Today’s edition of The Influencer is brought to you by– [SKIP]

As you’ve undoubtedly heard, Spotify is testing a “skip ahead” feature that will let some users bypass ads. Will it help or hurt marketers? Find out on this week’s episode of The Media Roundtable. 

Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) and Giles Martin (EVP, Strategy, Oxford Road) welcome podcast industry veteran Glenn Rubenstein (CEO & Founder, ADOPTER Media) to give his view on not only Spotify’s button-pushing decision, but also the AMP Accords. Let’s dive in.

“ Spotify is making an editorial decision on podcasters' content to label anything that's promotional as an advertisement. Therefore, they're saying: ‘This is worthy of being skipped. Here's a button.’ And I think that's fundamentally wrong.”

–  Glenn Rubenstein (Founder & CEO, ADOPTER Media)

Creators can be either a long-term asset or a short-term detriment to your campaign. That is why it is so important for brands to focus on finding the right fit, not just the name with the biggest following. To find out how to build the right kind of creator relationships, you need this week’s Media Roundtable.

Straight from this year’s Cannes Festival, Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) joins Bekah Schannuth (Director, Operations, LSKR) to discuss trust, values, and how to handle a crisis. Let’s dive in.

“ If you're trying to build a brand off somebody whose job is to wave their arms, get your attention, and run away… you're not going deep, and there is a direct correlation between the ROI you're gonna see.”

– Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road)

A few months ago, we revealed Oxford Road’s role in creating the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting, or AMP. It was launched by a top-secret group of podcasting leaders who’ve spent the last year working together on new measurement standards that could help our industry evolve.

This week, we’re finally unveiling the full result of all that hard work.

The AMP task force focused on three big questions: What’s a podcast? What’s an impression? Did the ad work? 

If you’re looking for the answers, turn to this week’s Media Roundtable, hosted by Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road). He’s joined by expert guests Giles Martin (EVP, Strategy, Oxford Road) and Bryan Barletta (Partner, Sounds Profitable). Together, they talk through AMP’s findings and discuss the most important question of all: What comes next?

“ This is key to the whole AMP story: Any standard is better than no standard, even if it's not exactly the standard that you want. You want to have something that is clear and consistent.”

-Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road)

Everyone experiences anxiety on some level, so why do creators and brands steer clear of the topic? Morra Aarons-Mele, a.k.a. “The Anxious Achiever,” is here to explain why addressing tough topics can be a win for audiences, creators, and a marketer’s bottom line.

This week on The Media Roundtable, Daniel Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) welcomes Aarons-Mele, host of The Anxious Achiever podcast, as well as an author, Harvard professor, presidential campaign strategist, and totally-not-anxious person. Together, they examine the challenges of building a business around an identity, and discuss why brands should align with creators who are brave enough to talk about difficult topics 

“Don't start a podcast to become rich. But if you have a specific thing that you want to chew over and [want to] get access to people, do it. I can't normally call up the Surgeon General and be like, ‘Hey, you want to talk about loneliness?’ But with a podcast, I can.”

- Morra Aarons-Mele (Founder, MHL Partners; Host, The Anxious Achiever)

For years, marketers have used downloads to help determine their podcast spend. But now that podcasts exist in so many different formats and spaces—from long-form Netflix videos to short-form YouTube Shorts clips to live shows—it’s harder than ever to determine audience size. With so many platforms in play, how can creators know exactly what they’re selling? More importantly, how can buyers know what they’re getting?

This week, Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) hosts Steve Goldstein (Founder & CEO, Amplifi Media; Adjunct Professor, NYU)on Media Roundtable to talk about how $1-2B in additional growth can be unlocked if we ditch downloads and create a new universal and consistent metric. 

Want the DL on downloads? Join Dan and Steve as they debate new methods of measurement and discuss what buyers need to be paying attention to as podcasting moves into its next phase.

“The money is going to flow to where the audience is. We have the audience. We have great shows…If we can verify the audience and present it in a unified sort of way, that's where we need to be.” 

-Steve Goldstein (Founder & CEO, Amplifi Media; Adjunct Professor, NYU)

For more than a year now, the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting, or AMP, has been working to create new frameworks for podcast measurement. In this week’s Media Roundtable, we’re announcing some of our latest findings.

Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) and Giles Martin (EVP -Strategy, Oxford Road) welcome Pete Birsinger (CEO & Founder, Podscribe) to discuss the problem with downloads, AMP’s internal tug-of-war, and the new standard metrics that could help grow the industry.

“ This type of evolution should put podcasting on a better footing to compete with other media channels for an enormous part of advertising dollars.”

• Pete Birsinger (CEO & Founder, Podscribe)

If your phone is full of podcast episodes you’ve never actually played, you know a download isn’t the same as an impression. So how can marketers figure out who’s really tuning in, and who’s tuning out? This week’s Media Roundtable discussion has you covered.

Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) and Giles Martin (EVP, Strategy, Oxford Road) welcome Dan Misener (co-founder, Bumper) to talk about the Bumper Score, a major new step toward shrinking the gap between a podcast’s reported listenership and its actual audience. It’s no secret we’re big advocates for better podcast measurement (check out today’s Forbes story, written by Frank Racioppi, about our work on the AMP Accords). The Bumper Score, like AMP, is aimed at helping the industry unlock its next billions through better data.

Join our panel of experts as they discuss how better information can not only lead to better measurement, but can also help prevent billions of dollars from being left on the sidelines.

“ There is a gigantic gap between what buyers are paying for and what sellers are actually delivering.”

• Dan Misener (co-founder, Bumper)

For the past year, some of the biggest names in podcasting have been working on a top-secret mission, one that could define the future of this multi-billion-dollar industry. Together, they debated three crucial questions: What’s a podcast? What’s an impression? Did the ad work?

Now, after months of closed-door meetings and discussions, Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) and long-time strategy consigliere Giles Martin (EVP, Strategy, Oxford Road) are excited to unveil AMP, the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting. The unprecedented effort, which features a cross-section of industry leaders, aims to answer podcasting’s big three questions and, in doing so, create a new blueprint for creators, advertisers, and platforms.

“ We know that the lack of consistency in what we're talking about, and in the things we're measuring, is costing everyone money.”

– Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road)