Sounds Profitable

Manuela: This is The Download from Sounds Profitable, the most important news from this week and why it matters to people in the business of podcasting. I’m Manuela Bedoya. Shreya: And I’m Shreya Sharma.Manuela: The Download is brought to you by Magellan AI. Track the trends in spend, ad load, podcasts on YouTube, and more with Magellan AI's advertising benchmark report for Q4, available now. You can find a link in the description or visit Magellan dot AI.Shreya: This week: Podcasts are coming to YouTube Music, Digiday breaks down the Google antitrust case, Podnews publishes a deep dive on podcasting in Japan, and how marketers are looking at Q2. Let’s get started.Podcasts are coming to YouTube MusicManuela: Since the release of the YouTube Podcasts webpage last year, there has been little in the way of concrete feature announcements from YouTube, leaving some skeptical of Google’s commitment. After all, podcasting has been burned by companies veering away from podcast support at the 11th hour. Last Thursday, during the Hot Pod Summit at On Air Fest, YouTube Podcast Lead Kai Chuck took to announce YouTube is releasing a beta version of podcasting functionality for YouTube accounts, as well as adding podcasts to YouTube Music in the near future. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/youtube-podcasts-1235332624/: “The message that I would hope folks are taking away is YouTube, at large, independent of YouTube Music, is looking to better support podcasters and [recognizes] that podcasting is generally an audio-first medium.” Once implemented, YouTube Music listeners will likely have a comparable podcast listening experience to current offerings with Spotify and Apple. As reported on the https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/youtube-music-premium-80-million-lyor-cohen/ in August, YouTube Music has a subscriber base of around 80 million users split across YouTube Music and YouTube Premium. Not bad, but it pales in comparison to YouTube’s over two billion users. According to Chuck, there are intentions to bridge the gap between the platforms. https://newsletters.feedbinusercontent.com/60b/60b0be3184899cafee144c595c4fee42eb420187.html: “I don’t expect podcasts to only live on YouTube Music, that’s the only way that people consume podcasts on YouTube,” Chuk said. “We expect there to be kind of a back and forth between the two.”Shapiro then says Google product lead for podcasting Steve McLendon gave an explanation of how the feature would ultimately work, describing seamlessly continuing a podcast episode that had been started on a desktop computer watching YouTube to an audio feed while driving home from work. While not directly related to podcasting, another promising audio feature was announced for YouTube last week: https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/youtube-multilanguage-audio-tracks-mrbeast-supercharges-videos-1235533196/. Currently in beta and piloted by popular content creators like Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, the feature will allow creators to upload alternate audio tracks to dub new and existing videos in different languages. If properly supported and implemented, this could have interesting implementations for podcasting in future.In the https://soundsprofitable.com/guide-and-article/how-google-can-earn-our-trust/, Bryan Barletta detailed several ways Google could win back trust from skeptical podcasters and show they’re committed to integrating with the industry. One way mentioned was a commitment to RSS ingestion and integration. While a step in the right direction, Chuck’s announcement didn’t completely deliver this. A quote from Chan’s presentation: “Definitely support for RSS is something we are looking at. I would say, probably initially, we will leverage RSS to make it easier for podcasters to bring shows to YouTube. In terms of future plans, things like that, we’re sort of exploring what should our goal be.” So podcasts are coming to YouTube. Kind of. As Chuck said, the current vision for RSS integration is less integration and more an automatic import to bring the file into YouTube’s ecosystem. Promising steps are being made towards YouTube integrating into podcasting, instead of YouTube turning podcasters into YouTubers who occasionally upload audio elsewhere, but we’re not out of the woods yet. WTF is going on with the Google antitrust case? Shreya: Back in late January the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging the search engine giant had created a monopoly in the ad tech market as well. The 155 page lawsuit argues Google has used a combination of ad tech tools like their ad exchange and publisher ad server to corner the market on programmatic ads. https://digiday.com/marketing/wtf-is-the-justice-departments-ad-tech-antitrust-case-against-google/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_source=daily&utm_content=230227 collecting together the first three installments of a series of videos explaining the DoJ’s lawsuit, as well as the basic fu

Writing for Sounds Profitable recently, Bryan Barletta posited the idea that Spotify has a big opportunity to use their streaming ad insertion technology to grow the industry. In this episode, Arielle Nissenblatt speaks with Bryan and Tom Webster about this opportunity, what it means for the larger industry, and how this all fits into the current zeitgeist around the future of audio (i.e. there have been some doom-and-gloom-focused articles popping up). Listen to learn about: The origins of streaming ad insertion How streaming ad insertion differs from dynamic ad insertion How streaming ad insertion and dynamic ad insertion can work together Why publishers benefit from streaming ad insertion How this discussion affects Apple, Amazon, and more companies Sounds Profitable’s presence at Podcast Movement and SXSW Links: Bryan Barletta Arielle Nissenblatt Tom Webster The article we’re discussing Podcast Movement Sounds Profitable at SXSW Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta, Arielle Nissenblatt, Tom Webster Produced by Spooler Media Hosted on Art19 Recorded on SquadCast.fm Edited by Reece Carman and Ron Tendick

Every podcaster thinks they know what their audience likes. This week Tom Webster shares strategies to actually get that audience talking and directly telling you what they like. Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Bryan Barletta Assembled with Spooler.fm Hosted by ART19 Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.

Manuela: This is The Download from Sounds Profitable, the most important news from this week and why it matters to people in the business of podcasting. I’m Manuela Bedoya. Shreya: And I’m Shreya Sharma.This week: The App Tracking Transparency Recession, Streamers struggle with frequency capping, Bumper calculates listen time, and IPG Equity Upfront Spotlights Lack of Diverse Adspend.Manuela: The Download is brought to you by Magellan AI. Track the trends in spend, ad load, podcasts on YouTube, and more with Magellan AI's advertising benchmark report for Q4, available now. Link in the description or at Magellan dot AIShreya: Let’s get started. The App Tracking Transparency recession Manuela: While not hot off the presses, an early January article from Eric Benjamin Seufert discussing the effects of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency has come across The Download’s desk. As with most things in advertising, there’s nuance in the numbers.Quick refresher for those who haven’t seen the letters ATT dozens of times: App Tracking Transparency was a privacy policy introduced to iOS in 2021 that turns most forms of mobile data tracking into an opt-in service. As a result, a significant portion of iOS users have digitally disappeared for advertisers. An upset to the status quo, for sure, but the overall numbers provided by Seufert show the digital advertising market is not in a cyclical downturn. That said, social media platforms and other industries most likely to be affected by ATT have experienced a significant downturn due to a combination of both ATT-influenced changes and changing consumer preferences.Which is to say, not macroeconomic factors. A market-wide downturn, as well as more stress on those companies most affected by ATT, would primarily come from an actual 2023 recession. Overall, digital advertising has been working as intended. Consumers are consuming. Seufert points to a Bureau of Labor Statistics graph tracking US employment in December of 2022. According to these, unemployment is the lowest it has been since August 1969. From Seufert’s piece:“But one might assume that the economy has utterly imploded from reading the Q3 earnings call transcripts of various social media platforms. Alphabet, Meta, and Snap, in particular, cited macroeconomic weakness, headwinds, uncertainty, challenges, etc. in their Q3 earnings calls.”In the weeks since Seufert’s article, the overall numbers are trending to agree. The Download has recently mentioned podcast ad spend has remained up while others decline, but the same holds true for other areas. Last week a piece by Ethan Cramer-Flood for Insider Intelligence reports mobile app install ad spending increased 24.8% in 2022, on track to a market growth of 12% this year. Meanwhile, still on Insider Intelligence, Daniel Konstantinovic reports that while market concerns aren’t gone, ad-cost inflation has slowed. 84% of ad executives told Insider Intelligence they're not lowering budgets for 2023. From Konstantinovic:“But now, the industry is adjusting to a new normal. With inflation steadily falling and the cost per ad decreasing, some of the advertising spending that was staunched in the second half of last year may return.”The future may be uncertain, but for the wider advertising economy, podcasting included, things tend to be stable or trending upward. And, it bears repeating, podcasting has never benefited from mobile device IDs. From this industry’s perspective, at least, ATT has had little to no impact. It feels fitting to end with this quote from Seufert’s article:“While one might materialize, the belief that an advertising recession is currently and comprehensively depressing advertising spend is difficult to support with analytical rigor.”Streaming advertisers continue to struggle with frequency caps. Shreya: If you’ve used a video streaming service with advertisements, you’re likely intimately aware of the industry’s issue with frequency caps. Last week’s Future of TV Briefing from Digiday’s Tim Peterson zooms in on this particular issue with the section Capping Out. Streaming advertisers are in a bind. Some viewers are getting underexposed to ads, while others are overexposed. Problems that will only exacerbate as digital video streaming continues on its overtake of traditional television. According to a recent eMarketer graph, US adults only averaged five minutes less digital video time than television last year, and are projected to overtake TV’s declining numbers for the first time this year. Of course, addressing the frequency issues isn’t as easy as it sounds. A myriad of reasons exist, from lack of ability to track exposures across multiple streaming platforms, to multiple DSPs buying from the same pool. Even when the solution exists, sometimes it comes at a price. Peterson reports some streamers are charging more in exchange for placing stricter frequency caps. An anonymous ad agency executive told Digiday:“Some will endeavor to charge more for more restri

On this episode of the Sounds Profitable Podcast, Bryan Barletta sits down with Audiohook's Jordan Bentley to discuss pre-bid. What is it, what does it mean in the world of display advertising, and how can it be brought to podcasting? Listen to learn about: Pre-bid/header bid for Display. Pre-bid is coming for audio. What 'headers' will look like for audio. Links: Bryan Barletta Arielle Nissenblatt Jordan Bentley Audiohook

There has been a cooling of Google and YouTube's enthusiasm for podcasting as of late. Bryan Barletta details what they can do to to heat things back up.Frequency Webinar Signup Link.Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Tom Webster Assembled with Spooler.fm Hosted by Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.

Manuela: This is The Download from Sounds Profitable, the most important news from this week and why it matters to people in the business of podcasting. I’m Manuela Bedoya. Shreya: And I’m Shreya Sharma.This week: The ‘slippery slope’ of podcast endorsements, Netflix’s ad-supported tier has teething troubles, why ad buyers are hesitant to embrace DSPs, and a look at modern contextual advertising. Let’s get started.Navigating the ‘slippery slope’ of personal endorsements in podcast adsManuela: Over the past few years there have been multiple headlines spotlighting instances of social media influencers butting up against the Federal Trade Commission. This period of adjustment as new media incorporates modern advertising rules has matured to the point the FTC has a official page just for coaching influencers on advertisement disclosure. As MarketingBrew’s Alyssa Meyers pointed out this week: the FTC hasn’t similarly cracked down on podcast advertisements just yet, but it has come close. Listeners of The Download might remember a case in November when Google and iHeartRadio settled with the FTC out of court. The case concerned allegations that several iHeart on-air radio personalities were given ad copy with personal endorsements for a Pixel phone the hosts had not used. From Meyers’ article: “Though the FTC’s guidelines for endorsements and testimonials in advertising don’t mention podcasts, the agency proposed a change last May that would, if approved, add an example concerning a podcast host related to disclosing material connections.”Podcasting is no stranger to ad copy that flirts the line between advertisement and personal endorsement. Meyers opens her article asking if the reader has ever questioned if podcasters really made the meal kits they endorse, or if their mattress sponsor actually fixed their back problems. Hyperbolic, perhaps, but endorsements are a big factor in the appeal of host-read ads. David Plotz, CEO of City Cast told MarketingBrew he has experienced advertisers requiring ads to contain personal endorsements or, more worryingly from an FTC perspective, attempt to slip a personal endorsement into the ad copy. Meyers spotlights two approaches that eliminate any FTC concerns: Lauren Lograsso and NPR. Lograsso prefers ad deals with required endorsements and the authenticity of having tried the product herself. Conversely, NPR has a blanket policy of zero personal endorsements, a byproduct of the company carrying over its radio journalism ethos into podcasting. The article then closes out with advice from Veritone One VP of podcasting Hilary Ross Shafer and Adopter Media CEO Glenn Rubenstein: onboarding calls between podcasters and advertisers are useful, if not vital, tools to establish goals and prevent miscommunication. While host-read remains the preferred method of podcast advertising, it’s worth remembering Sounds Profitable’s first study, After These Messages, found the gap between host-read and announcer-read was smaller than conventional wisdom might suggest. 81% of respondents trusted host-read ads, followed by 71% trusting announcer-read.While it’s certainly possible podcasting will get a headline or two on par with, say, Instagram influencers selling teas that claimed to cure cancer, the data shows there’s no need for such extremes. Podcast listeners, especially in comparison to other forms of media, are quite accepting, if not supportive of advertising. Netflix Ad-Supported Tier Experiences Teething TroublesShreya: Time for an update on a continuing story involving Netflix. Back in early November we covered the details of Netflix’s new Basic tier with advertisements, as well as the big brands buying space at a reported CPM between $60 and $80. Now Basic with Ads has been out a few months and experienced its first teething troubles. Danielle Long, writing for The Drum, reports the streamer has had to issue refunds to Australian advertisers after failing to meet projected audience numbers. From the article: “Media reports suggest Netflix’s Basic with Ads subscription tier, which launched in November, has underperformed by as much as 70% in the first three months of operation.”While Australia’s ad refunds are the most eye-opening headline, Basic with Ads is reportedly slower to start than expected on a global scale. From a US perspective, last week an Insider Intelligence piece from Sara Lebow digs into the question of why, in the face of a recession, consumers aren’t downgrading their Netflix memberships to Basic with Ads. In fact, as economic worries mount, CivicScience numbers show there has been a three percent decline in US citizens who only have one subscription video-on-demand service since January of 2022. From Insider Intelligence analyst Daniel Konstantinovic: “Not only have people shown they are willing to pay for entertainment through difficult economic times, but they’re actually adding more.”One bright spot for Basic with Ads is the recent rollout of Netflix’s passwor

On Air Fest is a yearly event that celebrates sound by way of the podcast and audio industries. It’s in its 7th year, and this year, there’s an added bonus to the three-day-long event: the Podcast Experience. Bryan Barletta speaks with On Air Fest founders Jemma Brown and Scott Newman about the festival, this year’s inaugural “experience,” their hopes for the future of events in the audio space, and more.Listen to learn about: How On Air Fest has evolved How the podcast and audio space can grow by way of in-person and fan-focused events Why Bryan thinks we have to look outside of traditional audio spaces to grow the industry How to get tickets Sounds Profitable’s plans for SXSW Links: Bryan Barletta Arielle Nissenblatt Jemma Brown Scott Newman On Air Fest The Podcast Experience Events Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta and Arielle Nissenblatt Produced by Spooler Media Hosted on Art19 Recorded on SquadCast.fm Edited by Reeece Carman and Ron Tendick

This week, on a very special Law and Order-flavored article, Tom Webster recounts his experience serving on a jury and what the defense’s tactics taught him about podcasting. Don’t look at the chicken.Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Bryan Barletta Assembled with Spooler.fm Hosted by Art19 Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.

Manuela: This is The Download from Sounds Profitable, the most important news from this week and why it matters to people in the business of podcasting. I’m Manuela Bedoya. Shreya: And I’m Shreya Sharma.This week: Podcasting a ‘bright spot’ at SXM Media, Amplifi Media CEO counters ‘jarring headlines,’ new Black Podcast Listener Report from SXM and Mindshare, and the state of Google in podcasting.Let’s get started.Podcasting remains ‘a bright spot’ at SXM MediaManuela: ‘Tis the season of quarterly earnings calls. It seems like we get a batch of these every three months! SiriusXM has published their Q4 and full-year results for 2022. Overall the company saw a 4% year over year increase in revenue, hitting 9 billion dollars. The company shouted out its agreements with, as the official copy puts it, “podcast powerhouses” like Crooked Media, Freakonomics, and a 24/7 original comedy channel captained by Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. Podcasting is on the mind at SXM. CEO Jennifer Witz spoke highly of the company’s podcasting arm during the call. To quote fhttps://d1io3yog0oux5.cloudfront.net/_a9fb3e04db36529ff47846b646f7e89e/siriusxm/db/2245/21302/file/SIRI+Q4+2022+Earnings+Release+vF.pdf“In a challenging ad market, podcasts continue to be a growth opportunity for us. This past quarter, we expanded our podcast offerings while doubling down on the shows that have proven most successful with five of the top 20 shows in Edison Research's top 50 podcast rankings, the most of any network.” Witz went on to say podcasting was a bright spot for the industry overall and SXM in particular, driving their 34% increase in off-platform business in 2022. We’ve said it before and will say it again: it’s a good day to hear good news in podcasting. Podcasting is doing fine; thank youShreya: Last week an https://rainnews.com/steve-goldstein-05132022-2/ was published on RainNews, built to assuage fears over recent doom-and-gloom media coverage. A quote from Goldstein’s opening: “If you are reading the headlines about podcasting, you might be a little nervous. There has been a lot of confusing and contradictory chatter about what the drop in new podcasts in 2022 means. Has the podcast bubble burst? Are podcasts on the way out? Not likely.”The piece puts to bed the air of uncertainty as recent reports show a decrease in active podcasts. Goldstein points to the marked increase in podcast production at the beginning of the pandemic, along with air fryer sales, used car sales, and views for cooking videos on YouTube. Now the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ay5GqJwHF8 era of podcasting is over. Companies can no longer invest with the philosophy of “if you build it, they will come.” Which leads to Goldstein’s conclusion. Quote: “Just like all media, the podcast space is dynamic, exciting and rapidly evolving. It’s full of possibility and wonder. We just need a little more rigor and a little less throwing spaghetti against the wall. The next generation of podcasts will likely have greater research, focus and muscle behind them. Companies that produce and promote fewer high-quality podcasts will be better positioned for optimal growth. So, let’s get past the jarring headlines.“SXM Media and Mindshare publish Black Podcast Listener Report 2.0Manuela: SXM Media is back with the second edition of their https://www.sxmmedia.com/insights/what-brands-need-to-know-to-reach-black-podcast-listeners-in-2023. The study is the result of over 2,500 online interviews with Black and/or African American adults in the United States during September of last year. According to SXM’s footnotes, the data was weighted for age, sex, census region of the US, and the Edison’s Infinite Dial 2022 podcasting listening statistics. Among the findings are some promising results for advertisers. From the SXM blog post: “The best way to win over Black podcast listeners is to run ads on shows that represent their voice, culture, and point of view. Black audiences who have listened to a podcast with a Black host in the last month are more likely to take action than those who’ve never listened to a podcast hosted by Black talent.”82% of respondents would consider a brand if they heard their ad on a podcast with a Black host, as well as 78% saying they would purchase said brand. The recap article ends by encouraging brands who set aside ad budget to target Black audiences during February for Black History month to continue that spend throughout the year. From the article: “Like so much of the population, Black audiences are listening to podcasts—and, as you’ve learned, they’re leaned-in and here for ads that support the shows they love.” The State of Google and PodcastingShreya: Continuing the trend of earnings calls, let’s talk Google. It was a mixed bag in this year’s Q4 earnings report. Parent company Alphabet reported a 0.7 billion increase year over year in total revenue for Q4 2022. According to https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/google-misses-mark-q4-setting-up-cha

It’s 2023! Sounds Profitable has a whole new look, some new team members, and we’re looking ahead towards a year packed with value for the audio and podcasting industries.Links: Bryan Barletta Arielle Nissenblatt Manuela Bedoya The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles SquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta and Arielle Nissenblatt Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Edited by Reece Carman and Ron Tendick Assembled by Spooler Media Hosted on Omny Studios Additional help from Gavin Gaddis

This week Bryan Barletta discusses Spotify's streaming ad insertion, what it means for their future, and how it could better the podcast industry overall. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Tom Webster Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with ART19 Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.

This week: Podcast Ad Spend Isn’t Slowing Down, IAB CEO Airs Beef with Apple, Several podcast companies are hiring, Brands Seek Alternatives Amidst Digital Clutter, and an updated edition of The Podscape is live.Open Podcasting PositionsManuela:In light of recent layoffs in the podcasting space, we would like to take a moment at the top of the show to highlight some companies that currently have positions seeking applicants. JAR Audio is hiring a full-time Audience Growth Specialist Wondery is currently hiring seventeen full-time positions, 15 in the US and two in their UK office in London.And Magellan AI is currently hiring for the positions of Account Executive, Measurement Success Manager, and Sales Development Representative.Podcast ad buyers have yet to see a slowdown Shreya: Yesterday, Digiday’s Sara Guaglione published a piece detailing how solidly podcasting has handled the much-debated recession. But to get to the good, we gotta hit the bad. As Guaglione points out, ad spending overall has taken a hit recently. Last week Insider Intelligence writer Arielle Feger reported ad spending in the US fell 12.1% in December, making it the sixth consecutive month ad spend has gone down. Insider Intelligence has cut five billion from their 2023 US digital ad spending forecast, bringing it down to 278.59 billion. Now for the good news; Guaglione is finding that decline hasn’t sunk into podcasting. Four buyers spoke with Digiday and report their client’s budgets aren’t getting cut, and they see an increase in podcast ad spend. Employees of Horizon Media, Ocean Media, and CMI Media Group report increased spending on podcast ads, often from clients who are backing down on ad spend in other forms of media. The piece reconciles increase in ad spend with recent industry layoffs, cancellations, and cost-cutting with a proposal from Elli Dimitroulakos, Acast’s global head of ad innovation: production houses are shifting away from multi-million dollar minimum guarantee signings. As headline-grabbing pandemic deals begin to end, small-to-midsize podcast inventory rises to take its place with inviting prices. “The buyers Digiday spoke with said there is plenty of ad inventory available despite the recent reports that investment in new and existing shows may be decreasing.” It’s a good day to hear good news in podcasting. IAB CEO Airs Beef with Apple, Lands MeetingManuela: Things have gotten interesting with the IAB and Apple. Last week, during the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting, CEO David Cohen took to the stage with a prepared speech titled “It Starts Here.” A speech so vitriolic it prompted a joint response from the ANA and 4A’s to criticize its tone and “polarizing political rhetoric.”The first segment dedicates multiple paragraphs to proposing the FTC, members of the Biden administration, and politically-opposed members of Congress are funneling ‘dark money’ into a common goal of destroying the advertising industry under the guise of controlling ‘Big Tech.’ Cohen then transitions to Apple. From the speech: “After years of failing to build a significant market for ads in Apple Music, in Apple TV, and on the iPhone, Apple has decided the next best thing is to stop anyone else from making money in advertising. That’s why they are the Poison Apple.”The crux of Cohen’s issues stem from App Tracking Transparency and the billions of dollars of ad revenue it has destroyed since Apple deployed the feature. Attention is given to both the damage ATT has done to third-party advertisers and the fact first-party iOS apps aren’t given the same treatment. From Cohen’s quote given to AdAge’s Garett Sloane: “So, we want to call it out for the hypocrisy that it is, and we want to invite them back to the table.”In his postmortem interview with Ryan Barwick, Cohen announced that since the Poisoned Apple speech, Apple has reached out to the IAB to schedule a meeting in February. Whether the meeting will be productive or not remains to be seen, as it was spawned by a speech with digs like, and I quote: “Apple will try to smother the advertising industry just like they did to the recorded music industry. We can’t sit back and watch that happen. “ The fact a meeting has been booked is a step in the right direction, regardless of how it was achieved. Whether or not Apple will have any motivation to re-engage with IAB podcasting groups remains to be seen. Brands Seek Alternatives Amidst Digital ClutterShreya: Last Thursday Julian Cannon, writing for Digiday, published a piece covering recent examples of companies recontextualizing print advertisements. “Last month, General Electric took over The New York Times’ print advertising for a day throughout the news, business and arts sections of the paper amounting to 22 full-page color ads as well as five partial pages.”Not only was this an impressive buyout, it was the first of its kind for the Times. It’s also the latest in a series of big plays as marketers embrace out-of-home advertising and the

This week Bryan brings you a feed drop from Marketecture.tv, featuring his interview with Ari Paparo. This episode marks the beginning of a partnership between Marketecture and Sounds Profitable! Look forward to interviews conducted by Bryan himself in future on official Marketecture channels, as well as Sounds Profitable DeepDives on the Sounds Profitable YouTube channel. From the original description: In this conversation with Ari Paparo, Bryan Barletta provides an overview of the audio advertising industry and its enabling technologies. After providing a level set on the size and maturity of the podcast ad vertical, he describes the mechanics of audio ad buying, serving, and measurement. Bryan also discusses the market dynamics in the podcast space, led by enterprise players like Spotify, IHeartMedia, and Triton Digital which operate their own ad tech platforms.

This week Tom Webster demonstrates how even seemingly small pieces of data can have big implications if given the right context and a story. Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Spotify layoffs, TikTok Podcasts feature spotted in the wild, exclusivity deals seem to be losing luster, and Buzzsprout launches premium subscriptions. Spotify lays off six percent of workforce. Manuela: We start today on a dour note, but it’s the largest story to happen this week and bears covering. This Monday Spotify CEO Daniel Ek announced the company is downsizing six percent of its workforce. Chief Content and Advertising Business Officer Dawn Ostroff is also leaving the company. https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/spotify-layoffs-dawn-ostroff-exiting-1235499118/ does the math on what six percent actually means.“The layoffs will eliminate nearly 600 jobs; Spotify most recently reported having 9,800 full-time employees worldwide as of Sept. 30. The company estimated that it will incur approximately €35 million-€45 million in severance-related charges.” In the https://podnews.net/update/spotify-job-losses, editor James Cridland notes that in addition to the layoff announcement, Spotify’s job website has removed all open full job positions. As of this writing the site only has 23 open positions, all of which are internships. From Spangler’s article: “Employees who are getting laid off will on average receive about five months’ salary in severance payments, per Ek’s memo. In addition, all unused vacation time will be paid out to any departing employee, and all terminated employees will be eligible for outplacement services for two months.” Ostroff was a big name behind a lot of Spotify’s big-ticket podcasting acquisitions. Between her departure and the overall downsizing, this news seems to signal Spotify is down-shifting into treating podcasts like it has treated music. It’s not necessarily the end of Spotify expanding into podcasting, but they likely will be focusing on expansion without owning content. New TikTok Podcast feature appears Arielle: Last Wednesday https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-testing-podcast-tool-feature-for-background-listening-2023-1 published new details in the months-long windup to TikTok officially getting into podcasting. As covered as far back as the October 10th episode of The Download, there has been a breadcrumb trail of evidence the social media platform has intentions of launching some form of podcast listening application. In December of 2021 TikTok users were prompted to complete a survey gauging user interest in both listening to podcasts and creating podcasts. In May a trademark was filed for an application called TikTok Music, which listed podcasts as a form of audio that could be played in-app. Then, this last October, Podnews got word bots associated with TikTok’s parent company were spotted scraping publicly-available RSS feeds. Clearly TikTok was up to something. Now, Business Insider has discovered an unannounced feature has been added to some TikTok accounts allowing users to play video hosted on TikTok as a podcast, a distinction which allows users to browse other apps or lock their phone while the audio continues to play. This is a similar functionality to one YouTube has had for Premium subscribers for years and last year was testing enabling it for all users to promote podcasting listening in certain markets. As Bradley and Whateley’s reporting suggests, once podcasts are implemented, TikTok could be primed to become a serious Spotify competitor. Exclusivity deals lose appeal Manuela: Last Friday Tyler Aquilina , writing for Variety, published a piece that became somewhat prescient in hindsight: Circling back to the topic of podcast companies expanding by acquiring podcasts: https://variety.com/vip/podcast-exclusivity-is-quickly-becoming-an-outdated-strategy-1235495652/. From the intro of the article: “If it’s still too early to declare platform-exclusive podcast deals dead as we move into 2023, it’s becoming ever clearer that this business model is likely not long for this world.” Aquilina’s piece presents several data points suggesting the exclusive podcast strategy, most typified by Spotify acquisitions in recent years, is falling out of favor. The article cites reported frustrations from producers who signed big-name deals and went exclusive, including the Obamas choosing not to renew their exclusivity deal with Spotify last year. One interesting data point is that of the Rogan Twitter Bump, the short-term engagement boost relatively smaller guests on The Joe Rogan Experience get in the week after appearing on the podcast. According to data collected from Social Blade by The Verge, JRE guests with fewer than 500,000 Twitter followers started to experience far smaller influxes of new followers starting December 2020, the month JRE went Spotify-exclusive. Conversely, podcasts that leave exclusivity to wide release are reporting more success in open podcasting. Aquilina reports he was given data from Acast that shows Spanish-language podcast Se Regalan Dudas has seen its listens increase 56% over their first year after leaving Spotify exc

Tom took a look back on all of the great research that was done at Sounds Profitable in 2022 and came up with a handful of the most impactful data points. Here are his three favorite data points from 2022! Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Tom Webster Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Opportunity in Kids podcasting as recession looms, Podcasting’s ‘recession era’, some audio publisher’s teams still growing in 2023, and Paul Riismandel joins Signal Hill Insights. Podcasting’s Recession Era and how podcasters are approaching it. Manuela: This week our first segment is going to cover a variety of articles centering around an overall theme: podcasting’s reaction to the recession in early 2023. To kick things off, we continue a throughline of covering how the Kids & Family category has quickly evolved into a juggernaut. Over the first half of 2022 the genre made itself known as a force to be reckoned with over several big deals and signings. Now as the recession looms, along with doom-and-gloom articles about said recession, big-name deals are becoming more scarce. Tumble Media CEO Lindsay Patterson has worked in kids podcasting for years and likens the 2022 surge to being invited to a party late. Kids & Family has arrived just in time to find the host is taking down the decorations. From her January 11th Medium post: “With a general pullback on spending on podcasts, it’s likely that companies will be hesitant to invest in strategy and content for kids, who require a new approach to audience development and monetization. It’s a different model than “grownup” podcasts. But the good news is kids’ podcasts may be a welcome guest at other parties — and in many other industries. There are choices. Nay, there are opportunities.” Patterson proposes Kids & Family’s relative newcomer status to the wider industry leaves it plenty of unpursued avenues that are already well-tread ground for others. Her article touches on concepts like adapting existing kid-friendly IP to podcasts and pursuing new platforms. Interestingly, she points to nonprofits, grants, and research studies as potentially viable funding paths. Patterson speaks from experience, having partnered Tumble Media with a non-profit organization to win a grant. The partnership has been funded to spend three years studying how both listening to and making podcasts can engage blind and sighted students in the classroom. “In a way, the warnings and scrutiny of the podcast industry makes me more optimistic than ever before about the kids’ space. We can take a clear eyed look from the outside, and see how kids’ podcasts can and should be better.” Patterson’s suggestions of creativity and adaptability come at a good time for smaller creators, as even larger presences in podcasting are beginning to feel the effects of hiring and investment freezes. This Wednesday the Hollywood Reporter published a piece by J. Clara Chan titled “Podcasting’s Recession Era: Dealmaking Gets More Selective in Slower Ad Market.” Chan begins the piece with a big-picture view of investments made by major players in the industry before setting the article’s goal answering the question: “What will podcasting’s next era look like during a recession?” Her article begins with a focus on the deal-making side of the industry, sourcing two anonymous dealmakers and their observations of industry performance in recent months. Big companies seem to have covered their bases on wide demographics. Chan gives the example of Spotify’s coverage of Gen Z and millennial women with acquisitions of Call Her Daddy and Emma Chamberlain’s Anything Goes. \ BIPOC Podcast Creators co-founder Tangia Al-awaji Estrada gives a perspective from a smaller, independent side of the industry: “It feels a little bit premature at this stage because we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but it does feel like there’s some panic in the air. We’re seeing companies who’d normally be investing in up-and-coming talents, indie creators — smaller companies are pulling back and saying, ‘Well, we’re not doing that right now. We’re not doing that at all.’ So, there’s definitely a feeling like folks are holding their breaths to see what’s going to happen.” Last Friday Sara Guaglione, writing for Digiday, published a piece covering the phenomenon of smaller production houses growing as larger entities condense their audio teams. A tally of jobs on sites like Indeed with the word ‘podcast’ in the description shows there has been a downward trend of open positions since the peak in May of 2022. Still, companies are hiring. “A number of media companies posted new podcast job openings this month. Vox Media, for example, posted a job opening this week for a $200,000+ ​​executive producer position for its daily show “Today Explained.”” Guaglione also points to Tenderfoot TV, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal as places that are actively growing their audio teams. Returning to the Hollywood Reporter piece, we reach the advertising side of podcasting. The conclusion reached by J. Clara Chan’s reporting will be a familiar one to loyal followers of The Download. In general, advertisers are pacing themselves from brand awareness campaigns and doubling down on direct response and prioritizing s

We’re off to the races in 2023, and we’re taking you with us. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Megaphone’s weekend of outages, AdvertiseCast Publishes average CPM of 2022, Apple debuts Delegated Delivery, a software engineer teases adblock for iTunes, and The Podscape 2023 is live. Megaphone has Weekend of Outages Manuela: We start from a story from the holiday break. On Monday, December 19th, https://podnews.net/update/flemish-podcast-platform on a weekend of outages for Megaphone. According to Megaphone documentation, the outage started sometime before 11am Eastern on Saturday the 17th for producers.https://status.megaphone.fm/history: “We are currently investigating an issue that is impacting content delivery. During this time end listeners most likely will not be able to download podcast episodes. We are working to fix this currently.” Within two hours the case was updated to reflect the playback issue. At 10am the following day a second outage started, this time as a “podcast playback” issue that ran for over 12 hours, leaving megaphone podcasts effectively offline until 11:56pm Eastern. One of the larger major hosting platform outages of the year. This incident marked the sixth time in 2022 Megaphone was temporarily unavailable to podcast listeners. AdvertiseCast Publishes Final Podcast Advertising Rates of 2022 Shreya: AdvertiseCast rang in the new year with a January 1st update to their monthly AdvertiseCast Marketplace Podcast Advertising Rates. A quote from AdvertiseCast CRO Dave Hanley https://podnews.net/press-release/advertisecast-dec-22 “2022 was a breakout year in podcasting. Podcasts have become mainstream with explosive growth among younger and more diverse audiences who are embracing niche genres and new ways of listening.” December’s overall average CPM was $23.57, a 4% drop month-on-month. With this new information, AdvertiseCast now has the data to generate an overall average for the year. The average CPM for podcasts in AdvertiseCast’s observed population was $23.87 for a sixty-second ad spot, a 2% increase from 2021. The three highest-CPM categories in December were, in ascending order, Business, Education, and Technology, with Technology podcasts pulling an average CPM of $27. Software dev wants to make podcast ad blocker, charge money for it. Manuela: Last week a Portland, Oregon-based software engineer Micah Engle-Eshleman announced his intentions to build something that, if fully developed, would change the industry: https://www.adblockpodcast.com/. From adblockpodcast.com: “Finally, a podcast app that skips ads! Adblock Podcast detects and skips ads on all iTunes podcasts.” While light on concrete information, the project appears to be a web-based application that would detect and remove any advertisements embedded in podcasts served through Apple Podcasts, erroneously referred to by the branding Apple retired six years ago. The project will be a paid service with a vaguely-defined intent to use an undefined portion of money collected to directly pay podcasters via revenue share. On paper, Engle-Eshlerman is proposing his web app would create a new, more profitable way for podcasters to be compensated for producing their shows. He’s quoted in last week’s Podnews as saying he hasn’t figured that part out yet. Which feels apt for the entire project. How would it skip ads? How would a web app produced by one person handle the complexity of paying out millions of individual podcasts? Why are podcasters supposed to be excited that they have to let a stranger’s product rip out their ads and give them a percentage of what it collected that month? If a podcast that’s on a network has its ads skipped, does that podcast get the check or does the network?At best, Podcast Adblock is a cautionary tale for bloggers and reporters covering podcast beats. Just because an email contains something that looks sensational doesn’t mean it’s worth giving air. Podcast Adblock has many telltale signs of being vaporware. A paid service based Adblock, a service that has been available for free in one form or another since 2002. From someone with no podcasting bona fides who still calls it ‘iTunes.’ Apple Podcasts launched Delegated Delivery Shreya: This Tuesday Apple announced the implementation of the https://podcasters.apple.com/4770-news-delegated-delivery-2023, which will allow podcasters to publish content to their Apple Podcast Subscription from the dashboard of select hosting services. From the blog:“With an active membership to the Apple Podcasters Program, creators can now generate API Keys from the Account tab of Apple Podcasts Connect, which they can share with their hosting provider to allow them to publish content on their behalf. Once enabled, creators can submit new free and subscriber shows, publish new subscriber episodes, and continue to publish free episodes to Apple Podcasts from their hosting provider dashboard.” Currently the beta enables podcasters on Blubrry, Libsyn, Triton Digital’s Omny Studio, and RSS to try out pushing episodes directly to their Apple subscribe

Join Bryan in kicking off this year with a review of the notable acquisitions and fundraising that happened in 2022. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

ChatGPT and other new forms of chatbot are already able to credibly write like humans, and it’s getting harder to tell who - or what - writes any given blog post. This week, Tom explains why this is a good thing for podcast creatives, and not the apocalypse. Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Tom Webster Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Amazon advertises podcasts offline, Twitter dissolves its Trust and Safety Council, Automakers phasing out AM radio, and a roundup of new research published this week. Amazon pushing podcasts offline. Manuela: This Monday Podnews covered Amazon Music’s new physical-space advertising campaign for their Best of 2022 podcast selections. The best-of collection has prominent placement on the front page of Amazon Music, and now the streamer is promoting it in England and France. From Editor James Cridland’s coverage: “In London, ads will be appearing for the next two weeks promoting ten of the top podcasters. The company also carried audio ads within the Wondery network for the chosen podcasts, and produced social media assets.” The ads in London primarily take the form of projected billboards on blank brick walls, along with a more traditional advertisement for the podcast +44 on a digital billboard in Waterloo station. In Paris, poster-sized digital placements for Amazon podcasts were spotted at Gare du Nord, the busiest train station in Europe. Twitter Trust and Safety Council Dissolved Arielle: Continuing the trend of a lot happening in a short amount of time at Twitter, the social media giant has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council. Originally booked to meet this Monday, members of the council told the Financial Times the meeting was canceled via email with only an hour’s notice. From Dave Lee’s reporting: “The council was created in 2016 to solicit advice from dozens of experts and external organisations on how Twitter should tackle harassment, mental health issues and child exploitation, as well as suicide prevention. But in a note sent to members on Monday, the social media company said the council was no longer the “best structure” to gain outside insights on its policies.” The dissolution of the council comes four days after three prominent members resigned, citing concerns over the leadership of new Twitter owner Elon Musk. From the trio’s group statement: “We are announcing our resignation from Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council because it is clear from research evidence that, contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline.” One of the largest social media platforms has quickly become a problematic place for advertisers. Meanwhile, as data from the new Sounds Profitable study Safe and Sound attests, podcasting is uniquely positioned to welcome them to a brand-safe and suitable environment. As the study’s data attests, podcasting’s opt-in nature creates an environment where programs that feature offensive or uncomfortable content largely have an audience of listeners who are fine with such content. And, more importantly, they tend to have audiences who are supportive of brands who sponsor that podcast. Listeners also tend to be forgiving for outlier examples of offensive content if they prefer podcasts that don’t discuss such things. From the study: “Regular listeners to otherwise non-offensive shows will highly likely return to the podcast after a single episode featuring uncharacteristically offensive content.” As advertisers begin to shy away from brand-unsafe places like Twitter, podcasting finds itself uniquely-suited to be a leader in brand safety and suitability. Automakers sundown AM Radio in New Vehicles Manuela: On December 1st, Senator Edward J Markey of New York sent a letter to the CEOs of several major automotive brands in the US, including Toyota, Volkswagen, and BMW. The letter strongly urges them to reconsider the growing trend of not offering AM radios in new electric vehicles. Why is this a trend? Here’s James Gilboy’s explanation from a July article for The Drive: “So are highly complex EVs incompatible with one of the oldest, simplest electronics? BMW and Volvo told me it was due to audio quality problems rooted in electromagnetic interference, of which EVs' drivetrains produce a significant amount. Cars' engines and other complex electronics have always made EM interference, but low-wattage static is relatively easy to shield against. It's not as simple with EVs that may pull hundreds of watts from their batteries, generating far more interference, reducing audio quality to a level both BMW and Volvo told me they consider insufficient.” Gilboy goes on to say he finds it difficult to take that explanation without a grain of salt, as US automakers circumvent the EM signal problem without issue. A common thread Gilboy notes is the manufacturers who have phased AM out of EVs tend to have strong roots in European markets. “The frequency has largely been superseded by the DAB format, which is a more advanced form of radio broadcasting with better audio quality and choice of stations. AM radio stations and their listeners are all but gone in Europe, so European carmakers may not need to include technology that many of its customers can't use.” Understandably, the radio industry isn’t happy with this trend. Gilboy points to th

Brand Safety and Suitability are among the hottest topics in podcasting. But how do the listeners feel? That’s Tom’s topic in this week’s Sounds Profitable. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Building an app for podcast listeners is a tough sell in this world where Spotify and Apple are so dominant. But Realm has been in the game for a while and have a dedicated fan base – both of the app they launched years ago and the content that’s contained therein. In this episode, Bryan Barletta speaks with Rachel Prisock, head of data and engineering at Realm, about building, maintaining, and utilizing the app as an audience engagement and measurement tool. Listen to learn about: How Realm got its start in podcasting Why the app model works for Realm (but isn’t as successful for other publishers) How Realm might evolve Realm’s strategy for partner content The role of the Super Fan in their strategy Links: Bryan Barletta Arielle Nissenblatt Rachel Prisock Realm The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles SquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta and Arielle Nissenblatt Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Edited by Reece Carman and Ron Tendick Assembled by Spooler Media Hosted on Omny Studios Additional help from Gavin Gaddis See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Sounds Profitable publishes brand safety and suitability study, Edison publishes top podcast networks by reach, Libsyn unveils November 2022 podcast advertising rates, Spotify unveils its top five podcasts in Wrapped, and GroupM and Magna predict a ‘durable’ ad market next year. Sounds Profitable publishes brand safety and suitability study Safe and Sound Manuela: We begin today’s show with something close to home. Yesterday Sounds Profitable debuted its latest research project, Safe and Sound. The first-ever study of brand safety and suitability from the listener’s perspective. “Safe and Sound surveyed a representative sample of 1093 podcast listeners to find out what they consider ‘offensive,’ what they are tolerant of, and how they view the brands that support podcast content when it pushes their boundaries.” The study delivers a wide range of findings, ranging from bombshells like the idea political ads are unpopular with audiences - regardless of political party - to taking the temperature of what audiences consider most offensive. Spoiler alert: people dislike racist language. That said, it looks like offensive content might not be as toxic to a podcast’s overall image as initially assumed. When asked how they felt about brands that advertise or sponsor a podcast where a guest or host said something offensive or uncomfortable, an average of 30% of respondents said their feelings about the brands had not been changed. When presented with the situation of a podcast someone regularly enjoys having an uncomfortable or offensive episode, 49% of respondents said they would stop listening to that particular episode but continue listening in general, while 31% said they’d continue listening to the outlier episode regardless. The data suggests podcast-listening audiences take a more holistic approach to offensive content on podcasts they already have a relationship with. In general, listeners appear to not hold a single out-of-character episode against a podcast they’re familiar with. Edison Top Podcast Networks Shreya: This Tuesday Edison Research published the Q3 edition of U.S. Top Podcast Networks, by Reach. Listeners of The Download might remember Spotify took the lead back in Q2, just edging out SiriusXM Media. This last quarter SiriusXM has overtaken Spotify and returned to the top, leaving the top five at SiriusXM Media, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audioboom, and NPR, with Wondery eyeing the top five from sixth place. From the Edison blog post: “Within the top ten, the biggest jump in rank goes to Wondery/Audible/Amazon Music, up two rank positions, propelled in part by their acquisitions of major shows like Morbid and My Favorite Murder. Bubbling below the top ten, WarnerMedia gained three levels in rank, now up to 14th.“ Once more SiriusXM takes the top spot, but not without Spotify having broken their streak of having been at the top since Edison first started publishing top network by reach reports. Libsyn Unveils November 2022 Podcast Advertising Rates Manuela: Continuing our unplanned theme of discussing data, let’s take a moment to talk about CPM. Last Thursday Libsyn published the November edition of their monthly CPM rate roundup from AdvertiseCast. “The Company releases the figures to empower the podcaster and advertiser communities to readily monitor market pricing and provide greater insight into podcasting advertising as a monetization vehicle. The data is derived from actual sales data across AdvertiseCast’s network of over 3,000 shows, including more than 225 exclusive podcasts.” Rates are continuing to increase, little by little. Last month the average CPM rate was $24.75 for a sixty-second ad spot, up 78 cents from the October average and a 6% year-over-year increase from November 2021. The report notes that the lower end of the spectrum contains fiction, television, and news content, averaging in the low twenties. On the high side, however, a familiar face for listeners of The Download. We’ve covered the meteoric rise of Kids & Family podcast content multiple times and its popularity continues into this November. The top four highest-earning categories in November are: Technology and Health & Fitness, tied for third place at $26. Science at $27. And at the top of the leaderboard, Kids & Family at $28, over three dollars higher than industry average. Spotify Wrapped is here, including its top podcasts Shreya: Some of you might have noticed a deluge of vibrant colors and boasting about listening habits last Wednesday, as the annual Spotify Wrapped dropped. Kimeko McCoy, writing for Digiday last Thursday, explains how big this yearly infodump has become: “It’s an awareness campaign that utilizes user data to serve up users’ favorite songs, albums and podcasts to be shared across social media platforms via the app, engaging more than 120 million users last year, according to Spotify. This year, Spotify has launched its Wrapped presence in Roblox, with the goal of tapping

Just what is a Sounds Profitable DeepDive, and what have they covered this year? What drove Bryan Barletta to create them in the first place? Read on to find out. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Samsung Free app issue causes spike in downloads, Transistor joins email spam prevention movement, How streaming TV is bracing for the recession, and Spreaker debuts two new offerings, one of which sounds like a cool robot. New auto-playing Samsung app spikes downloads. Manuela: Our top story this week, fitting for a holiday weekend, is one of collaboration and teamwork against all odds. Last week Samsung launched the Listen tab on Samsung Free, a media streaming app pre-installed on every Samsung Galaxy smartphone. When clicked on, the Listen tab would open a full-screen player with a three second timer. If not manually stopped within the three seconds, the app would begin to auto-play segments of featured podcast episodes, with each episode in the queue pre-downloaded for instant play. This auto-downloading and auto-listening lead to podcasters seeing a sudden spike of listens coming from the Dalvik user agent. Like something out of a heartwarming holiday special, the podcasting community came together on a long weekend to work together and solve the problem. In the Sounds Profitable Partners Slack channels, employees of Audioboom, Triton, Spreaker, and others jumped into threads to discuss how to handle the issue. James Cridland’s Monday edition of the Podnews segment The Tech Stuff details why a download spike from Dalvik isn’t necessarily an easy fix. Cridland says: “Some podcast hosting companies have blocked the “Dalvik” useragent entirely. However, blocking Dalvik - even with the Samsung model numbers - will also block, among other things, Google News’s audio player, which uses an identical audio useragent. At least one app powered by Podcast Index also uses this generic Dalvik useragent along with PodcastAddict, and Indian podcast app Gaana also retains Dalvik in its useragent.” Luckily, there’s a happy ending to this Thanksgiving story. Multiple employees on a holiday weekend managed to get the attention of Samsung, a company only just now entering podcasting, and get the problem fully solved. According to Podnews reporting, Samsung Free content partner Acast has since demonetized any traffic from the Dalvik user agent, and a fix to the app to prevent any future download spikes is set to be published soon. What could have been a massive headache for many people was quickly resolved fully without any half-measure bandage fixes, all on a holiday weekend, thanks to the cohesiveness of the community. That we can certainly be thankful for. Transistor joins email spam prevention movement. Shreya: Back on November 3rd we covered Buzzsprout’s announcement that they were removing email addressed from podcast RSS feeds. Presented as the company ‘fighting back against email spam,’ Buzzsprout only inserts a podcaster’s email address into the feed on request to verify the feed with other services and platforms. On August 22nd Apple Podcasts announced updates to RSS feed requirements in 2023, including the end of support for the ‘owner’ tag. “The owner tag and its contact information, including email, will no longer be recommended.” In addition to Buzzsprout embracing the email-free future, Podbean and - most recently - Transistor have joined the cause. From their blog post this monday: “Unfortunately, because podcast feeds are public, spammers can scrape these email addresses and use them to send unwanted emails (like pitches for guests to appear on your show).” Meanwhile, yesterday’s Podnews published an alternate take on this move to prevent email spam. The Canadian Podcast Awards told Podnews they neither agree with nor support the removal of email addresses from RSS feeds. From yesterday’s issue: “We do not have any plans at the moment to support feeds without contact information.” Email spam has become a growing problem in podcasting. Back in July, James Cridland published the results of an email spam-trap he’d created in the Podnews RSS feed. Over the course of three months his experiment received 240 unsolicited commercial emails. Similarly to Buzzsprout, Transistor has removed email addresses from the feed by default, but include a tool to manually reveal it for verification purposes. In addition, they now have a verification code entry field designed to work with Apple Podcast’s new code-based verification system. A new verification method that, hopefully, will help ease the concerns of objecting organizations like the Canadian Podcast Awards. How streaming TV is bracing for a recession Manuela: Depending on who you ask, the next recession is either here already or fast approaching. On November 17th Maia Vines, writing for AdAge, published a piece detailing how streaming television is battening down the hatches. From the article: “Brands have already started to re-prioritize where they are placing their ad dollars, said Lisa Herdman, senior VP and executive director of strategic investments at RPA.” Heather Stewart, General Motors’ general director of global media and marketing services pre

Multitude Productions has an impressive array of podcasts, resources, events, and more going for them. In this episode, Bryan Barletta speaks with Multitude CEO Amanda McLoughlin about building the company, how they handle relationships with advertisers, scaling, and so much more. Listen to learn about: (5 bullet points) Why Amanda believes CPA ads are a win-win The Multitude Podcasting Conference How Amanda and team build engaged audiences Why Multitude can’t scale tenfold (but maybe that’s a good thing) Links: Bryan Barletta Arielle Nissenblatt Amanda McLoughlin Multitude Productions The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles SquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta, Arielle Nissenblatt Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Additional support from Gavin Gaddis Compiled by: Spooler Media Edited by: Reece Carman and Ron Tendick Hosted on: Omny Studios See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Bryan comes at things from a different perspective, specifically that of the ways that the podcaster and audience interact. From how we convert a follow to a subscriber, to weighing and prioritizing each subscription solution from both the podcaster and listener perspective, and most importantly to exploring the upper limits of what we can accomplish under a subscription offering. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the Sounds Profitable Deep Dive, Bryan Barletta is joined by SoundStack CEO Jon Stephenson to embark on a three-part journey through what the audio-as-a-service company has to offer. Tune in to learn how the SoundStack platform makes podcast hosting/distribution, broadcast-to-podcast, and monetization really simple. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Week: Apple Podcasts is using machine learning to tag episodes, IAB to require annual recertification, Edison Research shares Share of Ear Q3 statistic, and Headliner announces automated YouTube integration. Bumper Discovers Apple Podcasts Assigns Topics Automatically. Manuela: This Tuesday Bumper co-founder Dan Misener posted a new discovery that explains how Apple Podcasts can recommend individual podcast episodes based on topics discussed. The example Misener uses is an episode of Today, Explained which, if one opens the web page source on Apple Podcasts, is tagged with twenty topics ranging from broader concepts like ‘world politics’ to individual names of celebrities and politicians mentioned in the episode. The catch? Those keywords and topics do not appear anywhere in the episode description or RSS feed. The only way to assign them to that particular episode is a transcript. From the article: “Here’s my best guess: Apple is using machine-generated transcriptions, then applying natural language processing techniques like topic modeling to generate lists of relevant topics on an episode-by-episode basis.” According to Misener’s reporting, the current top 250 podcasts on Apple Podcasts consists of 70,094 episodes. Approximately 63.5% of those episodes are currently tagged with topics generated by Apple. “Here’s my best guess: Apple is using machine-generated transcriptions, then applying natural language processing techniques like topic modeling to generate lists of relevant topics on an episode-by-episode basis.”The topics are also ranked with a per-episode relevance score and appear to be integrated into the Apple Podcasts search function. Misener tested this by searching the phrase ‘war in Donbass,’ which he had seen as a tag on Today, Explained. Apple Podcasts returned an episode of The Inquiry that discusses the issue at length, but also does not specifically include those keywords in the title or description. This suggests the assigned topics influenced its search ranking. As Misener says in his breakdown of what this means for podcasters, the implications of this automated topic system are numerous and all signal better relevancy in podcast discovery. SEO now goes far beyond what they chose to include in RSS feeds. In response to the Bumper article, https://podnews.net/article/apple-topics. Visitors can type in the name of a podcast and choose one of the 20 most recent uploads to see what topics Apple has assigned. That is, if it has been assigned any at all. Unfortunately the Sounds Profitable feed has not been fed through their machine learning, so we don’t know what Apple thinks last week’s episode of The Download is about. IAB to require annual recertification. Shreya: Last Thursday Podnews reported the Interactive Advertising Bureau is now requiring annual re-certification from podcasting companies. The information came from a note Podnews editor James Cridland discovered on the IAB website. https://iabtechlab.com/standards/podcast-measurement-guidelines/“As podcast listenership increases and the technology to support that listenership improves, the podcast technical measurement capabilities are continuing to evolve at a rapid pace. As such, and to be aligned with other industry auditing programs, IAB Tech Lab is updating its compliance program to require annual recertification. “ The post then cites the fact several complaint companies were certified on the 2.0 version of the standards but have not re-certified under 2.1. As of this podcast https://iabtechlab.com/compliance-programs/compliant-companies/#\ For context: version 1 of the Measurement Technical Guidelines was released in September of 2016. Version 2.0 released the following September. Version 2.1 released five years later, finalizing in February of 2022. The bulk of the updates in 2.1 involve guidelines blocking the Apple Watch user agent to prevent duplicate download stats. Members of the audio committee and the tech lab were not briefed on the upcoming changes prior to Cridland’s reporting on this story. Using numbers available on the IAB website, the original Podnews report cited the cost for annual recertification at $45,000, split between a $35k certification fee and $10,000 annual membership fee. The page has since been updated to reflect previously un-announced, cheaper certification prices. Now the cost of initial certification is $17,500 for non-members and $12,500 for members. Recertification will cost $8,750 and $6,250 for the same respective categories. Reducing the price for certification is a step in the right direction, creating more competition and reinforcing standards that others are likely to flaunt when compared against those who decide to merely be IAB compliant instead of IAB certified.An issue remains the recertification itself, as the process has had a life cycle of six years between 2.0 and 2.1 with no commitment whatsoever to improvements in the certification process to drive interest into certific

Podcasts and Audiobooks are crossing the streams of spoken word content - what else is possible? This week, Tom Webster looks at ideas for hybrid non-fiction content that could open up whole new sources of revenue. Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Tom Webster Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Why sports podcasts are a slam dunk for podcast advertisers, our quarterly earnings roundup, how the buy-side of advertising defines ‘premium’ content, how podcast advertisers are embracing Latino podcasting, and Netflix launches their ad-supported tier. Why sports podcasts could be a slam dunk for advertisers who know how to navigate the in-demand space Shreya: There’s no denying the synergy of sports and advertisers during regular game seasons, but a new article from MarketingBrew’s Alyssa Meyers highlights how podcasts can easily fill that gap the rest of the year. “The sports podcast genre is among the top five most popular in the US, according to Edison Research, and the percentage share of ad revenue for that category more than doubled from 2020 to 2021, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.” Several of Meyers’ sources stress that sports is one of the most in-demand podcast genres for ad buyers. Steven Abraham, president of the Oxford Road, said the agency’s biggest clients are interested in the space due to its reach with an active and engaged audience. “A good sports-podcast media plan includes both, according to Abraham. Major shows that cover entire leagues or sports news in general can provide the benefit of reach, but fan-led shows that focus on specific teams tend to be more targeted and affordable, he said.” Regardless of a show’s popularity, the CPM of a sports podcast has the benefit of flexibility even in the off season. Locked On Podcast Network CEO David Locke reports listenership spikes more during off-season times like trade deadlines than during important games during the normal season. Traditional media has spent decades refining their infrastructure around courting sports fans when players are on the court. Podcasting has the flexibility and staying power to capitalize on sports fandom’s dedication for their favorite pastime and make sporting content a perennial avenue for advertisers. Podcasting Companies Post Q3 Earnings Manuela: It’s time for what’s becoming a quarterly event here on The Download: quarterly earnings reports are here! Most of what we’re reporting on today has been released in the past week, but in the interest of gathering everyone together, we’ll open with Spotify. As we covered back in October, Spotify shares dipped after their earnings call, in which CEO David Ek announced price increases coming in 2023. In good news for Big Green: they report 456 million monthly active users, up 20% year over year, 195 million of which are paying subscribers, representing a 13% year over year jump. iHeartMedia is up 7% year over year on revenue, with a Q3 total of $989 million. Their Digital Audio Group revenue hit a 23% year over year increase, with podcast revenue hitting $91 million dollars. On Wednesday Veritone posted their Q3 financial report. $37.2 million in revenue with 64% year over year growth. Audacy’s financial report shows total revenue down 3.8% year on year. Their Digital revenue, including podcasting, made $62 million in the quarter. As Podnews James Cridland reports, this is up 2% year on year but 10% down quarter on quarter. Cridland also said: “The company is threatened with stock market delisting; stock hit a record low of $0.27 yesterday.” Acast’s Q3 has been positive with revenue up 21%, amounting to $29.8 million USD when converted from Krona. In their significant events recap they list the Podchaser acquisition, the partnership with Wondery to translate and record successful podcasts in Italian, and their agreement with rep The New York Times and sell UK ad space on NYT podcasts. They also note Amazon functionally purchasing all ad space on Acast podcasts through the deal struck just after the reporting period so Amazon can run Acast shows ad-free for Amazon Music subscribers. How the buy-side of the ad industry is now defining ‘premium’ content Shreya: On Wednesday Ronan Shields, writing for Digiday, published a piece covering how the buyer side of the market is defining premium ad content and the general mood of the industry in regards to the looming threat of recession. The piece quotes panels from multiple relevant conferences in New York City last week. “Just about everyone in the industry is bracing themselves for a recession with swinging cuts to advertisers’ budgets expected, fellow panelists Jesse Fisher from Horizon Media and GroupM’s Esra Bacher offered insights into how marketers would make budgeting decisions. They both pointed out how priorities will delineate depending on whether they are an emerging or mature brand.” Fischer predicts smaller brands will focus more on awareness campaigns instead of focusing on ROI. “But if you look at a more mature brand, you know that’s really well positioned… they might shift spend into more measurable channels and types of activations because they really want to make sure that if they’re spending a million dollars, they’re able to see $1.1 million in ROI.” Programmatic Investment

What’s the episode about: If you’re a long time podcast listener, you’re probably familiar with promo codes. In this episode, we discuss how impactful they really are. And, is it possible that they could have even more impact for listeners, publishers, and advertisers? Tom Webster proposes an upgrade. Arielle Nissenblatt and Bryan Barletta are here to discuss with it with him. Listen to learn about: A promo code that’s been living rent free in Arielle’s head for 5+ years Why promo codes work for publishers A possible upgrade to the promo code system we know and love Whether or not this potential upgrade would be as impactful for advertisers as it would be for publishers and listeners How this discussion ties into our recent research studies, After These Messages and We’ll Be Right Back Links: Bryan Barletta Arielle Nissenblatt Tom Webster Article discussed The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles SquadCast Podsights Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta, Tom Webster, Arielle Nissenblatt Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Produced by: Reece Carman and Ron Tendick Assembled by: Spooler Media Hosted by: Omny Studio See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Tom continues his thoughts from last week about what Podcasting can learn from Radio’s worst mistakes. Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Tom Webster Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Amazon Prime users get ad-free podcasts and music, Buzzsprout combats email spam, new ad placements at Apple cause brand safety issue, and a roundup of the three new podcast research studies. Amazon Music adds entire music catalog, ad-free podcasts. Manuela: On Tuesday David Pierce, writing for The Verge, covered the changes coming to Amazon Prime subscribers. Previously, Amazon Prime members had access to a limited batch of 2 million songs from Amazon Music’s extensive library. Now they have access to all 100 million songs in a limited shuffle-only capacity, similar to how a Spotify free account currently works. The big change makes the Amazon Prime music offerings comparable to a free Spotify account. However, Amazon Prime members also get ad-free access to a fair few major podcasts. This includes podcasts produced by Amazon-owned companies like Wondery, as well as podcasts produced in partnership with outside companies, including NPR, ESPN, and the New York Times. “Amazon is also working on podcast discovery. It’s rolling out a new feature called Podcast Previews, which seems to be something like trailers for podcast episodes. You’ll be able to listen to “a short, digestible soundbite” before deciding to dive into an episode, which Amazon thinks could help discovery.” Pierce says the feature is billed as being “swipeable” and summarizes it as ‘Tinder for podcasts.’ Sounds Profitable asked several large publishers and hosting platforms for their percentage of downloads from Amazon Music. All were below 1% of monthly volume. Giving Amazon’s over 250 million Prime subscribers ad-free access to podcasts might bring that percentage up soon. In addition to the Prime members, those who pay the $9 monthly subscription fee for Amazon Music Unlimited but do not have Prime get access to the ad-free podcast listening and Podcast Previews tool. Buzzsprout ‘fighting back against email spam.’ Shreya: This Monday, Buzzsprout posted a short update announcing a significant update to how they’re distributing RSS feeds. “Email spam has increasingly become an issue for podcasters. Spammers and bots routinely scrape RSS feeds to collect podcasters' email addresses and send them junk emails.” The inclusion of a producer’s email in the RSS feed has been a mixed bag in recent years. As Buzzsprout says, making it easily available leaves the door open for companies scraping data to create massive databases of email addresses specifically to cold-call in hopes of selling something relevant to podcasters. On the other hand, anyone who has produced a podcast knows the RSS email is an integral part of the process, with many platforms sending an email to that address with a verification link to prove the person claiming they own the RSS feed is legitimate. Buzzsprout’s solution to that issue is simple: a new button has been added to the dashboard that puts the account owner’s email back into the RSS feed for 24 hours, enough time to verify the podcast Barring any teething troubles with the 24 hour temporary email addition process, it seems like Buzzsprout has found an elegant solution to an inelegant problem. Apple’s new ad placements immediately caused a brand safety crisis Manuela: As covered in past episodes of The Download, Apple has been interested in expanding advertising offerings on its platforms. This Monday Insider Intelligence’s Daniel Konstantinovic posted coverage of a brand safety speedbump Apple encountered when rolling out new ad locations on the App Store. One of the new ad spots is in the “you might also like” section recommending similar apps, allowing advertisers to promote their own app. On the 25th when the ads went live, users began to notice inappropriate advertisements appearing on the platform. The chief example of this provided in the article is an ad for the game Jackpot World - Slot Machines on the page for RecoverMe, a gambling addiction management app. “The influx of gambling ads led to an outcry from developers, who didn’t want their apps associated with such services, and prompted Apple to indefinitely pause ads in the gambling category.” Podcasting is no stranger to this kind of hiccup. Back in May, Spotify experienced an issue with their implementation of ads on podcast pages, leading to one Wild Turkey whiskey ad getting served to every podcast on the platform, including those about substance abuse and alcoholism, causing a small social media firestorm. Growing pains happen with large platforms rolling out changes like this. In-depth rules and hands-on verification helps reduce issues when rolling out a new moving part, like ads on every app listing. Apple is looking into expanding similar ads into Apple Podcasts. It’s best to keep aware of how these changes happen and be comfortable reporting on them as they happen. Apple certainly doesn’t want their own version of Spotify’s whiskey snafu, but it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out when ad changes debut on any platform. Podcasting Research Ro

This week we kick off a two part series on the lessons that podcasting can take from radio's struggles. Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Tom Webster Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: A birds-eye view of how podcasting is doing political ads this year, Spotify stock drops after announcing price increase, podcast companies discuss diversity at Advertising Week and the IAB Upfront, and a massive new Nielsen study shows podcast ads universally boost brand metrics. How podcast networks are making their own rules for political advertising—and how they differ from one another. Manuela: Midterm elections are approaching fast in the United States and that means political ads are on the rise. This Wednesday MarketingBrew’s Alyssa Meyers published https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/10/26/how-podcast-networks-are-making-their-own-rules-for-political-advertising?mid=4afb33bb7ffe284d840660fb3604ff60. “Political advertisers, including candidates and advocacy groups, have expressed interest in podcasts, according to several network execs, but not all networks want to play ball. And because the FCC doesn’t regulate political ads in podcasting, the rules are left entirely up to platforms and networks.” iHeart, Wondery, and Vox declined to comment on Meyer’s story, but those that did gave a wide variety of responses and opinions. Cadence13 has always been open to political ads, for instance. That said, the decision on whether or not to run any particular cause or campaign is left to the individual hosts of Cadence13 original podcasts. Spotify has flipped the switch to allow political ads again, having banned them after accusations of spreading disinformation during the 2020 presidential election. Curiously, both Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts do not directly mention political advertising in their ad policies. Due to government regulations, NPR cannot run political ads on terrestrial radio. CEO Gina Garrubbo told MarketingBrew NPR chooses not to run political ads on other platforms. Meyers continues: “Execs from other podcast networks told us they’re starting to see increasing interest from political candidates and issue-based organizations, and though they’re open to these opportunities, some don’t have formal policies in place yet.” Shira Atkins, co-founder and CRO of Wonder Media Network, has taken the approach of allowing political ads but only as part of sponsored content or via baked-in host-read. She says the network has gotten pitches from PACs and candidates, but some have blanched at the idea of handing over creative control to a host instead of running an ad produced by the campaign. “While political ad dollars aren’t flooding the podcast space the way they are CTV, as the industry continues to grow, its political ad policies will likely continue to evolve and solidify, even if they differ across networks.” If there’s one clear consensus in the world of political advertising on podcasts, it’s that there currently is no consensus. Spotify Shares Slip 10% After CEO Says Price Hikes Coming Next Year Shreya: On Wednesday Denny Jacob, writing for The Wall Street Journal and reposted to MarketWatch,https://www.marketwatch.com/story/spotify-shares-slip-10-after-ceo-says-price-hikes-coming-next-year-271666801839The results were a mixed bag for Spotify. “For its third quarter, Spotify reported 456 million monthly active users, up 20% from a year earlier and above the company's guidance. Paying subscribers, Spotify's most lucrative type of customer, climbed 13% to 195 million, also exceeding the company's expectations, thanks to promotions and household plans.” That said, Spotify also posted a Q3 loss of 195 million dollars. Spotify Premium has cost $9.99 since the service launched in 2011, but CEO Daniel Ek says that’ll change some time next year. Spotify shares fell 10% after the announcement. Podcast companies want to increase diverse content—but say they need better ad budgets to do so Manuela: Time for another article from MarketingBrew’s Alyssa Meyers, this one published on Monday. In it, she covers conversations about the podcasting industry stemming from https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/10/24/podcast-companies-want-to-increase-diverse-content-but-say-they-need-better-ad-budgets-to-do-so?mid=4afb33bb7ffe284d840660fb3604ff60 last week. “Part of the push for more diversity in podcasting is about getting creators from different backgrounds behind the mic in the first place. Conal Byrne, CEO of the iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group, said that podcasting, like other mediums, has a problem with representation, but that there are efforts underway to “course-correct.” Meyers cites the Edison Research’s 2022 Infinite Dial to demonstrate that the average makeup of the regular US podcast listeners - 53% men and 59% white, has declined in recent years. She also notes the diverse makeup of podcast hosts is outpacing wider US population statistics, using statistics from https://soundsprofitable.com/article/the-creators-us-2022 on June 28th. Conversations about diversification also raise questions about brand safety. “During Acast’s panel, global head of ad innovation Elli Dimitroul

What’s the episode about: Arielle Nissenblatt chats with Sounds Profitable partners Bryan Barletta and Tom Webster about the two year anniversary of Sounds Profitable. Learn about our content initiatives, our research, our partnership opportunities, and how you can get involved at every stage. Listen to learn about: What it means to be a Sounds Profitable partner Where we think Sounds Profitable will be in another two years Our upcoming research initiatives AKA what we’ll be exploring next The next iteration of The Creators, our research study about podcast creators How you can best utilize Sounds Profitable’s resources for continuing education within your company Links: Bryan Barletta Arielle Nissenblatt Tom Webster Article discussed The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles SquadCast Podsights Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta, Tom Webster, Arielle Nissenblatt Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Produced by: Ron Tendick and Reece Carman Assembled by: Spooler Media Hosted by: Omny Studio See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does it mean that several podcasts paid to have their podcasts downloaded in a mobile app? Let’s break down the issue at hand, where things went wrong, and what we as an industry can do to solve it. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: TikTok spotted scraping podcast feeds, YouTube launches audio ads and host-read ad service, Internet radio platform Live365 to distribute through TuneIn On Air, the Spoken Word Audio Report debuts next week, and Digiday research shows publishers are warming more to programmatic. Evidence suggests TikTok to explore podcasts. Manuela: TikTok is coming to podcasting, or at least it looks to be that way from the breadcrumb trail of hints the company has left behind over the past year. Most recently, in Monday’s edition of Podnews, James Cridland reported podcast hosting company Audiomeans has spotted a“new bot that is scraping our feeds, starting October 11th.” The host also provided Podnews with details about the bot scraping their feeds that ties it back to TikTok.Back in May the social media giant registered a trademark for a new service titled TikTok Music, which happened to include a provision for podcast content. Further back still, in the last week of December 2021 all TikTok users got a notification prompting them to take the ‘TikTok Podcast experience survey’ that collected listener-focused data, as well as audience metrics if the person filling it out identified as a producer. With questions like “if TikTok is going to launch a podcast feature, which of the following do you think will lead to a positive podcasting experience?,” it’s no surprise we’re seeing signs they’re building something podcasting related almost a year later. YouTube launches audio advertisements, service for host-read podcast spots. Arielle: This Monday YouTube announced a launch of audio-only ads, including ways to allow advertisers to specifically target podcasts, music, and those using connected TVs. This feature was beta-tested in 2020 but has now gone live globally. Sheila Dang covered the announcement for Reuters. “The streaming video platform said it will expand audio advertising globally to allow brands to market to people who use YouTube to listen to music or podcasts.” It should be noted, as of this writing the YouTube podcasts homepage is still unavailable outside the US, though the announcement of global audio ads suggests this will change soon. Then on Tuesday MarketingBrew’s Alyssa Meyers covered further development on the story as YouTube brought host-read ads into the mix. “YouTube BrandConnect, its branded-content platform that connects creators with advertisers, is piloting a program that offers video ads read by podcasters, signaling YouTube’s continued interest in expanding its footprint in the podcast world.” The BrandConnect system will allow brands testing the program to op into 60 or 90 second host-read ad segments that exclusively appear on the YouTube version of the podcast. The spots will either include video of the host reading the copy or a custom title card with audio overlay. BrandConnect managing director Lori Sobel mentioned skincare company Neutrogena has implemented the tool to run a campaign on the The Financial Confessions. In the future BrandConnect has intentions of using audience insights to pair brands with creators. Live365 signs TuneIn On Air distribution deal. Manuela: Last Wednesday Soundstack’s Live365 platform announced a distribution agreement with TuneIn. Broadcasters on Live365 premium subscriptions now have access to the TuneIn On Air, opening up access to the platform’s 30 million US-based people using the TuneIn mobile app on over 200 connected devices, including integrations with automotive systems by Tesla and Volvo. A quote from TuneIn CEO Richard Stern: “This partnership with Live365 fits perfectly within our mission to reinvent radio for a connected world and democratize access to radio for broadcasters large and small. We believe great conversations are driven by the power of the human voice and we know our listeners rely on us to stay connected to the issues that matter to them most via our content catalog. We're thrilled to help more broadcasters reach TuneIn's expansive audience." This partnership comes at a time when traditional radio listenership is dropping. Last month Tom Webster, in an article for Sounds Profitable, wrote about the most recent Edison Research Share of Ear study. In recent years there has been a slow decline in Americans 13 and up listening to audio on AM/FM radios, while listening time on mobile devices has grown in almost direct correlation. “I am certainly not the only person to write about this, but radio has as much of a hardware problem as it does a “software” issue. Other than your car, it is getting harder and harder to even buy a broadcast radio receiver. Some mobile phones do offer radio tuners, but Apple has famously rebuffed all attempts by radio lobbyists to include one in the iPhone. And so, as you might guess, AM/FM’s Share of Ear on mobile devices is comparatively quite small, indeed--in fact, today that share is markedly smaller than the share allocated to podcast listening on mobile devices.”Bringing radio to those mobil

There are around four million podcasts in the world today - but how many are you actually competing with? The answer is much smaller than you might think. Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Tom Webster Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: ESPN to potentially partner with DraftKings, Podcasting unions make headlines, Netflix confirms two independent measurement companies, advertisers reflect on 2023 spend, and two new podcasting hosts arrive in the US. ESPN Nears Large New Partnership With DraftKingsManuela: Last Thursday Ed Hammond and Crystal Tse of Bloomberg covered an anticipated deal between ESPN and sports-betting firm DraftKings. According to an update to the piece, DraftKings’ stock rose as much as 8.8% in response to the news on Friday. “ESPN has already invested heavily in sports gambling, though it has steered clear of taking actual bets. The broadcaster has betting-related shows such as Daily Wager and marketing deals with DraftKings and Caesars Entertainment Inc. where links to the sportsbooks are integrated into ESPN’s website. Disney also acquired a stake in DraftKings as part of its acquisition of Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019.”Disney has long avoided gambling in pursuit of upholding its wholesome family image. As Bloomberg points out, none of the Disney cruise ship fleet have casinos aboard, nor are Disney characters licensed to slot machine manufacturers. Clearly, their attitudes appear to be changing as they search for a sports betting partner for ESPN.Sean Russo, Research Manager of Magellan AI, offered this when asked about the growth of sports betting and adjacent categories: “As of August, the Fantasy Sports industry is up 22% year to date, although historically spending in the industry has peaked in September. Last year spend more than doubled between August and September, primarily driven by brands like Fanduel and DraftKings” ESPN is a major podcast network and sports betting, as well as its cousins like fantasy sports, continue to climb in popularity. If this deal comes to fruition, it could be a big deal indeed. Podcasting gains new union, hears from two recently affected by Spotify layoffs. Shreya: In this first segment we have two stories fitting in a theme of organized labor in podcasting. Last Tuesday, Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios announced last Tuesday that roughly 75% of their proposed bargaining unit signed up to officially join WGA East. Ashley Carman reported for Bloomberg: “The employees said they’re looking for increased transparency around pay, rights to their intellectual property, protection against favoritism at work and improved health insurance, according to the letter.”Later in the week, the utility of unionizing was highlighted when Spotify pruned their walled garden. Last Thursday Tech Crunch’s Lauren Forristal reported on Spotify canceling multiple shows at once from two of the four Spotify in-house content production companies. Three podcasts from Gimlet and eight from Parcast are either canceled effective immediately or set - in the case of Horoscope Today - scheduled to end in the second quarter of 2023. Spotify also announced this would cause “less than 5% of layoffs of Spotify’s podcast staff.” Last Friday both the Gimlet Union and Parcast Union took issue with that number in an official letter posted to Twitter. “Yesterday, Spotify blindsided both Gimlet Union and Parcast Union with at least 38 layoffs across their studios. Spotify has said in the press that these layoffs constitute less than 5% of people working on original podcasts. That number is misleading. The reality is that each bargaining unit organized with the Writers Guild of America, East has lost about 30% of its members. These are not small cuts, they are massive restructurings.” The two unions go on to highlight Spotify’s internal reasoning for canceling the podcasts was due to low listenership, which the unions argue was in large part due to decisions made by Spotify itself. “Their decision to make most of Gimlet’s and Parcast’s shows Spotify Exclusive caused a steep drop in listeners - as high as three quarters of the audience for some shows. Yet the company did little or nothing to staunch the bleeding. Shows languished without marketing support, and teams were not given clear audience goals to meet.” Netflix strikes measurement deals ahead of new ad-supported tier Manuela: On Monday Garett Sloane, writing for AdAge, reported on some updates to the ongoing story of Netflix prepping for the launch of their ad-supported tier. As covered in the September 8th episode of The Download, details were scarce about the tier beyond its possible price point and the streamer’s CPM goals. “... Netflix has been asking for high prices for its ad inventory, at least $60 CPMs—cost per thousand views—while only offering limited targeting possibilities and no third-party measurement, according to people familiar with the situation.” Now Netflix has announced they’re working with both Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify to act as that third-party measurement. A measurement executive speaking to Sloane anonymously believes implementation of the two services should be relatively easy for Netflix. Netflix signing two big-n

As interest in podcasting continues to surge, so does the expectation that podcasting adheres to norms established in other advertising channels. Today, frequency capping takes the center stage. Podscribe DD: https://soundsprofitable.com/article/podscribeThoughtleaders: https://soundsprofitable.com/article/thoughtleaders-intelligence Sounds Profitable Podscribe A deep dive into Podscribe: critical intelligence for podcast advertisers. Dec 17th, 2020 Sounds Profitable ThoughtLeaders Partner Intelligence Solution Elsie Bernaiche, Director of Sales at ThoughtLeaders, joins us for our latest product deepdive into the ThoughtLeaders Partner Intelligence Solution. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Podcasting overtakes talk radio, CPMs increase, video game ads counting as podcast downloads, and Publishers test personalizing newsletters. Podcasting overtakes talk radio, CPMs increase Manuela: For today’s first segment we’re going to cover two recent pieces about industry growth. First, Kurt Hanson’s Rain News recap of the Audioscape 2022 talk by Cumulus Media executive Pierre Bouvard. The biggest eye-catching number from Bouvard’s presentation of Edison Research media involves how the 18-34 age group spends their weekly time listening to talk or personality-driven audio content. Terrestrial radio has been overtaken in this bracket, with podcasts taking 60% of those listening hours. “Even within the older demos of 25-54 and 35-64, podcast listening’s share of talk/personality listening is high — 47% and 39%, respectively, with those numbers up nearly double and more than triple, respectively, compared to five years ago.” Continuing the trend of good news from new data, Libsyn’s Advertisecast has published their Podcast Advertising Rates 2022 report. The presentation is compiled from reporting data provided by 2,985 podcasts. Podnews editor James Cridland reported on Monday: “There has been a jump in the average CPM for podcast advertising, according to Libsyn’s AdvertiseCast: the average is now $24.35, the second-highest on record. It’s up 3.7% month-on-month, or 5% year-on-year.” Podcasting continues its upward climb. More listener share over radio and growing CPMs sounds like a good thing to us. A follow-up on video game ads counting as podcast downloads. Shreya: Last week we covered Ashely Carman’s piece covering podcast companies, most notably iHeartRadio, purchasing downloads via mobile game ads. In a follow-up piece covering industry reactions posted last Thursday, Carman got official comment from the Interactive Advertising Bureau. “The standards are in a continual state of review,” said Eric John, vice president of the media center at the IAB. “We’re trying to ski to where the puck is going ultimately, and we’re going to make standards to match the industry’s needs.” On the same day Podnews reported a response from Podtrac explaining why the gaming ads only playing 20 seconds of an episode of were counted as full downloads. “It’s our understanding they appear as browser traffic without a unique user agent (or [unique] IP address). These downloads don’t have a material impact on the publisher rankings including the rank order of the top publishers.” Then, in related news, HotPod reported on an InsideRadio piece covering Podtrac suspending its weekly data newsletter after iHeart stopped sponsoring the project. The decision was reportedly made over a month ago. According to HotPod, the last data tracker email they’d received was published September 13th, while the last one with iHeartRadio branding had been sent August 15th. Since the HotPod publication went live, InsideRadio - a company owned by iHeartMedia - has pulled their Podtrac story. Publishers test personalizing newsletters with varying degrees of success Manuela: Last Wednesday Digiday’s Sara Guaglione reported the experiences of publishers who experimented with using tools to generate personalized newsletters for subscribers. We’re covering it here as the tools and methodology involved might just be of interest to podcasting. From the article: “As companies like The New York Times and The Washington Post experiment with personalizing their homepages to get readers to consume more articles, publishers are also tweaking newsletters to serve readers’ specific interests and behaviors — but to varying degrees of success. The piece opens with the success story of The Telegraph, which has run the personalized newsletter Headlines for a year. Each time a newsletter needs to be sent, an algorithm selects vertical-specific content recommendations based on browsing history, including making sure to not recommend articles the subscriber has already read. The Telegraph reports higher click-through rates, page views per click, and time spent on the website from Headlines subscribers vs. their standard hand-built newsletters. In contrast, publications like The Toronto Star have tried similar things and found little to no results. Newsroom director David Topping told Digiday: Most newsletter subscribers “seem pretty happy getting what everyone else got,” Topping said. The personalized newsletter drove engagement for a “niche audience” who wanted tailored recommendations but it wasn’t “necessarily something that’s going to move the needle,” he added.” Niche audiences are a thing podcasting does well. The recommendation tech used to create these newsletters could be of use in the podcasting industry. An individual news podcast could build itself live akin to how Spooler allows The Refresh to add new segments on the fly. Except, with a recommendation engine, a news podcast could be constructed of only segments the recommendation tool knows the l

With the release of We’ll Be Right Back, part two of After These Messages, Tom Webster has a few questions about promo codes. Is it time to change how we use them? Credits: Written by Tom Webster Edited by Tom Webster Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sounds Profitable is two years old this month! Founder Bryan Barletta talks about just how far we’ve come in 24 short months, and where we are headed next as we continue to serve our mission to push podcasting forward and set the course for the future of the audio business. Credits: Written by Bryan Barletta Edited by Bryan Barletta Produced with Spooler.fm Hosted with Omny Studio Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week: Podcasts found using mobile game ads for downloads, a trio of new pixels announced, and the Independent is reframing programmatic for advertisers. Podcasters Are Buying Millions of Listeners Through Mobile-Game Ads Manuela: Our first story is a big one! This Tuesday, Bloomberg’s Ashely Carman published a piece reporting on the discovery that podcast companies are serving podcast players as ads in mobile games. For those not hip to mobile gaming: free-to-play mobile video games traditionally generate revenue by interrupting gameplay on a regular basis with a skippable ad, with the option to watch a 20 second unskippable ad in exchange they receive beneficial in-game items, or more attempts to play that day. Instead of serving a video ad, which is one of the more common uses of these platforms, some companies are serving a web player that plays the an episode of a podcast. The ads are timed, requiring the app user to interact for often 20 seconds or more, which is more than enough time to download an entire 1 hour podcast through progressive downloading. That download and every ad in that download would be seen as legitimate by current IAB podcast standards, even though the app user was prompted to move out of the ad and back to the game after the timer ended.Ad fraud detection company DeepSee’s August examination of ads in the popular game Subway Surfers spotted podcasts from the New York Post, independent podcaster Scott Savlov, and iHeartMedia. Carman interviewed Corey Weiner, CEO of Jun Group, a company specializing in placing ads in mobile apps. The starting rate for Jun Group placement is a $27 CPM for one of the 20 second ads. Jun Group’s main podcast client is iHeartMedia. “According to a person familiar with the effort, the radio company, which bills itself as the top podcast publisher globally, has shelled out more than $10 million and gained approximately 6 million unique listeners per month through these ads since 2018."During the last week of August, half of the top ten trending podcasts in Podtrac were iHeart productions that hadn’t uploaded new episodes in weeks, if not months, according to Carmen. Podtrac is an industry ranker that only measures podcasts that opt into their platform’s prefix analytics solution, and recently independent developer John Spurlock identified that Spreaker from iHeart had added the prefix to podcasts on their platform en masse. Yesterday Podnews published exclusive info regarding iHeart rankings: “Are these plays counting for iHeart’s “#1 for podcasting” Podtrac ranking? Podnews analysis confirms that the embedded podcast players used, as documented by DeepSee, makes a call to Chartable and a call to Podtrac.” Podnews editor James Cridland then links to Podnews coverage of a 2018 story in which iHeartMedia was busted embedding podcasts on the websites of hundreds of affiliate radio stations, inflating play counts.The core problem that led to this story existing lies in the fact that there are minimal requirements for podcast players and not requirements for reporting transparency to podcast advertisers. Podcast players like Apple are Spotify are safe to trust as one can be 99% sure it’s coming from their apps. Even web player traffic is generally trustworthy given it’s assigned less inventory in general. That said, it’s time for the industry to figure out stricter guidelines for web players and more obligations to our advertisers.It’s not immediately clear what the finite details of a solution will be, but if all the big players in the industry came together for the sake of transparency they can build something. Something that would get publishers and advertisers alike reevaluating what inventory is or isn’t valuable based on where it’s played rather than simply if it’s played. Pixels Galore - Podscribe and Gumball launch podcast analytics, and Magellan launches attribution Shreya: Time to increase your resolution, several new pixels have recently arrived in podcasting. First up: a little trip to the past. Back on August 11th Podscribe announced third party impression verification. Or, in their words, third pod-y impression verification. Once users get the pixel to their publisher they will receive real-time downloads. “As early publishers in all other seasoned media forms discovered, 3rd party verification both facilitates and is required for significant scale.” The new verification comes designed to automatically sync to Google Sheets, allows for flagging of campaigns if suspicious data starts coming in, and GARM methodology brand safety monitoring. Flashing forward to last Thursday, our second pixel comes from Magellan AI with their new Attribution by Magellan AI. With the new Attribution tech both advertisers and publishers will have details like campaign performance and pacing at their fingertips within the Magellan AI dashboard. “We are helping brands and agencies complete the entire buyer’s journey in one seamless location to enable them to scale w

This week: Serial and the importance of content curation, Spotify launches audiobooks, Spanish-language TV is surging, why Wonder Media Network won’t use programmatic, and SirusXM is no longer the biggest podcast network by reach. Let’s get started. Serial and the importance of content curation. Manuela: Last week news broke that prosecution would petition for the release of Adnan Syed, whose case was the subject of the first season of Serial. Since then Syed has been officially released. In the interim conversation regarding the case and the part Serial played in popularizing it reached a boiling point on social media. On Friday the 16th attorney Rabia O’Chaudry, host of Undisclosed and the person who originally brought Syed’s case to the attention of Sarah Koenig, tweeted an analogy for how Serial fit into the narrative of Syed’s release: “Imagine you ask someone to help renovate your house. Instead they set fire to it. The story about the fire brings thousands to your aid that rebuild your house.” Media critic and true crime aficionado Rebecca Lavoie quote-tweeted O’Chaudry to start a thread with an important lesson to be learned from Serial. “I have previously heralded Serial as a seminal piece of media and even made a podcast originally based on reviewing it. But given the facts of the case, Rabia’s analogy is precise. Serial doesn’t hold up. And its biggest crime is its abandonment of its own reporting.”Lavoie details several sections of the popular podcast that contain outdated or inaccurate knowledge with seven years of hindsight that, due to the podcast’s popularity, are still being discovered by brand new podcast listeners with. No warnings or amendments have been placed on the original season of Serial. “I am not saying that Sarah Koenig et al have an obligation to report this story forever. But…the owners of the Serial feed (now [The New York Times]) have an absolute obligation to point news consumers to the latest… news.”Lavoie points to dynamic ad insertion tech and how it could be used to retroactively place a warning giving context without having to manually update each episode’s file. Given last year’s scandal with Caliphate, the NYT is no stranger to retroactively adding disclaimers to its own in-house reporting. Lavoie argues they have the same level of responsibility to maintain legacy feeds. Even the most popular true crime podcast in the industry is not above poor reporting or claims that were later disproven by new evidence. Despite being seven years old, Serial’s popularity means statistically it’s still someone’s first podcast in 2022. Spotify Offers Audiobook Service with 300,000 Titles Shreya: This Tuesday Spotify announced the launch of their audiobook platform. “Starting today, Spotify listeners in the U.S. will be able to purchase and listen to more than 300,000 audiobook titles—making our platform a true all-in-one destination for everyone’s listening needs. And we’re excited to launch audiobooks with a brand-new user interface that’s geared specifically for listening to audiobooks and fits them seamlessly alongside the music and podcasts you already listen to and love.” The new audiobook interface includes an in-app purchase screen to buy each individual audiobook. Most popular audiobook platforms, like Audible or Libro.fm, use a monthly subscription system that gives users a set amount of credits to exchange for audiobooks at a rate that costs less than purchasing them retail. Spotify’s model requires a Premium Spotify membership for the ability to purchase audiobooks.Press materials include a series of four screenshots depicting the purchase of Colleen Hoover’s novel It Ends with Us for $13.99, on sale from a normal listing of $17.99. This pricing is in lockstep with the average retail cost of the same book at popular audiobook providers Google Play, Kobo, and Audible if the user is not a subscriber. With this addition Spotify is now a one-stop shop for the casual user. While it might not attract many users specifically for the audiobook functionality, any user who listens to music or podcasts with Premium has the ability to buy audiobooks and listen without leaving the app they’re already paying for. Spanish-Language TV viewership surges despite mishandled metrics, lackluster representation. Manuela: As is becoming common on The Download, this segment will discuss two articles that are closely related. First off: Spanish-language TV Viewership is Surging by Kelsey Sutton for MarketingBrew. The headline leads into a subheader explaining the surge is accompanied by poor measurement leading to under-investing. Now things are turning around. “We’re sure you’ve heard it about a million times: linear TV viewership is, on average, not looking good. But there’s one segment of old-fashioned TV whose outlook seems downright rosy. Spanish-language TV networks, including mainstays like Univision and Telemundo, are on the upswing, growing daily audience reach even as many other major n