Brands Are Paying More For Ads That Do Less by Tilde Herrera
Shutterstock’s 2025 Creative Impact Report finds marketing spend jumped 33% from 2023 to 2024, but the effect on purchase intent only increased 17%. Which leaves a 12% “impact gap” that seems to be growing over time, as the report finds a further 8% of gap grew through the first eight months of the year.
Shutterstock director of creative strategy and insights Cal Roberts says brands aren’t keeping pace with behavioral changes to customer bases. And in losing sight of who their core audience is, they’re spending more to cast wider nets that return fewer hits. Relevance and authenticity are the name of the game.
Oxford Road’s recent ORBIT Top 15 Podcasts Measured by Ad Performance report shows that’s especially true in podcasting, as some of the most widely agreed-upon “biggest podcasts” don’t crack the top fifteen shows that actually convert to sales. Shows with hyper-mobilized and engaged audiences are the ones actually getting brands the best bang for their buck. Where one would expect Rogan to sit at the top of the pile, instead Oxford Road found tabletop roleplaying livestream broadcast-to-podcast series Critical Role.
And, as the new Oxford Road report What Brands Want 2025: How Audio Publishers & Platforms Can Win Over Advertisers finds. Half of the brands surveyed (including 6 of the 10 highest-spending brands in podcasting) say they would spend more on podcast advertising if there weren’t limitations on performance data. 76% of respondents would increase their podcast spend if attribution of YouTube podcasts matched that available for audio. According to Oxford Road’s math, that works out to nearly $1 billion in ad spend that would be going to podcasts if measurement was solved for.
Spotify finally brings video podcasts and music videos to its Apple TV app by Andrew Liszewski
In the announcement for a new version of Spotify for Apple TV, the streamer says the experience has been rebuilt from the ground up to be faster and more visual. As The Verge reporting reflects, the Apple TV version of Spotify has lagged behind Fire TV and Google TV in functionality, but the new version addresses those issues. Music video streaming remains unavailable in the U.S. and Canada, but over 90 other markets have the ability to switch from lyrics to music videos while listening to a song. In addition, video podcasts are now watchable in Apple TV. All of which serves as a big step forward in the living room TV-ification of Spotify’s pivot to video.
Here’s what Amazon told Audible staff as layoffs hit the audiobook division by Jyoti Mann
Amazon is planning to cut 14,000 corporate jobs across the board. According to SVP of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti, many of those affected will be offered 90 days to look for a new role elsewhere within Amazon. Audible CEO Bob Carrigan, in an email shared with Business Insider, said that impacted employees had been notified and these layoffs will “add focus and speed” to audiobook and podcast growth areas. A quote from Carrigan:
“All of these areas require collaboration across Content, Marketing, Product and Tech, so we are streamlining the structure dedicated to each. This will involve shifting a number of roles across those groups in order to bring team members closer to key initiative owners and increase the speed of decision-making.”
As is customary whenever moments like this occur in the industry, I want to remind readers that the Sounds Profitable job board is entirely free to both submit new positions and browse/apply. There’s a lot of skilled people out there looking for a home in podcasting, and a lot of companies growing their teams. We want to do what we can to bring them together.
Could the Next Hit Podcaster Be… Your CFO? by Mark Stenberg
Morning Brew has announced a new podcast from their business-to-business arm HR Brew. The new show, People Person, is hosted by Kate Noel, senior vice president of people operations at Morning Brew. This follows a trend both within Morning Brew (e.g. Per My Last Email features the chief of staff and director of consumer revenue) and the wider B2B podcast sphere: executives sitting down in front of mics instead of influencers or journalists. Here’s a quote from Morning Brew president Devin Emery:
“We have Revenue Brew, so if we decide to do content for that, we would want someone from our sales team to be talent. We are building out a mechanism that enables not just our journalists, but also our business-side folks, to be creators.”
A move that makes sense: if the goal is to connect your business with another business, why introduce a middleman to build that parasocial relationship when the company itself could be doing that vital connection-building?
China Now Requires Degrees For Influencers Discussing Professional Topics by Dragomir Stojkov
Despite the joke tweets circulating the internet, China has not “banned podcasters.” The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) rolled out new regulations this week that limit online influencers discussing “professional topics” to needing to hold formal qualifications in the fields they’re discussing.
The fields in question are medicine, law, education, and finance. To speak authoritatively on any of those topics, influencers will need to present credentials proving they have a degree, certification, or professional credentials in that field. The regulations act against a worldwide trend. A UNESCO study conducted by Bowling Green State University found only 36.9% of digital content creators actually verify information before sharing it with their audiences.
And here in the U.S. a similar framework exists to limit media figures from sharing potentially dangerous medical, financial, or legal advice. I know I’ve heard a semi-sarcastic disclaimer of “I am not a doctor, this is not real medical advice” dozens of times in my 12 years of podcast consumption.
As for the rest of the news…
- Triton Digital has launched their AdBuilder AI platform, which allows partners to have their own branded white-labeled self-service audio buying platform.
- John Allen, known as MrBallen on YouTube, is moving to SiriusXM from Wondery. The new multiyear deal gives exclusive audio advertising sales rights to his flagship podcast The MrBallen Podcast: Strange Dark & Mysterious as well as the rights to his podcast network.
- Headliner has announced Automatic Clips for Back Catalog, which will generate clips from past episodes and allow creators to influence the LLM’s decisions with a simple thumbs up or down system to rate clip quality.
- Shorts now make more money per watch-hour for YouTube than long-form videos.
- Fountain has launched a podcast hosting service called Fountain for Podcasters, built to distribute video to supported apps (including Fountain itself), streaming payments, and paid subscriptions.
- The Media Ratings Council proposes new transparency rules for digital audio ad auctions, which are available as a public comment draft.
