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:

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:

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Evo Terra is the executive producer of Sounds Profitable: Adtech Applied

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 better shot at developing content and skills that are useful in the long run. Another interesting facet of this story is CensusWide got these numbers before YouTube launched their TikTok competitor YouTube Shorts, effectively cloning Tiktok’s endless stream of short-form content in the existing YouTube ecosystem. But then news dropped to complicate things further: https://www.androidcentral.com/tiktok-rolling-out-10-minute-video-uploads, more than doubling the original limit of three minutes. https://www.axios.com/insider-axel-springer-podcast-company-spooler-db4ded4c-c8cd-43fe-9759-68b935e5c9db.html. Working with Insider, Spooler will co-produce daily news podcast The Refresh from Insider with a special trick: Spooler’s proprietary tech will allow the hosts to add new segments to that morning’s episode as the day’s news progresses. “For news companies, the expectation is that producers could build ‘playlist programs’ that Spooler automatically stitches together to make the podcast sound seamless, even though it's being repeatedly updated. The bespoke player on http://Insider.com and Insider's app will allow users to skip over segments they've already heard.” https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/28/iheartradio-modernizes-the-radio-call-in-with-launch-of-talk-back-a-tool-for-sending-voice-messages-to-show-hosts/, an in-app feature allowing podcast-listening audiences to send voice messages to show hosts. There must be something in the Spring air as podcast companies seem to be in the mood to experiment and innovate, pushing the limits of what podcast tech can do. https://adtechexplained.com/interoperable-private-attribution-ipa-explained/ Trey Titone writes for Ad Tech Explained: “When Meta and Mozilla team up to improve digital advertising, you should probably pay attention. The two companies joined forces to create Interoperable Private Attribution or IPA, a framework for attribution measurement without tracking users.” The teamup shows changing times and attitudes between the companies. Back in 2018 when Meta was still Facebook, Mozilla developed an extension for their Firefox browser with one goal: keep Facebook from watching users’ web activity outside of Facebook. Now the two are teamed up with a proposed framework that could follow pro-privacy trends formed by Google and Apple to find a way to provide useful advertising data while protecting the individual’s privacy. Titone’s breakdown of what Meta and Mozilla have proposed IPA will be, as well as what its constituent parts might actually do, is incredibly thorough. Thorough enough to necessitate a table of contents. Check it out. For more thoughts on the subject of podcast advertising and a quality-over-quantity approach, The Download recommends Brian Morrissey’s Substack newsletter piece https://therebooting.substack.com/p/end-of-an-era-of-ad-targeting?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo2OTIzNDM2MSwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDkyMjU1NjIsIl8iOiJzczJINCIsImlhdCI6MTY0NTY1MzExMCwiZXhwIjoxNjQ1NjU2NzEwLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTAwNTQxIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.Bq6sIrtc5I9u9XT2eZvTLvCIt60p-CpHIghM06gdsdk&utm_source=url&s=r We should know, we covered it last week. The Download is a production of http://soundsprofitable.com/. Today's episode was hosted by

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:

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:

Credits:

Evo Terra is the executive producer of Sounds Profitable: Adtech Applied

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 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.

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

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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 Sarah Perez: “After Chartable is fully integrated into Megaphone, Spotify will deprecate the standalone Chartable platform. Until then, however, it will remain available to both new and existing publisher and advertiser clients.” Here’s what Sounds Profitable’s own Bryan Barletta had to say in Podnews: “Third-party analytics and attribution are critical to a growing advertising ecosystem. In podcasting, Chartable and Podsights were two of the three core providers that helped drive that point home. Spotify has bought great technology and acquired an all-star technical and sales talent, but these companies are no longer third-party solutions due to Spotify’s role as a publisher, hosting platform, and ad seller. Just like with Adswizz’s attribution pixel and the Triton ranker, these solutions can still add value, but with this acquisition, they now lack the ability to be seen as truly neutral.” And finally, in a rare ‘honorable mention’ section, The Download tips its proverbial cap to Alyssa Myer. Thanks to her efforts, we’re seeing more detailed coverage of podcast advertising. If you haven’t checked out her coverage of advertisers experimenting with programmatic ads over on The Morning Brew. Get to it! 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.

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

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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 what they’re doing. Did they pivot to the metaverse?” The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable! Today's episode was hosted by Evo Terra and Manuela Bedoya. Bryan Barletta is the executive producer. 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.