Thank You
Chances are, you have been working from home since March 2020. That’s a really long time. It’s a time in which your personal space has been invaded by work. Where you probably enjoyed a solid week or two “reclaiming” your commute time, but now find yourself just working longer hours.
Few companies out there are currently running weekly “lunch-and-learns” for their employees anymore. They aren’t sending internal emails highlighting what their employees need to know in the space. Digital content has increased; more newsletters, more webinars, and more day-or week-long digital events.
Despite all of that, nearly two thousand people just like you chose to sign up for Sounds Profitable in 2020 and found room in your week to read my rather wordy newsletter.
And for that, I am truly grateful. You’ve enabled me to stay completely freelance, keeping my content and opinions unbiased and unaffiliated.
The goal of Sounds Profitable is to provide FREE information to you and anyone else who wants to learn this stuff. Did you know I’m not an engineer and actually dropped out of college in my fifth year while trying to become a history teacher?
I’m living proof that, if you want to learn about podcast adtech, you do not need any prior qualifications other than being genuinely interested in podcast adtech.
Everything I do related to Sounds Profitable will always be free for those looking to learn. I have turned down invitations to panels/conferences because the content I would be helping to create would not be freely available. I’ll soon be adding a section on the site linking to the podcasts I’ve been on and any webinars I’ve been a part of, if that interests you.
So let’s get into some really exciting updates.
Let’s Be Friends
I’m not kidding. Hit reply to any of my emails and tell me what you think. Ask me questions. Especially tell me if you disagree with the piece.
I’m always happy to talk to you and make time for a call if there’s anything I can help you with. I am truly passionate about adtech and I am working as hard as I can to share this knowledge so that there are more people capable of improving podcast adtech.
Please, take me up on this.
Sponsors
Please take a look at the amazing list of sponsors that have chosen to support Sounds Profitable. These are all companies that agree that we need to ask more tough questions, give better answers, and educate everyone in this space. They’re also companies I think very highly of them on a personal level.
If I can introduce you to anyone at any of these companies, please let me know. I would be very very happy to make connections for you.
If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor, please reach out!
The Podcast
Coming in January 2021, Sounds Profitable will be releasing a weekly podcast. Each episode will be a content extension of the newsletter. I’ll be bringing on guests who are experts or have interesting opinions on a given topic so we can delve deeper into it.
What excites me the most about the podcast is I’m going to use it as an adtech demo. There’s a lot of cool things you can do with podcast adtech that we’re not exploring yet because the setup takes a bit of time, but I assure you it’s worth it. Evo Terra of Simpler Media is taking the lead on production, and we’re collaborating with Whooshkaa, to really show what you can do if you put effort into the process.
We’ll have a full post walking through the technical setup once we’re live so that we can help you think about producing content in conjunction with adtech in different ways.
Market Insights
Starting next week, we’ll have a new section in the newsletter, below the Homework section, called Market Insights, sponsored by ThoughtLeaders.
ThoughtLeaders is a sponsorship intelligence tool that’s focused on highlighting advertisers in YouTube, newsletters, and podcasts.
This will be a weekly chart that will show ThoughtLeaders top 10 podcast advertisers for the week, along with the change in ranking from the previous week.
Their data is not a complete set, but it is directional, focusing primarily on collecting show note data from 12,000 podcasts on a daily basis, along with some insight provided by their transcription service.
Last week I said that data, by its very definition, is objective. Data presentation, however, is subjective. That’s what led to this collaboration with ThoughtLeaders. Collaborating on sharable data and being open to taking feedback from the Sounds Profitable audience on what additional information you’d like to see.
This section will also include links to the most recent Product Deepdives and potentially other information as time goes on. It’s a work in progress, but I’m excited about it!
Product Deepdives
I’m proud to announce that outside of December, we’ve fully booked one Product Deepdive per month for 2021.
The entire goal of this project is to help more people understand how these products work. It took me years to be invited into the decision-making room. A room where my boss would sign a contract for a product I’d have to use without giving me a chance to vet. Worse, there were many times I was finally let into the room only to discover there wasn’t anyone in the room savvy enough to ask tough questions to make sure this was the right product for us.
On top of that, I’ve suffered through many sales pitches, demo environments, press releases, and marketing websites that… well, kind of suck. They don’t actually tell us how things work and instead funnel us through a sales process that can be off-putting in a fully remote world.
And that’s my goal with these Product Deepdives: I’m opening the door to that room to you, on your own time, so you can learn about all these products for free.
Here are the companies that have signed up to participate with a Deepdive in 2021:
- December 2020 – Podscribe – view it now!
- January – Triton Digital – sign up for the event!
- February – AdsWizz
- March – Voxnest
- April – Triton Digital
- May – AdsWizz
- June – Remixd
- July – AdsWizz
- August – Kevel
- September – Redcircle
- October – AdsWizz
- November – Frequency
- December – Sign up now!
Wrapping It Up
I hope each and every one of you has an amazing end to your 2020 and start to your 2021.
Special thanks to Evo Terra, for being an amazing mentor and friend. James Cridland, for taking a chance on associating his amazing brand with a mouthy opinionated adtech nerd. And Jake Crowe, who has provided amazing art that gave Sounds Profitable the style I was hoping for.
