Sounds Profitable

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...

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:

1. A joint effort among the top podcast networks to create standard disclosures for ads
2. Making category exclusivity a standard for host-read ads
3. Networks to stop forcing "combo" buys that contain unwanted inventory
4. Local media publishers joining forces to create their own regional podcast networks
5. Facebook leveraging its advertising toolset to benefit podcasters on the social network
6. Airchecks and transcripts become standard
7. And the podcast Industry finally getting serious about brand safety

Dan goes into detail on each one of these needed initiatives, painting a picture of a future in which podcast advertising finally becomes a multi-billion dollar industry.


And that was The Download, from Sounds Profitable! I know we went through these fast, so be sure to check out the links to every article mentioned, right in your podcast listening app. And thanks for sticking with us on this grand experiment to give you the best stories you might have missed from this week. I'm Bryan Barletta.I'm Evo Terra. Thanks for joining us. Robot?
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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 week, why podcast listening has been destroying commercial talk radio right under our noses. Plus Demi Lovato, ONJ, and schnitzel.

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 power. The ad—or "card"—will be visible to the listener on both the episode and show pages for seven days or until the end of the campaign, whichever is shorter. This feature isn’t yet available to publishers who use Spotify Audience Network through Megaphone or Anchor, nor is it available to any publisher directly selling their inventory.Spotify is straddling the walled garden of advertising with their in-app streaming audio offering and their mainstream podcast advertising through dynamic ad insertion. But as they release more unique ad features solely to users of their mobile app, it will be interesting to see how Spotify responds to listener pushback for selling and running ads for their Spotify Premium customers who have paid for ad-free listening.
And that was The Download, from Sounds Profitable! I know we went through these fast, so be sure to check out the links to every article mentioned right in your podcast listening app. And thanks for sticking with us on this grand experiment to give you the best stories you migh have missed from this week. I'm Evo Terra.I'm Bryan Barletta. Thanks for joining us. Robot?
[Download complete!]
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.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, 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 Athletic

The 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...

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 power. The ad—or "card"—will be visible to the listener on both the episode and show pages for seven days or until the end of the campaign, whichever is shorter. This feature isn’t yet available to publishers who use Spotify Audience Network through Megaphone or Anchor, nor is it available to any publisher directly selling their inventory.Spotify is straddling the walled garden of advertising with their in-app streaming audio offering and their mainstream podcast advertising through dynamic ad insertion. But as they release more unique ad features solely to users of their mobile app, it will be interesting to see how Spotify responds to listener pushback for selling and running ads for their Spotify Premium customers who have paid for ad-free listening.
And that was The Download, from Sounds Profitable! I know we went through these fast, so be sure to check out the links to every article mentioned right in your podcast listening app. And thanks for sticking with us on this grand experiment to give you the best stories you migh have missed from this week. I'm Evo Terra.I'm Bryan Barletta. Thanks for joining us. Robot?
[Download complete!]

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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.

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-in-five-charts/ point out that with over 50% of their panel still as concerned about the impact these changes will have to attribution and targeting. Even more surprising is that, with all of that concern “[d]espite nearly a year of testing, development and dealmaking, publishers remain about as worried about the end of the third-party cookie as they were at the beginning of 2021”, “[p]ublishers are twice as likely to be using alternate identifiers in none of their ads deals than they are to be using them for a majority of their deals.”While those changes don’t directly impact podcasting, a third chart highlights that contextual targeting, a mainstay of podcast advertising, is front and center for both agencies and advertisers in 2022. Focusing on contextual skips quite a few of the cookie and ID based problems whose solutions weren’t enticing enough to jump on, and lets CTV and podcasting shine, both of which have been seeing incredible growth.Writing in https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/369782/ny-lawmaker-seeks-to-clamp-down that knowingly promote hateful, harmful, or medically fraudulent content posted on their platforms. And he's not alone.Quoting from the piece:"Hoylman isn't the only one attempting to control how social media companies handle users' speech. Earlier this year, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota)https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/365335/bill-seeks-to-strip-websites-of-protections-for-fa.html the “Health Misinformation Act,” which aims to discourage social media companies from promoting posts with false information about COVID-19. That measure would carve out an exception to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act for users' posts with false health information, when those posts are algorithmically promoted during a national emergency."These laws face an uphill battle even if they do manage to pass, and some will likely be thrown out as unconstitutional. But these attempts seem to be chipping away at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 certainly seems to be coming under fire, and it's revocation or rewriting could have significant impacts on how all media companies—including podcast media companies—manage the content housed on their services.And finally for this week, Neisen released some very interesting demographic-specific insights on podcast listener behavior in their https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/report/2021/being-seen-on-screen. Podcast companies often look at blended average of all podcast consumers. But this survey shows clear differences and affinities for different groups, a reality that businesses marketing to or trying to reach these distinct podcast audiences should pay attention to.Quoting from thehttps://podnews.net/press-release/nielsen-podcasts-diversity:"[T]hese audiences want to hear from trusted voices with similar backgrounds or that have similar interests. Most importantly, the topics need to be inclusive and of interest—from credible sources with original voices. And as podcasts more authentically appeal to a wide range of audiences, brands and agencies can track engagement with them and leverage targeted opportunities within marketing strategies and campaigns."So your company has been taking a one-size-fits-all approach to reaching the average podcast consumer, 2022 is the time to course-correct.
The Download is brought to you by https://twitter.com/bryanbarletta and https://twitter.com/evoterra.See