Podcasts for Game Marketing: An Untapped Opportunity by Edward Fuller
An addition to the ongoing Sounds Profitable thought leadership article series in which Media Bodies CEO Edward Fuller discusses podcasting historically attracting performance-based marketing channels. With that in mind, there’s one industry that heavily relies on performance channels with deterministic attribution: video games. As research from Sounds Profitable and Edison Research show, 90% of podcast consumers are 18-54 and podcast audiences in the U.S. are more likely than the average population to have a household income over $75k/year. The next step is demonstrating to game marketers that podcasting gets them in front of ideal audiences who actively support the brands that sponsor their favorite shows.
The Spotify Partner Program Expands to Nine Markets
The Spotify Partner Program, which allows creators who match engagement criteria to receive funding based on viewership metrics, originally launched in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. Starting April 29th, the program will also include France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Reporting by Podnews highlights this is both good news for the residents of those countries, and existing SPP members, as the Program pays based on Spotify Premium user streams from users in countries covered by the SPP.
YouTube is updating how views are counted in Shorts. Up until now, Shorts have used the same metric as a YouTube video proper to count “a view,” which requires both a user pressing play and a few seconds of video playing. Now Shorts will use a similar system as TikTok, which is any time the video starts. If the video is completed and loops back around, that’s another view. If the video is paused and re-started (e.g. by scrolling down then back up in the infinite feed), that is also a view. It should be noted, the traditional ‘engaged’ viewer metric will still be available in creator analytics UI, this change more impacts the public-facing view metric users see while scrolling videos.
Gen Z prefers premium content to premium TV
A new study from Deloitte shows that Gen Z is choosing special events and social media over traditional media channels. According to Deloitte’s new Digital Media Trends report, 56% of Gen Z respondents listed creator content as “more relevant” than premium movies and TV shows, and 52% get their advice from creators over other entertainment sources, such as talk show hosts and journalists. One factor of this could be the sheer variety of creator content now available which outpaces the production time and costs of traditional TV. In a world where premium content outpaces premium TV, podcasting is in a good place both coming and going: podcasts make premium content, and podcasts can also drive viewers to traditional TV.
Digiday spoke to five B2B brands who revealed that, in some cases, employee-generated content performs better than brand pages themselves. Some advantages of this include employees being able to provide a deeper look into the mechanics of a brand release, or use their firsthand knowledge to cover specific customer-requested details. However, at least one company revealed that employees are not paid extra for creating these posts, and said employee posters are not required to explicitly state they work for the brand.
