Five Days at Terminal 5 by Tom Webster
Sounds Profitable is taking over New York City’s Terminal 5 for five straight days this September, and Tom Webster lays out the full plan. It opens with the inaugural, partner-only Sounds Profitable Business Summit on September 14 and 15, where the first speakers announced include Ira Glass, Don Lemon, and Rich Roll alongside executives from YouTube and Amazon, with Crooked Media set to make an exclusive announcement on stage. The week rolls through the official IAB Podcast Upfront after party on Wednesday before Podcast Movement’s newly revealed lineup kicks off for September 17 and 18, bringing 80-plus sessions and podcasting’s biggest creators, executives, and innovators to the same venue. Not one minute of Podcast Movement NYC stage time is for sale, a deliberate bet on programming and networking built to strengthen the whole ecosystem.
Your podcast’s problem was never the budget by Fatima Zaidi
Quill and CoHost CEO Fatima Zaidi argues that brand podcasts rarely fail for lack of money, they fail for lack of a clear purpose. Teams that cannot name who the show is for, what behavior it should change, and who owns the outcome end up defending vague goals like awareness or thought leadership, the first line items to go when budgets tighten. Her fix is clarity before cash, a specifically named audience, a defined behavioral shift, and a single accountable owner. The shows that survive are the ones that can explain exactly why they exist.
Alex Cooper’s Unwell Receives Investment From Patrick Whitesell’s Firm at $500 Million Valuation
Alex Cooper’s Unwell has taken its first outside investment, a deal from Patrick Whitesell’s firm WTSL that values the creator company at $500 million. Unwell, co-founded by Cooper and Matt Kaplan and home to the breakout hit Call Her Daddy, has been profitable for three years and now gains WTSL’s capital plus the industry relationships of a firm whose clients include Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions. The raise signals continued investor appetite for podcast creator IP with established, loyal audiences, and it sets up Unwell for a possible acquisition push.
…as for the rest of the news:
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Registration is open for Sounds Profitable’s next Ask a Marketer webinar, where Right Side Up’s Krystina Rubino and Quo’s Tori Murray join Tom Webster on Tuesday, August 18 at 1:00 pm ET to work through The Podcast Atlas from the media buyer’s perspective.
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Basis and Barometer enabled episode-level brand suitability ad targeting on podcasts, letting advertisers enforce suitability before the bid instead of relying on broad show-level exclusions while preserving reach.
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Cineverse launched VAUDIO, a tool for extending audio campaigns to connected TV, giving advertisers a path to carry podcast and audio buys onto the CTV screen.
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The Streaming Wars digs into how brands like Gap, P&G, and Kraft Heinz are becoming Hollywood’s new financiers, turning marketing budgets into production capital as Publicis helps fund Amazon MGM’s comedy DINKS in a model that could reshape how streamers acquire original content.
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Scalable discusses new data showing Gen Z’s ambition to become full-time influencers has fallen from 57% in 2023 to 5%, as the creator economy consolidates around its top tier and 71% of monetizing creators keep outside jobs, pointing to a shift toward part-time, supplementary content creation.
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Digiday’s Future of Marketing Briefing examines how creator agencies are becoming full entertainment studios with brands footing the bill, building production infrastructure that increasingly shapes audio and podcast creator partnerships.
