Sounds Profitable

This week on The Download: Google Announces Ad Library, the maturing podcast ad industry attracts more mainstream brands, and Audiobooks could become new audio advertising frontier. Quick Hits:Gumball Expands Its Host-Read Podcast Advertising Marketplace Model to YouTube Integrations. Podcast Company Audacy Shakes Up Its Leadership, Retains Cadence13 Studio by Ashley Carman. For a full transcript of the episode, links, and other episodes, please visit SoundsProfitable.com/Podcast

Tom Webster recently wrote an article entitled, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Podcasts.” He posits that, while publishers may think they know a lot about their audiences, they don’t really know all that much. He outlines five questions that podcasters can ask of their audience in order to get a better grasp on who they are, what they want, and how the show can potentially appeal to more listeners like them. Arielle Nissenblatt and Tom discuss these five questions and share some more context on how to chat with your audience. Also in this episode, we discuss Sounds Profitable’s “The Medium Moves the Message” research study and Tink Media’s upcoming Adopt a Listener Month initiative.Listen to learn about: 5 questions you can and should ask your audienceHow to actually get responses from your audienceWhy it’s not enough to just ask “what do you like about my podcast?”Why you don’t need this to be a study or have thousands of responses for it to be effectiveWhat’s coming up at Sounds ProfitableLinks:ArticleArielle NissenblattTom WebsterSounds Profitable’s researchCredits:Hosted by Bryan Barletta, Arielle Nissenblatt, Tom WebsterProduced by Spooler MediaHosted on Art19Recorded on SquadCast.fm

From an undisclosed location in Prague, Tom Webster reflects on highlights from recent Sounds Profitable research and why it means radio should embrace podcasting. Credits:Written by Tom WebsterEdited by Gavin GaddisAssembled with Spooler.fmHosted by ART19Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim CameronSounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.

This week on The Download:Ad Fraud Yet to Significantly Impact PodcastsMarketers and creators react to potential TikTok banYouTubeTV increases price due to content costsSounds Profitable releases The Medium Moves the MessageQuick hits: The Biggest Challenge for Podcasters Today is… by Eric Nuzum in his newsletter Audio Insurgent. This issue Nuzum has a conversation with ChatGPT, asking the bot to list the biggest issues podcasters face currently. Interestingly enough, it might have parroted the sentiments of one of Nuzum’s own articles back at him.Amaze Media Labs Acquires Rockable. Podcast advertising company Rockable, and their proprietary audience growth solutions, are now a part of AMAZE Media Labs. For a full transcript of the episode, links, and other episodes, please visit SoundsProfitable.com/Podcast

Google has a potentially huge opportunity to grow the podcast industry — both for publishers and for listeners (and even for advertisers) — by way of YouTube Music. The past few weeks have brought more and more attention to this possibility by way of Kai Chuk’s announcement at Hot Pod Summit at On Air Fest and a recent press release shared on Podnews. In this episode, Bryan Barletta and Arielle Nissenblatt discuss the opportunity at hand, what we would like to see, what we will likely see (realistically), and what the future looks like if the opportunity is seized.Listen to learn about: How YouTube could potentially ingest RSS feedsWhat hosting providers and YouTube should be negotiatingHow Sounds Profitable plans to handle videoUpcoming research from Sounds ProfitableHow AI fits into all of thisLinks:ArticleSounds Profitable’s researchCredits:Hosted by Bryan Barletta, Arielle Nissenblatt, Tom WebsterProduced by Spooler MediaHosted on Art19Recorded on SquadCast.fm Edited by Gavin Gaddis

This week Bryan addresses the myth that podcasting has a unique measurement problem, and how the industry as a whole can move forward to address it. Written by Bryan BarlettaEdited by Tom WebsterAssembled with Spooler.fmHosted by ART19Sounds Profitable theme written by Tim CameronSounds Profitable: Narrated Articles is a production of Sounds Profitable. For more information, visit soundsprofitable.com.

The Download is brought to you by Magellan AI. Track the trends in spend, ad load, podcasts on YouTube, and more with Magellan AI's advertising benchmark report for Q4, available now.The stories covered this week are: 6 AI tools podcasters are using for new ideas, editing, and more — and why they're skeptical of ChatGPTWhy regulators’ scrutiny of Big Tech is rekindling buyers’ interest in ad tech  News publishers lament the role of verification firms in the programmatic market Quick Hits: The JAR Audio Pilot Competition for Emerging Women Podcasters is now accepting applications. The winning idea will be produced as a pilot episode with JAR audio collaborating with the creator. The deadline for submissions is May 1st. Sessions from Veritonic’s Audio Intelligence Summit are now available on Veritonic’s website. For those who missed out, or are interested in reviewing what they saw in person, the seven sessions are now live, including the panel on attribution and brand lift that includes our own Bryan Barletta. What Are the 3 S’s of Programmatic Podcast Advertising? By Mattia Verzella on AdMonsters. Spreaker’s Head of Business Development breaks down the rise of ad trading in podcasting, the challenges faced by both publishers and advertisers, and details how the three S’s can solve for them. For the episode's full transcript, please visit SoundsProfitable.com/Podcast

Does the medium move the message? Spoiler alert - yes. This week Tom Webster previews the next research project from Sounds Profitable.Written by Tom WebsterEdited by Bryan BarlettaAssembled with Spooler.fmHosted by Omny StudioSounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron

Gavin: This is The Download from Sounds Profitable, the most important news from this week and why it matters to people in the business of podcasting. I’m Gavin Gaddis, in for Manuela Bedoya. Shreya: And I’m Shreya Sharma.Gavin: The Download is brought to you by Magellan AI. Track the trends in spend, ad load, podcasts on YouTube, and more with Magellan AI's advertising benchmark report for Q4, available now. You can find a link in the description or visit Magellan dot AI.Shreya: This week: Spotify Stream On Announces New Features, RSS.com and Spreaker make transcripts more accessible, Marketers adapt to serve niche communities, and The Infinite Dial turns 25. Let’s get started. Spotify live stream Gavin: Yesterday Spotify hosted their annual Stream On live event from LA. Throughout the 90 minute presentation a series of guest speakers, ranging from Spotify executives to the Jonas Brothers, debuted new features from Spotify and the company’s goals in the near future. Let’s look at the ones relevant to podcasting:Starting yesterday the Anchor brand has been retired. The hosting service and other podcasting features will be brought under the name Spotify for Podcasters. In addition to the new coat of paint for Anchor, several features originally only available to podcasts hosted on Anchor have been made platform-agnostic.  Chief among these features is the ability to upload video podcasts to Spotify, a particular pain point for video podcasters outside the Spotify umbrella. In addition to video uploads, users will have access to net-new features like Q&A posts and polls that will be visible on the podcast’s page in Spotify. The Spotify for Podcasters dashboard will also feature more advanced analytics. As one slide of the presentation announced: “Spotify is open for business.” Speaking of business, during the segment focusing on the Spotify Audience Network, Chief Business Officer Alex Norstrom announced the newest publisher to join SPAN is none other than podcasting giant NPR.In the world of monetization, Spotify podcasters are getting a sizeable upgrade in the form of a Patreon partnership. Now podcast listeners will be able to listen to premium content hosted on Patreon from within Spotify itself. With this announcement, Spotify now has a direct answer to Apple’s paid podcast subscription service.This year’s Stream On was a promising one, with a healthy focus on the podcasting industry overall. This renewed focus on upgrading the platform, adding new features, and making older features more accessible to podcasters everywhere is a promising one. Spotify seems to be interested in growing with podcasting instead of growing independently. We love to see it. RSS.com and Spreaker make transcription freeShreya: To continue the trend of features that benefit everyone in podcasting we have two big transcription announcements. First: this Monday https://podnews.net/press-release/rss-com-free-transcripts?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2023-03-06. When generated, these transcripts will be posted automatically to the show’s episode page on RSS.com, as well as pushed the show’s RSS feed. This will allow the transcript to be displayed in podcast listening apps that support Podcasting 2.0 tags. According to this Monday’s issue of Podnews, the list of apps that actively support transcripts through this method includes Podverse, Podbean, and Podcast Addict. At launch the automatic transcripts support thirteen languages: English, Spanish, Arabic, Catalan, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese and Turkish.  In the official press release, RSS.com co-founder Ben Richardson said there were several features the company considered essential to the tool for it to be ready, including multiple languages and ease of use for the podcaster. From the press release: “We encourage all types of podcast player apps to facilitate the use of captions and transcripts our podcasters can provide in order to open up even more of podcasting’s potential.” And for the second part of this Monday transcription tale: the folks at Spreaker launched http://freepodcastranscription.com, a free tool available to anyone regardless of affiliation with Spreaker. The website touts a high level of privacy and security due to everything being run locally in the user’s browser. From the site’s copy: “We don't send the mp3 file to a server. All the processing happens on your device.” Since that processing is kept in-browser instead of farmed out to an expensive server network, the burden of effort and cost is shifted to the user, allowing a lightweight, free option for podcast transcription. Users pick from one of sixty language options, select the file needing transcription, and run the process. After some time, dictated by the power of the computer, a .SRT file is generated for download.  The easier it is for podcasters to generate transcripts, the more pressure there will be for podcast apps to fully implement them. Not only does the popularization of transcription make podcasting more accessible to a wider audience, it increases the search engine optimization far beyond what can be written in a given episode title or description. More people can enjoy podcasts, and more people will be able to find them. A win-win scenario. Marketers adapt to serve niche communities as culture fragments. Gavin: This week an eighth-part article series on social fragmentation in the internet era kicked off on Digiday. https://digiday.com/marketing/marketers-adapt-to-serve-niche-communities-as-culture-fragments-strays-from-universal-water-cooler-moments/ focuses on the death of the classic “water cooler moment.” From the article: “Today, we not only don’t have a watercooler — as the return to the office hasn’t been a return to pre-pandemic normal — but we have fewer mass cultural moments where everyone is paying attention to one thing. In recent years, the proliferation of content online has made the experience of the internet more individualized, according to agency execs, allowing people to focus on specific niches that they find interesting rather than tune into whatever they’re supposed to like because everyone else says they should.” A natural reaction to this fragmentation is to focus down on appropriate niche groups and meet the individuals at their own individualized online experiences. Unfortunately this also comes with the task of convincing marketers to buy in, as they tend to want to stretch their budgets as wide as possible. Some of this convincing comes in the form of sobering conversations explaining that even the largest brands don’t have the money to target every audience at once. Fragmentation has lead to more digital boots-on-the-ground marketing, such as Cristina Lawrence, EVP of consumer and content experience at Razorfish, aiding a CGP company in establishing a viral TikTok account. Primarily by being flexible and producing content quickly, the company could pursue moment-to-moment trends as they developed and meet users where they naturally were going.Much like when Apple Tracking Transparency turned the advertising world on its head, save for podcasting, our industry is uniquely positioned to serve targeted communities. Podcasts, by their very nature, create their own niche groups. If properly maintained and surveyed, a podcast community is the perfect place for niche targeting.    Edison Research Publishes 25th Anniversary Edition of The Infinite Dial Shreya: For our final story of the week, why not end on some more good news? A flashy 25th anniversary edition of Edison Research’s report The Infinite Dial dropped last Thursday. Here’s some highlights from the 73 page document to take you into the weekend: Monthly podcast listening for the total US population 12 and up dipped last year, going from 41% in 2021 to 38% in 2022. Listenership has risen once more, with 2023 numbers sitting at 42% of the population, an estimated 120 million listeners. Weekly podcast listening took a similar dip in 2022, slipping from 28% of the population to 26%. This year it has climbed back up from the slump to 31%, or an estimated 89 million podcast listeners in the US alone. From the observations slide: “Data appears to reflect ‘post-pandemic’: on pattern from previous years.” In essence, it appears the number fluctuations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic severely changing daily routines have calmed. Now the industry is back to the familiar, steady growth seen in previous years. Shreya: 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: https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2023/03/02/advertisers-can-use-their-own-first-party-data-to-target-podcast-ad-campaigns-but-are-they By Alyssa Meyers. A piece interrogating how podcasting can implement first-party data in ad campaigns, as well as interrogating why certain companies prefer or avoid it. Spoiler alert: first-party, like programmatic and any other tool, has its uses and can work well when used appropriately. 

This week we bring you a feed drop from Insider Interviews, in which E.B. Moss interviews Linda Bethea. The original show notes follow: Linda Bethea, Head of Marketing for Danone North America - a top 15 Food and Beverage brand and the country's largest B corp - gives Insider Interviews host, E.B. Moss, the insider's scoop on marketing 20 different beloved CPG brands, and staying true to a corporate mission of sustainability. Hear how she developed her leadership skills during stints with PepsiCo, Frito-Lay and Diageo, and is now "delighting" consumers with everything from International Delight partnerships with the iconic show "Friends" to the hit Super Bowl commercial for Oikos with Deion Sanders and family.Linda and E.B. discuss:• Linda's path from soda to spirits to spirited field work that taught her how to negotiate and earned the nickname of The Velvet Hammer• Her definition of brand purpose and how proper marketing of it impacts consumer choice and company values• The growing demand for plant-based foods today• How Danone is rescuing fruit and repurposing bottles into shoes and what E.B. eats as an "ova-lacto-pesce-vegetarian"! (And a lot more about plant-food trends, like Danone's new campaign for Silk with a "faux" milk moustache on stars!Linda Bethea is smart and inspiring and mission-driven. Don't miss this conversation with a conscientious consumer marketer and leader.