This Week in the Business of Podcasting

Before you head off to the weekend, visions of cans of cranberry sauce dancing in your head, I have a brief programming note. In light of the upcoming turkey-geddon next Thursday, Sounds Profitable will be taking the week off. If you’re subscribed to the Download Daily (this is where I say something pithy to judge if you if you’re not subscribed), you’ll still get news recaps on Monday and Tuesday. There will be no Wednesday newsletter, nor a Download Recap next Friday. So until this feed slips into a tryptophan-induced nap until the 29th, let’s check out the news!

The Spoken Word Audio Report 2023

Last Thursday from Brad Hill at Rain News: The fifth annual Spoken Word Audio Report from NPR and Edison Research has arrived. This year’s edition is built from a nationwide survey of over 4,100 people aged 13 and up. Highlights include 48% of respondents saying they listen to spoken word audio in some form on a daily basis, an increase of two percentage points from last year and a record high for the report.

Also for the first time in the study’s history, mobile devices have overtaken AM/FM radio receivers as the top way people listen to spoken word content on a daily basis, this year scoring 39% and 35% respectively. Podcasts have now grown to over a third of daily time spent listening to spoken word at 36%. When respondents are listening at home, that podcast percentage jumps to 40%.

YouTube Debuts New AI Content Policies

This Wednesday from Brad Hill at Rain News: YouTube has recently announced a new initiative to deal with videos altered or generated wholesale by deepfake/AI-powered tools. A new label has been created that will denote a video is “artificial or synthetic” in nature in the description panel. If the topic of the video is particularly sensitive, the label will appear on the video itself. If a synthetically-created video is deemed to be harmful, such as one that shows realistic violence for the purpose of shocking or disgusting viewers, it will be removed outright.

YouTube has also promised a future update to its reporting system that will allow users to report a video that is using AI-generated content to imitate “identifiable individuals.” Something for podcasting to keep in mind as the industry grows its presence on YouTube. With it becoming steadily easier and more affordable to access apps that can fully synthesize audio, the question is now raised: will we see similar anti-deepfake policies put into place on podcast apps?

Saving TikTok Songs to Spotify With New Integration

This Tuesday from Spotify: The music streaming service has announced an integration with shortform social video platform TikTok. For those who have not used TikTok: one of the platform’s main features is the ability to choose a ‘sound’, usually a segment of a song, to overdub or replace audio when filming a video. In recent years songs that become viral sounds on TikTok receive what’s known as the “TikTok Bump” in their Spotify analytics as TikTok users search for the song and listen to it on Spotify. Now, with formal integration into TikTok, the so-called bump will likely be more pronounced as the song discovery process has been streamlined.

While TikTok’s podcast integration has not been fully released, this new Spotify partnership bodes well. If the future TikTok podcasting tools include a way to make TikTok sounds out of podcast clips that then can directly link to the show on Spotify, TikTok becomes even more of a no-brainer for podcast promotion.

Ad Engagement Declines With Lack of Representation

This Wednesdays from Beau Jackson on PodPod: A new Q3 report from Insights Accelerated, built from surveys and search trends, finds 57% of UK residents say they disengage from media and ads if they felt they were unrepresentative.

When filtered for specific communities the numbers grow higher, such as 76% disengagement from neurodivergent people and 79% from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic individuals surveyed. The main reason given was either lack of representation or negative portrayal, while the second most common reason given was inauthentic representation. Effectively money left on the table for advertisers.

Meanwhile, as covered in AdExchanger this week, Insider Intelligence predicts Hispanic and Latinx purchasing power is expected to hit $2.6 billion by 2025. By then the demographic is expected to make up 20% of the U.S. population. Unfortunately, as reinforced by data validation company Truthset, estimates expect four in ten U.S. Hispanics are not accounted for in third-party data sets.

TelevisaUnivision’s head of production management, speaking at Advertising Week New York last month, recounted a national campaign run for a brand client that served roughly 70% of its impression to non-Hispanic households. One example given of how this can happen is data brokers categorizing audiences based on surname, despite Spanish surnames being present in many other demographics across the country.

Time and time again, research shows advertising is most effective when it meets audiences where they’re at and provides an authentic representation of that audience. Implementing first-party data and delegating third-party to a supplementary role could help create more accurate delivery for future (hopefully authentic) campaigns.

Industry Insights with Magellan AI

In Q3 2023 average ad loads increased across all genres highlighted. Ad loads increased most in the True Crime genre, from 8.4% in Q2 to 10.7% in Q3. By contrast in Q2 we detected a dip in ad loads on the True Crime genre, decreasing from 8.9% in Q1 to 8.4% in Q2.

Looking to get a handle on podcast advertising metrics? Book a demo with the Magellan AI team.

Quick Hits

While they may not be top story material, the articles below from this week are definitely worth your time:

• Spotify’s podcast and audiobook discovery will get a boost from Google Cloud’s AI by Amrita Khalid. Google Cloud’s Large Language Models will be used to scan all podcasts and audiobooks on Spotify to improve metadata and discoverability. 
• Podcasting Lessons From Dogs by Tom Webster. This week Tom reflects on why podcasts with multiple hosts need an Abbot to their Costello. A traffic cop to direct the flow of conversation when need be.
• How I got 10x YouTube subscribers by adding video to my podcast by Ashley Hamer. A step-by-step account of Hamer adding video production to her existing podcast Taboo Science and how optimizing her YouTube channel boosted YouTube algorithm attention. 
• Sound You Can See: Podcasting’s Video Dilemma. On Wednesday, December 13th, Sounds Profitable will debut their latest study, which dives into consumer perceptions of podcasts on video and how they continue to drive the future of this medium.
• Global signs exclusive podcast distribution and licensing deal with iHeartMedia by Reem Makari. iHeartMedia podcasts will be distributed on the Global Media app in the UK and Ireland, while Global podcasts will be distributed in the U.S. on iHeartRadio’s app, along with iHeartMedia monetization. 
• Triton Podcast Ranker: October 2023. 48 Hours climbs two spots to enter the top 10 in 9th place, pushing Conan Needs a Friend down to #10.