Podcast Expert 2025 Predictions, ANA 🔎 Programmatic Transparency, & More

28 Expert Podcast Predictions for 2025 by Tianna Marinucci

Rounding out 2024, the CoHost blog rounded up nearly thirty experts from the business of podcasting and asked them what they anticipate for podcasting next year. The crowd (including a familiar Sounds Profitable face) offers up sentiments like anticipating a rise of video and accompanying analytics, multi-channel podcasts by executives, and a return of narrative and hybrid format podcasts as the traditional interview chat show reaches oversaturation.

BuzzFeed’s sale of First We Feast seen as a ‘good sign’ for the M&A media market by Sara Guaglione

In 2021 Buzzfeed acquired Complex Networks for $198 million. Earlier this year the majority of Complex, save for the First We Feast brand, was sold to NTWRK. This week a group of investors, including Hot Ones host Sean Evans, Crooked Media, and Mythical Entertainment, have purchased the remaining production company for $82.5 million. All-told the Complex Networks purchase ended up recouping $196.8 million of the $198 million originally paid for Complex three years ago. While technically a loss, industry analysts say it’s a good sign overall for media M&A activity that Buzzfeed was able to get close to what they paid for Complex/First We Feast back, especially given Buzzfeed’s financial turbulence in recent years. According to the official press release, FWF will retain their team and senior management with Hot Ones creator Chris Shonberger operating as CEO of the newly-independent company.

IAB Tech Lab Is Redefining Seller Defined Audiences by Anthony Vargas

The rebranding will change IAB Tech Lab’s Seller Defined Audiences curation specification to “Curated Audiences.” CEO Anthony Katsur, in both LinkedIn posts and IAB Tech Lab articles, has recently discussed the issue of branding curation as “seller defined” and ‘joked’ about this now-confirmed switch. The anticipation is that by redefining to Curated Audiences, given curation in this context has been present in advertisement in some form for over 20 years, will help encourage wider buy-in from the industry at large.

Moving the Chains – From AdExchangers’ Optimizing The News

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) have published a new benchmark study focusing on programmatic advertising’s transparency. For every $1,000 in ad spend that enters a DSP (demand-side platform), the ANA found roughly 44% is spent on quality, viewable impressions seen by real consumers. An increase from 36% last year. On a similarly positive trend upward, less money is being funneled into made-for-advertising sites, declining from 15% in 2023 to 6.2% this year.

Electric Slide – From AdExchanger’s Optimizing the News

TV ad spend from automakers promoting their electric vehicle options has decreased year over year. According to research from iSpot, manufacturers spent 22% less on EV ads for linear TV than they did last year, generating 34% fewer impressions. A decline that can largely be attributed to moving their budgets into Digital channels, more popular with Gen Z, the eldest of which are now in their prime car-buying age.

As for the rest of the news…