recently Podtrac announced its podcast tracker is now available in thirty countries, including the UK. Bowie takes a look at the new UK top podcasts and publishers on Podtrac, comparing them to similar charts from Edison Research. He highlights that Podtrac’s methodologies chosen for UK charts include a combination of downloads and estimated downloads. Publishers who opt in to sharing UK download data with Podtac (like the U.S. charts) are likely accurate, but for those who aren’t, estimates are being used. It’s possible, Bowie notes, that there might not even be enough third-party data to properly construct reliable UK top charts in this way.

SiriusXM Q3 earnings: Slippage in revenue comps and the sweep of history by Brad Hill

The latest quarterly earnings from SiriusXM Media reports $2.17 billion in revenue with $93 million in free cash flow. Overall subscription revenue reached $1.6 billion for the quarter, and advertising revenue reached $450 million. Subscriber revenue represents a 5% drop year over year. Ad revenue is down 2% year-over-year.

Marketing execs believe deeper relationships, understanding influencers can avoid potential backlash in politics by Kristina Monllos

In the build-up to tomorrow’s election in the U.S., brands have preemptively cushioned against backlash regarding influencers they work with. These tactics include pushing their influencer partners to be apolitical, as well as some companies outright planning ‘dark periods’ pausing influencer campaigns entirely. Six influencer marketing and agency execs interviewed by Digiday propose it’s nearly impossible to be entirely apolitical as a brand, so the more reliable strategy is to form a close relationship with a stable of well-vetted influencers. Ones who can be relied on to have political takes at least in line with the brand’s own mission/goals outside of branded content.

As for the rest of the news…