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This week: Podcasts found using mobile game ads for downloads, a trio of new pixels announced, and the Independent is reframing programmatic for advertisers. Podcasters Are Buying Millions of Listeners Through Mobile-Game Ads Manuela: Our first story is a big one! This Tuesday, Bloomberg’s Ashely Carman published a piece reporting on the discovery that podcast companies are serving podcast players as ads in mobile games. For those not hip to mobile gaming: free-to-play mobile video games traditionally generate revenue by interrupting gameplay on a regular basis with a skippable ad, with the option to watch a 20 second unskippable ad in exchange they receive beneficial in-game items, or more attempts to play that day. Instead of serving a video ad, which is one of the more common uses of these platforms, some companies are serving a web player that plays the an episode of a podcast. The ads are timed, requiring the app user to interact for often 20 seconds or more, which is more than enough time to download an entire 1 hour podcast through progressive downloading. That download and every ad in that download would be seen as legitimate by current IAB podcast standards, even though the app user was prompted to move out of the ad and back to the game after the timer ended.Ad fraud detection company DeepSee’s August examination of ads in the popular game Subway Surfers spotted podcasts from the New York Post, independent podcaster Scott Savlov, and iHeartMedia. Carman interviewed Corey Weiner, CEO of Jun Group, a company specializing in placing ads in mobile apps. The starting rate for Jun Group placement is a $27 CPM for one of the 20 second ads. Jun Group’s main podcast client is iHeartMedia.  “According to a person familiar with the effort, the radio company, which bills itself as the top podcast publisher globally, has shelled out more than $10 million and gained approximately 6 million unique listeners per month through these ads since 2018."During the last week of August, half of the top ten trending podcasts in Podtrac were iHeart productions that hadn’t uploaded new episodes in weeks, if not months, according to Carmen. Podtrac is an industry ranker that only measures podcasts that opt into their platform’s prefix analytics solution, and recently independent developer John Spurlock identified that Spreaker from iHeart had added the prefix to podcasts on their platform en masse.  Yesterday Podnews published exclusive info regarding iHeart rankings: “Are these plays counting for iHeart’s “#1 for podcasting” Podtrac ranking? Podnews analysis confirms that the embedded podcast players used, as documented by DeepSee, makes a call to Chartable and a call to Podtrac.” Podnews editor James Cridland then links to Podnews coverage of a 2018 story in which iHeartMedia was busted embedding podcasts on the websites of hundreds of affiliate radio stations, inflating play counts.The core problem that led to this story existing lies in the fact that there are minimal requirements for podcast players and not requirements for reporting transparency to podcast advertisers. Podcast players like Apple are Spotify are safe to trust as one can be 99% sure it’s coming from their apps. Even web player traffic is generally trustworthy given it’s assigned less inventory in general. That said, it’s time for the industry to figure out stricter guidelines for web players and more obligations to our advertisers.It’s not immediately clear what the finite details of a solution will be, but if all the big players in the industry came together for the sake of transparency they can build something. Something that would get publishers and advertisers alike reevaluating what inventory is or isn’t valuable based on where it’s played rather than simply if it’s played. Pixels Galore - Podscribe and Gumball launch podcast analytics, and Magellan launches attribution Shreya: Time to increase your resolution, several new pixels have recently arrived in podcasting. First up: a little trip to the past. Back on August 11th Podscribe announced third party impression verification. Or, in their words, third pod-y impression verification. Once users get the pixel to their publisher they will receive real-time downloads. “As early publishers in all other seasoned media forms discovered, 3rd party verification both facilitates and is required for significant scale.” The new verification comes designed to automatically sync to Google Sheets, allows for flagging of campaigns if suspicious data starts coming in, and GARM methodology brand safety monitoring.  Flashing forward to last Thursday, our second pixel comes from Magellan AI with their new Attribution by Magellan AI. With the new Attribution tech both advertisers and publishers will have details like campaign performance and pacing at their fingertips within the Magellan AI dashboard. “We are helping brands and agencies complete the entire buyer’s journey in one seamless location to enable them to scale with ease as the podcast industry exponentially grows,” said Cameron Hendrix, CEO and co-founder of Magellan AI. And for the final pixel, a bit more recent: This Tuesday Gumball, adtech division of the podcast network Headgum, announced a new feature titled Gumshoe. “Prior to Gumshoe, host-read ad measurement and verification were archaic, requiring podcasters to provide screenshots to verify impressions and download data. Gumshoe, which works with most major hosting platforms and is compatible for both embedded and dynamic ad formats, now digitizes this function to add increased communication and transparency.”  How The Independent is getting brands on board to advertise against breaking news Manuela: This Monday Digiday’s Kayleigh Barber covered a talk by The Independent’s SVP of U.S. publication, Blair Tapper, about the fight to sell inventory as a publication covering breaking news. In a world where huge negative stories are breaking on a regular basis, a publication that doesn’t have subscriptions to rely on has to ensure skittish advertisers have confidence in where their inventory is being served. According to Tapper, 75% of The Independent’s ad revenue in the U.S. comes from programmatic ads. Given news is a commonly-avoided category, her team has focused on recontextualizing programmatic in a way that combats advertiser’s negative preconceived notions. “Programmatic advertising makes up approximately 75% of The Independent’s advertising revenue in the U.S., according to Tapper. But because news is such a highly avoided category by many advertisers, her team has been working to reframe the idea that buying programmatically means losing control over where and when a display ad gets placed.” “There used to be this misnomer that programmatic was just all of these underground pipes [that spit out ads like] magic. I really believe that’s not the case. Programmatic is still a human business, it’s still a human sell — it’s just a different way of buying inventory. And so if you can humanize the programmatic relationship, I think a lot of the objections to news go away.” In addition to that, Tapper spoke to fighting against rudimentary lists of blacklisted keywords that accidentally catch false positives. An example given is if the keyword “shot” were to be blocked to avoid serving ads on school shootings, it also eliminates any sports articles that describe a player taking a shot at a goal.  “To remedy this, Tapper’s team works with IAS, Ipsos and NewsGuard to try and contextualize the articles affected by keyword blocking.” It has been said before on The Download and we’ll say it again in future: Programmatic is not a dirty word, it’s a tool that works as well as you use it.  Quick Hits: Recommended Weekend Reading 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’s five great reads are: Has streaming made it harder to discover new music? By Alexis Petridis. Discoverability in podcasting is a common conversation topic. This op-ed discusses how modern music discoverability has a habit of playing things safe, to the point the charts frequently feature old songs brought to temporary viral fame due to television and TikTok.  Why Kochava says it doesn't want to settle with the FTC by Ryan Barwick. Back in our September 8th episode we covered the beginnings of the FTC lawsuit against data broker Kochava. Barwick is reporting on the story again and, spoi

This week: Serial and the importance of content curation, Spotify launches audiobooks, Spanish-language TV is surging,  why Wonder Media Network won’t use programmatic, and SirusXM is no longer the biggest podcast network by reach. Let’s get started. Serial and the importance of content curation.  Manuela: Last week news broke that prosecution would petition for the release of Adnan Syed, whose case was the subject of the first season of Serial. Since then Syed has been officially released. In the interim conversation regarding the case and the part Serial played in popularizing it reached a boiling point on social media. On Friday the 16th attorney Rabia O’Chaudry, host of Undisclosed and the person who originally brought Syed’s case to the attention of Sarah Koenig, tweeted an analogy for how Serial fit into the narrative of Syed’s release: “Imagine you ask someone to help renovate your house. Instead they set fire to it. The story about the fire brings thousands to your aid that rebuild your house.” Media critic and true crime aficionado Rebecca Lavoie quote-tweeted O’Chaudry to start a thread with an important lesson to be learned from Serial. “I have previously heralded Serial as a seminal piece of media and even made a podcast originally based on reviewing it. But given the facts of the case, Rabia’s analogy is precise. Serial doesn’t hold up. And its biggest crime is its abandonment of its own reporting.”Lavoie details several sections of the popular podcast that contain outdated or inaccurate knowledge with seven years of hindsight that, due to the podcast’s popularity, are still being discovered by brand new podcast listeners with. No warnings or amendments have been placed on the original season of Serial.  “I am not saying that Sarah Koenig et al have an obligation to report this story forever. But…the owners of the Serial feed (now [The New York Times]) have an absolute obligation to point news consumers to the latest… news.”Lavoie points to dynamic ad insertion tech and how it could be used to retroactively place a warning giving context without having to manually update each episode’s file. Given last year’s scandal with Caliphate, the NYT is no stranger to retroactively adding disclaimers to its own in-house reporting. Lavoie argues they have the same level of responsibility to maintain legacy feeds. Even the most popular true crime podcast in the industry is not above poor reporting or claims that were later disproven by new evidence. Despite being seven years old, Serial’s popularity means statistically it’s still someone’s first podcast in 2022. Spotify Offers Audiobook Service with 300,000 Titles  Shreya: This Tuesday Spotify announced the launch of their audiobook platform. “Starting today, Spotify listeners in the U.S. will be able to purchase and listen to more than 300,000 audiobook titles—making our platform a true all-in-one destination for everyone’s listening needs. And we’re excited to launch audiobooks with a brand-new user interface that’s geared specifically for listening to audiobooks and fits them seamlessly alongside the music and podcasts you already listen to and love.” The new audiobook interface includes an in-app purchase screen to buy each individual audiobook. Most popular audiobook platforms, like Audible or Libro.fm,  use a monthly subscription system that gives users a set amount of credits to exchange for audiobooks at a rate that costs less than purchasing them retail. Spotify’s model requires a Premium Spotify membership for the ability to purchase audiobooks.Press materials include a series of four screenshots depicting the purchase of Colleen Hoover’s novel It Ends with Us for $13.99, on sale from a normal listing of $17.99. This pricing is in lockstep with the average retail cost of the same book at popular audiobook providers Google Play, Kobo, and Audible if the user is not a subscriber. With this addition Spotify is now a one-stop shop for the casual user. While it might not attract many users specifically for the audiobook functionality, any user who listens to music or podcasts with Premium has the ability to buy audiobooks and listen without leaving the app they’re already paying for. Spanish-Language TV viewership surges despite mishandled metrics, lackluster representation.  Manuela: As is becoming common on The Download, this segment will discuss two articles that are closely related. First off: Spanish-language TV Viewership is Surging by Kelsey Sutton for MarketingBrew. The headline leads into a subheader explaining the surge is accompanied by poor measurement leading to under-investing. Now things are turning around. “We’re sure you’ve heard it about a million times: linear TV viewership is, on average, not looking good. But there’s one segment of old-fashioned TV whose outlook seems downright rosy.  Spanish-language TV networks, including mainstays like Univision and Telemundo, are on the upswing, growing daily audience reach even as many other major networks are seeing steady declines.” Dan Reiss, EVP and chief growth office at TelevisaUnivision told MarketingBrew Univision has seen an increase of brands on-air of more than 200 over the past two years. One of the benefits of podcasting being a younger industry than other media is it can learn from their mistakes and adjust earlier on when it’s easier to do so. Just last month Edison Research’s Latino Podcast Listener Report dropped, revealing 59% of the U.S. Latino population have listened to podcasts. Podcasting is a diverse field and should be treated as such from the ground up. To that note the final quote from an AdExchanger piece featuring Orci CEO Marina Filippelli: ““Gen Z can smell bullshit from a mile away – they know whether or not creative was produced by somebody like them,” Filippelli said. “Representation needs to take place not just in front of the camera, but behind the scenes.” Why Wonder Media Network won’t sell its podcast ad inventory programmatically Shreya: This Tuesday Kayleigh Barber published a piece distilling an interview on the Digiday Podcast into article form. The interview features Wonder Media Network co-founder and CRO Shira Atkins enthusiastically explaining why the network refuses to carry programmatically-served ads, instead choosing a more bespoke approach. Not only are ads produced in-network, they’re permanently baked-in.  “But on the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Atkins said she still believes that programmatic is “a tragedy for the podcasting ecosystem at large.” Her team does not sell any of its ad space programmatically. Instead, the podcast network uses its branded content studio to make bespoke audio ads, which Atkins said creates memorable ads that listeners are less likely to skip over.” It’s worth noting the difference between content provided by programmatic methods and the tool of programmatic advertising itself. High quality memorably ads like those produced by Wonder Media Network for baked-in use can be served programmatically through direct deals that operationalize and improve the process for both buyers and sellers.  NPR, for example, does this currently with great success. Programmatic distribution is a tool, not a particular flavor of advertisement.  “We don’t [carry programmatic-sold ads] because the reason that we’re able to demand such high CPM [or sell flat rate deads] is that we’re selling embedded ads in perpetuity. It makes me feel like an old lady whenever people ask me about this, because they’re like, ‘I can’t believe you don’t do dynamic ad insertion.’ But it works for us.” Host reads, baked-in, and dynamic ad insertion are all excellent tools that podcast audiences are receptive to, and companies like Wonder Media Network are an excellent example of how the power of the podcasting industry can allow individual facets of the industry to exist and thrive on their own.  Sounds Profitable’s first research study - After These Messages - has the data to back up the efficacy of host-read ads. The study shows the audience preference for host-read ads over generic announcer-read ads, which Atkins conflates with programmatic, is much smaller than one would expect.  Spotify hits the top of Edison Manuela: For our final story I don’t have to summarize the info, as they do it for me. “This week Edison Research publicly announced the ranking of the biggest podcasting networks through the second quarter of 2022, based on Edison Podcast Metrics survey of over 8,000 weekly podc

In this episode of Sounds Profitable: Arielle Nissenblatt and Tom Webster sit down to discuss Podcast Movement, the Sounds Profitable Business Leaders Summit, and most importantly: an update on Tom’s dog Walnut. Listen to learn about: Dynamic ad insertion and video trends among our sponsors. Tom’s Podcast Movement takeaways. What happened at the Sounds Profitable Business Leaders Summit Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: “When things don’t seem settled in the space, try to organize as best you can with other voices and take strong positions.” Links:Bryan BarlettaArielle NissenblattThe DownloadSounds Profitable: Narrated Articles Credits: Hosted by Arielle NissenblattProduced with Spooler.fmHosted with Omny StudioSounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We talk a lot about the unique content advantages in podcasting, but one key to growing the medium with an older audience might be even simpler. Credits: Written by Tom WebsterEdited by Tom WebsterProduced with Spooler.fmHosted with Omny StudioSounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron 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: Analyst predicts programmatic will get podcasting to six billion in ad spend, the new iOS update takes care of AppleCoreMedia, Apple announces virtual neighborhood for Latine Heritage Month, brand-lift studies are catching up with the times, and kids content is booming for Paramount+. Programmatic advertising could make podcasting a $6 billion industry by 2026 Manuela: In last Friday’s Hot Pod Insider, Ariel Shapiro covers B. Riley analyst Daniel Day’s newest publication about the industry. His most attention-grabbing prediction, as the headline spoils, expects podcast ad spending to be up to six billion dollars within four years. It’ll be an uphill battle to get there. Shapiro points out the potential downsides of programmatic without the right data and infrastructure by recalling the infamous Wild Turkey incident. Back in May Spotify accidentally ran an ad for budget whiskey on every podcast on the app simultaneously, leading to a social media firestorm as users posted screenshots of the most inappropriate examples of podcasts to pair with Wild Turkey. Day is of the opinion more detailed location data will be a game-changer that avoids such issues in future.  “Small and mid-sized businesses really have almost entirely sat out podcast advertising to date,” Day told Hot Pod. “These advances in geo-targeting and programmatic allow mom and pops and local, regional businesses to access this medium in a way that they couldn’t before, absent reaching out to like some local sports or news podcast. Now, they can target audiences listening to some big national podcast.” Day points to iHeartMedia putting significant investments into podcasting, as well as podcasting making up a larger portion of the company’s revenue each year, as examples of the growth he projects in action.  iOS 16: What’s new for Apple Podcasts Shreya: Last Wednesday Apple published an update blog detailing some of the new features coming with their iOS 16 update.  The update comes with some creature comforts for the user, such as more prominent placement of the sleep timer button and better Apple Watch integration for podcasts. There’s also a bit of housekeeping noted, in case you missed the multiple emails over the past few weeks: “Show and provider titles will continue to be displayed alongside show artwork on the Library and Search tabs, so make sure your show’s metadata is up to date and that your artwork includes your show’s title for the best experience.”  The most important feature of this update for the business side of podcasting isn’t mentioned in the update blog, though. This update brings the change to AppleCoreMedia user agent that’ll shift how we view Apple’s footprint in podcasting. As covered in our June 10th episode, this will lead to far less confusion as to what traffic is actually coming from Apple Podcasts. Those who didn’t report ACM will no longer underestimate traffic from Apple, and those who labeled all traffic from ACM as Apple will get a more balanced look at just how much traffic is coming out of Apple. For those that are code-savvy, we’ll include a link in the show notes to the official Apple developer page for the updated user agent key. Apple Podcast launches "El Vecindario" collections. Manuela: On the subject of Apple: This Monday an email sent by Apple announced their plans for Latine Heritage Month, which runs from today through October 15th.  “Later this month, Apple will showcase the abundance of Latine created content across genres, formats, and languages – and spotlight many great creators. Apple Podcasts has created a special destination, titled El Vecindario, that honors the spaces where Latine communities come together and conversations originate.” El Vecindario, the neighborhood in Spanish, will showcase Latine-created content covering multiple genres, formats, and languages.  Influencer marketing brand-lift studies are improving Shreya: Last Friday Marketing Brew’s Phoebe Bain used the release of the Association of National Advertisers’ organic measurement guidelines for influencers as an excuse to discuss how brand-lift studies have matured.  “Out of more than 1,000 Marketing Brew readers surveyed last month, about one-third said they think measurement for influencer marketing has “evolved significantly” over the past two years.”  A useful tool to track that rapid evolution is the brand-lift study. Bain spends a good portion of the article explaining the basics: two groups are asked questions about something, with only one having experience with that thing. Any differing answers or familiarity expressed by the second group is quantified as - you guessed it - brand lift.  Old-school brand-lift studies would ask simple questions regarding information retention, or whether the audience wanted to buy the product in an ad. Modernized studies take into account the changing media landscape, especially with the popularity of influencers.VP of marketing at creator management platform Grin  Ali Fazal explains to Marketing Brew: “With an influencer marketing brand-lift study, questions go a level deeper. Those questions might focus more on brand affinity, or how consumers feel. For example, “is the brand cool? Is it viral? Is it modern?” These questions focus less on what consumers remember, and more on a brand’s overall or social appeal. In an influencer marketing brand-lift study, he said, the questions focus on the full picture rather than just the ad itself. “This measures the true depth of impact that creator marketing has,” he said. Why should the business side of podcasting care? Podcasting is influencer marketing. In a world of pixel-based brand attribution and walled garden ad solutions, people are finding their options are missing the mark for influencer and podcaster alike. Brand lift studies by companies like Edison Research, Signal Hill Insights, Veritonic, or Nielsen can help fill that gap.  How kids shows are boosting Paramount+ Manuela: Last Thursday Kelsey Sutton published a look at how kids’ content is performing well at Paramount+. While Paramount+ is separate from Paramount’s podcasting ventures, The Download has been covering the boom in kid-friendly podcasting since our March 18th episode. Paramount’s experiences reaffirm that family and kid-oriented content drive engagement.  “When it comes to streaming, parents will go without eating before disconnecting something that entertains their kids,” Brian Robbins, president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon, said Tuesday at the Bank of America Securities 2022 Media, Communications, and Entertainment Conference. “Kids content is an amazing, amazing retention tool for us.” The streaming platform has done well for itself since the CBS All-Access rebrand. Currently Paramount+ reports 3 million paid subscribers.  “Kids’ programming on streaming can also help fill the audience void as linear viewing continues to drop off. “If you take our linear share and the audience for kids that we’ve picked up on Paramount+, we actually have more audience and share of kids 2–11 than we’ve had in years when you combine them both,” Robbins said.? As reported back in March, studies show the Kids & Family categories have grown 20% since last year and there’s reason to believe poor categorization of content is causing a lower number than the industry is actually experiencing. Kids content is doing quite well, as any parent will tell you.  Quick Hits: Recommended Weekend Reading 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:  Class Photos by Skye Pillsbury, for The Squeeze.  Pillsbury holds a mirror up to diversity on the business side of podcasting by compiling yearbook-style collages of the big podcasting company’s leaders and known executives with deal-making power. A must-read.  Introducing The Mullet Career Strategy™ — Creativity & Business by Steve Pratt. Pacific Content co-founder Steve Pratt announces his upcoming venture titled The Creativity Business, a strategy firm aimed at helping creatives learn better business and businesses learn better creativity.   17 Stats That Reveal the Power of Podcast Advertising and Host-Read Ads by Connie Chen. In addition to quoting our After These Messages study, senior manager of content management at Gumball Connie Chen brings a bundle of research to back up the efficacy of host-read ads. The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's epis

September 22nd is officially the last day of Summer, making our third and final article in our Programmatic Summer series absolutely not late to the party. Credits: Written by Bryan BarlettaProduced with Spooler.fmHosted with Omny StudioSounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron 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: We learned something interesting about Netflix, Cross-promotions work but you might be doing them wrong, Anchor continues to be the top podcast host by episode share, and the FTC sues a data broker. All we know about Netflix’s ad plans so far Shreya: Once again we bring you an article that doesn’t feature the world “podcast”, but could have big implications for the industry. Last Friday Kelsey Sutton published a brief roundup of all the news about Netflix that had dropped during the week. The world learned about polarizing new ad-supported tier, charging between $7 to $9 a month. We also learned they’re targeting 15 and 30 second spots for preroll and midroll ads.  “The flurry of reports helps provide a better picture of how Netflix is strategizing the rollout of its ad-supported tier after eschewing Madison Avenue for years. There are still many unknowns, including what kind of metrics the service will provide to measure ad effectiveness. Even without all the details, media buyers are buzzing with anticipation.”  Podcasters and advertising folk alike should take note of how much Netflix is paying per thousand impressions. According to Sutton the streamer is paying $65 CPM, with expectations of that going up to $80 in future.  With those rates in mind for the biggest streaming platform, average podcast CPM is fair to underpriced in comparison.  Do Cross-Promos Work? Hell Yes, But You Are Likely Doing Them Wrong…And We Can Fix That Manuela: On Monday Eric Nuzum published an issue of The Audio Insurgent that aims to introduce podcasters to a vital lesson learned while conducting research for terrestrial radio nearly two decades ago.  Nuzum is of the opinion that on-air and in-episode content promotion is frequently misunderstood and often poorly executed. This and the next two issues of Audio Insurgent are dedicated to covering the three Rs of program promotion: Reduction, Repetition, and Real Content.  In 2004 Nuzum conducted a study for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting titled ON-air Program Promotions Insight Study, a study of cross-promotion in the radio industry so helpful he continued to get messages asking where to find the study long after the original webpage hosting it had decayed.  For this newsletter series he has done some light editing and uploaded the entirety of the 18 year-old study to Google Drive for preservation.  “Yet despite its age, it can still be very effective and useful to all audio professionals today. But the whole project boils down to one simple sentence: A well-constructed message, delivered to the right listeners often enough for them to recognize it, can increase listening.” His issue on Reduction stresses the importance of stripping fat from a promotion and ensuring it isn’t airing in a block of multiple other promotions that could distract from the message. An example given from when the promo study was first conducted is Nuzum playing a promo for A Prairie Home Companion. The promo rapid-fire announced the town, state, college auditorium in said town the performance would take place at. Following that, three musical acts and the name of the famous News from Lake Wobegon segment.  “Immediately after playing it, I would ask those in the room to name a single artist or location mentioned in that promo. On a rare occasion, someone could remember “Iowa”--but most times, no one could remember anything. And these people were (supposedly) paying attention.” Top Podcast Hosting Companies by Episode Share (August 2022) Shreya: Last Thursday Livewire Labs updated their substantial snapshot of the industry via episode share.     “One of the ways to measure the health of the current podcast ecosystem is to measure the number of new episodes published in a given period. We look at every single new podcast episode published (about 1.6 million in August 2022, up 5.4% from last month) and identify which podcast hosting company it belongs to.” One of the first things that jumps out about both the list of hosting companies by new episode share and the ranking of hosts by new episodes published in August is the gulf between first and second place. In a ranked list of 234 podcast hosting services Anchor dominates first place at 22.9% of new episodes published. Buzzsprout showed gains in solidifying a strong second place at 9%.  Livewire’s data pairs nicely with the Podnews podcast hosting change tracker, which observes RSS feed hosting changes across the system’s sample size of over 73,000 podcasts. Over the past week 211 podcasts changed from one hosting service to another, 26 which moved from various other services to Anchor. Pundits are fond of depicting Anchor as a dumping ground for single episode or dead podcasts due to their free tier, but they clearly are attracting a lot of new creators.  A sociologist on what advertisers should know when they use health data And:  FTC picks fight with data broker Manuela: Over the past week Ryan Barwick of Marketing Brew has published two closely-related articles covering the use of data collected in a healthcare environment for advertising.  First, yesterday’s article features an interview with Mary F. E. Ebeling, an associate professor of sociology at Drexel University and recently-published author of a book on the effects of collected data on individuals’ lives. Ebeling provides an anecdote of how a child she lost to miscarriage in the real world continued to live a false life through parenting-related marketing emails.  “Though it’s near impossible to audit a digital ad—how, why, or where it was served—Ebeling connects the experience to her research in the healthcare industry, where patients rarely know they’re feeding “massive databases maintained by healthcare providers and public and private insurers, or payers—often called data ‘lakes’ and ‘oceans.’” With Ebeling’s account in mind, we look back to last Friday when Barwick covered a much-publicized lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission.  “On Monday, the agency brought a lawsuit against Kochava, a data broker, for allegedly collecting and selling location data “that can be used to trace the movements of individuals to and from sensitive locations” like reproductive-health clinics and places of worship.””  The suit comes several weeks after a preemptive lawsuit from Kochava towards the FTC. Barwick details the two businesses within Kochava in its data marketplace and measurement service. Kochava argues the user is forewarned when they initially agree to share their location data with the third-party apps they purchase the data from. The FTC, clearly, disagrees.      “By the end of the week, many were wondering: Why Kochava? And though we don’t know the answer yet, the FTC’s lawsuit could put the entire location data collection industry under the microscope.” Quick Hits: Recommended Weekend Reading 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:  The Ambies, the flagship award program of The Podcast Academy, designed to celebrate excellence in podcasting in the same way the MPA celebrates film with the Oscars, is now taking nominations. In addition, they've also announced a membership program sponsored by Spotify to enable independent creators to submit.  WQXR hires a podcasting chief by Laura Holt. Music remains one of the most untapped categories in podcasting. WQXR is a great example of a station that produces its own content and has access to a number of resources for original content, which is the key to making music podcasting work in a world where licensing music under copyright is still financially not viable in podcasting. Apple is staffing up its ad business by Ryan Barwick. This might not be breaking news for dedicated audience members of The Download, but it is crystal clear confirmation that apple is fully embracing its advertising business.  The BBC Shares podcast stats by

In this episode of Sounds Profitable: Bryan Barletta is joined by Stew Redwine in observing the anniversary of the first audio advertisement in 1922. How have things changed over a hundred years? What even was the first ad? Listen to learn about: The origin of audio advertisingHow audio ads have grown since. What we can learn from the evolution of audio ads Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: “History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.” - Mark Twain.  Links: Bryan BarlettaArielle NissenblattStew RedwineThe DownloadSounds Profitable: Narrated Articles Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta & Arielle NissenblattSounds Profitable Theme written by Tim CameronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a lot of received wisdom that says host read ads beat announcer ads in podcasting. But is this always true? Could it even be a false choice? Credits: Written by Tom WebsterEdited by Tom WebsterProduced with Spooler.fmHosted with Omny StudioSounds Profitable theme written by Tim Cameron 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: Podcast ad spending goes strong despite recession fears, YouTube and Twitter launched dedicated podcast spaces, advertising questions what to do if premium users choose not to see ads, and a look into why DTC ads haven’t fallen off as expected. Podcast Ad Spend isn’t Slowing as a Recession Potentially Looms. Manuela: Marketing Brew’s Alyssa Meyers brought good news last Wednesday. Things are looking up for the podcast ad spending despite, shall we say, less than ideal economic conditions.  Over on the general advertising side of things, it’s a bit bleak. On August 18th  Daniel Konstantinovic, writing for Insider Intelligence, covered the worst month of ad spending in two years.  “July saw ad spending go through its worst monthly decline since July 2020. Ad spending contracted 12.7% year over year in July, per MediaPost and Standard Media Index’s US Ad Market Tracker.”  Several potential causes of this dip are proposed, most of which are interlinked to some degree. Relaxing of pandemic restrictions and the return of larger social gatherings has increased commuting and free time away from screens. Meanwhile, even while the jury’s out on whether we’re technically in a recession, Konstantinovic points out a Brand Keys statistic showing 70% of consumers believe they’re in a recession and thus are cutting back on spending.  Perhaps spending wasn’t great in the general advertising space, but podcast ad spending continues to boom regardless.  “Some of the biggest audio companies reported growth in podcast ad revenue for Q2 despite a softening ad market, and buyers responsible for major audio budgets told us they’ve yet to see a significant retreat from podcasting, indicating that the sector could continue growing regardless of the state of the economy.”  It’s also worth keeping in mind which data we’re looking at and how we’re looking at it, as Magellan AI’s Sean Russo explains:  “We took a look through a few different lenses. When you look at year-over-year spend in July in podcasts, we’re seeing a 19% increase.  If we look at Q2 YoY we’re seeing a 48% increase. Worth noting that looking at month-over-month June to July we saw a 7% decrease. So, the bottom line on what we’re seeing is that podcast ad spend continues to grow at a healthy clip YoY, though we did see a minor pullback from June to July.” YouTube and Twitter Launch Dedicated Podcast Sections Shreya: It’s time to follow up on two developing stories we’ve covered in recent weeks, as two giant social media platforms have now rolled out sections dedicated to podcasting.  Last Thursday Twitter started the rollout of the new dedicated Spaces tab.  “Integrating podcasts into Spaces, where audio conversations happen on Twitter, is another way we’re continuing to invest in audio creators. To do this in a simple and intuitive way that allows listeners to simply hit play and go, we started with a redesigned audio experience in the Spaces Tab.”  Twitter remains an important space for podcasters to both promote and network. With the addition of podcast functionality that’s native to the app they’ve removed some of the friction between the promotion of a podcast and the potential audience member actually listening.  On that same note: last Monday YouTube launched a dedicated page for podcasts, though only for users in the United States. As covered by Sarah Perez in TechCrunch, the url for the new page was discovered ahead of formal announcement. Despite their thunder being partly stolen, YouTube’s shown a promising amount of dedication to the industry.  “Last year, YouTube hired a podcast executive, Kai Chuk, to lead its efforts in the space and has been offering cash to popular podcasters to film their shows, reports said. This March, a site called Podnews leaked an 84-page presentation that detailed YouTube’s podcast roadmap. In the document, YouTube revealed it had plans to pilot the feature by ingesting RSS feeds. It also mentioned a new URL, YouTube.com/podcasts, but the link didn’t work at the time.” A quick note from script writer Gavin: yes, that bit of the quote with the phrase “a site called Podnews” hurt me too.  In addition to what Perez covered in the quote, it’s also worth remembering YouTube has recently announced a partnership with NPR to bring their shows to the platform. It’s safe to say YouTube is one of the big companies that is taking the podcasting industry and its potential seriously.  What happens when high-income households opt out of ads? Manuela: Last Monday Kelsey Sutton, writing for Marketing Brew, approached an important question: what if the people certain brands wish to market to are also the demographic most likely to pay a premium specifically to avoid ads?  “The people that advertisers most want to target are hiding from the advertisers,” said Eric Schmitt, research director and analyst on the Gartner for Marketing Leaders. “It really is going to have some interesting knock-on effects for the ad business over time.” Podcasting is not specifically name-checked in the piece, but it is a growing phenomenon to keep in mind. Current data tells us most listeners are comfortable with ads as they currently exist in podcasting. Stick around for our Quick Hits section this week if you want a link to some extremely relevant data from a certain study Sounds Profitable published last week. Sutton’s article points to multi-tired subscriptions to streaming services as the biggest example of the popularization of a premium ad-free option. While these are worth thinking about, there’s ample room for nuance in the discussion, up to and including services like Paramount+ and Hulu, who have baked-in preroll ads before every television episode or movie regardless of subscription level.  “Schimtt hypothesized that the shift may eventually spell larger challenges for traditional ad-supported media channels, including TV, as marketers look elsewhere to reach higher-income consumers or spend more resources marketing to past customers.” Ad-free listening is a relatively new invention in podcasting, especially on a large scale. For now we wait and see which way the advertising winds blow.  How and why DTC advertising hasn’t cooled off as much as once thought Shreya: Last Tuesday Digiday’s Michael Bürgi published a brief look into the world of direct-to-consumer advertising in a world anticipating DTC upheaval. With the deprecated ability to track conversions due to changes in iOS 14.5 and the additional changes to cookies and third party data, DTC brands are turning to alternatives like branding opportunities to hit their goals. Surprisingly, after seasonal changes are taken into account, there’s quite a few DTC markets growing.  “Facebook has the highest monthly median spend in July 2022 at $19,022 ($2,000 less than a year prior), according to Varos, a research company that tracks e-commerce spend for about 1,800 companies. Google’s median spend inched up from $8,101 to $8,209 over the same period; TikTok’s grew from $4,095 to $5,981.”  The commonly-held belief that there would be pullback from DTC spending was indeed widespread, even leading to some companies not surviving. Those who did explore other avenues besides the cheapest and fastest clicks have discovered the wide world of influencer marketing, which just so happens to be where podcasting thrives.  Quick Hits: Recommended Weekend Reading 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 Sounds Profitable releases their second study, After These Messages.  Do podcast audiences prefer improvised host-read ads, scripted host-read, or pre-recorded radio spots? After These Messages is a one-of-a-kind study polling over 1,000 podcast super listeners to answer that question. Both the study and the half-hour video of Tom Webster’s presentation at Podcast Movement 2022 are available now.  Streaming surpasses cable and broadcast for the first time by Kurt Hanson.  While not a podcasting story, per se, it does highlight a significant milestone for digital media. People are becoming more and more comfortable unplugging from traditional broadcast media and constructing their own media diets from digital sources. Podcasting could ride along with that. I made a map of Spotify podcast recommendations. Here’s what I learned by Dan Misener.  The inner workings of the aggregators are completely unknown to us. While Spotify refutes Dan’s points, his research with multiple touch-poi