Sounds Profitable

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Caila Litman, author of Sounds Profitable's #GoodData series and longtime podcast industry professional, is on the show today. It's a special episode—sans regular host Bryan Barletta. Caila and Arielle Nissenblatt, who you usually hear at the top and bottom of each episode, discuss all things Good Data. If you've been wondering how our Good Data series came to be and what our goals are for it, this episode is for you. Listen in to learn about: How Caila finds, dissects, and evaluates data Caila's background (hint, she doesn't come from a math/statistics standpoint) Caila's goals for the #GoodData series and how she sees it evolving over the next few months Some of Caila's favorite recent stats from Nielsen and Edison Research The emergence of the "lighter listener" And much more! Here's our favorite idea from this conversation: Nielsen data has shown that COVID has propelled an emergence of the "lighter listener," people who don't listen to hours and hours of audio each week, but something closer to 1-2 hours. This is an opportunity for advertisers to target newer listeners. Links: Caila's first article Caila's second article Connect with Caila Litman Submit to The Podscape Podsights SquadCast The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Evo Terra is the executive producer of Sounds Profitable: Adtech Applied Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Download from Sounds Profitable; big names in podcasting are pulling down big numbers in ad revenue, Meta and Mozilla have teamed up to change advertising privacy, and TikTok might not be the #1 place to take short-form podcast content. https://www.morningbrew.com/marketing/stories/2022/02/25/ads-from-major-brands-are-running-on-news-sites-owned-by-or-linked-to-the-russian-government?utm_campaign=mkb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew&mid=4afb33bb7ffe284d840660fb3604ff60. Ryan Barwick of Morning Brew wrote a brief rundown of the situation last Friday. According to a Business Insider report, Google AdSense has been found on publishers of Russian state propaganda. “While on those sites, BI observed Google-served ads from Best Buy, Progressive, and Allbirds, and a handful of other brands. Marketing Brew also saw ads for brands on these two sites, but a banner ad atop several stories was blocked by Integral Ad Science, a brand-safety firm.” Barwick then pairs this evidence of brand safety kind-of working with the infamously-timed Applebee’s promotion that aired in a split-screen ad break with footage of Kyiv under siege. The ad, featuring footage of a man in a cowboy hat gyrating his butt in glee over $1 boneless chicken wings, went viral on social media for its grim pairing with footage of burning buildings. “What do these stories have in common? Funding journalism. Advertisers often don’t want to fund inflammatory, hateful, or controversial content. While brand-safety tech might help marketers avoid having their ads showing up on propaganda sites, it can also direct their ads away from legitimate coverage of political or other sensitive topics, inadvertently hurting newsrooms as a result.” Both the propaganda site ad serves and Applebee’s pulling from CNN serve as evidence of extremes of what could happen in similar spheres of podcasting. To ignore brand safety and the messaging of associated programs is a recipe for being associated with disinformation and propaganda. To overcorrect and leave the space entirely could leave journalism podcasts without the stability of CNN in a financial pickle. https://www.morningbrew.com/marketing/stories/2022/02/24/audio-giants-report-ad-revenue-gains-for-2021?utm_campaign=mkb&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=morning_brew&mid=4afb33bb7ffe284d840660fb3604ff60. SiriusXM, Spotify, Acast, and iHeartMedia all show significant growth. Both Spotify and Acast posted a 40% year-over-year increase for ad revenue while SiriusXM-owned Pandora experienced a 30% growth. The biggest headline-grabber of the bunch, though, is iHeartMedia “Q4 revenue grew 59% in iHeartMedia’s ‘Digital Audio Group’ division, which encompasses iHeartMedia’s podcasting business, digital service, and ad-tech companies. Podcast revenue alone increased 130% YoY. The company said the growth was partly due to ‘general increased demand for digital advertising’ and ‘the growing popularity of podcasting.” It appears the industry-wide trope of saying podcasting ads are fast-growing is less of a marketing pitch and more a truism as more companies rake in those fast-growing profits. Up next we have a story shuffled into the digital stack of news and left by the wayside: Spotify appears to be better at announcing podcast deals than actually publishing podcasts. https://www.businessinsider.com/spotify-star-podcast-partners-few-shows-insiders-tumult-2022-2, much of the original reporting on the subject was done by Podnews’ James Cridland in the December article https://podnews.net/article/missing-spotify-shows As Cridland and others report: a great deal of splashy Spotify projects announced since December of 2020 have yet to come to fruition. Some announcements were vague deals akin to a popular actor signing a multi-picture deal with a prominent movie studio. Others, however, appear to have died on the vine. Warner Brothers and DC Entertainment’s celebrity-studded Batman audio fiction series has fallen off the radar since announcing its cast last June. British royalty power couple Meghan and Harry signed up in December of 2020. The most concerning is Kim Kardashian West’s partnership with Spotify and Parcast. Cridland writes “In March 2021 she hinted she was ready to release her episodes. Where are they?” https://www.emarketer.com/content/tiktok-short-video-app-us?ecid=NL1001 In fact, the data gathered by CensusWide in late January puts TikTok in third place with 53.9% of respondents sixteen and up. The top two are Facebook and YouTube with 60.8 and 77.9% respectively. As podcasters explore video podcasting, or simply video clips promoting their shows, TikTok is constantly brought up. The format of what makes a successful Facebook or YouTube video are far different than what pleases TikTok’s famous algorithm, making it difficult to reuse assets. The results of this study seem to imply that while TikTok is valuable, those new to video as an advertising medium would have a bette

The full Super Listeners Study is available here: https://www.edisonresearch.com/super-listeners-2021-from-edison-research-and-ad-results-media/Support the show at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pierre Bouvard, Chief Insights Officer at Cumulus Media, is on the show today to speak with Bryan Barletta about what podcasting can learn from radio and other legacy media. Bouvard develops media and marketing insights to support Cumulus's 1300+ media sellers. He works with brands and agencies to craft targeting and measurement solutions. As always, Arielle Nissenblatt joins Bryan at the top of the show to introduce the conversation. She then rejoins after the chat to break it all down, giving listeners actionable next steps. Listen in to learn about: Bryan and Arielle's favorite radio stations Why Bryan and Pierre think ads should be no longer than 90 seconds How to write impactful ad copy for audio What the listening public really thinks about ads on their podcasts (i.e. did you know they'd be ok with more?) Listener behavior as it relates to advertisement consumption on podcasts and on radio An instructive note from Bryan about updating your pitch decks! And much more! Here's our favorite idea from this conversation: The job of advertising is to help a brand or product be known before they’re needed. Links: The Download Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles Pierre Bouvard Cumulus Media Signal Hill Insights Submit to The Podscape Podsights SquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Evo Terra is the executive producer of Sounds Profitable: Adtech Applied Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Download, Libsyn grows monetization, LinkedIn launches a podcast network, and what the new Privacy Sandbox feature for Android means for marketers. Let’s get started. Libsyn has bought another podcast representation firm, this time acquiring PAR - Podcast Ad Reps. With the acquisition LibSyn brings around 120 podcasts that were currently under representation with PAR under the LibSyn-owned AdvertiseCast banner, further building out the company’s monetization arm. According to Libsyn CEO Brad Tirpak in the official press release: “With the acquisitions of AdvertiseCast in June 2021 and now PAR, Libsyn is well-positioned to continue to rapidly scale in the podcast advertising market, which PWC estimates will reach around $3.5 billion by 2025. We plan to continue to invest in our award-winning hosting platform, expand both our host-read and programmatic advertising efforts, and look for new ways to make Libsyn the preferred destination for both creators and advertisers.” All of this continues to show another side of Libsyn, a company that previously swore it would never have a free hosting platform and was anti-targeted advertising is now a large, tech-focused ad platform. Australian podcast producer LiSTNR has branched out into audio fiction. From Radio Today’s Kim Napier: “LiSTNR is investing in audio fiction with book adaptations by Australian authors to bring audiences compelling audio stories, with Bryden Media casting Australian actors to deliver the stories in different podcast formats as episodic series or audio movies.” Both LiSTNR’s slated audio movies and standard serialized audio fiction podcast adaptations reflect a building synergy and momentum between podcasting and publishers, two factions that’ve circled each other since before the coining of the term podcast. Until now audio fiction as a genre has remained a largely under-utilized sector of podcasting. With industry moves like this, we could be seeing enough momentum building to change that for the better. Over on The Rebooting’s Substack newsletter, Brian Morrissey has published a piece titled “End of an era of ad targeting: Publishers will need closer ties to their audiences.” In addition to being an excellent overview of privacy on the web and how business has worked to take full advantage, Morrissey stresses the importance of adapting with changing tech. “Primary-engagement media will gain. As I’ve written, I believe the next phase of digital publishing will favor quality over quantity in terms of audiences. Those publishing brands that put community at their core will thrive since it easily lends itself to a direct relationship that will make those audiences far more valuable than a random collection of people who mindlessly tapped a link on their Facebook feed. There’s a reason that Squarespace found podcasts such an efficient way to acquire customers. The newsletter boom is a signal of where publishing is going.” Morrissey reflects on the very first ad sold on the internet circa 1994 as a reflection of how much online marketing has changed and what modern advertising can learn from the mistakes made back then that’re still made today. It’s time to update that profile you’ve been neglecting. Business-focused social media network LinkedIn launched a podcast network on Wednesday. The network has a dozen shows at launch that, according to protocol’s Veronica Irwin will, “...cover topics ranging from mental health to startup trends. With the announcement, LinkedIn joins the ranks of tech companies attempting to become the favorite hub of content creators and influencers.” The social network’s launch appears to have gone incredibly well, with their flagship show “Hello Monday,” gaining 4 million downloads in its first day. Over on Digiday, Ronan Shields and Seb Joseph have made a post aiming to decode the implications of Google’s nebulous new Android feature Privacy Sandbox for advertisers. “The main takeaway: Google says it will work with the industry to establish a set of technical standards that will enable ad targeting and measurement online after traditional targeting tools, like mobile identifiers, are retired on its Android devices. Why is this important? It’s pitched as the inverse of Apple’s own scorched earth plan to do something similar.” While Privacy Sandbox might be of some concern eventually, maybe, Shields and Joseph’s interpretation of existing news suggests: “...marketers needn’t panic over the latest announcement.” At the risk of this becoming a regular segment, we’ve got another article the staff of The Download recommend checking out. This week: “What is Podcasting 2.0, and why is it important” by Podcode’s Mark Steadman. While ostensibly written for podcasters, namespace changes are something the people in the business of podcasting need to be aware of, if not outright adopt. Steadman’s primer on podcasting 2.0 is a great start. The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted b

Sean Howard, founder of Flightpath and of Fable and Folly, talks with Bryan about solving for pain points in adtech, collaboration with your competitors, and how we're truly only at the beginning of podcasting. Sean Howard of Flightpath Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!Join the Podscape Podcast: https://bit.ly/3rHLxgDCheck out The Download: https://omny.fm/shows/the-download-from-sounds-profitableSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Download, Amazon continues their streak of signing exclusivity deals, agents are becoming more of a common site in podcasting, and Spotify buys both Podsights and Charitable. Good news for those who missed Ad Result Media and Edison Research’s big webinar on 2021 data from Super Listeners: Caila Litman live-tweeted the event! Litman, author of Sound Profitable’s column #GoodData, posted a thread of 17 tweets containing screenshots and quotes full of juicy data. According to the thread, podcast power users are eagerly engaging with podcast advertising. 74% Super Listeners are visiting a product or service’s website after hearing it promoted on a favorite podcast. 53% of those listeners agree they have a more positive opinion of a company when it’s mentioned on a podcast they regularly listen to. A 9% increase from 2019 data on the same question. After last week’s Amazon-heavy coverage we’re mixing things up with... another Amazon acquisition! Amazon Music and Wondery have signed How I Built This with Guy Raz. The deal gives Wondery exclusive ad sales and YouTube distribution rights for simulcasts while all new podcast episodes will have Amazon Music exclusivity for one week. Meanwhile, NPR keeps radio distribution rights and underwriting credits. In addition, How I Built This will ramp up to a twice-weekly upload schedule. Amazon’s just getting started in podcasting and deals like this indicate podcast ads are clearly working for them. In addition, their premium Wondery+ subscriptions in their own bespoke app and through Apple Podcast subscriptions are working well enough to continue obtaining more timed exclusive content. Now we find Amazon at an interesting moment in regards to acquisitions. They’ve got Art19 for tech, Amazon Music for distribution, and Wondery to produce and publish content. Their biggest space for growth is ad sales, something that might change if their offer to buy Audioboom is chosen over competitor Spotify. If big green gets the company, they effectively buy a company that does something they can already do well. Buying Audioboom would effectively eliminate competition in their field. If Amazon gets the purchase they get closer to a full package of podcast monetization that will become incredibly hard to compete with. For brevity’s sake, we’ve combined two stories into one segment, as iHeartMedia appears to be in the mood to form partnerships this week. Partnership number one: iHeart partners with Sounder to bring brand safety to audio. At the moment, all current brand safety and suitability solutions are built for text. If one wants to turn one of those services on for podcasting, the podcast has to be transcribed. This partnership provides similar value to what Adswizz and Acast implemented with Comscore to contextually categorize their inventory for targeting and brand suitability. This is just a first step, though, as the data has to be actionable by buyers, sellers, and planners in their tools directly. As things currently stand, it feels like the overall podcast industry would benefit more from building a unified framework to tackle this problem than everyone splitting off and doing duplicate work to build their own solution. And partnership number two: iHeart is looking to broaden its global podcast outreach by partnering with Veritone to use their translation and synthetic voice AI tech to, as Brad Hill reports on RAIN News “translate and synthetically voice iHeart’s leading podcasts for Spanish-speaking markets.” With this Veritone partnership, iHeart is on track to be able to have their more popular podcasts available in global markets via synthetic translated voices. Our Valentine’s gift this year is an article from The Hollywood Reporter’s J. Clara Chan interviewing talent agents tasked with signing big podcasts. Podcasting is growing fast and a big sign of that is the prevalence of agents. Behind every big acquisition story is an agent getting into a relatively new field and helping the producer. With the industry growing at an exponential rate podcasting has a growing need for representation and agents seem to be stepping up to rep shows big and small. Chan reports: “As Hollywood fully buys into podcasting, multimillion-dollar deals are the norm for the crème de la crème of shows, while a growing audio advertising marketplace has allowed more podcasters to make a good living off their work as the industry is expected to exceed $2 billion in ad revenue next year. The major talent agencies have jumped on the train and are building out their audio divisions, with agents increasingly working on podcast deals with clients.” The big players in podcasting are chasing the new trend of acquiring IP to adapt, and agents are taking notice. Finally, the biggest news in podcasting this week: Spotify has purchased both Podsights and Chartable. With the acquisition, the podcast measurement service Podsights will remain available to the public. Quoting from Tech Crunch’s Sa

Jordan Bentley, Founder of Audiohook, talks with Bryan about transparency, waterfalls, programmatic advertising, and how Podcasting still has a chance to start things the right way to lead to a better future. Jordan Bentley of Audiohook Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!Join the Podscape Podcast: https://bit.ly/3rHLxgDCheck out The Download: https://omny.fm/shows/the-download-from-sounds-profitableSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Download: Today: Amazon inherits a celeb-powered podcasting company, new ad revenue numbers forecast good news for podcast investment, and a new op-ed asks where has Facebook’s fervor for podcasting gone? Celebrity chat podcast Smartless, hosted by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes, recently launched production house SmartLess Media. With former Jon Stewart-era Daily Show producer Richard Korson at the reins as president, SmartLess Media is poised to add multiple new stars to the relatively small constellation of Amazon-owned podcasts. The new company has sprung into existence following a prior deal in which the trio of celebs licensed the podcast SmartLess to Amazon Music and Wondery in a deal, as reported by Deadline’s Peter White, “thought to be valued at between 60 million to 80 million.” According to White, this deal also extends to shows created by the fledgling production house, meaning SmartLess Media’s promised slate of “weekly series, narrative, and limited podcasts,” are subject to first-look exclusivity with Amazon. It appears through careful future-proofing and investment during the licensing deal when SmartLess was just one podcast feed, the shopping and streaming conglomerate has inherited a celebrity-fronted production company wholecloth. And they continue to have rights to the original product’s momentum, which currently fuels a cross-country live tour set to wrap up this weekend. Speaking of Amazon: in a first for the company, Amazon has broken down its advertising revenue as a distinct category instead of bundling it with other earnings. The decision to do so now and not last year when they posted a ten billion profit increase from 2020 to 2021 remains unseen, but we’ll take it. According to Business Insider “at $9.7 billion in the quarter, up 32% year-over-year, ad revenue was one of Amazon's fastest-growing areas.” With their fostering SmartLess from a simple podcast acquisition into a brand-new source of content production, Amazon appears to show no sign of slowing growth in media properties that can help fuel this advertising boom. Amazon’s continued heavy spending in podcasting could be an indicator they believe in the medium’s ability to help continue ad revenue growth. Continuing the theme of growth: eCommerce is on the rise globally. Sara Lebow of eMarketer provides statistics breaking down the top ten countries with the biggest increase in ecommerce made over any internet-capable device that excludes travel, bill payments, gambling, food service, or anything that falls under the “vice good” umbrella. To quote the article: “The Philippines and India will lead the world in retail ecommerce sales growth this year, with respective increases of 25.9% and 25.5%. Countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia will make up most of the top 10 list, while the last spot will go to the US, the only advanced economy to slide into the rankings, with 15.9% growth.” A significant portion of podcast advertising is still direct-to-consumer and significantly focused on the US. The country that’s coming in tenth out of the top ten. That, combined with emerging podcast markets or strong pre-existing histories with audio in countries represented in the top nine shows podcast advertising has room to grow. Growth that might shift to bucking the existing status quo of purely targeting North American customers. New podcasting app Fountain aims to make things easier for podcasters to receive tips from their audience in the form of Bitcoin Lightning, a system simplifying the process of transferring one hundred millionths of Bitcoin between users. The biggest barriers to entry for such a scheme have been the need of a digital wallet, the process of buying crypto for said wallet, and the ID of another person’s wallet to be able to transfer the crypto to an intended recipient. While those hurdles still exist for the person intending to send the money, startup Fountain solves the initial problems for podcasters on the receiving end of Value 4 Value transactions by creating a wallet on their behalf. Several larger podcasts have embraced the service, including Jack Rhysider’s Darknet Diaries. In this week’s Hot Pod Insider, Ashley Carman published an op-ed about Meta (nee Facebook), their profit woes, and the question mark that leaves for Facebook podcasting. Carman writes: “I wondered if brands would start spending more money on podcast ads simply because Facebook’s aren’t as powerful. Maybe that’s worth another check-in, but instead, I’m now wondering how this tech informs Facebook’s decision to pursue podcasts on its platform.” With the social media giant reporting a decline in users for the first time in its existence alongside declining profits, a second “pivot to video,” and a full-throated commitment to rebranding VR gaming headsets as office supplies, Facebook’s previous interest in embracing podcasts seems to have been lost in the shuffle. Quote “I’m unclear where that team stands or

Claire Atkin, co-founder of the brilliant non-profit Check My Ads, talks with Bryan about disinformation, ad accountability, and the steps you should be taking to make sure your brand is being seen where you want it to. Claire Atkin of Check My Ads Link discussed in Episode:https://checkmyads.org/branded/ Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!Join the Podscape Podcast: https://bit.ly/3rHLxgDCheck out The Download: https://omny.fm/shows/the-download-from-sounds-profitableSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Download: is the IAB on borrowed time?, podcast ads see big gains again, Google makes misinformation less profitable, podcasts grow globally, SXM enters the identity game, and Spotify stands behind Rogan even as earnings fall. Let's get started. Neilsen spells doom for IAB In the world of TV, Nielsen measurement has been the defacto solution that deals are guaranteed against for decades. But now, according to https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/advertisers-tv-networks-plan-to-set-nielsen-alternatives-as-shadow-currencies-in-this-years-upfront-negotiations/ and for some publishers and campaigns, replacing them completely. Nielsen took its fair share of lumps last year, with the https://www.adexchanger.com/tv-2/an-update-on-nielsens-re-accreditation-journey-and-whats-next-for-the-mrc/#:~:text=In%20late%20August%2C%20the%20MRC%27s,media%20companies%20finally%20boiled%20over.&text=The%20MRC%20released%20its%20final,measurement%20standards%20in%20September%202019.. And with their newly announced plans for Nielson One, a cross-measurement product, there is a lot of comfort in using new measurement partners in parallel to compare to current Nielsen reporting, while publishers determine their path forward. Incumbent measurement solutions are incredibly hard to shake, and this change in the TV landscape doesn’t mean that overnight, Nielsen won’t be the primary solution or that they’ll ever necessarily lose that top spot. But it does mean that any measurement solution that represents an industry can and should be challenged, to better represent the industry and all those participating in it. IAB measurement of podcasting may be the default today, but we should always keep an open mind to better opportunities. Podcast Ads See Big Gains—Again! Good news for the podcast advertising industry! https://www.advertisecast.com/podcast-advertising-rates Their most recent study of the 2,515 podcasts tracked shows that aggregate or the average CPM is now $25.37, which is up from $22.50 this time last year. Doing the quick math shows that’s an increase of 12.7%. Nice And the news is even better for shows with the largest audiences. According to AdvertiseCast’s data, shows that see over 100K downloads are getting an average of $23.08, up from $20.09 a year ago. That’s a 14.6% increase year over year, and great news for the growing value of podcast advertising. CheckMyAds Makes Misinformation Less Profitable The nonprofit adtech industry watchdog CheckMyAds continues to gain traction on holding platforms accountable for monetizing disinformation content. https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/370781/google-stops-serving-ads-to-website-of-fox-news-ho.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=125147&hashid=u70GlKs7RsqyAMPsHBEpeg. This comes just a week after YouTube permanently banned Bongino from the platform for, you guessed it, repeated violations of YouTube’s COVID misinformation policy. Quoting from the piece: It is not clear how much revenue Bongino will lose as a result of the Google Ads and YouTube bans. However, as Engadget noted, https://twitter.com/catthekin/status/1487108665513439240?s=20&t=P7thsM49qVb6LebdNzOD1Q, co-founder of the digital disinformation-fighting nonprofit https://checkmyads.org/, tweeted that Gateway Pundit lost $1.1 million in annual revenue after its Google AdSense account was revoked for spreading COVID and election misinformation. Quick side note: Clair Atkin is my guest on the next episode Sounds Profitable: Adtech Applied, if you are not already subscribed. What’s most interesting is Google, at least with their ad platform, doesn't have to make a decision on whether to censor content or not. Instead, they make the decision whether or not to fund it through their ad solutions. So sure, you can say anything you want on your own platform. But with this move, Google is saying pick someone else to make it profitable, a trend we hope to see echoed through all of media. Growing Podcasts Globally Every indicator shows podcasting has had a heck of a growth trajectory over the last few years. But even though we count our numbers now in the millions, it’s still dominated by English-speaking podcasts. But that may be changing. In https://digiday.com/media/how-podcast-publishers-and-platforms-are-working-to-grow-non-english-language-audiences/. Quoting from the piece: Of the 600,000-plus podcasts that launched in 2021 [that had declared] a language [in the RSS feed], a majority – 53% – tagged a non-English language, according to [Dave] Zohrob [of Chartable]. By contrast, in 2020 less than half of the 900,000 new podcasts debuted in 2020 were in non-English languages. Knowing that the majority of new podcasts launched last year are presenting information in a language other than English is a huge turning point for the global-ness of podcasting, which should be welcome news for any podcasting business looking to expand their global foot

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Today on The Download: is the IAB on borrowed time?, podcast ads see big gains again, Google makes misinformation less profitable, podcasts grow globally, SXM enters the identity game, and Spotify stands behind Rogan even as earnings fall. HBO Max is Hiring For Their Podcast Marketing Team Subscription streaming video service HBO Max continues to prove its serious about podcasting. Their first venture into the space dropped last summer with Batman: The Audio Adventures, an exclusive podcast that could only be listened to in HBO Max app itself.While HBO maintains podcast channels on Spotify and Apple for related content, just like their peers at Netflix, this is the first podcast to be exclusively hosted in a subscription video streaming app.Now, they're looking to hire a new role, specifically for podcasting under the HBO Max brand. The role is for a Sr. Analyst, Direct-to-Consumer, Podcasting Strategy & Operations, and will “provide strategic and analytic support on various projects covering direct-to-consumer and HBO Max Podcasting initiatives. Interactive Voices Lack Diversity If you missed CES 2022 because... well, reasons; you probably saw a plenty of breathless reporting of new prototypes and maybe-coming-in-the-future tech. Steve Keller, Sonic Strategy Director for Studio Resonate, SXM’s audio-first creative consultancy has an in-depth piece on things he noticed at the event of interest to audio people like us. Like a lot of tech around the explosion of interactive voice systems. But he also noticed something else: Quoting from the piece: But something was missing. Innovation aside, the lack of sonic diversity in the voice sector was disturbing. [P]ractically all the AI voices we heard at CES 2022 were female—and white. In fact, the only voice assistant of color heard was during a series of sessions focused on voice technology, curated and moderated by attn.live CEO, Ian Utile. Multiple panelists affirmed that there’s an underlying problem with the overwhelmingly white, male demographics of the AI world who are unconsciously programming biases, sonic color lines, and digital discrimination into voice systems. As a result, the default voice of automotive assistants, connected homes, and a plethora of other devices is white. The issue is compounded by the fact that these assistants, designed to serve us, are also predominantly female. It’s a systemic problem, and developers and brands need to work harder to sonically diversify their voice systems, as well as the designers, engineers, and developers who create them. With DEI so high on the priority list for most companies, it’s surprising this problem exists. No, wait. It’s not surprising at all, is it? Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts Replaced by Topics While third-party cookies aren’t part of the information we receive from listeners in podcasting, they are a big part of the device graphs we use to augment what we do receive and improve how we run attribution. So while Safari and Firefox kicked them completely to the curb in 2020, Google has pushed out their deadline for when they’re twilight third-party cookies until 2023. And their original pitch, Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC for short, has now been scrapped for what they’re calling Topics. FLoC grouped audiences based on their browsing activity at a very granular level, where Topics focuses on applying a list of topics, starting at around 300 but expected to be in the thousands, directly to the individual. Only the top three most prevalent Topics will be available for targeting and identification, but what’s really interesting is that they expire every three weeks, keeping them increasingly fresh and relevant. Topics fit in nicely with the contextual offerings that podcasting is primed to offer advertisers if we continue to prioritize transcription and contextual targeting. Podcasting Only Looks Hit-Resistant If you somehow avoided the kerfuffle over the Bloomberg Article where Lucas Shaw reported on podcasting’s inability to generate a current hit... well, I’m not sure how you did. There have been a lot of hot takes on the article, but one worthy of your attention was penned by Tom Webster in his weekly newsletter, I Hear Things.It’s a fascinating read, with Tom pointing out that other mediums, like movies, television programs, and music all have the same “problem”. They just present differently. Examining the top movies from last year, Tom notes: Even if you go further down the list from the top 10, it's sequels, movies based on existing properties, and remakes. Is it fair to say that the movie industry hasn't produced a new hit in years? No--all the above movies are new movies, but they are familiar at the same time. He goes on to make a similar case for popular television programs - The Bachelor season 26, anyone? - and even music, going so far as to craft metaphors around melody and harmony to predict a hit. Working that back to podcasting, Tom says: Podcasting is, by its v

Chase Miller, EVP of Strategy and Corporate Development at Claritas, joins us for our latest product deepdive. We talk about device graphs, legacy, "The Barletta Household", and why having good data is so incredibly important.Think of the product deepdives like the final meeting your company would have with an adtech vendor, fully running through what the product actually is and how it’s used. No power points, press releases, or marketing presentations here. It’s time for some detailed product reviews.This event is free to attend and will be made available on demand. We respect your time, and planning your day around a webinar isn't fun for anyoneSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The "podcasting isn't creating new hits" article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-01-09/podcasting-hasn-t-produced-a-new-hit-in-years2021 Top Movies: https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/box-office/highest-grossing-movies-of-2021/#2-shang-chi-and-the-legend-of-the-ten-rings2020-21 Top TV Shows: https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/most-popular-tv-shows-highest-rated-2020-2021-season-1234980743/Larry Rosin's article: https://radioink.com/2022/01/11/music-radio-a-kingdom-of-gold/?vgo_ee=6dAkE8pCl7%2FUnVnkEHwyU9dBEzid0g%2F0Hme0NU6Dyjw%3D&fbclid=IwAR27qCcEzU0V8BrM6HwYtsKQ0zVAhsmO06EPe_nbSK6HI-52CPjLYXUMjS0"Killing New Music" from Ted Gioia: https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/is-old-music-killing-new-musicSupport the show at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterThanks for listening!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is The Download from Sounds Profitable, the most important business news from the world of podcasting, I'm Bryan Barletta.And I'm Evo Terra. Today; Audible moves away from daily news digests, Audioboom's profit soars, how podcast advertising needs to write its own future, and two more pieces you don't want to miss. Let's get started.In GeekWire, Todd Bishop reports that Audible will stop making and distributing their audio digest versions of The New York Times, a service they had been providing since 1999. Additionally, Audible's audio digest versions of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal will also be halted.Quoting from the piece:"The audio programs, which were available as a perk for Audible members, had been around for more than two decades in some cases. The decision to discontinue the digests reflects the growing number of daily news podcasts, and the rise of other services offering human-narrated audio of newspaper and magazine stories. Responding to GeekWire’s inquiry about the move, an Audible spokesperson provided copies of emails alerting listeners to the change. The messages directed listeners to the lineup of podcasts on Audible, and specifically recommended NPR’s Up First as “another way to get your news fix.”Audible and Amazon Music added podcasts in 2020. The New York Times is testing a new audio product of its own. The Times acquired Audm, which offers human-narrated stories from a variety of publications, in 2020."More proof-positive that podcasting is not just a disruptive force in journalism, but a valuable type of media in its own right. One that subscribers are eager to add to their media consumption diet.On Saturday, January 9th 2022, four mobile sports betting apps, including FanDuel and DraftKings, went live in New York state, with five more on the way, according to Neal Freyman of Morning Brew. In the four years since the Supreme Court ruled on legal sports betting, half the states in the US now allow sports betting, and twenty states support mobile sports betting specifically.Industries like sports betting and cannabis benefit from geotargeting to states where they’re legally approved and aligning with contextually relevant content; two things that podcasting does exceptionally well. As podcasting continues to grow its programmatic advertising opportunities, expect to see these categories leading the charts.Brad Hill from RainNews has a breakdown of Audioboom's financial report for 2021. A report that showed increased revenues of over 125% for the company that produces, monetizes, and distributes podcasts. That's a big increase that looks all the more impressive when you learn that Audioboom's growth more than doubled the IAB's tracking of the overall industry growth.Audioboom's growth seemed to hit on all cylinders, with increases in total impressions, advertisers serviced, and even a big jump in effective CPM.CEO Stuart Last reports that his company already havs $45 million on the books for this year, with a “strong set” of new shows is in development as they try to ride that train through 2022 and beyond.Tom Webster of Edison Research penned a great article where he looks at the massive shift in spoken-word audio consumption since 2014 to podcasting and from where? You guessed it: radio.As with every issue Tom writes in his newsletter, I Hear Things, this one is as entertaining to read as it is educational, and I highly encourage you to give it a read.Quoting near the end of the issue:"My point here is not to "celebrate" the growth of podcasting in spoken word. It's to take notice of just how much ground commercial radio has to podcasters who have done nothing more than add back in all the colors spoken word audio can paint with. Podcasting's surge isn't only about being an on-demand medium. It's about innovation. It's about taking risks. It's about closing the pool for renovations when it's easier to stick with the swimmers you have.cededAgain, this one is really worth your time to read, and for remembering that the way to succeed with spoken word content is to not only appeal to your audience, but those who might become your audience.And finally, It's not every day that an ad agency writes an opinion piece, but Dan Granger from Oxford Road has done so. And wow, is it an opinion that will probably ring in your ears for some time.In the piece, Dan presents seven key initiatives that would, in his opinion, demonstrably expand and optimize the podcast industry in 2022. You should read the article—we've linked to it in the episode details—to get his full take on each, but here's a quick rundown:A joint effort among the top podcast networks to create standard disclosures for adsMaking category exclusivity a standard for host-read adsNetworks to stop forcing "combo" buys that contain unwanted inventoryLocal media publishers joining forces to create their own regional podcast networksFacebook leveraging its advertising toolset to benefit podcasters on the social netw

I'd love it if you would subscribe to the newsletter version of I Hear Things, at https://tomwebster.media. You can find all of the data cited in this week's episode there in the article with the same title (The Best Schnitzel in Detroit.)You can also support the show at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterThe "Who Doesn't Like Pizza" piece: https://tomwebster.media/no-one-likes-pizza/The best schnitzel I've had: https://www.gasthaus-reinthaler.atSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is The Download from Sounds Profitable, the most important business news from the world of podcasting, I'm Bryan Barletta.And I'm Evo Terra. Today, The New York Times Bets half a billion on sports, NPR doubles down on paid subscriptions, Spotify goes all-in on in-app digital ads, and I'm clearly making too many gambling references. Let's get started.NYT buys The AthleticThe New York Times has agreed to purchase the sports news company, the Athletic, for $550m. The six-year-old company, which raised $50m in 2020 at a $500m valuation, was originally in talks to sell to the New York Times last summer, but the deal fell through due to disagreements on price. With the New York Times focusing heavily on subscription content and on audio with their new app, called obviously enough "New York Times Audio", acquiring the Athletic with their 1.2m paid subscribers, which is 1/8th the total subscriptions the New York Times has, puts them on track to easily exceed their goal of 10m subscribers.Currently, the Athletic is hosted on Megaphone, part of Spotify, and participates in the Spotify Audience Network. The New York Times hosts on Simplecast, part of Adswizz, which also offers a competing monetization product. Whether we see The Athletic migrate to Simplecast or not likely depends on how integrated the two companies will be with each other.AdvertiseCast has updated their Industry Average Podcast Advertising Rates page as of January 1st, 2022. AdvertiseCast has been tracking the average CPM rates for their client podcasts since the beginning of 2020, grouping the rates charged by podcasts into three buckets—shows getting less than 10,000 downloads per month, shows getting between 10,000 and 100,000, and those seeing more than 100,000 downloads per month.And it's good news, with the average CPM of all groups at just under $24, up nearly 6% comparing December 2021 to December 2020. And the biggest shows saw an even higher increase, jumping up by more than 8% year over year.The takeaway here is clear: The actual value—not just the perceived value, but the actual value paid by advertisers on 2,412 podcasts in this sample size, is going up for podcast advertising.Reviewing the programmatic mergers and acquisitions that James Hercher of AdExchanger pointed out this week, there’s a lot of trends happening in channels outside of podcasting that bode well for our industry.Hercher writes:“Historically, DSPs and SSPs have been kept separate from ad server businesses. Ad servers are the source of reconciliation data, meaning they decide whether ads were served or visible and whether advertisers should pay for an impression. Although walled gardens can often get away with bundling an ad server and grading their own homework, open programmatic companies generally could not. But SSPs need an ad server for CTV.”This need has been echoed in podcasting for quite some time. Companies like Triton Digital and Adswizz offer publishers both adserving and SSP capabilities in one package.Similarly, verification vendors like DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science, whose technology relies on client-side execution to verify ads, have each purchased contextual advertising companies to further their offering. Contextual verification is the easiest path for these vendors to enter the podcast space, enabling their clients to validate their purchased podcast inventory.Axios reports that NPR is taking another run at monetizing their podcasting efforts, working with premium podcast provider Supporting Cast to launch NPR+. The broadcaster plans to add a slate of new shows as well as subscriber-only episodes, including "podcast bundles" as incentives to listeners who become members of local NPR affiliates.Quoting from the article:"Subscription podcasting offers a new digital business model for NPR and its member stations. But its long-standing mission to inform the public limits how much content the non-profit can put behind a paywall.""NPR has been experimenting with podcasts for well over a decade, but it's pushing more aggressively to produce podcasts, particularly daily shows, that it can include in subscription efforts.""Podcast subscriptions will be used to drive revenue from loyalists who want to support their favorite shows and hosts, similar to radio memberships.""It's about the relationship that our journalists, our producers, our editors have with their audiences and their ability to create and craft new relationships," said Sarah Gilbert, vice president for news programming."The new NPR+ service is already live, with nine shows available at the time of this recording, each going for $2.99 per month.Spotify has released their take on a companion ad to accompany their streaming ad insertion offering, called CTA Cards. The unit works by providing a size-variable, banner-like ad, served only to listeners of Spotify's original and exclusive podcasts, and only to users of the Spotify mobile app.What’s unique about this ad unit is its staying powe

Hey it's me. I know this is an odd day for an episode, but that's because it's not an episode of Sounds Profitable the Podcast. Instead it's an episode of another podcast you should be listening to: Podcast Pontifications, by Evo Terra. It's cool, he's cool, and if you like it, search for Podcast Pontifications in your podcast app, and give it a follow. And I'm excited to share with you the next episode of Sounds Profitable the Podcast on Sunday, and the next episode of The Download on Friday. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is The Download, the most important business news from the world of podcasting, I'm Bryan Barletta.And I'm Evo Terra. Today, why premium content won't kill advertising-supported podcasts, Facebook podcast activity is over-inflated, Section 230 under fire, and why the "average" podcast consumer is a myth you need to move away from. Let's get started.With Coca-Cola picking WPP to handle their nearly $4 billion in yearly ad spend, https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-advertising-accounts-up-for-grabs-right-now-2021-2, from Nike to CVS Health. Their list, including Coca-Cola, covers over $7.5 billion in ad spend for next year.New agencies means new strategies. And new strategies include testing new channels, which is how many of these brands view podcasting. Podcast publishers and agencies will be the resources that enable these larger agencies and brands to buy direct podcasting ads at scale, while the adtech companies will further enable programmatic offerings directly in their tools of choice.https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/369669/the-great-app-advertising-exodus-or-not.html, where advertisers—specifically in-app advertisers—are shifting away from ad revenue with a newfound focus on subscription revenue, particularly in a post-ATT world, or Apple Tracking Transparency.Quoting from the article:"[C]onsumers have already taken on vastly higher costs of premium media subscriptions -- especially subscription video-on-demand and music services -- over the past several years, and there is only so much they can bear.In fact, over the past couple of decades, consumers have surpassed advertisers as the primary source of media revenues, and according to estimates from industry economic tracker PQ Media, the average American now pays close to $1,500 annually accessing media and media content. How much more can they take?"So what does this have to do with podcasting, you're probably asking. Well, with both Apple and Spotify leaning heavily into paid subscription models, and other premium services from Glow, Supercast, Acast+ and more continuing to explore premium, ad-free offerings, costs to subscribe to premium or ad-free podcast feeds eats into that annual subscription budget. Which means free, ad-supported podcasts will likely remain the staple of podcast listening behavior for the foreseeable future.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-22/amazon-s-voice-controlled-smart-speaker-alexa-can-t-hold-customer-interest-docsConsidering Amazon employs 10,000 people to work on Alexa and is attempting to move from a $5 loss per device sold in 2018 to a $2 per-unit profit by 2028, things might seem grim. But as an indicator of innovation from the overall audio space, it’s incredibly encouraging.Amazon previously reported that 25% of US households currently have at least one Alexa device. The primary uses of those devices is home automation, timers, and playing music and podcasts. Amazon, Apple, and Google all offer their own voice assistants through dedicated devices, phones, and more. And all three companies are increasingly active in both the podcast and music space. These devices won’t disappear anytime soon, but the rush in 2020 to build unique content specifically for smart speakers might have been a bit pre-emptive.In Podnews, https://podnews.net/article/facebook-partial-downloads—but only if the podcast hosting company isn't providing IAB-certified stats.Quoting James:"We think that when you see a podcast in your timeline, the Facebook app is pre-downloading a little bit of the audio file to work out how long the audio is, and to ensure that it’s got 30 seconds of audio ready so you can hit the play button and instantly listen to it. This is against IAB guidelines.This is a bad engineering decision by Facebook - it will cause unnecessary bandwidth use by its app, and will cost podcast hosting companies significant revenue in wasted traffic. It would be ideal if they’d confirm to the IAB standard, and only request audio files when a user has asked for them."Facebook is being a bad actor in this case for a couple of different reasons. Not doing proper fetch requests to IAB guidelines, as James points out, is one. But also is the fact that Facebook seems disinterested in engaging with podcast hosting companies or even podcasters on this initiative. Given the outsized influence Facebook has on... well, everything, a few well-placed strategic calls to some podcast media companies might have saved them this aggravation.2021 was an incredibly rough year to look back on for many reasons. But in the adtech space, the fear of what comes next as we move away from third-party cookies and mobile device ID’s was particularly vexing . A good handful of adtech partners have put forth their best solutions for alternative identifiers, building quickly and getting significant buy-in, but according to DigiDay+’s research panel, nothing was resolved.https://digiday.com/media/heres-how-2021-went-for-publishers

We got such good feedback a few days ago that we decided to test the waters again with another pilot (co-pilot?) episode of The Download. Just in time for Christmas! If you love it, send us a note!Matt Deegan examines Global's acquisition of podcast hosting platform Captivate. In particular, he notes how Captiave's hosting solution fills a much-needed gap in Global's offering, and how their audio advertising business—DAX—should integrate nicely, giving the company "full-stack" capabilities., comparing and contrasting that acquisition to the other podcasting-related business and services Global has acquired.Quoting from the piece:"Captivate definitely fills a hole, as Global have lacked their own platform for managing the hosting of their podcasts. Up to now they mainly seem to have been using Spreaker, which was acquired by Voxnest, which was snaffled by iHeartMedia last year."DAX has been spending some time over the past couple of years owning the end-to-end technology around digital audio. Its streaming ad platform was originally built on top of Adswizz’s server, that’s now been replaced by their own in-house tech and Captivate gives them another chunk of the tech stack.Expect to see more as Global's integration of Captivate, DAX, and Remixd continues in the coming months.Full disclosure, Evo was an advisor to Captivate up until their acquisition by Global.Spotify opened Pod City, an on-location recording and production facility as part of their newly opened LA campus. The company's choice to invest in on-site capabilities for an industry that continues to rely on remote work and distributed teams seems odd.Quoting from Wendy Lee's article in the Los Angeles Times:"Beyond centralizing its podcasting business in one place, the new Los Angeles operation allows Spotify to reduce the costs of paying outside vendors, attract and nurture new talent, and produce more original shows that it can own and distribute."At least two production houses owned by Spotify, The Ringer and Parcast, are located in Los Angeles.In late November 2021, Spotify's CEO Paul Vogel said the company had earmarked $3.5 billion to spend on expansion, with an emphasis on podcasting. Will a shiny new building attract higher-profile shows to join Spotify? And if more podcast studios are built by other powerhouses, does this signal a shift away from the remote-work nature we've grown accustomed to in podcasting?The Verge The article which we’ve linked in the episode description is still being updated, but outside of major companies with a podcasting presence like Amazon, Google, Meta, and iHeartRadio confirming they won’t be attending, a substantial portion of the tech media has also decided to opt out as well, including The Verge. Before you hop on your flight to Vegas in just under two weeks, you might want to make sure any meetings you've scheduled are still on. Sean Hollister of provided extensive coverage of cancellations from major companies for CES 2022.they made the unpopular decision to cancel lifetime accounts for their service. But then on Tuesday, Podnews reported an abrupt about-face. Podcast hosting company bCast found themselves in hot water of their own making this week, when purchased via AppSumo, according to Podnews on Monday.Quoting from founder Tom Hunt's social media post:'After further discussion and feedback... we have decided to cancel the "cut off" and will continue to support all lifetime accounts as per the original terms. I understand that our original note from Thursday was misguided, irresponsible, and in short: a mistake. We will look to boost revenue from new subscribers, cut costs, and look for other routes of funding."Podcasters are notoriously cash-conscious. And they tend to have long memories. Keep that in mind before you start looking for creative ways to increase your MRR.Marketing Brew In , Ryan Barwick covers the digital ad industry's inability to hire fast enough. Barwick notes that as of December 17th, Roku had 750 openings, The Trade Desk had 572 openings, Criteo had 319 openings and Google had 10,224 openings on LinkedIn.With advertising and adtech continuing to grow in the podcast industry as well, almost all companies are actively hiring for nearly all positions to cover both new growth and attrition. Reading the People category in Podnews every day shines a spotlight on an incredibly painful issue we’re facing; we keep poaching from within the space instead of hiring from outside and training up.The easiest thing to teach while onboarding someone into the podcast industry is the podcast industry itself. As an industry, we need to do better, and if you’re interested in collaborating on a project to fix that, reach out to me. [email protected] Download is brought to you by Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra.

You can support my increasingly bad coffee habit at Buy Me A Coffee, here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterPacific Content's annual Predictions article(s): https://blog.pacific-content.com/in-the-year-2022-part-two-92c22c1c44b0https://blog.pacific-content.com/in-the-year-2022-320f4c175f6fSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted and Produced by Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra Audio Engineering by Ian Powell This is The Download, the most important business news from the world of podcasting, I'm Bryan Barletta.And I'm Evo Terra. Today we're covering the entirety of the podcast acquisition and funding that happened in 2021. Let's get started.Libsyn, the public podcast hosting platform founded in 2004 had an incredibly active year. They started by raising 25 million dollars and they definitely put it to work, buying podcast creation platform Auxbus, subscription and membership platform Glow for 1.2 million dollars, host and announcer read self-serve advertising marketplace Advertisecast for 30 million dollars, and longtail podcast advertising marketplace PODGO. With the leadership team from Advertisecast taking a more active role, and former board chairman and investor Brad Tirpak coming on as CEO, Libsyn has a chance to really upgrade their image if they can match the momentum of their competitors and integrate a non-trivial amount of companies into one of the oldest podcast platforms still active.Audacy, started the year as Entercom, and after 53 years, rebranded. Kicking it of by acquiring longtail self-serve ad marketplace Podcorn for $22.5m. Podcorn gives Audacy micro-influencer reach contrasting with their higher-profile owned and repped shows. For $40m, they also bought “an exclusive, perpetual license of WideOrbit’s digital audio streaming and podcasting technology and related assets and operations. Audacy will continue to operate WO Streaming under the name AmperWave.” Today, Audacy builds and hosts their radio broadcast to podcasts solution with Triton Digital’s Omny Studio, owned by close competitor iHeartMedia, while hosting their Cadence13 and Pineapple Street Media shows on Spotify’s Megaphone. For a company reporting around $16m in revenue per quarter from podcasting alone, expect to see them fully migrate to AmperWave and bulk up the public offering for the platform.While Global, the UK-based media & entertainment group and parent company of DAX Digital Ad Exchange does offer podcast hosting capabilities, their main appeal for publishers has been monetization opportunities. So acquiring podcast hosting, analytics, and monetization platform Captivate, which is IAB certified and has strong brand appeal for indie podcasts, shows Global's drive to be more accessible. Ad exchanges thrive on inventory, so the purchase of Remixd, which “automatically converts text articles into audio files” provides Global a quick path to more ad supply. With Captivate off the table, hosting platform Buzzsprout, that serves over 100k podcasts, becomes even more appealing for a longtail inventory play.Earlier in the year, iHeartMedia acquired audio ad technology company Triton Digital for 230 million dollars from E.W. Scripps, which purchased Triton Digital for 150 million dollars in 2018 and Omny Studio, part of Triton Digital, in 2019. Like Audacy, iHeart currently uses Spotify’s Megaphone to host their podcasts. Getting all their assets to their own platform is clearly on the horizon for iHeart, especially with Triton Digital offering radio broadcast-to-podcast capabilities. Coupled with iHeart’s acquisition of Voxnest/Spreaker in 2020 and the announcement of their ad marketplace in both 2020 and 2021, the only offering iHeart currently lacks to compete with their direct competitors, is an attribution product. Will they build it internally like Adswizz or will they acquire a solution?With over 70% of podcasts on Spotify serving from their hosting platform Anchor, Spotify continues their plans of going wide on audio by buying audiobook distributor Findaway and podcast hosting platform Whooshkaa, which specializes in creating podcasts from radio broadcasts. Whooshkaa will be integrated into hosting platform Megaphone, which Spotify purchased last November for 235 million dollars. While Spotify is unlikely to retain Audacy and iHeartMedia as clients, as both purchased their own radio broadcast-to-podcast technology this year, Spotify will continue to attract publishers looking for those features as part of a complete offering. With Whooshkaa acquired, RedCircle is the last independent hosting platform with dynamic ad insertion and programmatic offerings. And SGRecast from StreamGuys is the only independent company offering a broadcast-to-podcast technology. How long either will remain independent is a very good question.Acast started the year by acquiring US podcast technology startup RadioPublic. Keeping inline with their creator-focused image, the main appeal was “RadioPublic’s Listener Relationship Management platform, which allows podcasters to foster even deeper relationships with fans”, which played nice with the beta launch of Acast+, their subscription offering. Over the summer, Acast went public, which is it’s own kind of acquisition.And though it falls slightly outside of 2021, when Podnews editor James Cridland announced Ama

Arielle and Bryan interview Sounds Profitable artist Jake Crowe, and talk about his inspirations, his process for designing the art of SP, and how everybody can draw. Jake Crowe Article: https://soundsprofitable.com/update/podscape-podcast Join Jakes Newsletter!: https://crowebot.ck.page/7b26e3390b Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What are the benefits of having in-app subscription services for your podcast? What are the downfalls? Is it worth the experiment to give them a try? Hosts Bryan Barletta and Arielle Nissenblatt speak with guest Lindsay Graham about his experience with subscription services, and talk about ideas for the future of the technology. Lindsay Graham of Airship Article: https://soundsprofitable.com/update/paid-subscriptions-hidden-costs Link discussed in Episode:https://soundsprofitable.com/update/apple-podcast-subscriptions Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thanks for listening! A few links from this week:Spotify's announcement: https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/27/spotify-says-u-s-podcast-listeners-now-use-its-service-more-than-apple-podcasts/A Vice article about the "battle" between Pandora and Spotify: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8q8a/how-pandora-won-its-royalty-battle-but-lost-the-war-to-spotifyPacific Content's 2022 Predictions article: https://blog.pacific-content.com/in-the-year-2022-320f4c175f6fInfinite Dial Live at Podcast Movement Evolutions: https://podcastmovement.com/podmov/pm-evolutions-to-host-infinite-2022-los-angeles/You can support the show, if you'd like, at Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterSubscribe to the I Hear Things newsletter at http://ihearthin.gsThanks for listening!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Bryan and Arielle chat about podcasts they love, why third party research matters, and why you should care about studies. Guest Gabriel Soto from Edison research speaks with Bryan on the Latino Podcast Segment, studies done by Edison, and how much Bryan loves data. Gabriel Soto of Edison Research https://soundsprofitable.com/update/invest-in-latino-podcast-segment Link discussed in Episode: https://soundsprofitable.com/update/free-podcast-survey Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bryan's family is a bit under the weather, so we've taken the week off. But this gap in programming has allowed us to replay one of our favorite episodes, with guest Marcus dePaula, discussing how your current audio equipment influences how people perceive you in modern business. Cheers everyone! Marcus dePaula of Podcast Audio Lab https://soundsprofitable.com/update/audio-quality-and-your-brand Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The six-country study we recently completed on in-car radio: https://www.worlddab.org/news/blogs/89/car-buyers-survey-2021A tribute to Rosalie Trombley from Sean Ross: https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/10-songs-cklw-curated-for-me-rosalie-trombley-bryan-adams-7325434/The Infinite Dial UK: https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-infinite-dial-2021-uk-save-the-date/The Top 50 Podcasts, Q3 2021: https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-top-50-most-listened-to-podcasts-in-the-u-s-q3-2021/Sign up for the I Hear Things newsletter to get access to our upcoming Pitchable Podcast webinar: https://tomwebster.mediaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Does your podcast need to be monetized? Or can it just be a fun hobby? And does the normal road to monetization fit what you're looking for, or should you be looking into alternate means? Listen as hosts Bryan and Arielle, and guest Alban Brooke, discuss the differences you should distinguish, and the data behind those decisions. Alban Brooke of Buzzsprout https://soundsprofitable.com/update/anchor-serious-ad-channel Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sometimes the best fix is being provided by someone else, and there's no shame in using it. In fact, that useful tool may be exactly what your company needs, at a more fair price. Arielle and Bryan talk with James Avery of Kevel about how it's even more than buy vs build with podcast technology, in that is should be "buy and then build upon". James Avery of Kevel https://soundsprofitable.com/update/buy-vs-build Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!Join the private feed! https://soundsprofitable.supercast.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Spoken Word Audio Report (SWAR!) https://www.nationalpublicmedia.com/insights/reports/the-spoken-word-audio-report/GWAR (GWAR!) https://gwar.netNY Times analysis of Spotify Data: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/favorite-songs.htmlMy 2019 piece on why Spotify is getting into podcasting: https://tomwebster.media/spotify-music-and-podcasting-the-meteor-is-coming/Who Was Prince? https://www.dcpofficial.com/who-was-princeA better explainer of NFTs than I am: https://www.theverge.com/22310188/nft-explainer-what-is-blockchain-crypto-art-faqTamsen Webster: http://www.tamsenwebster.com/Find Your Red Thread: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B091G3FRFW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1Subscribe to my newsletter and get all the details of our upcoming webinar at http://tomwebster.mediaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's the difference between a synthetic voice and a deep fake? And what's the most ethical way to use this amazing technology? Sean King joins hosts Bryan Barletta and Arielle Nissenblatt to discuss the future of synthetic voices, and Sounds Profitable's recent foray into the Spanish language. Sean King of Veritone One https://soundsprofitable.com/update/sounds-proftable-in-spanish Check out the Open Voice Network Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pete Birsinger joins us to talk about the benefits of a Sounds Profitable Product Deepdive, and why Podscribe has been such a huge supporter. Pete Birsinger of Podscribe https://soundsprofitable.com/update/deepdive-into-adtech Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Join the private feed! https://soundsprofitable.supercast.comSend us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A data slide of the Independent Podcast Listening Audience can be found at http://ihearthin.gsJames Cridland's analysis of the Spotify news (recommended): https://podnews.net/update/spotify-q321Source data for the Spotify announcement: https://tomwebster.media/the-most-important-question-in-podcasting-2021/Understanding Podcast Stats, again from James Cridland: https://podnews.net/article/understanding-podcast-statisticshttps://podnews.net/article/understanding-podcast-statisticsJohn Spurlock's analysis of download trackers: https://livewire.io/podcast-trackers-by-episode-share/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2021-10-15Support for the show can be offered at Buy Me A Coffee--and thank you for listening. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lets learn about lift reports and audience insights, and what those can do for you and your company. Megan Johnson of Podsights https://soundsprofitable.com/update/audience-insights Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Podcast Movement keynote: https://youtu.be/Ggy6Bs1FsLIUnderlying data and observations about Facebook: https://tomwebster.media/the-most-important-question-in-podcasting-2021/Support the show at Buy Me A Coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, Sounds Profitable talks sound quality with Marcus dePaula, and how a good microphone can both save AND make you money. Marcus dePaula of Podcast Audio Lab https://soundsprofitable.com/update/audio-quality-and-your-brand Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Join the feed at https://soundsprofitable.supercast.tech/Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Check out this Bonus Article featuring the synthetic voices of James Cridland of Podnews and Evo Terra of Podcast Pontifications!Here's the article: https://soundsprofitable.com/update/sounds-proftable-in-spanishMARVEL.ai: https://www.veritone.com/applications/marvelai/Join us for more narrated articles!: https://soundsprofitable.supercast.tech/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Edison Podcast Listener Survey template: https://www.edisonresearch.com/edison-research-podcast-listener-survey/Buy Me a Coffee!: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterAs always, I appreciate your support, and your subscriptions. You can get the newsletter version of this at http://ihearthin.gsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sounds Profitable chats with Claire Fanning about the IAB fall podcast UpFronts, and how you should be capitalizing on what we've learned. Claire Fanning of SXM Media https://soundsprofitable.com/update/programmatic-podcast-ads-upfront Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Join the feed at https://soundsprofitable.supercast.tech/Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join Bryan and new cohost Arielle Nissenblatt as they discuss what's coming in Season Two of Sounds Profitable.___Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] and Arielle Nissenblatt Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Join the feed at https://soundsprofitable.supercast.tech/Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Tucker Carlson graphMost recent Share of EarShare of Ear by deviceSupport the show at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterSubscribe to the I Hear Things newsletter at http://tomwebster.media

The Sounds Profitable podcast started impulsively as a way to test out the amazing ad tech I talk about. It's always been important to me that the people who talk about the technology know how to use it hands on and absolutely know what their clients experience. Now after 30 episodes and just finishing up our first year of Sounds Profitable as a newsletter, we're taking a month to completely reformat and improve the podcast to make it a better listening experience.For the month of September I wanted to share with you four episodes you may have missed. And of course, ask you to please take our survey, at podcast.study/soundsprofitable . Without your feedback, we couldn't have made the improvements we're planning.Understanding if your ad is working is absolutely critical. Brand Lift studies help you know if they are working. Tom Webster and Edison Research do a phenomenal job of telling you just that.Key Links: Tom Webster of Edison Research Article:https://soundsprofitable.com/update/brand-lift-studies -----Send us answers to Tom’s questions at [email protected] using the Subject “Episode 18”. Make sure to answer all 3 questions, and include your address so we can send you a sticker!“What section of the library would you find Sounds Profitable under?”“Do you think this show is popular?”“If Sounds Profitable were to die tomorrow, what would you miss the most about it?”___Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Join the feed at https://soundsprofitable.supercast.tech/Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Facebook opportunity for podcasting: https://tomwebster.media/accidental-podcast-listeners/The WSJ reporting on The Facebook Files: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-facebook-files-11631713039Twitter: Before And After Trump: https://www.edisonresearch.com/twitter-before-and-after-trump/Unfriending Facebook: https://medium.com/swlh/unfriending-facebook-new-research-on-why-people-like-facebook-less-74894b927a0The newsletter edition of this podcast: http://tomwebster.media/podcasting-for-connection/And your support for this podcast at Buy Me A Coffee is always welcome! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Sounds Profitable podcast started impulsively as a way to test out the amazing ad tech I talk about. It's always been important to me that the people who talk about the technology know how to use it hands on and absolutely know what their clients experience. Now after 30 episodes and just finishing up our first year of Sounds Profitable as a newsletter, we're taking a month to completely reformat and improve the podcast to make it a better listening experience.For the month of September I wanted to share with you four episodes you may have missed. And of course, ask you to please take our survey, at podcast.study/soundsprofitable . Without your feedback, we couldn't have made the improvements we're planning.Key Links: Matt Drengler of Podsights Articles:https://soundsprofitable.com/update/understanding-podcast-lift-reports https://soundsprofitable.com/update/understanding-podcast-lift-reports-2 -----Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Join the feed at https://soundsprofitable.supercast.tech/Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most of the podcasts I talk about are found on the Podcasts page of my website: https://tomwebster.media/podcasts/You'll have to go to Spotify for Deep Six: https://open.spotify.com/show/0ZeM4Zf9RVknahbM4gk8dS?si=NS9ME2l1TzyPa6l2e_rIIg&dl_branch=1And I rescued the Mitch Joel episode of The Friday Five here: https://soundcloud.com/tomwebster/mitch-joel-on-2013-05-24-at-0803outputSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Sounds Profitable podcast started impulsively as a way to test out the amazing ad tech I talk about. It's always been important to me that the people who talk about the technology know how to use it hands on and absolutely know what their clients experience. Now after 30 episodes and just finishing up our first year of Sounds Profitable as a newsletter, we're taking a month to completely reformat and improve the podcast to make it a better listening experience.For the month of September I wanted to share with you four episodes you may have missed. And of course, ask you to please take our survey, at podcast.study/soundsprofitable . Without your feedback, we couldn't have made the improvements we're planning.Heather Osgood of True Native Media and I really explored the value of dynamic ad insertion and why every publisher should be focused on implementing it. Heather was one of the first people to have me on her podcast, The Podcast Advertising Playbook, and I'm always excited to talk more about podcast ad tech with her.Key Links: Heather Osgood of True Native Media Article: https://soundsprofitable.com/update/dai-for-podcasting -----Is DAI actually free to use? (spoiler, it’s not).-----Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable - [email protected] Audio engineering by Ian Powell Executive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler Media| Special thanks to James Cridland of Podnews Podcast hosting and dynamic insertion wizardry by Whooshkaa Sounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron Join the feed at https://soundsprofitable.supercast.tech/Send us messages with Yappa!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Writers' Workshops, but for podcasters. That's the tweet ;) Also: an extended meditation on failing, failing fast, and the "just ship it" mentality.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.