Radio on the Move
Not-for-profit Canadian radio trade association Radio Connects has published new 2023 data on the audio industry’s growth in the country, created in partnership with Signal Hill Insights. Of Canadians aged 18+ surveyed, 14% spend their audio listening time with podcasts, edging out music streaming (which sits at 11% of time listened). When narrowed down to adults 18-49, podcasting accounts for 23% of audio time, a 3% year-over-year increase from 2022. [Source]
Listeners say: Keep audio ads simple and not too loud by Brad Hill
Veritonic and AI firm RealEyes have partnered to create the Veritonic Audio Attention Report. The survey filmed respondents as they listened to four sample ads, with each iteration adding more elements and louder volume. The experiment measured listener reactions to poor production quality. For the ad with the least volume, 32% of respondents found it less likable than normalized volume levels. 36% of respondents had the highest attention quality with the version of the ad containing the highest voiceover volume. Keeping an ad creative engaging, but scaling back complexity and layered audio elements boosts efficacy. A well-balanced, normalized ad is doubly important in podcasting, an industry with years of experience with show content clashing with high-volume ads. [Source]
How Criteo is playing within Google’s Privacy Sandbox by Ryan Barwick
Criteo, an adtech company that works on both the supply and demand sides of the industry with commercial and retail verticals, is not the most optimistic about Google’s upcoming post-cookie world. In a recent earnings call, CFO Sarah Glickman said the company expects signal loss to the tune of $30 million to $40 million in the back half of this year, in line with their 2022 predicted loss of $140 to $160 across 2024 and 2025 due to third party cookies being retired. Podcasting has been naturally insulated to the death of the cookie thanks to the industry’s focus on first-party data, instead of leveraging ad spend on third-party cookies. For more of a podcasting perspective, we spoke to Krystina Rubino, General Manager of Offline Practice at Right Side Up: “Brands are being forced to get more creative in their measurement approach to get over and around cookies, in a way that’s very familiar to those already investing in audio and offline marketing. Brands who have been active in podcasting will continue to see strong performance assuming they are running optimized campaigns. And, brands who’ve dabbled or stayed on the sidelines may look to the medium to diversify their media mix once they start seeing diminished targeting accuracy, and as their measurement is more and more impacted by the coming changes.” [Source]
2024 Begins On An Upward Note, U.S. Ad Market Posts Best January Ever by Joe Mandese
Despite fears of macroeconomic change and a new recession, the U.S. ad market has yet to post a negative monthly change in ad spend since March of 2023. The Guideline US Ad Market Tracker has been updated to include January’s ad spend numbers and brings the count up to 10 months of positive change, ranging from the lowest point (0.6%) in April to July’s peak of 6%. This forward momentum last month is attributed to smaller ad categories, which rose an aggregate 5.3%. [Source]
…as for the rest of the news:
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BBC Sounds announces a new slate of podcasts for the year.
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AdLarge debuts new female podcast venture the fwd. network, as well as a partnership with Consumable to expand audio advertising reach to female consumers at scale.
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Ausha’s Podcast Search Optimization control panel is now compatible with every hosting platform.
