Audio ad sales company AdLarge has announced its latest podcast-repping deal, this one as exclusive representative for So Money with Farnoosh Torabi, a Millennial-targeted finance show currently ranked at #5 in the iTunes Podcast Business News category. The 30-minute daily interview show has featured luminaries Tony Robbins, Time Ferriss, Gretchen Rubin, Seth Godin, David Bach, and others.
Jay Green, AdLarge VP of Digital Sales and Content Partnerships, emphasized that building a podcast lineup for advertisers is more about quality than quantity. “We’re not just trying to aggregate as much inventory as possible,” Green told RAIN News in a phone conversation. “It’s important to us to bring quality programs. The first time I was introduced to Farnoosh and listened to the show, I had an ‘Aha!’ moment. I knew this was a talent that would speak to advertisers.”
AdLarge arranged for host Farnoosh Torabi to speak directly to advertisers at the IAB Podcast Upfront on September 10 in New York, where she was interviewed by AdLarge co-founder and c0-CEO Cathy Csukas.
While audience size is not referenced in today’s announcement, So Money does reside in the top-10 program list at the Libsyn hosting platform. Farnoosh Torabi told RAIN News that the audience is global, evenly split between men and women, about half of listeners are Millennials, and the average household income is $75,000. She described her typical listener as “aspirational […] When I surveyed them, the big financial concerns were not things like, ‘I have so much debt I don’t know what to do’ — they were saying ‘I want to learn how to make more’ and ‘I want to do more with what I have.'”
Torabi told RAIN News that although she did not target any specific generation when she started the program, she wanted to produce a show for someone like her — an upper-age Millennial herself. She came to podcasting with a background in finance journalism and book authorship. Torabi received her journalism degree from Columbia University, where she also took radio courses.
Up to this point, the So Money podcast has not sold sponsorships. “I worried about having to find my own sponsors,” Farnoosh Torabi said, “but now I have the privilege of working with a professional and talented team. For an entrepreneur and journalist, it’s a dream come true.”