Sounds Profitable

This week on The Download: Spotify’s earnings call happened, Apple improves podcast statistics, and podcast pros weigh in on how many ads is too many ads. Podcast statistics are about to get better, thanks to a recent update from Apple that’ll help take a bite out of AppleCoreMedia’s presence on podcast statistics. Anyone who just opened the linked source and doesn’t have a background in coding: we promise that page makes sense. User Agents are how we truly understand what specific app is being used to play a podcast. AppleCoreMedia is the default displayed by iOS apps if they haven’t built their own player from scratch. Few do. This leads to a snowball effect of either over or under-counting Apple’s presence in the market. As James Cridland explained in Tuesday’s Podnews:  “Buzzsprout’s global stats don’t include AppleCoreMedia, under-estimating downloads from Apple Podcasts. On the other hand, Libsyn’s stats wrongly attribute all traffic to AppleCoreMedia as Apple Podcasts.” This new update from Apple solves for that. For a more detailed breakdown on AppleCoreMedia, we recommend the Podnews article from April “Mythbusting: are downloads from 'AppleCoreMedia' mostly from Apple Podcasts?” Edison Research’s 2022 edition of the Smart Audio Report is slated for June 16th.  In 2017, for the original Smart Audio Report, NPR and Edison surveyed smart speaker owners to learn how the technology was being integrated into their lives.  “The 2022 installment of the Smart Audio Report will not only offer an update on some of those original families, but also fresh data from a recent national study that measures attitudes around voice tech among those who use it and those who don’t.” For those listening in time to register, one can do so for free at the link provided in our show notes.   This Wednesday Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman live-tweeted the Spotify earnings call. The music powerhouse had a fair bit to say about their podcasting efforts, including some numbers that come as a bit of a surprise after such heavy investment over the past few years. As reported by Carman:  “A number! Spotify had 200 million euros in podcast revenue in 2021. They expect it to be a $20 billion opportunity.”  If that number feels low, that’s because it is. In a reply on Carman’s thread Podnews editor James Cridland pointed out that $220 million USD of profit amounts to only fifteen percent of the total podcast ad revenue for just the United States in 2021.  In addition to the revenue number, Spotify teased some details of their upcoming audiobook offerings that’ll put them in a market mostly dominated by Amazon’s Audible wing. In a bit of mixed messaging, much hay was made about Spotify branching out into three new businesses but they also claim they’re a music-first company.  CEO Daniel Ek said: “That’s the thing you just have to get about Spotify. We’ll put out these big, audacious targets.” The irony of this being the official position of a company with a history of announcing big, audacious projects only to blow past the intended release window by months, if not cancel them, is not lost on The Download.  The earnings call also featured a section criticizing the limitations of RSS distribution, including calling it outdated tech. This is a curious change in tack given a substantial amount of ad service on Spotify is handled through RSS by Megaphone. It remains unclear as to why Megaphone is being left out in the cold while doing a not-insignificant portion of the business that got them to their percentage of 2021 global ad revenue.  Every podcast with ad breaks has struggled with an eternal, unanswerable question: how many ads is too many? On Monday MarketingBrew’s Alyssa Meyers published “What’s the perfect number of ads in a podcast episode?”  Spoiler alert: Meyers’ quest involving interviews with 14 marketers doesn’t turn up a magic formula that’ll change the industry. Some questions can never be concretely answered, but there is wisdom to be found in a big-picture view of the current podcast advertising landscape.  In general, Meyers found short-form podcasts with episodes shorter than thirty minutes featured four ad slots populated with three to six ads. Long-form podcasts had the same potential slots for ad breaks but increased the maximum threshold up to eight potential ads per episode.  “As of the first quarter of 2022, about 5.5% of a podcast episode was made up of ads, according to podcast media planning platform Magellan AI’s quarterly benchmark report.” Big takeaways from those interviewed include acknowledging the power of host-read over pre-recorded, fewer quality ads beat out quantity, and inevitably the best ad is the one the host knows will work with the audience they’ve cultivated.  Finally, a quick-hits rundown of two articles we think are well worth your time that came out this week:  Crooked Media adds speech-to-text podcast captions with Adobe partnership, by Brad Hill. And, in our continuing mission to bring news of global podcasting:  Podcasts more popular than ever as ‘a reliable source of information,’ study shows by The Brussels Times. The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Shreya Sharma and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was written by Gavin Gaddis. Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Evo Terra edited today's episode. Special thanks to our media host, Omny Studio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Arielle Nissenblatt and Bryan Barletta discuss some big Sounds Profitable news – Tom Webster has officially joined the team, we announced a big Summit, taking place at Podcast Movement in Dallas later this year, and we’ve got some research presentations coming soon. Bryan and Arielle also recap Bryan’s last few weeks – his whirlwind adventures in Europe, attending both Radio Days Europe in Malmo, Sweden, and Podcast Show London in…London. Listen for: Bryan’s recap of Radio Days Europe and his big takeawayBryan’s review of the ChunnelBryan and Arielle’s vegan food podcast announcementBryan’s recap of Podcast Show London and the big opportunity that outside-of-the-U.S. podcast presentsWhat to expect at the Sounds Profitable Summit at Podcast Movement in August in DallasHow to become a sponsor to get involved with the Summit and with Sounds Profitable   Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: if you’re looking to find a niche in the podcast space, learn all about the podcast and audio market outside of the U.S. According to Bryan, through his experience in Europe, there’s tons of opportunity here, especially in the advertising space. Links: Bryan BarlettaArielle NissenblattRadio Days EuropePodcast Show LondonSounds Profitable Summit at Podcast MovementThe DownloadSounds Profitable: Narrated ArticlesSquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan Barletta & Arielle NissenblattAudio engineering by Evo TerraExecutive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler MediaSounds Profitable Theme written by Tim CameronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Download: Podcast profits on the rise in the UK, white noise podcasts prove profitable, and the first Sounds Profitable Business Leader's Summit is headed to Podcast Movement. As is true of many episodes of The Download, we start with an article published on Tuesday. Bron Maher of the Press Gazette published “https://pressgazette.co.uk/economist-podcasts-paywall/”  The lede is somewhat buried, as the interesting information lies not in the framework of The Economist’s future plans to paywall podcasts, but in just how much traffic those free podcasts bring in. Prior to the launch of the publication’s flagship podcast The Intelligence, The Economist had seven full-time employees dedicated to podcasting. As of 2022 that number has ballooned to thirty of the paper’s nearly 320 staff. Quoting the article:  “The Intelligence gets approximately 350,000 downloads an episode. In a month, Prideaux said the podcast can now reach as many as two million listeners. During peak coverage of the invasion of Ukraine, the figure hit two and a half million. Across its entire podcast stable, The Economist is now being listened to by more than three million people a month. That compares against 1.2 million print subscribers – while its digital circulation in the second half of 2021 was 995,228, according to its ABC report.” John Prideaux, director of podcasts for The Economist, notes that the podcasting wing’s success brings an unexpected level of familiarity with one’s audience. The Economist’s longstanding policy on not publishing bylines does not extend to their shows, allowing parasocial relationships to blossom where they wouldn’t in articles of identical information without an author attached. Maher quotes Prideaux: “I mean, it’s a bit of a surprise – some of our people, who are on the podcast, they suddenly get not exactly recognised, but internet famous in a way that is new for a place with no bylines. And some of them find that a bit alarming.” Regardless of whether the publication paywalls previously free content, nearly two decades of embracing podcasting has lead The Economist to a point where a fraction of its staff bring in more impressions via podcast audience than the actual published paper.  Jacob Kastrenakes, writing for Hot Pod Insider, https://newsletters.feedbinusercontent.com/d1c/d1cd50d1a231ab6a200d0d2d0802ce2b4cf7b3b4.html. The main takeaway of the talk? iHeart believes there’s a finite window in which one can determine if a podcast can be made successful purely through promotion. “First off, a show has to be good, according to Bob Pittman, iHeart’s CEO and chairman. ‘We can’t make something that’s not a hit a hit,’ he said. From there, it comes down to marketing. ‘What we can generally find is probably in two or three weeks, we can see if we've got a hit or not with heavy promotion.’” Though, unlike radio, a lack of success during launch window doesn’t spell death for the product. Kastrenakes quotes Pittman as saying podcasts have “unlimited shelf space.” Without a limited amount of bandwidth on which to program, iHeart is able to take risks on relatively cheaper production costs and - even if it doesn’t take off in the 2 to 3 week launch period - allow the product to exist on its own in hopes outside forces lead to a free resurgence in popularity.  Once again we circle back to the global story of podcasting doing well everywhere, not just in the North American markets. Quite well, in fact, according to https://pressgazette.co.uk/publisher-audio-revenue/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2022-05-31 “Among the sample of 12 publishers included in the report, which was produced by the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) and Deloitte, audio revenue hit £4.2m in the first quarter of this year. This was six times what they made in the first quarter of 2021.” Deloitte’s Dan Ison claims daily podcast listening has caught up to online radio in the UK, growing to the point one in ten adults under 25 pay for at least one form of premium podcast subscription.  AOP managing director Richard Reeves, as quoted by Majid, said:  “We’ve seen revenue for digital audio grow steadily over the last few quarters, driven in part by what’s being deemed the ‘golden age of podcasts’. The 500% revenue growth reported for this channel in Q1 2022 demonstrates that publishers are now successfully monetising this type of content.” This next bit of news is home-grown as it comes direct from Sounds Profitable founder—and former host of The Download—Bryan Barletta. In partnership with Podcast Movement, https://soundsprofitable.com/update/business-leaders-summit.  “On its own, a one-day business-focused event would be a hard sell to just about anyone, even in NYC or LA. But as an industry, we absolutely need one. A day dedicated to the real tough conversations that the industry needs to have in order for us to drive the progress that leads to a $4bn US podcast advertising industry and then some. So, for an event like this to thrive, it would need to be attached to the undisputed leading podcast industry event in America.”  The summit is slated to kick off with the Sounds Profitable quarterly research report.  “Measurement, video, and programmatic are words we hear in conversation every single day. Sometimes positively, occasionally from a negative perspective, and most often from a place of curiosity. So we’ve gathered the best and brightest to make sure we’re all on the same page, as each of these three topics continue to grow in popularity and importance.” While the quarterly report will be available publicly, the rest of the Summit - keeping in line with a key goal of fostering candid conversations on where to take the future of podcasting - will only be accessible to members of companies that sponsor Sounds Profitable.  For our last full story of the week we turn to Ashley Carman’s Bloomberg piece from Wednesday: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-01/how-to-make-money-on-spotify-a-white-noise-podcast-could-bring-you-big-bucks.  Carman’s brief journey into the world of white noise podcasting reveals a surprisingly healthy field of competing products all fundamentally designed to serve up calming soundscapes to put audiences to sleep, all while running occasional ads to their slumbering subscribers. Quoting Carman: “Those who did respond to interview requests say they are making good money, winning over fans and marveling at the power of podcast distribution. Collectively, the shows represent a burgeoning and lucrative podcast genre.” Take, for instance, the story of Brandon Reed: a man whose podcasting career started by using Anchor more as a file hosting platform for white noise to soothe his own son rather than intending on distributing the files globally. Three years later things are extremely different. Quoting Carman again: “His inadvertent hit has also made the charts on Apple Inc.’s Podcasts app and has reached over 26.6 million total listens, he said. Reed now offers a $2.99 monthly subscription, which gives paying customers access to additional sounds and the ability to request new ones. When a chiropractor needed railroad clacking for an anxious patient, Reed went out and captured it. So far, he’s made over $10,000 through subscriptions.” At the risk of reigniting years-old social media arguments as to what it means for a piece of media to qualify as a podcast, these snippets from the world of calming noise serve as a reminder that restrictive views of podcasts both in format and content can leave niches unserved.  And finally, befitting of a short episode we only have one article for our semi-recurring segment spotlighting articles worth reading that didn’t quite make it into the episode. This week The Download recommends https://moncarnet.blog/2022/06/01/baladoauquebec/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2022-06-02 Fair warning, the post is in French, but it contains statistics relevant to The Download’s ongoing coverage of podcasting’s growth in global markets. Time to dust off that vocab textbook from college.  The Download is a production of http://soundsprofitable.com/. Today's episode was hosted by https://www.linkedin.com/in/shreyaapurvsharma/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelabedoya/, and the script was written by https://twitter.com/GavGaddis. https://twitter.com/bryanbarletta and https://twitter.com/evoterra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Evo Terra edited today's episode. Special thanks to our media host, https://omnystudio.com/

Future articles and podcasts from Sounds Profitable (and me!) are all available here: https://soundsprofitable.com/episodesThanks for coming along for the ride, and I hope you'll join me at Sounds Profitable!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Download: Spotify erroneously serves liquor, platforms continue to snap up content houses, and RSS.com shares how they beat podcast spam. Last week Spotify experienced the mother of all brand safety mistakes, and for now it has cost them the ad dollars of a major liquor distributor. https://tannerhelps.substack.com/p/spotify-done-effd-up-big-time?s=w, sometime on Saturday Spotify began serving a banner ad for bourbon distillery Wild Turkey to the profile of every podcast. This led to numerous screenshots demonstrating just how unfortunate such a slip-up can be, including children’s entertainment and podcasts discussing sobriety. https://podnews.net/uploads/campari-group-statement.txtQuoting their statement:  “We are disappointed that the implementation of the campaign by Spotify was inconsistent with our advertising code and have paused all media with Spotify pending results of the investigation. We are members and partners of DISCUS and Responsibility.org and unequivocally support a responsible marketing agenda.”  The Download has covered numerous stories involving new tech designed to ensure brand safety when it comes to problematic podcast hosts or suspect content in an existing brand’s catalog, but this slip-up shows brand safety doesn’t stop at the content of the podcast itself. Which leads to a decision that might set up further problems in the very near future. https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/spotify-political-adsQuoting the article: “In an email the company sent out to potential partners this week, Spotify said that political ads will appear “across thousands of podcasts on and off Spotify.” An accompanying presentation promises political advertisers the ability to target niche audiences and tap into AI-driven “contextual targeting,” which allows advertisers to place ads in podcasts when they are discussing issues relevant to their target audiences.” Lapowsky highlights the uphill struggle Spotify has ahead of them. While competitors like Meta and Google have made efforts to be open with political advertisements by maintaining large public archives, Spotify’s starting from scratch.  The Wild Turkey slipup isn’t enough to raise alarms at Spotify’s ability to run ads ethically. Mistakes happen. That said, it does highlight just how impactful a mistake can be when made by a massive player in the industry. A player now dabbling in an area of advertising infamous for its ability to spread disinformation.  It’s been a week of big-name acquisitions of talent in the podcasting world. The massive long-running interview podcast WTF with Marc Maron signed with Acast, https://rainnews.com/marc-maron-and-wtf-to-join-acast/ “‘Entering into a partnership with the podcast giant Marc Maron is a big win for Acast and for the open podcasting landscape, as this deal guarantees that the podcast can continue to be listened to by everyone, everywhere and on their preferred listening platform,’ said Ross Adams, CEO of Acast.” WTF, which previously operated as an independent production with a paywalled back catalog available for a fee on its website, will now switch to offering older episodes to Acast+ subscribers as bonus content. For the audience little will change, but Acast has just inherited one of the biggest names in podcasting outside of Spotify’s walled garden and gets to handle ad sales.  Establishing the trend for the week, https://podnews.net/press-release/siriusxm-team-coco most notably bringing aboard Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend. Like the Maron buyout, Sirius has purchased the production house whole hog, including a five year talent agreement with O’Brien. Longtime fans of the former late-night comedian will understand the gravitas behind convincing O’Brien into an exclusivity deal after his messy breakup with NBC.  Rounding out the trio of announcements, Monday also saw https://redcircle.com/blog/redcircle-partners-with-drew-binsky/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2022-05-24. Binsky is making the popular move for influencers by starting a podcast guaranteed to court a built-in audience from his existing audience, sporting 3.3 million YouTube subscribers alone.  “Roots of Humanity celebrates the beauty and diversity of the world, which is aligned with RedCircle’s vision of helping podcasters of all sizes and shapes across the globe to get rewarded for their work. RedCircle is excited to be part of Drew Binsky’s journey and help him to achieve his goals with its modern podcast hosting and monetizing technology.” It seems the trend continues with podcast platforms looking beyond simple exclusivity rights for an individual podcast to focus on acquiring production houses and existing brands that can act as content engines beyond the popular podcast’s lifespan. Full creator/talent packages are the current hotness and there’s no signs of them slowing down. This Monday Sounds Profitable’s own Bryan Barletta https://twitter.com/BryanBarletta/status/1528858422665691136 In simple terms, the Buzzsprout Ads beta gives podcasters the ability to use Buzzsprout’s dynamic ad insertion tech to implement midroll ads in a way previously only available to signed talent or shows with crew who’ve worked in advertising.  Producers entering the beta can manually review ads to decide which would be the best fit for their podcast and whitelist them for inclusion. Buzzsprout’s tech by default uses a music jingle slowly increasing in volume to signal an ad break is approaching, attempting to emulate the five second timer announcing ad breaks on video hosting platforms like YouTube. Users are given a surprising amount of customization with this feature, offering five stock transition options as well as the ability for hosts to record their own ad break and ad return bumpers for the automated system to use.  Accessibility has also been taken into account. The Buzzsprout Ads platform is designed to drop chapter markers around each inserted ad and automatically time-shift the SRT file for podcasts with transcripts to accommodate the inserted ad changing timecodes for any portion of transcript that takes place after.  Bryan sums things up best at the end of his thread, saying:  “Ad monetization empowers many podcasters to grow their show into a business. Sponsorships will always take the cake, but out-the-gate options for a skilled creator without sales experience changes the game. DAI Marketplaces and Programmatic are how we hit those IAB numbers.” A few days ago a string of spam podcasts were published to major platforms, all containing a single episode of unrelated audio aimed at using the show art and description fields to promote escort services in various locations in the United Arab Emirates. They had the legitimacy of the spam texts one gets at 2:00 a.m., but they were produced by the dozen. https://podnews.net/article/podcast-spam-naughtiness “We had two options: a. “Throw humans at the problem”, hire 1 or 2 extra people to counteract this misbehavior (perhaps also implementing a moderation queue for newly created podcasts). b. build tech to address and mitigate the problem. We chose option B because it works at scale, it doesn’t need food and drinks, and because it’s a lot more fun! A few people in our team, in fact, have a strong AI/Machine Learning background and it doesn’t happen very often to have the opportunity to leverage this skill set in the podcasting space.” What’s important here isn’t necessarily the fact RSS.com was able to quickly fix the issue with neart machine learning and clever implementation of tools to prevent false positives from getting stuck in the system, it’s the fact that we the public know the broad strokes of how they accomplished it.  “We cannot share our current ML model as open source because it is part of the unique value proposition of our company. However, we have described the methods and provided actionable recommendations for anyone that wants to build something similar. Hopefully, this is our small contribution to keep podcasting spam free!” Sharing methodology used to overcome issues that could affect anyone with similar services in the market is useful, embodying the spirit of open source communities even when dealing with proprietary creations. We need more sharing like this across the industry.  Finally, it’s time for our semi-regular roundup of articles that didn’t make it into today’s episode, but are still worth working into your weekend reading.  - https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/05/24/streamers-are-creating-companion-podcasts-for-superfans-of-their-shows

Today on the show, Arielle Nissenblatt chats with soon to be Sounds Profitable partner, Tom Webster. They discuss Tom’s entry into the audio world, what drives him to tell stories with data, how to be into statistics without being a “math” person, and our near and longterm plans for the company.   Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: Arielle asked Tom to go through the pillars that the team has outlined as important principles for the company and we break them down. This is a mission statement that we want the podcasting public to hold us to. Links: Tom WebsterTom’s recent article for Sounds ProfitableThe DownloadSounds Profitable: Narrated ArticlesSquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan BarlettaHosted by Arielle NissenblattAudio engineering and transcriptions by Ian PowellExecutive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler MediaSpecial thanks to James Cridland of PodnewsSounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Download: Premium Podcasting on Apple just got easier, Media Monitors slips up on methodology, and Podfest Africa’s annual study is here. Publishing content to a premium subscription feed on Apple Podcasts is about to become far less painful. This Tuesday Techcrunch’s Sarah Perez https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/16/apple-podcasts-gains-storage-clean-up-tools-support-for-annual-subscriptions-and-a-new-distribution-system/ in a rundown of Apple’s new announcements. Quoting the article: “Starting this fall, a select number of hosting providers will support the Delegated Delivery system, including Acast, ART19, Blubrry, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Omny Studio and RSS.com. Apple says these providers represent around 80% of listening for premium content on Apple Podcasts, and more services will be added over time.”  Additionally: “The feature will be available at no additional cost to all creators through Apple Podcasts Connect and creators won’t need a membership to the Apple Podcasts Program to publish their free shows — only to publish premium content.” Prior to the introduction of the delegated delivery offerings, uploading a premium file to Apple for one’s monthly subscribers was an arduous and time-consuming process. Now the process will be smoother, at least for those on hosting platforms included in Apple’s rollout.  https://twitter.com/ashleyrcarman/status/1526221885259784192 noted the divide possibly forming between providers when comparing who supports the new Apple feature and who is partnered with Spotify’s similar premium service. The tweet read: “Spotify works with third parties to support its subscription offering, too. The only overlap is Acast, at least according to the initial partner list. [I’m] curious if this means there's now additional stratification in [the] podcast world: team Spotify or team Apple.” In what is pleasantly becoming a weekly segment on The Download, we bring news of podcasting flourishing on a global scale. Last month Podfest Africa published the 79 page report titled https://www.podcasting.africa/discovery-tour-data-edition-report The study is built off research collected in part with in-depth interviews with podcast producers and industry stakeholders, reviewing existing literature on relevant topics, and a survey of 370 podcast listeners across the study’s target areas of Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. Unsurprisingly, podcasting seems to be doing well. “These results build on existing evidence of the rapid growth of podcast usage in allt hree countries and the evidence that South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria are the most developed podcasting markets on the African continent.” A quick rundown of some interesting statistics provided: on average over 50% of respondents were women. With all results aggregated the idea podcast episode length across the three represented countries is 30 to 40 minutes. Spotify has a significant advantage over its competitors for distribution in the three countries studied for apps most used to listen to podcasts, clocking in at 35.1%. Apple comes in at a close second with 18.1% of the market share. Google Podcasts, YouTube, Anchor, and Afripods make up the rest of the top contenders.  In its key takeaway section, the study makes a point of stressing that their findings suggest - unsurprisingly - audiences want content influenced by local creators and local companies.  “A key growth opportunity identified is educating media companies to not rely on Western expertise for guidance on podcast production but instead to generate key insights through research from the African continent.” Continuing the trend of podcast news favoring Tuesdays, for some reason, Alyssa Meyers of Marketing Brew publishedhttps://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2022/05/17/here-s-what-you-missed-at-the-2022-iab-podcast-upfront?mid=4afb33bb7ffe284d840660fb3604ff60 Quoting the article: “If you couldn’t make it last week (or if you were already burnt out from NewFronts), we tuned in and rounded up some of the most important announcements and themes of this year’s event, which positioned pods as ‘mainstream, prominent, and influential.’” Meyer’s reporting condenses a substantial amount of IAB content down to three main points plus a bonus regarding Disney - ever a fan of conglomerating - consolidating podcasting brands under one banner. The three common topics focused on diverse hosts and audiences, statistical dumps in the form of podcast trend reports, and quite a few mentions of brand safety.  That last point might perk up the ears of long-time Download listeners, as brand safety is a recurring topic in more places than the IAB UpFront. Even https://omny.fm/shows/the-download-from-sounds-profitable/us-podcasting-revenue-is-up-5-more-stories-for-may included coverage of a story involving ethics in adtech and its impact on brand safety.  This Monday Media Monitors published the results of a listeners survey conducted over two weeks in March, all bundled with the enticing headline https://www.mediamonitors.com/npr-slips-as-smaller-publishers-capitalize/ The findings begin with a ranking of the top ten publishers from the top 200 podcasts for the first quarter of 2022. The iHeartPodcast network comes in first place, followed by Spotify in second with Amazon Music and SiriusXM tied for third. NPR doesn’t place in the top ten publishers. Editor James Cridland adds vital context in https://podnews.net/update/habit-secret “To suggest that NPR isn’t in the top ten of US podcast publishers is obviously untrue; but helpful narrative for its competitor iHeartMedia. Coincidentally, iHeartMedia owns Media Monitors, a fact not disclosed.”  Accountability is key when presenting data like this.Media Monitors analyzed the top 200 podcasts mentioned by respondents in their survey, that conveniently shuffled the deck so their parent company place first while a legacy competitor was shuffled off the list entirely. It was then followed on Tuesday by https://www.edisonresearch.com/sxm-is-the-top-podcast-network-in-the-u-s-based-on-reach/. Edison’s findings show a fair difference in ranking, with SXM Media coming in first, Spotify in second, and iHeartRadio placing third. NPR rejoins the group and places fourth.  In the interest of full disclosure, the following quote from the press release is from Director of Research at Edison Research Gabriel Soto, who is also be co-host of The Download’s Spanish sibling show La Descarga.  “Edison Podcast Metrics is the only dataset that covers the entire U.S. podcast space. By surveying listeners and measuring their actual consumption, the data doesn’t depend on opt-ins from networks and isn’t subject to the various issues with counting downloads. These top networks offer a diverse range of shows that appeal broadly to listeners.” Methodology matters. Who owns the ranking company matters. Opt-in will always be incomplete and the techniques used to fill those gaps matter.  Another Tuesday article joins the episode with James Hercher’s AdExchanger piece https://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/brands-lean-on-new-attribution-tech-just-dont-call-it-mta-as-budgets-split-to-new-channels/?oly_enc_id=7865D1013734B0R  New models of attribution are coming for all of advertising, challenging the incumbent Multi Touch Attribution. Companies like Measured, Triple Whale, and Northbeam are all taking new approaches as old ones fail to deliver. The following quote contains a nested quote from Parachute’s VP of Growth Ian Yung. “One social media platform stuck out as an early win for Measured, according to Yung. Parachute was spending in the low six figures per month on the platform. “And they were obviously giving us reporting that it was very profitable.” Upon closer inspection, Measured found Parachute’s spending on the unnamed platform could be cut to zero and show no impact on sales. An all-too familiar adtech story. Quoting the article again: “Podcast advertising is another category that Parachute rethought once it had a measurement testing regime in place. Podcast attribution often banks on listeners redeeming a particular code, which under-credits the channel. “Podcasting is one [rarer] example where we have to take the reporting and increase what it has on our end to capture the true value,” Yung said.” Companies outside of podcasting are coming into the adtech space, and fast. It just so happens the podcasting industry has been operating steadily without widespread MTA adoption in the first place.  The Download is a production ofhttp://soundsprofitable.com/. Today's episode was hosted byhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/shreyaapurvsharma/ andhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelabedoya/, and the script was written by

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Fatima Zaidi, founder and CEO of Quill inc., a full-service podcast agency that makes it easy for brands and publishers to create, launch and grow successful podcasts. Quill is launching a hosting service, Co-Host. After years of trying to work with existing hosting solutions, Quill found that their clients desired different and more complex KPIs, so, they decided to build a solution that could track them. Listen for: How and why Quill decided to build a new hosting platform in this seemingly saturated spaceHow Quill has built a tech team after running a production company for a few yearsP.s. they’re still looking for a developerA discussion on the hype around VC and angel funding Why we should celebrate bootstrapped companiesA playbook on real-time beta testers   Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: Fatima believes in the concept of “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” But she and her team still came to the decision that the existing solutions weren’t hitting all of the needs of their clients. Ultimately, they had to put their clients first. Links: Fatima ZaidiQuillThe DownloadSounds Profitable: Narrated ArticlesSquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan BarlettaHosted by Arielle NissenblattAudio engineering and transcriptions by Ian PowellExecutive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler MediaSpecial thanks to James Cridland of PodnewsSounds Profitable Theme written by Tim Cameron  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on The Download: US podcasting revenue is up, Google launches new way to collect data, and a new partnership aims to bring ethics to advertising. One of many podcasting social media staples is sharing platitudes about how the industry is always growing, always doing better. This Monday offered a wonderful moment where one gets empirical data to back them up. The United States podcast ad revenue market hit a billion dollars for the first time in 2021 and shows no sign of slowing down. Anthony Vargas writes for AdExchanger:  “At $1.4 billion – up 72% from roughly $840 million in 2020 – podcasting is now one of the fastest-growing digital media channels, and it’s growing twice as fast as the internet advertising market as a whole, according to a report on podcast ad revenue released by the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers on Monday.”  Growth has developed so quickly just the US market’s 2021 revenue matched podcasting’s global 2020 revenue. Vargas attributes a bulk of this growth to the increase of dynamic ad insertion leading to better ad placement. Regardless, things are looking good on the business side of podcasting.  This Tuesday Rain News’ Brad Hill reported on the Q1 earnings call of audio distribution platform Audacy. CEO David Field cited strong growth in digital revenue but as far as The Download is concerned, we’re interested in their reported 37% podcast revenue increase  Audacy’s apps offer a generational divide-bridging service, offering a place to access both terrestrial radio stations and on-demand audio in the form of podcasts in the same place. And it appears Audacy is aiming to take advantage of their broad audience. Brad Hill reports from the earnings call:  “A key forward-looking emphasis of the call was the Audacy Digital Audience Network, a scale-and-reach initiative which was launched during the quarter. Field described it as ‘an addressable and aggregate of over 60 million listeners across our app, streaming content and podcast lineup, enabling precision targeting at scale, coupled with real-time optimization and reporting.’” Up next: a bit of nostalgia looking back at the world that allowed podcasting to exist. Last Thursday Ben Thompson of Stratechery posted an interview with Tony Fadell, the designer known as the father of the iPod.  On the off chance there are members of The Download’s audience who aren’t old enough to rent a car: the very word podcast is a portmanteau of iPod and broadcast, originally created specifically as a way to share spoken word to Apple’s wildly successful MP3 player via their iTunes digital media platform. With Wednesday’s announcement that Apple has officially discontinued the iPod Touch, a vestigial remnant of the iPod brand, it’s a good time to be nostalgic for the early days of the industry and reflect on how much has changed.  Thompson’s interview with Fadell gleefully partakes of nostalgia, rehashing key moments from both Fadell’s career and that of the iPod’s development. Steve Jobs’ leadership style from Apple’s 2005 flash memory gambit, the interview evokes memories of a time when touch screens were still exotic futuristic technology.  Last Thursday Olivia Morley, writing for Adweek, covered the announcement of Havas Media Group partnering with the Institute of Advertising Ethics. According to Havas, they intend to offer an advertising ethics certification course to over 9,000 clients and employees.  A quote from the founding COO of IAE, as reported by Morley:  “‘Our industry, astoundingly, is virtually the only professional industry—unlike law, medicine, architecture, engineering, et cetera—that doesn’t have any sort of industry code of ethics or certification for ethics,’ said Andrew Susman, noting that this will now change.” As Susman said, the IAE has identified a marked lack of training and focus on ethics in advertising. This has a trickle-down effect on the podcasting industry, as we’ve seen before with various sticky situations companies and creatives alike create with brand safety or unintentional side effects of unethical systems.  “Ethics, according to Downing, can extend to many things. Some include issues of brand safety and ensuring that clients are not using discriminatory ad filters that impact minority creators. For example, putting “LGBTQ+” on a blocklist.” One needs only look at the tech industry’s laundry list of issues with their army of engineers with no ethical training creating wildly unethical digital ecosystems. A more ethical advertising industry, if it takes advantage of the IAE and whatever competitors might arise, is a better one.  Speaking of weird ethics: The Download is going to take a brief moment to report on someone reporting on our mothership Sounds Profitable. Tom Webster is leaving Edison Research to join Sounds Profitable as a partner. Webster goes into detail on his motivations and goals for the new position in Tuesday’s edition of his newsletter I Hear Things. Quoting Tom: “On June 1st, I am joining Sounds Profitable as Partner, teaming up with Bryan Barletta to help build something to make the podcasting space better for everyone. As a part of that, I Hear Things and its companion podcast will then be under the umbrella of Sounds Profitable, where I’ll be a regular contributor.” Webster aims to pursue his and Sounds Profitable founder Bryan Barletta’s common goal of making podcasting better. Being a veteran of research and presentations, he’s broken it down into an easily-digestible four pillars: insightful content, industry-leading research, unmissable events, and peerless advisory services.  Welcome aboard, Tom. This Wednesday Google announced a new service titled My Ad Center during their annual I/O event. Greg Finn covered the announcement for Search Engine Land.  "All Google users will now have the ability to choose the brands and topics most germane to them that they want to see. This is much different than the Topics targeting within the Privacy Sandbox now being tested, as the inputs are dictated directly by the user.” At launch My Ad Center will only be compatible with Google’s search results, YouTube, and Google Discover. On its surface the service promises better transparency with users receiving more granular information as to why they’re being served a particular ad, and giving them the ability to fine-tune what topics they would prefer Google cater to. Of course, that’s the corporate line. One of the recurring stories that’s changing the industry and keeps appearing on The Download is that of advertisers adjusting to stronger privacy on mobile devices and desktop browsers. People serving ads simply don’t have access to the hyper-specific data they once did, and conveniently Google has now put out a product designed to get users to give them similarly hyper-specific data points for free under the premise it’ll make their online existence better.  The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Shreya Sharma and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was written by Gavin Gaddis. Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Evo Terra edited today's episode. Special thanks to our media host, Omny Studio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Shantae Howell, Creative Director for the Americas at Acast. They discuss branded podcast content: how and when to make it, what to consider, and what to expect  Listen for: The difference between branded podcasts, advertising on podcasts, and sponsoring podcasts.How Acast works with brands to make impactful branded podcasts.When your brand should consider getting into the audio game.   Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: a branded podcast can have many different goals, whether it be brand awareness, customer acquisition, sharing customer stories, as a creative outlet for the company, and so much more. It’s important for the brand and the creative agency behind the soon-to-be branded podcast to be aligned in their missions for the show. Links: Shantae HowellAcastThe DownloadSounds Profitable: Narrated ArticlesSquadCast Credits: Hosted by Bryan BarlettaHosted by Arielle NissenblattAudio engineering and transcriptions by Ian PowellExecutive produced by Evo Terra of Simpler MediaSpecial thanks to James Cridland of PodnewsSounds Profitable Theme written by Tim CameronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.