Sounds Profitable

We’re offering up a special treat for you today. You see, a lot of the Sounds Profitable crew was all at Podcast Movement Evolutions last week... and what a week it was! Think non-stop discussions about podcasting, ad tech, equipment, statistics... and more. This week, as we wind down from all the hype, networking, eating, and drinking that occurred in LA, Bryan's having some fun in Disneyland with his family, and Arielle's enjoying some time with family on the west coast. This episode is actually from an episode of another of our podcasts, called Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles. And that podcast is what it says on the box—an article published on Sounds Profitable that’s narrated by the writer. In this case, it’s Bryan, walking you through the entirety of the Sounds Profitable family of shows. At least as they are today. Credits:

Sounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Download from Sounds Profitable; podcast CPMs blow digital out of the water, a leaked document reveals YouTube plans for podcasters, and iHeartMedia breaks into kids podcasting. In a development some industry veterans might not have seen coming when they got started in the industry: The Wall Street Journal has an article about podcast advertising. And what’s better: podcast CPMs are doing well. Last Friday WSJ’s Megan Graham published “Streaming Audio Climbs the Charts With Marketers, but Some Want More Certainty.” Graham’s 900-word report combines interviews with advertisers with data from sources like the Infinite Dial to give a birds-eye view of the industry. “In early 2021, some 68 percent of Americans aged 12 and older said they listened to online audio in the previous month, up from 47% who said the same in 2014, according to surveys conducted by Edison Research and Triton Digital.” Graham goes on to cite a Standard Media Index study showing podcast CPMs rose to $26 in Q3 2021, up four dollars from 2019. The piece covers some of the inherent issues with confirming the reach and success of a given podcast ad, but primarily presents a bright future to the industry through quotes from ad buyers big and small. While it’s not full of brand-new information that’d shock someone with an eMarketer bookmark, it does reflect a healthy and growing industry. And did we mention the Wall Street Journal is talking about podcasting? Last week we covered the developing story of TV ratings giant Nielsen, their pack of evolution, and a rejected buyout offer of six billion dollars. According to InsideRadio this Tuesday, Nielsen has sold for sixteen billion to a collective of private equity firms. “The Nielsen board voted unanimously to support the acquisition proposal, which represents a 10% premium over the consortium's earlier proposal and a 60% premium over Nielsen's stock price before the potential sale surfaced in early-March.” Barring any unforeseen interruptions, the deal is expected to close in the latter half of 2022. Now we wait to see if, as said last week on The Download, yet another third party incumbent for measurement and research becomes a proprietary service under new ownership. YouTube’s planning big things for podcast integration, monetization, and analytics, according to an exclusive scoop on Wednesday from Podnews. “Despite no announcement from YouTube’s director of podcasting, Kai Chuk, at Podcast Movement Evolutions last week, Podnews has been sent an 84-page presentation produced by YouTube, intended for podcast publishers. In it, three slides marked ‘Looking Ahead’ allow us a view into what YouTube is planning.” The most notable features of the leaked deck are a promise of RSS feed ingestion, monetization both through Google and approved larger partners, and they’re open to accepting podcast measurement solutions. The final comes with a promise to integrate YouTube data into “industry-standard podcast measurement platforms.” This is paired with the logos for Podtrac, Charitable, and Nielsen. Podnews offers the insight with “Chartable was bought by Spotify in February, so perhaps this slide shows companies that YouTube have worked with, rather than companies it might work with in future.” Shreya: Spotify is testing out one of its new toys in a new test integration of discovery platform Podz. As reported by Tech Crunch’s Sarah Perez on Monday, a Twitter thread from early adopter Chris Messina showcases the new feature. The Podz integration as of this writing is visually similar to algorithm-driven vertical feed apps like TikTok, providing Spotify users with a seemingly infinite virtual feed of sixty second audio clips from podcast episodes matched to show art, animated transcript, and episode information. “What made the company’s technology interesting is that it didn’t rely on podcast creators to produce their own clips for its feed. Instead, it used a machine learning model that had been trained on some 100,000 hours of audio to help automatically select clips to showcase.” As Perez points out in the article, Podz isn’t the first company to try and fix podcast discovery, but they were the first to be bought for almost fifty million dollars. Now their tech is being deployed for field testing on iOS devices. Time will tell how Spotify’s new automated TikTok for podcasts works out. Followers of The Download might remember our March 18th episode in which we covered a Hollywood Insider article about the booming business of making podcasts for children. That story continues to blossom as a big name in the industry has tossed their hat into the ring. As reported by Brad Hill on Tuesday for RainNews, iHeartMedia has teamed up with Collab Incorporated to create podcast network Curativity. The network has partnered with Jim Jacobs, known as Mr. Jim to his young audience, creator of Kids Animal Stories and Kids Short Stories. According to iHeartMedia’s press release, both of Jacobs’ existing series net over a million monthly downloads. In addition to onboarding existing content, Curativity has a new Jacobs-hosted Mr. Jim property called Spyology Squad scheduled to launch April 4th. This new announcement signals not only is children’s content catching the eye of big players in the podcasting industry, it’s interesting enough to provoke a rare iHeartMedia collaboration with a creative agency. Finally, it’s time for our semi-regular roundup of articles that didn’t make it into today’s episode, but are still worth working into your weekend reading.

The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Shreya Sharma and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was written by Gavin Gaddis. Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Special thanks to Ian Powell for his audio prowess, and to our media host, Omny Studio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The full Infinite Dial 2022 Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf3CtkkUqgAMy Medium article, with a recap of the current state of podcasting for 2022: https://webby2001.medium.com/the-state-of-podcasting-in-2022-back-to-work-2b21583c33bcSpotify's new podcasting interface (from Podnews): https://podnews.net/update/spotify-new-ux
 
Adori Labs: https://www.adorilabs.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Tyler Blot, Director of Client Development at TransUnion about data -- 1st and 3rd party data, with a bit of 2nd party data thrown in there. They discuss the differentiating factors between the three of them and what you should know as an advertiser and consumer.Listen in to learn about:

Here's our favorite idea from this conversation: You have to do your homework. While your industry peers can vouch for a product to a certain extent, you won't be able to make your decisions until you read the fine print.Links:

Credits:

 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Download; A new article shines light on unsavory developments at Stitcher after their buyout, Chartable is shuttering SmartAds, and this year’s edition of The Infinite Dial was unveiled at Podcast Movement: Evolutions. Last Friday, Tom Webster published an installment of I Hear Things titled Podcasting’s Most Controversial Statistic. The statistic in question relates to an experiment run by Edison Research’s Podcast Consumer Tracker. The parameters of the experiment were simple: discern how many networks an advertiser would have to buy run-of-network spots to reach at least half of weekly podcast listeners, accounting for unduplicated reach. Webster goes into great detail explaining unduplicated reach, something The Download’s writer does not feel qualified to condense further. “When we ran these numbers a year ago, we discovered that you could reach 50% of weekly podcast listeners if you bought every show on the top seven podcast networks.” Webster has run the same experiment again using Q4 2021 data and that number has now dropped to one only needing to buy out ad space on four podcast networks to confidently reach fifty percent of podcast listeners. Webster stresses the importance of collective action for smaller, independent podcasters who don’t have the same ad-buying power of the bigger players in the industry. “I have a day job (I am sure you do, too), but if indie podcasters don't find a way to organize and consolidate their buying power, some monetization options are just not going to be available for them. For you.” On Tuesday The Verge published How SiriusXM Bought and Bungled a Beloved Podcast Network. **With extensive reporting by writer Ashley Carman and bespoke illustrations, the piece tells the story of SiriusXM’s acquisition of Stitcher from the founding of comedy podcast network Earwolf in 2010 to today. The 2020 SiriusXM and Stitcher merger came with many beneficial changes for both companies. SiriusXM gets all the benefits of a successful podcasting company while the producers get access to SiriusXM-level budgets, enabling podcasts under the Stitcher banner to grow and improve. “But according to 13 former corporate employees across Stitcher who spoke with The Verge anonymously because of nondisclosure agreements and fear of retaliation, the merger was marked by confusion, culture clash, and shifting objectives. Around 145 people worked at Stitcher when it was bought, and since then, more than a quarter of them have left, The Verge found through LinkedIn.” Carman’s article continues at length to detail systemic issues plaguing all but the most successful content creators through the multiple buyouts that lead to SiriusXM’s difficult transition period. A period plagued with mismanagement and miscommunication to the point one Stitcher employee had to explain to a SiriusXM team member that RSS feeds aren’t constantly-live feeds. The piece is a masterclass in how not to handle merging two completely different companies. A new post on the Chartable blog has announced the inevitable: Chartable has made the first step in winding down services available to users not on Spotify’s Megaphone. Chartable co-founder Dave Zohrob writes: “With Chartable now a part of Spotify, we will be shifting our focus to building world-class publisher tools as part of the Megaphone platform. For our advertiser customers, that means that we will soon be deprecating our SmartAds product and will no longer be supporting advertiser campaigns on the Chartable platform.” SmartAds campaigns can still be booked through April 21st. The final day for new impressions tagged with SmartAds will be June 30th. In the final paragraph Zohrob clarifies Chartable publisher products aren’t going anywhere, as these shutdowns only affect advertising products. For those wondering why this wasn’t a surprise announcement, we recommend checking out February 18th’s edition of The Download when we covered an article about the Chartable-Spotify acquisition. Now for a pivot away from acquisitions: Nielsen has not been acquired by a private equity firm. The original story, posted last Thursday to The Drum by Hannah Bowler, details the struggles facing the aging monolith and asks if a buyout would help. Neilsen, once synonymous with television monitoring, has been slow to adapt to the rapid evolution of what people watch and how they watch it. Now their older methodology combined with pending lawsuits alleging inaccurate counting and fraud by concealment threatens the company. “For the industry to trust Nielsen again, president and chief executive at the VAB Sean Cunningham says it needs to deliver - here begins a nested quote from Cunningham - “deep disclosures and real transparency, commitment to the modernization that sharply increased competition demands and increased collaboration versus increased collision with their major clients.” Then, this Monday, the story developed further. Frank Saxe, writing for InsideRadio, reported the proposed deal was dead in the water. Nielsen referred to the offer as "unsolicited”. The company remains public. Even so, the near-miss of a buyout remains a sign of the times. We’re seeing the chipping away of a third party incumbent for measurement and research. With current trends there very well could be a future where a service even as big as Nielsen becomes a gated proprietary service. And finally, the one you’ve all been waiting for: on Wednesday,Thursday Tom Webster took to the Podcast Movement: Evolutions stage to present the 2022 edition of Edison Research’s The Infinite Dial. Over the hour-long presentation Webster and Wondery CEO Jen Sargent covered the plethora of industry data, a lot of which continues to trend upwards. “Seventy-three percent of the U.S. 12+ population (an estimated 209 million people) have listened to online audio in the last month, up from 68% in 2021.” Casual engagement with podcast listening is up as well, with sixty-two percent of the U.S. population over the age of 12 having ever tried a podcast, compared to just eleven percent in 2006. The seventy-side pdf and fifty minute video of the presentation might sound like a daunting task, but the Infinite Dial remains an invaluable source of data for the podcasting industry. Since The Download doesn’t have a must-read article recommendation segment this week, consider combing through the Infinite Dial to take up that space of three or four articles you’d have read otherwise. The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Shreya Sharma and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was written by Gavin Gaddis. Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Special thanks to Ian Powell for his audio prowess, and to our media host, Omny Studio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta sits down with Brendan Kelly (director of ad quality measure) and Stacey Hultgren (senior manager of ad quality measurement) of SXM Media to break down the concepts of brand safety and suitability. How do advertisers determine what shows are brand safe and brand suitable for them? They also discuss a proposal that Brendan and Stacey recently brought to an IAB working group, focusing on how transcripts can be used to ameliorate the process of determining brand safety and suitability for podcasts and audio.Listen in to learn about:

Here's our favorite idea from this conversation: Bryan uses the recent example of the Applebee's ad running on CNN's wartime coverage of Ukraine to explain brand suitability.Links:

Credits:

YouTube | The Young TurksCNN Airs Corny Applebee’s Ad While Covering Russia-Ukraine War iabtechlab.com-Established in 2014, the IAB Technology Laboratory (Tech Lab) is a non-profit consortium that engages a member community globally to develop foundational technology and standards that enable growth and trust in the digital media ecosystem. Comprised of digital publishers, ad technology firms, agencies, marketers, and other member companies, IAB Tech Lab focuses on solutions for brand safety and ad fraud; identity, data, and consumer privacy; ad experiences and measurement; and programmatic effectiveness. Its work includes the OpenRTB real-time bidding protocol, ads.txt anti-fraud specification, Open Measurement SDK for viewability and verification, VAST video specification, and DigiTrust ide… Show moreSXM MediaSXM Media — The Best of Music, Podcast, and Satellite Radio AdvertisingThis is the best of audio advertising, all in one place. Experience the power of audio across music, podcast, and satellite radio. (27 kB)https://www.sxmmedia.com/pod.linkThe Download from Sounds ProfitableThe most important news from this week and why it matters to people in the business of podcasting. Brought to you by Sounds Profitable. (85 kB)https://pod.link/1608566100pod.linkSounds Profitable: Narrated ArticlesSounds Profitable is a weekly newsletter that covers both strategic and tactical changes to the business side of podcasting. Articles cover a range of topics, from podcast adtech to new revenue models to innovative business initiatives and is read by senior podcasting industry management, including CEOs and divisional heads. Our mission is not to make the information from the podcasting industry more accessible to everyone, and this podcast feed is an extension of that. Each episode is a human-narrated version of the articles we publish on our site and in our newsletter, typically voiced by the author.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Download from Sound Profitable; Beer gets into video podcast advertising, kids podcast business is booming, and an appeal to private marketplace deals over FAANG, and more. Production company Crooked Media has kicked off a campaign incorporating a purely visual sponsorship into Offline with Jon Favreau, and it’s from a sector not frequently seen in podcasting. Morning Brew’s Alyssa Meyers covered the story last Friday, shining light on a YouTube-focused partnership between Crooked Media and Blue Moon beer, a subsidiary of Molson Coors. “For Blue Moon, Crooked agreed to add title cards that say ‘presented by Blue Moon,’ along with the brand’s logo, to the start of each Offline YouTube episode, Crooked Media VP of commercial marketing and creative strategy Joel Fowler told Marketing Brew.” In addition to the title card and host-read ads in each video, Blue Moon will also buy YouTube ad space specifically on Crooked Media’s YouTube channel. Joel Fowler told Marketing Brew Blue Moon is the first “bigger blue-chip brands that you’re seeing come into the podcast space.” Fowler foresees more Fortune 500 companies embracing multi-media podcast ad campaigns in the near future.  Disinformation detection company NewsGuard is looking to provide brand safety by uprooting disinformation in podcasts. According to reporting by MediaPosts’ Joe Mandese: “NewsGuard is said to be in talks with at least three of the ad industry’s big holding companies to fund the new podcast rating service, and would reap a six-month exclusive window as part of the deal.” Mandese connects a renewed industry interest in new brand safety tools for podcasts to the latest controversy surrounding the resurgence of COVID-19 disinformation on Spotify’s The Joe Rogan Experience. NewsGuard aims to provide a personal touch with physical human analysts to employ prior knowledge and context to determine a podcast’s veracity, building lists of safe or problem podcasts as time goes on. While initially NewsGuard’s attempt to adapt their blog fact-checkers for podcasting sounds noble, it raises some eyebrows. It’s a proprietary tool that’ll have six-month exclusivity for the anonymous holding companies funding the project. Their chosen hands-on approach also isn’t scaleable like other solutions currently in production, like that offered by Barometer. Unlike NewsGuard, Barometer is using the publicly-auditable GARM framework and isn’t focusing on exclusivity with a particular investor. It is *The Download’*s opinion that the brand safety problem needs not be solved with proprietary solutions, but with accessible and easily-replicated frameworks.  Once again J. Clara Chan over at Hollywood Reporter has some fun developments in the podcasting world. Published last Tuesday, Chan’s The Booming Business of Kids’ Podcasting gives a rundown of the big-name attention kids podcasts are getting. “Podcasts in the kids and family category have seen a 20 percent increase in listenership since 2019, according to NPR and Edison Research’s 2021 Spoken Word Audio Report. Podcast adaptations of hit children’s shows are proliferating, while, conversely, film and TV studios are becoming involved earlier than ever to snap up podcast IP catered toward kids.” That 20% number is likely quite low, as discussed in Lindsay Patterson’s Medium blog on how the Kids & Family category needs an overhaul. Regardless of where the number’s at, it’s good enough to get some big movers interested in kids’ podcasting content. Spotify has produced a podcast spinoff of the viral hit toddler sensory videos CoComelon. GBH Kids is producing an adaptation to continue the recently-retired PBS Kids series Arthur. On the opposite side of the equation Warner Brothers is optioning the TV rights from Gen-Z Media’s unreleased podcast 20 Million Views. According to Ben Strouse, CEO of Gen-Z media while speaking to Hollywood Reporter: “Everyone’s looking for great IP, especially great family IP, which is what we’re counting on.” As YouTube, television, and every other form of media has discovered: making content to entertain kids is profitable. Now podcasting just has to thread the tricky needle of advertising to younger audiences with legislation like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act severely limiting traditional advertising practices. On Wednesday Michael Korsunsky published the incredibly thorough op-ed “How Publishers Can Lessen Their Dependence on FAANG” in a Wednesday op-ed for Adweek. Korsunsky opens with a quick recap of the alleged handshake deal in which Google offered Facebook perks like lower digital ad fees in exchange for Facebook’s support of Google’s Open Bidding program. News that gives the appearance the F and the G of FAANG are colluding. For those not looking at the transcript: FAANG is an initialism of the five biggest players in tech consisting of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. Well, technically with Google becoming an Alphabet company the last letter should be A, but FAANA doesn’t have the same flair. Quirky names aside, Korsunsky’s not happy. “[T]he news is a betrayal of publishers’ trust and highlights yet again the overdominance of the walled garden; it should therefore be treated as a bellwether moment for all digital marketers.” Korsunsky thinks its high time to kick shadowy open marketplaces to the curb and embrace transparent, more direct transactions on private marketplaces. For more background on the perils of open-market programmatic, check out Michael Bürgi’s Digiday piece “Open-market video programmatic is rife with fraud, say buyers, further complicating an already-difficult marketplace.” What does this mean for podcasting? As an industry it’s best poised to expand with programmatic through private marketplaces, providing more transparency and better relationships than open marketplaces. If advertisers get on board with finding this solution more preferable outside of podcasting, it will likely bleed over to increased programmatic sales in podcasting Once again we bring shocking news posted to Twitter. On Monday Digital Content Next CEO Jason Kint posted a Twitter thread analyzing developments in a sizable privacy lawsuit against Google in Northern California courts. The court order calls for Ernst & Young, Google’s independent auditor, to immediately relinquish all files relevant to the suit. Google is also ordered to show cause as to why they should not be sanctioned in light of new information suggesting Google allegedly ordered Ernst & Young to withhold over six thousand sensitive documents relevant to the case. “It’s a bad look for E&Y to be playing this way for Google considering they perform much of the auditing across the advertising industry.” In addition to the advertising industry implications, Ernst & Young is one of the primary auditing firms for certifications, like those through IAB. Continuing The Download’s tendency to experiment and grow, we’ve got two new segments that don’t quite have names just yet. We’re working on it. First up, a brief recap of podcast company funding rounds of note over the last week. On Tuesday Libsyn landed 4.75 million in new equity financing. And as broken in Monday’s Podnews, podcast startup Kaleidoscope secured 3.5 million in funding, as well as a six-show deal with iHeartMedia. For this second and final segment, we want to branch out our occasional honorable mention into a regular highlight of multiple stories we couldn’t fit into today’s episode but are absolutely worth your time to read in full. With that in mind, here are this week’s three must-reads: The Care and Feeding of a Podcast Audience by Tom Webster. Women Podcast Listeners: What We Know Right Now by Caila Litman.Big Tech Always Fails at Doing Radio by Matt Deegan, which might be of special interest to those who remember our coverage of the Amazon AMP app last week. The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was

Sorry about all the police sirens. I wasn't arrested. No, I had to record this on St. Patrick's Day. In Downtown Boston. It's like Christmas, but for alcotourists.Register for the 2022 Infinite Dial presentation here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-infinite-dial-2022-tickets-290830069567?aff=edisonnewsletter&__s=xxxxxxxSupport for I Hear Things can be provided at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/TomwebsterSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Manuela Bedoya, Shreya Sharma, and Gavin Gaddis are on the show today, chatting with Bryan Barletta about our newest podcast, The Download. If this is your first time hearing about it, The Download is our weekly podcast about the business of podcasting. It started in December, and was initially hosted by Evo Terra and Bryan Barletta. We quickly decided to bring in Sharma, Bedoya, and Gaddis to the production and hosting team. In this chat, learn more about the team behind The Download and why we decided this podcast was necessary in the first place, both for Sounds Profitable, and for the podcast industry. Listen in to learn about:

Here's our favorite idea from this conversation: when each guest was asked where they get their podcast news, they cited each other's podcast newsletters -- Shreya Sharma writes Inside Podcasting, Manuela Bedoya curates the Podcasting, Seriously newsletter, and Gavin Gaddis is subscribed to all of 'em! Links:

Credits:

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on The Download from Sounds Profitable; ad tech firms are under fire for data scraping, Amazon joins the social audio market, YouTube is paying podcasters to incorporate video, and more. Morning Brew’s Ryan Barwick reports that trade groups acting on behalf of publishers from the US, UK, and Canada are accusing ad-tech firms of unfairly scraping metadata from websites Once collected, this allegedly ill-gotten data is used to create contextual advertising segments for clients without the publisher’s consent, also undercutting the publishers’ attempts to directly sell contextual advertising deals. “Now that third-party cookies are dying and some ad dollars are shifting to contextual advertising—ads based on the content of the media, not on personal information—publishers want a (better) seat at the table and stronger terms as the industry adopts new technologies.” Richard Reeves, managing director of the Association of Online Publishers, summarized the issue of companies scraping data. “What we are now seeing is people almost brazenly walking through your home, and removing your furniture, and selling your assets elsewhere. And you don’t even know that they’re doing it, or you can’t receive any value for it. Just because you can doesn’t mean to say you should.” Data scraping isn’t new to podcasting, either. Transcription happens in podcasting, with and without a publisher's consent. It’s likely however this wider publisher issue plays out will have trickle-down effects to what companies can do with unlicensed podcast transcripts. Amazon has a new social audio app to make podcasters' dreams of being a DJ come true. Brad Hill of Rain News reports: “While early reports compare Amp to Clubhouse, Amazon’s promotional emphasis is on building interactive music shows, something like live, interactive radio.” Amp brings to mind an obscure podcasting tool Spotify launched for Anchor in late 2020. The feature, titled Shows with Music at launch, allows podcasters on Anchor to slot any song in the Spotify catalog between any pre-recorded podcast segments. Listeners with Spotify Premium would experience a seamless transition as if the music was baked into the podcast, while free listeners would hear a thirty-second preview of the song. Shows with Music still exists, technically, but has fallen by the wayside to become a feature hidden in the Anchor interface. Much like the forgotten podcasts from big-name creators covered last week. Amp, conversely, only requires listeners to sign up for a free Amp account to listen to creators. The Verge’s Jack Kastrenakes writes: “Amazon is positioning this as more of a radio-style service than a live chat service (there’s even a five-person cap on callers right now), which is probably for the best.” Shows with Music was a cool feature that enabled podcasters to live out their radio DJ dreams in a copyright-friendly manner. Another platform with a massive collection of licensed content at their disposal playing in this podcasting-adjacent space might just lead to more creativity and innovation in the social audio sphere. On Tuesday, podcasting ad tech company Gumball announced they had raised ten million in Series A funding. Brad Hill of Rain News reports, “Gumball, which was started by podcast comedy network Headgum, allows advertisers to programatically buy pre-recorded host-read ads. The system offers real-time inventory browsing, demographic audience targeting, and verification of placement and listening. The company lists a few brands which have used the system — Casper, CBS, Netflix, OkCupid, Squarespace, Warby Parker, and others.” Naturally, the Gumball system is deployed across the entire Headgum network, serving ads on flagship podcasts like The Doughboys, Punch up the Jam, and We Hate Movies. YouTube is taking podcasting seriously enough to put their money where their mouth is. Last Friday Bloomberg’s Ashely Carman reported both independent podcasters and podcast networks, all of which asked for anonymity, received offers ranging from $50,000 to $300,000 to create filmed versions of their episodes, as well as “other kinds of videos.” Video podcasts on YouTube historically have done well. As the platform matured from cat clips to encouraging content creators to make longer and longer content, the unedited video chat show took off. Productions like The H3H3 Podcast and The Joe Rogan Experience saw great success embracing the platform. That said, as Carman said, “However, the cost to build a studio, hire editors, and develop a fully functioning video publishing pipeline can deter networks and shows from adopting the platform.” In addition to these cash injections implying YouTube wants to seed more of a professionally-produced podcasting atmosphere, there are small infrastructure moves to suggest this is a long-term plan. Alex Castro at The Verge reminds readers that back in October YouTube began allowing Canadian users to listen to videos while the device was not focusing on the YouTube app or was locked. As YouTube power users in the US can attest, this feature is pushed very hard in YouTube Premium advertising as a good reason to sign up. Without putting on a podcast-branded tin-foil hat, it seems like making the ability to use YouTube like a podcasting app would be a huge step towards YouTube courting more podcasters and their audiences. On Tuesday The Hollywood Reporter’s J. Clara Chan published an exclusive announcement that UTA has launched Audio IQ, a data analytics service to facilitate podcast deals. The service will make use of social media, search results, and other open-source data to inform both clients and agents of a podcasts’ health to facilitate dealmaking. “While podcast analytics can often rely on historical data points like number of downloads or past ad revenue, UTA’s Audio IQ analyses also offer future projections — a tool that is particularly key in negotiations for shows that have not yet launched or for identifying emerging talent.” Audio IQ comes onto the field as massive podcast outfits buy up previously third-party analytics companies - see our February 18th episode for coverage of the Spotify acquisition of Chartable - and that atmosphere has UTA IQ lead Joe Kessler concerned. As Kessler is quoted by Chan’s article: “I’m hopeful that this announcement serves as a wake-up call for the podcasting industry to somehow coalesce around a common source of truth and data for the industry, because it’s sorely needed as it’s maturing.” Finally, a smaller bit of news that’s not technically a full news story yet, but we feel is worth keeping an eye on as things develop. There was something about Tuesday this week that lead to podcasting announcements. Ashley Carman tweeted the exclusive scoop that three senior leaders at Megaphone are leaving. CEO Brendan Monaghan, CRO Matt Turk, and COO Jason Cox, all in their positions prior to the Spotify buyout, have been confirmed to be leaving the company after their one-year contracts expired. The three are now starting a blockchain company. The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Shreya Sharma and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was written by Gavin Gaddis. Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Special thanks to Ian Powell for his audio prowess, and to our media host, Omny Studio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.