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This week on The Download:  Quarterly earnings, more quarterly earnings, Audio is getting its own track at Advertising Week, and Spotify is giving podcasts their own space in its app.  Arielle: Hope you’re ready for some earnings reports, because we’ve got two segments worth of second quarter earnings to go over. First up: the big platforms. Last Wednesday https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/08/03/spotify-siriusxm-and-acast-report-growing-podcast-ad-biz-in-q2?mid=4afb33bb7ffe284d840660fb3604ff60Things kick off with a silver lining:  “Call it what you want, the ad biz is not looking its best right now. But according to these execs, the growing podcast segment is keeping its head above water.”  Economic uncertainty is undeniably impacting the ad industry. The CEOs of Spotify and SiriusXM both cite ‘macro’ trends as being notably dire but not to podcast ads sales. SiriusXM’s Q2 ad revenue for Pandora and associated platforms reports a 5% year over year increase, reaching 403 million. Spotify posted a 31% year over year gain, earning around 366 million. This time around they neglected to isolate their podcast ad revenue as its own statistic.  Meyers quotes Spotify CFO Paul Vogel as saying they’re experiencing “strong growth on the podcasting side.” Hosting service Acast has been busy this second quarter, citing new features, a massive increase of podcasts on the platform, and their acquisition of Podchaser as driving factors of their 39% net sales growth. A figure that calculates out to 31 million USD.  While the macro trends are concerning, The Download will never pass up an opportunity to report numbers going up in podcasting. Big or small, names in the industry are increasing ad revenue, and that’s a good thing.  Shreya: Now to cover the Q2 numbers from three large broadcasters: iHeartMedia, Cumulus Media, and Audacy. There’s a few dark spots throughout but, interestingly, their podcast numbers are shining beacons of hope in all three reports.  Overall https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220804005680/en/iHeartMedia-Inc.-Reports-Results-for-2022-Second-Quarter, despite, in the words of company president Rich Bressler: “the uncertain economic environment.” Podcast revenue is up to 86 million, a 60% year over year increase.  Meanwhile, https://www.cumulusmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/CMLS-2022.06.30-Earnings-Release-FINAL.pdfjoined the macro club during president Mary Berner’s opening statement:  “Despite the challenging macro environment, we increased revenue in the quarter by more than 5%, driven by our digital businesses whose growth accelerated in Q2 to 20% year-over-year.” Podcasting made Cumulus around 15 million this last quarter, up 27% year over year. All told, podcasting accounts for 6% of the company’s revenue. Not too shabby.  Finally,https://seekingalpha.com/pr/18894187-audacy-reports-second-quarter-results:  “After a very strong first quarter in which we grew revenues by 14% and significantly increased margin, our second quarter results were adversely impacted by declining macroeconomic conditions and ad market headwinds which reduced our top line growth to 5%.”  The company made a nice $69m from “digital,” which includes podcasting, and is up 18% year over year. Podcast downloads grew 40% year-over-year. Revenue from podcasts is supposedly in the upper teens of percentage growth, but Audacy didn’t give specifics. Even with the ad market headwinds it seems podcasting is doing well for them.  Arielle: Wednesday of last week was a busy day for Alyssa Meyers, as we cover her second article of the day: “https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/08/03/audio-gets-its-own-track-at-this-year-s-advertising-week?mid=4afb33bb7ffe284d840660fb3604ff60”  Advertising Week’s head of podcasting Richard Larsson told Marketing Brew,  “The rise of audio throughout the pandemic, coupled with Advertising Week’s efforts to build its own podcast network, culminated in the decision to give audio a more official spot on the agenda this October.” Audio representation continues with one of - if not the - longest-running podcast awards ceremony. Yesterday the People’s Choice Podcast Awards announced the nominees for their 17th annual session. The substantive list of nominees can be found https://www.podcastawards.com/ Continuing the award theme with one more bit of news: on Monday the newest issue of Adweek dropped with the winners to the 2022 Adweek Podcast of the Year Awards. The full list of winners can be found in the official Adweek posthttps://www.adweek.com/media/see-all-the-2022-adweek-podcast-of-the-year-awards-winners/amp/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2022-08-09. Shreya: Podcasts and music are taking a break from each other soon on Spotify, according to David Pierce’s https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/9/23298679/spotify-app-redesign-podcasts-music “Spotify has been working on a new design for its home tab that will create separate feeds for your music and your podcasts. The company says it’s part of an effort to give you more and better recommendations, but it also addresses a common criticism of the Spotify experience: with every kind of audio smushed together in the app, it can sometimes be hard to figure out.”  The new layout creates a bar at the top of the app delineating whether the user is in the Music area or one called Podcasts & Shows. Music will continue to feature new suggestions for songs and albums along with recently-listened tracks while Podcasts & Shows gets rid of music and purely focuses on new episodes of subscribed podcasts and recommendations for shows Spotify believes the user will enjoy.  Pierce offers the comparison:  “They’re not so much new home screens as new filters for your home screen. (I’d rather just have them be separate tabs altogether, but I’ll take what I can get.)” An app redesign with a dedicated area for podcasting provides more opportunities for promotion. Podcast promotion and growth of audience is one of the hottest topics in podcasting.   Spotify providing more of those opportunities for ads in a way that doesn’t step on music-based ads is a big deal. Promotion opportunities are a big enough deal that Dan Misener and Jonas Woost of Pacific Content have left to form https://wearebumper.com/, an agency dedicated solely to promotion.  Arielle: Finally, it’s time for our semi-regular roundup of articles we’re calling Quick Hits. These are articles that didn’t quite make the cut for today’s episode, but are still worth including in your weekend reading. This week’s three great reads are:  https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/fundamentals-of-programmatic-advertising?ecid=NL1001. A quick read with a helpful infographic that makes a great introduction for those not familiar with programmatic, as well as those in need of a refresher.  https://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/doubleverify-grows-q2-revenue-by-expanding-brand-safety-to-retail-media-tiktok-and-gaming/?oly_enc_id=7865D1013734B0R Notable in its absence is any entrance into podcasting. Meanwhile IAS, a direct competitor of DoubleVerify, https://integralads.com/news/spotify-and-ias-join-forces-to-establish-a-brand-safety-solution-for-podcast-advertisers/. DoubleVerify not expanding into audio over these other verticals suggests that the IAS and Spotify relationship is more driven by Spotify looking to tend their walled garden. Perhaps the move was more motivated by Spotify themselves rather than actual advertiser demand to have a brand safety partner. Finally, some self-promotion: Sounds Profitable’s latest research project will debut Tuesday, August 23rd during the Sounds Profitable Business Summit. The Summit, as covered in a previous episode of The Download, will take place in Dallas, Texas during the opening day of Podcast Movement. The “After These Messages” study will present a definitive take on the impact of live host-read ads, scripted ads, and announcer-read spots. This study was designed by podcast and research industry veteran Tom Webster, in partnership with Edison Research, and will be seen as an important new resource for publishers and brands. Don’t miss it.  Arielle: And that was The Download, fromhttp://soundsprofitable.com/! 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, or on SoundsProfitable.com/TheDownload. And thank you for sticking with us as we bring you the top stories you might have missed from the past week. I'm

In this episode of Sounds Profitable: Adtech Applied, Bryan speaks with U of Digital Managing Partner Shiv Gupta about what it means to create a comprehensive educational approach across an industry. Gupta comes to us by way of the digital marketing space, but has spent his career creating programming aimed at educating and serving across different sectors and levels within companies. Adtech Applied cohost Arielle Nissenblatt joins to set up the chat and break it down with takeaways at the latter half of the show. Listen to learn about:

Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: creating opportunities for folks to learn, either if they’re new to a job or looking to move on to the next level, benefits everyone. Links:

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The Summer of Programmatic continues! You may have already decided that programmatic advertising is important, but is it difficult to get started? The answer is...no! And this week, we lay out a simple plan to get you up and running. Credits:

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

This week on The Download: New TikTok Trademark Could mean new streaming service, third-party cookies get a stay of execution from Google, Apple App Store ads could signal Apple Podcasts’ future, and two perspectives on the downturn ad economy.  New TikTok App Trademark Manuela: Last Thursday Dan Whateley and Amanda Perelli, writing for Business Insider, covered a new trademark application for a service called TikTok Music. As the simplistic name suggests, TikTok parent company ByteDance could be looking to branch the TikTok brand out beyond its current relationship to music and create a fully-fledged streaming platform.  “The idea that ByteDance would launch a standalone "TikTok Music" streaming service in the US to compete with players like Spotify and Apple Music isn't unfounded. It already runs a streaming app called Resso in three markets — India, Brazil, and Indonesia — that has been grabbing market share from other streamers in the past year.” While nothing has been formally announced or set in stone, the sources Perelli and Whateley contacted for their story suggest it’s highly unlikely ByteDance would file such a trademark. Filing in the US and Australia wouldn’t happen without a strong chance the company meant for it to come to fruition. Then there’s the matter of this move making perfect sense for TikTok.  Why cover this on The Download? Well, in addition to the general fact TikTok is slowly devouring the online world, it’s coming for audio specifically and the trademark application lists, among other things, the proposed new app’s ability to stream: “downloadable mobile applications providing podcast and radio broadcast content.” What remains to be seen is what the TikTok version of ‘a podcast’ will be. Google Delays Cookie Death Again Shreya: Once again we won’t be seeing the death of third-party cookies, as Google has delayed their death blow for another year. Last Wednesday The Verge’s Richard Lawler covered the story in the article “Google delays blocking third-party cookies again, now targeting late 2024.”  “The plan is to expand the group of Chrome users who have Privacy Sandbox APIs enabled to “millions of users globally” starting in August, then gradually opt more people in throughout the rest of the year and into 2023, giving the publishers and developers of these sites time to find out how the technology works before the APIs are “generally available” by Q3 of 2023.”  With this second delay third-party cookies are becoming the shoe that refuses to drop in advertising. While podcasting doesn’t depend on cookies per se, the ability to track individual consumers remains an expectation of digital marketers who don’t want to see the genie go back into the bottle. If it does, podcasts are on equal footing with mobile and web ads, and all will have to do the work to target the right consumers. Apple App Store Ad Offerings Signal Podcast Future Manuela: This Tuesday’s issue of Stratechery covers many sections of the Apple earnings call, but one particular section stuck out to The Download: Apple’s new advertising slots. The new slots are detailed by 9to5Mac’s Chance Miller.

“Apple is expanding its advertising business and adding two new ad slots to the App Store. Currently, the App Store has two ad slots: one on the main ‘Search’ tab and one in the Search results. The two new App Store ads announced today will bring advertisements to the App Store ‘Today’ homepage, as well as to individual app pages.”  While the App Store and Apple Podcasts are different services, this change could signal a shift in the winds over in the podcasting world. Currently there are no ads in Apple Podcasts. Apple also puts considerable time into featuring podcasts in places ads would normally appear at no charge. Years of careful curation and optimal placement have caused those spots to become incredibly coveted. By making some of those spaces available for purchase - through search or the home page, or even on pages for OTHER podcasts - Apple would unlock a large revenue opportunity for themselves outside of subscriptions, and provide a new for-pay opportunity for podcast promotion. Ad Economy Downturn Dual Perspectives Shreya: On Monday Digiday’s Seb Joseph posted “The downturn ad economy: A tale of two narratives.”  “There are two competing narratives on advertising at the moment. They sit uneasily with each other. But both are correct. Ad dollars are being spent, but they’re also being cut. Yes, these two things can be true at the same time. No, the latter perspective doesn’t make the former any less valid or vice versa. Really, it’s a matter of perspective.”  The two warring perspectives in Joseph’s piece are that of the big holding companies and agencies versus the platforms. Both are staring down the barrel of a recession and have different reactions.  “It’s no surprise that the marketers who can afford to advertise now are trying to make the most of it.  They’re spending ad dollars, rather than looking to pull them. Indeed, economic slumps are usually the best chance to buy share of voice cheaply at the same time rivals reduce their own. It’s a cliche for a reason.   Otherwise, Unilever wouldn’t have splurged £169.73 million ($206.7 million) on advertising in the first half of the year alone. Coca-Cola did so mething similar, as did McDonald’s. The largest advertisers will try and advertise their way through the downturn — to a point, at least.”  Podcasting is platform-heavy, working diligently to get the big advertisers to shift their spending into podcasting. Yet those platform peers are the ones getting the short end of the stick when it comes to ad cuts.  “To survive, companies are cutting costs, including advertising. When these companies advertise, they tend to do so online first and foremost. SMEs and DTCs are nothing but digital-first in many respects. So when these businesses feel the effects of adverse conditions, so do the platforms they advertise on.” When those in the podcasting industry talk about the push for bigger advertisers in our space, it's not only for growth: it’s to weather the storm. If some of those spend-through-the-storm big fish can be directed to our corner of the world, they’ll keep multiple industries afloat. Quick Hits Section Manuela: Finally, it’s time for our semi-regular roundup of articles we’re calling Quick Hits. These are articles that didn’t quite make the cut for today’s episode, but are still worth including in your weekend reading. This week’s four great reads are:  First: Google Begins Interest Group-Based Ad Experiment by Laurie Sullivan. Google is testing grouping users into interest groups (the article gives “custom bikes” as an example).This has implications for podcasting. What would be a great way to reach custom bike fans? A custom bike podcast.  Podcasting has a window to figure this stuff out.  Clear your calendar for the afternoon of August 16th as the Latino Podcast Listener Report 2022 is coming your way. The presentation, co-hosted by Gabriel Soto, Edison Research Senior Director of Research, and my co-host on La Descarga, as well as She Podcasts cofounder Elsie Escobar. Registration is open now.  Also: Podcasts are testing out-of-home ads to reach broader audiences by Alyssa Meyers. In a previous episode we touched on the story of Slow Burn buying a billboard to promote their season on Shirley Wheeler in Roe v. Wade battleground states. This covers the wider trend of podcasts dipping their toes in out-of-home advertising, first highlighted by James Cridland over in Podnews. The habit is growing and catching more attention, though it comes with - ironically - less metrics than the already small amount of fingerprinting traditional podcast advertising comes with.  Finally: How Slate’s Charlie Kammerer is prioritizing frequency to boost podcast revenue by Kayleigh Barber. In a piece that rarely happens in mainstream podcast coverage, Slate’s Charlie Kammerer talks through the outlet’s podcasting strategy. Of note is the approach that shows integrated value, using podcast paywalls to drive subscriptions of Slate overall.  The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Shreya Sharma and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was

We're such big fans of Laura Mayer and her new show Shameless Acquisition Target, that we wanted to make sure you didn't miss it. Subscribe directly here! After years of seeing friends (and some enemies) get rich, rich, rich selling their shows and companies to other bigger shows and bigger companies, longtime podcast executive Laura Mayer has decided to get hers. To do this, she'll speak to straight-up geniuses in the worlds of podcasting, entertainment, and business to understand what value is in media and how to make it. At the end, Laura will sell the show itself to the highest bidder. Will she make hundreds, millions, or even dozens of dollars? Will she be able to afford the gray house down the street from her rental apartment? Let’s find out together… shamelessly. Laura explains why she cares so *very* much about acquisitions And, hopefully, why you should care, too!  Want to buy MERCH (“Hector’s Place” is our newest addition) or buy the show?\
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Are programmatic ads bad for podcasting? Or are they a lifeline for creators? We ask the number one solo artist in U.S. history. Credits:

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

Bryan speaks with Marketing Brew’s Alyssa Meyers about reporting on podcasting and audio for an advertising-focused publication. Marketing Brew is part of Morning Brew’s network of newsletters. Adtech Applied cohost Arielle Nissenblatt joins to set up the chat and break it down with takeaways at the latter half of the show. Listen for:

Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: we need subject matter experts who are not just well-versed in their own product or company’s capabilities, but who also know how their product/company relates to and fits in with the larger audio landscape. Links:

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Download: Acast buys Podchaser, PodcastOne strikes out on their own, SiriusXM and Comscore expand their deal, Disney’s integrating with The Trade Desk , and Podnews caught 240 spam emails. This Monday Podnews started off the work week with a big announcement: Acast is acquiring Podchaserhttps://podnews.net/press-release/acast-podchaser “Podchaser, which will continue to operate as a separate brand and independent business, was founded in 2016 and is home to the leading global podcast database, covering more than 4.5 million podcasts and more than 1.7 billion data points — including hundreds of thousands of ratings and reviews, and the advertisers of the world’s top 5,000 podcasts. This unique, proprietary data — which will also remain open to all — spans and powers the entire open podcast ecosystem, and is used by listeners, podcasters, advertisers and industry professionals.” Podchaser has created strong integrations with hosting platforms to receive data, exported data to podcast apps and hosting platforms, and has a competitive intelligence tool built to enable publishers and buyers alike to improve their revenue streams.  General industry sentiment of Acast currently is a bit lukewarm unless you’re actively working with them as a publisher or a buyer. As previously reported, Acast has—or at least had— a marketing strategy involving unrelenting spam emails encouraging podcasters to switch to their services. With mass emails to RadioPublic users and their siloed relationships with partners like Patreon, it’s hard for some podcasters to give this deal the benefit of the doubt.  We’re very happy for our sponsor Podchaser, and the entire team there, and truly hope the independent nature is maintained. We still question the comfort of existing and new integrated partners providing data to a competitor. Last Friday LiveOne issued a press release announcing that their company PodcastOne, having just raised 8.1 million in funding, is looking to separate and https://ir.livexlive.com/news/news-details/2022/LiveOnes-Wholly-Owned-Subsidiary-PodcastOne-Closes-8.1-Million-Financing-at-a-Pre-Money-Valuation-of-60-Million-as-Part-of-Its-Intention-to-Spin-Out-PodcastOne-as-a-Separate-Public-Company-Before-Year-End/default.aspx  “PodcastOne is the leading advertiser-supported on-demand digital podcast company, offering a 360-degree solution for both content creators and advertisers, including content development, brand integration and distribution. Acquired by LiveOne in 2020, PodcastOne has had more than 2.1 billion downloads a year since its acquisition, across the more than 350 weekly episodes it distributes.” Their talent stable includes names like Jordan Harbinger, Adam Carolla, and T-Pain. In the press release PodcastOne president Kit Gray said:  “The podcasting business has exploded over the past five years and PodcastOne is one of the largest independent podcast companies in the world. The company is one of only two independent podcasting publishers in the top 10 of Podtrac's list of Top Publishers. We believe that by trading as a separate public company, PodcastOne will have the opportunity to access the public capital markets as well as be better positioned to both acquire podcast platforms and attract significant podcast talent.”  PodcastOne offers its own self-built platform and operates as an ad sales network for its publishers. It’s weathered a lot of storms in podcasting and investment like this during a recession shows confidence in the ability for them to stand on their own. It will be interesting to see how their products and services come to market faster, and who they cater toward. Much like the acquisition last story, this announcement shows podcasting deals aren’t going stale. Last Thursday SiriusXM and Comscore announced the expansion of their collaborative agreement to bring predictive audience targeting to podcasts. This new expanded agreement https://podnews.net/press-release/siriusxm-comscore-predictive. General Manager of Comscore activation services Rachel Grant said:  “With podcast consumption skyrocketing and the regulatory environment still very fluid, it’s critical to give advertisers the ability to develop privacy-forward and future-proof audience targeting on podcasts”  Prior to this AdsWizz was already working with Comscore for their contextual targeting based off of keywords for the Podscribe tool (not to be confused with the company Podscribe). The new deal expands into a targetable dataset for those buying through Adswizz programmatic offerings, either as a buyer using their demand side platform to buy anywhere in podcast programmatic, or buying directly into their open marketplace Podwave.  The continued highlighting of it being privacy-first is a bit misleading. AdsWizz is still providing the IP address to match off of, which we at Sounds Profitable do not find to be an issue. That Comscore has built a new dataset not built on cookies is a step towards the aforementioned future-proofing. The dataset looks to come from Comscore opted-in panels, which is different from universal ID solutions looking to match first party data. While podcasting is always probabilistic matching - as it's based on IP address - this is also probabilistic targeting.  It’s neat to see Comscore focusing a bit more on podcasting while many other major data partners are snoozing on it. In a rare twist we only have one article posted on a Tuesday for you this week. Last Tuesday AdExchanger’s James Hercher published https://www.adexchanger.com/data-exchanges/disney-integrates-with-the-trade-desk-and-uid2-in-pursuit-of-better-addressability/?oly_enc_id=7865D1013734B0R “This new integration with The Trade Desk, which was born from recent meetings in Cannes, will accelerate Disney’s ambition to automate and target more of its overall pool of data, Barnes said. Advertisers will be able to more effectively find their audiences across Disney inventory and the added precision should help improve ROI and post-campaign results.” Disney is a major player in podcasting, both directly and through partnerships. So much of what Disney does today uses programmatic for efficiency’s sake. A company of that size can’t easily do manual IO’s for every cookie-cutter campaign. As Disney continues to invest and grow their podcast offerings creates synergy with the majority of podcast SSPs being configured to purchase from The Trade Desk. There’s  real potential for further increase in podcasting programmatic as the industry takes care of the small discrepancies and differences that stand in the way of podcasting as a main advertising channel.  While the article is worth engaging with on its own merits, script writer Gavin Gaddis wishes to spotlight the piece’s cartoon of Toy Story stars Buzz and Woody selling ads with the caption ‘to automation and beyond.’ Three months ago Podnews editor James Cridland laid a trap to learn more about the methods and companies using shady tactics to cold-call podcasters via email. On Wednesday he published the results in “https://podnews.net/article/podcast-industry-biggest-spammer.”  “In May 2022, we amended Podnews’s podcast RSS feed to produce a near infinite amount of trackable email addresses as a kind of spamtrap. We wanted to discover who was scraping our RSS feed for emails; what user agent they were using, when they scraped it, what tag they scraped it from, and whether the messages were legal under the FCC’s rules (the so-called CAN-SPAM Act).”  Cridland’s honeypot strategy attracted 240 emails over the three month period. Some fall within the boundaries of CAN-SPAM, some seem pointed in their lack of transparency.  The specific companies involved are not necessarily important to the overall story. Podcasting needs good governance as growth continues and the industry constantly redefines what constitutes ‘normal’ business practices. It’s on those within the industry to make podcasting better through what’s considered an acceptable marketing strategy. It’s perfectly legal to scrape email addresses from RSS feed tags and send them unsolicited emails as long as they follow loose FCC and other governmental regulatory rules. In an industry growing as fast and consistently as podcasting one has to question if it has a place for an antiquated cold-calling strategy perfected in the late 90s.  Finally, it’s time for our semi-regular roundup of articles we’re calling Quick Hits. These are articles that didn’t quite make the cut for today’s episode, but are still worth including in your weekend reading. This week’s two Quick Hits are  https://blog.pacific-content.com/the-most-important-things-weve-learned-about-successful-branded-podcasts-c9e52f643c8fMisener, formerly Director of Audience Development at Pacific Content, provides a great list of learnings on his way out the door. One of the greatest minds at Pacific, Misener has been skilled at breaking down complex data and making it accessible to the masses. His heart has always been focused on growing all of podcasting and Sounds Profitable fully supports him in whatever he’s doing next. We know it’ll have an impact.  And secondly: a press release from Pushkin media:

This week on The Download: Blubrry brings a new spin to media kits, Twitter’s building a podcast player, TargetSpot expands into Latin American audiences, Overcast’s creator has beef with how podcasters use DAI, and Anchor’s co-founder finds RSS standards restrictive to innovation.  While a significant portion of the United States was recovering from an excessive amount of explosive devices used over the holiday weekend, Blubrry announced a new way for podcasters to present themselves to potential sponsors and partners.  “Blubrry is introducing a podcasting industry first by providing all Blubrry paid customers a podcast media kit that updates daily with information you choose to include. The kit includes data you provide, podcast statistics and audience survey results.” Data points that can be included in the kit range from simple unchanging data points like website or show start date to granular things like social media follower counts, average monthly downloads per episode, and Blubrry audience survey results.  While not technically a media kit, this is a great step forward in helping arm podcasters with useful information they can give advertisers interested in evaluating their show. While lacking in the usual collection of logos and information ephemera a true media kit designed to be attractive to press, this sort of media kit 2.0 cuts down on a fair amount of repeat labor. To The Download’s knowledge this is the first time a hosting company has automated this process and included actual download statistics in the package. Usually the process is a tedious manual one that requires regular updates by either the show runner or their representation to pull each data point.  Kudos to Blubrry for being the first to market with this dreamed-of feature.  Once again we bring news of a social media platform showing interest in podcast integration, but this time it feels more legitimate. Frontend engineer and code researcher Jane Manchun Wong did some digging. In her to-the-point tweet she announced:  “Twitter is working on in-app Podcast player.”  Attached to the tweet is a screen recording of the new player in action, showing Wong clicking on show art for Office Ladies, which prompts a new podcast player overlay.  For the younger folk in the room, it’s worth noting that Twitter didn’t spring forth fully formed into the world. In its primordial form the service was originally Odeo, a 2005 attempt at what we’d call a podcast social media network today. Podcasting is literally in Twitter’s DNA.  This Monday Podnews shared an announcement from TargetSpot concerning a promising step towards diversifying podcasting further. The adtech company is opening a Latin American-focused office in Miami, Florida under the leadership of Angelica Potes. Chief Revenue Officer Alexandre Ouhadi said: “We are glad to finally be physically present in the Latin American Market. We have created amazing partnerships with big name publishers. This is the right moment to officially go live. Audio is growing rapidly, so it’s a great opportunity for advertisers to leverage their digital media budget through this engaging medium.”  Diversity in language, ethnicity, and geographical location is how the podcast industry expands. Hispanic/Latino creators are incredibly well represented in podcasting in comparison to the overall US population. Providing revenue opportunities for those audiences provides the ability for new businesses to be built to capture that revenue. This is good growth for the industry. On Tuesday Marco Arment, creator of podcatcher Overcast, took to Twitter to address a trend in negative reviews for his app. In four screenshots provided four different anonymous users cite an abundance of jarring advertisements. Some complain about the amount and quantity of ads, one claims the ads were so poorly-optimized the volume shift was enough to burst their eardrum.  While the last review’s threat of legal action might be hyperbolic, Arment is still concerned.  “Cheap, sloppy dynamic ad insertion (DAI) in podcasts continues to degrade the experience for listeners. They blame the app, and that’s my problem to deal with.”  He goes on to ask podcasters who poorly implement DAI “what are you doing” in all capital letters.  Sounds Profitable’s Bryan Barletta took issue with this in a quote-tweet of Arment, citing issues like frequency capping, comp separation, and other features related to poor-quality ad placement:  “...are not tech issues, they’re business decisions. Your host doesn’t offer it? Switch hosts. And don’t buy inventory that doesn’t support your needs.”  Sloppy implementation of DAI is a recipe for disaster, and there’s plenty of evidence of podcasters falling for that trap. Too often that sloppiness is built in under the guise of 'automation', which often leads to odd ad breaks added by the hosting company filled with even odder ads. So what's the solution? Bad ads—ads that don't fit the context of the episode, ads that are recorded at wildly different volumes than the rest of the episode, or an overabundance of ads in an episode—are predominant in dynamically inserted programmatic ads as well as baked-in host-read ads. And solid DAI implementation can power highly relevant host-read ads that sound like they belong in the episode. In the end, it comes to having an ad strategy as well as tactics that are acceptable to the podcaster, the advertiser, and the audience as well. And it'll make it less likely for listeners to blame their listening app for something that's not their problem. We got you, Marco. On Tuesday Anchor co-founder Michael Mignano posted a Medium blog titled “The Standards Innovation Paradox.” In it, he proposes the theory that standards like RSS were useful in helping podcasting grow in the beginning, but have become restrictive over time as services all adapt the same standards and any new additions come with all previous updates as well.  “If you’ve ever searched the App Store or the Google Play store for a podcast app, you’ve likely come across a tidal wave of search results. In some ways, this fragmentation is great for users, because it means they have a ton of choice and flexibility in what product to use for their podcast listening. But at the same time, this fragmentation is bad for innovation, and makes it nearly impossible to innovate on experiences that are based on RSS, meaning the podcast listening experience has remained stale and largely unchanged for almost the entirety of podcasting.” On Wednesday James Cridland published a rebuttal in the form of “The Standards Innovation Paradox: is it real?” The piece takes Mignano’s to task and seeks to add outside context to his thought process, namely the fact Mignano worked at Spotify after they bought out Anchor. During that tenure the company threw itself into reinventing podcasting without RSS, instead using the proprietary method that follows Mignano’s proposal that proprietary tech is required due to the difficulty of forcing a standard to evolve.  “Yet, Spotify absolutely could evolve the standard: because by April 2022, they were big enough, with at least 30% market share, to have set the standard themselves. They could have said “here’s how to signal the video asset in your RSS feed, and if you do this, you’ll get video podcasts in Spotify too.” They could have looked at the currently existing solution to this, the podcast namespace’s alternateEnclosure tag, and adopted that (and, possibly, molded it to their needs). But, they didn’t.” Cridland goes on to point out decisions to stick with black box proprietary tech conveniently also mean any user who wishes to take advantage of that new tech is permanently locked into using Anchor as a hosting service.  The risk of an open ecosystem is the ability for aggregators to control and separate the industry. For all the dour news about a lack of profits, Spotify is currently succeeding at this to some degree. RSS is capable of doing everything Mignano’s piece takes issue with; issues he has historically complained about even prior to the buyout.  Innovation is stifled not by standards, but by people and businesses with the necessary power to adopt new standards instead choosing to whine about having to share space and leverage that to release new impenetrable black boxes.  Finally, it’s time for our semi-regular roundup of articles we’re tentatively calling Quick Hits. These are articles that didn’t quite make the cut for today’s episode, but are still worth including in your weekend reading. This week’s Quick Hits are  Spotify acquires music trivia game Heardle by Ariel Shapiro. Podcasting: True or False? By Fred Jacobs.  As usual, links to everything mentioned can be found in the episode notes.  The