Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. CST Tom Webster will be giving a keynote presentation at Evolutions by Podcast Movement, debuting some findings from the upcoming flagship Sounds Profitable study The Advertising Landscape. Be among the first to see data from the largest study of podcast advertising effectiveness in America. Registration for the Advertising Landscape debut webinar, scheduled for 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday April 16th, is live now.
4 things to know about managing videos on Spotify with Megaphone
Last week Bryan Barletta kicked off a short article series with Understanding Spotify Video. In preparation for the second half of the article series, he sent a series of questions to Spotify about how video podcasting works on the platform. In addition to a direct reply that will be covered next week by Barletta, Spotify has published this blog post answering some of the questions with a brief breakdown of how video works on Megaphone. Members can still do old-school baked-in direct sold ads, as well as use Megaphone’s campaign management tools to dynamically insert direct-sold ads on both audio and video. There’s also a demonstration of the upshot of streaming ads, with the ad only being summoned for the user right before they reach the ad break mark, ensuring for the advertiser they have an actively-attentive consumer the ad is going to instead of pre-inserting ads into a freshly-downloaded file that might not be listened to all the way through. Spotify’s full response will be covered by Barletta on Wednesday, April 9th’s issue of the Sounds Profitable newsletter.
Big Athletes Make Big Moves in Sports Podcasting [Multiple Sources]
We’ve got a couple stories about big movers and shakers in sports podcasting to kick off the week. First up, Blue Wire CEO Kevin Jones has announced Dwight Howard, D’Angelo Russell, Penny Hardaway, and Victor Oladipo are all bringing their podcasts to the network, further growing their stable of sports podcasts hosted by current and former players. Meanwhile, The New York Times covers the return of Mind the Game, a podcast formerly hosted by JJ Redick and LeBron James. With Redick now head coach of the Lakers, James has brought Mind the Game to Amazon’s Wondery network with the co-host chair now filled by former player and coach Steve Nash. While the growth of sports podcasting has been a common narrative in recent years, it’s worth taking a step back to note that podcasting has reached the point where bringing back a show that’s been on hiatus for eight months generates a nearly 800 word New York Times article.
BBC U-turns on podcast ads plan by Jack Benjamin
Sources tell The Media Leader that early this week the BBC’s annual plan will be published, and that plan will not include the proposed idea of introducing ads into BBC-produced podcasts accessed through third-party hosting platforms. The now-abandoned plan would’ve kept BBC content ad-free within the BBC’s own digital ecosystem, but placed third-party advertising on BBC podcasts accessed via open RSS platforms. As James Cridland noted in his Podnews coverage, the BBC will still be running ads in UK podcasts, as there are podcasts under the BBC content umbrella that are not produced by the BBC itself and thus not funded by the state media service. Also, the BBC is in part funded by advertising run on BBC content outside of the UK.
The back-and-forth of ‘culture war’ social media campaigns has made life tricky for brand marketers. Between genuine significant consumer movement motivated by company decisions (e.g. Target’s profit drop after reversing long-held diversity initiatives) to orchestrated influencer-led social media campaigns that give the impression of a wide audience’s anger, it’s difficult to convince a brand to take a stand. Notorious111 CEO Katie Hooper tells Digiday while it’s not bad for brands to consider social justice causes in their marketing, it’s vital for them to be true to that brand’s roots and do so authentically as audiences will sniff out inauthentic ideas. In that search for authenticity, podcasting stands out as the place for brands to work with content creators that share similar ideals, and by extension the self-selecting audiences consuming that content will support the brands that make their favorite shows possible.
As for the rest of the news…
- Libsyn has announced a multi-year exclusive advertising partnership with veteran journalist Dan Harris for his podcast 10% Happier with Dan Harris. In addition to the show’s inventory being sold via Libsyn Ads, 10% Happier will also be hosted on the Libsyn platform.
- Frequency has debuted a new service known as the Frequency Premium Publisher Network. The PPN acts as a new monetization channel for podcast advertising, connecting Frequency directly into publisher operations to manage inventory and creative across multiple platforms instead of relying on VAST tags to deliver the ads.
- AdLarge’s fwd. network has acquired Adalyst Media’s podcast suite in a move to expand their collection of female-focused podcasts.
