Apple’s announcements include more for podcasting by James Cridland
The annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) had a fair few new Apple announcements, and Podnews has rounded up all the ones impacting podcasting. Similar to existing speech volume-adjustment features in third-party apps like Overcast and Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts will have an “enhance dialog” option to boost voices over background noise. More playback speed options are being rolled out, as well as the app saving which speed you prefer on a per-show basis.
YouTube Loosens Rules Guiding the Moderation of Videos by Nico Grant and Tripp Mickle
A growing trend in online platforms as of late is a step away from content moderation, either by changing terms of service to allow more aggressive/dangerous content or by creating context for which rule violations are handled on a per-case basis. Moderation training materials made available to The New York Times show YouTube’s current approach is to allow videos with content that violates community guidelines (e.g. transphobic slurs, intentional medical disinformation) if the overall topic of the video is of a popular “public interest” topic. It’s going to be much harder for a video to be taken down on the merits of its content. The business of podcasting will need to redouble their efforts of using the various brand safety and suitability solutions out there to vet (and continually monitor) the YouTube shows they work with. Content moderation is no longer the safety net it was five or ten years ago.
Case study: Launching a hit podcast for EuroMillions’ biggest draw in over a decade
Last Fall the EuroMillions transnational lottery had a sizable jackpot built up, but players in the UK were not engaging with the same energy of previous lotteries. To combat that, Acast launched a video podcast specifically about the dream of winning a lottery. As data from Differentology and The National Lottery show, 72% of players in the UK buy a ticket not to actually win, but to partake in the fantasy of winning. That dream was leveraged by Rich Beyond My Wildest Dreams, on which guests would pitch their lottery-winning fantasies. In the end, after the podcast debuted EuroMillions brand consideration increased 11%, with a 5% uptick in ad awareness from lapsed players. The podcast itself reached second place in branded charts, with 6.2 million minutes listened on audio platforms and 2.4 million watch-minutes on YouTube.
The project is a bipartisan effort led by Beth Van Duyne and Yvette Clarke to gather together popular content creators, including Game Theory’s MatPat, streamer Pokimane, and team members from Jubilee. The goal of the project is to educate lawmakers on the content creation industry, with the hope lawmakers will be able to better create small business resources and protections for them. It also allows creators to shape legislation around relevant issues, such as online privacy and generative AI use. On the flip side, it’s also an opportunity for the creators to branch out into political content, as more audiences are getting their political content from content creators.
As for the rest of the news…
- True Native Media is hosting a webinar on July 9th titled Audio-First Success: Why Not Every Podcast Needs Video (and Why Advertisers Shouldn’t Worry). In attendance will be founder Heather Osgood, Sounds Profitable’s Bryan Barletta, and Acast Creative Studios VP Emily Rudder.
- As of yesterday Zeno Media has been added to the IAB Tech Lab’s list of Podcast Measurement Guidelines v2.2. Compliant companies.
- Now you can do CanCon, with CBC Podcasts announcing they’re doing an open call for episode pitches under five umbrella podcast feeds they run, from true crime to gripping memoirs. The deadline for pitches is June 30th.
- SiriusXM Media VP of B2B marketing Liz Lacey has a guest article on AdWeek about digital audio being the missing piece to video campaigns.
- Wondery+ has just launched the podcast Liberty Lost, an investigative series in which journalist T.J. Raphael looks into a secretive maternity home within Liberty University.
- Bloomberg covers the announcement that the hosts of SmartLess are starting a Smartless-branded MVNO focused on the eschewing unlimited talk and data for more modest, affordable plans.
