ART has announced an expansion of its monetization and advertising intelligence capabilities by adding support for the VAST standard, and broadening its partnerships. VAST was originally a video ad delivery standard, but is now merged with DAAST, the audio counterpart. Continue Reading
Triton digital is sending out an interesting announcement this morning: The company has linked up with Tru Optik Political Data Cloud to offer digital audio advertisers audience targeting by political inclination. These segments include Leaning Democrat, Leaning Independent, Leaning Republican, Swing Voters, and Undecided. It’s easy to imagine that the availability of these targeted segments could bring more political ads into digital audio during this election season. Continue Reading
Ad tech company AdsWizz presented a raft of data at the IAB Podcast Upfront this week. One key point which caught our attention was the growth in advertising from January to June — up 44% in that period. Whatever disruptions Covid imposed on the industry, the overall growth trend over six months is startling. Click through for charts. Continue Reading
Continuing the cross-channel programming and monetization which has been part of the SiriusXM/Pandora merger from the start, a pR is circulating today which advertises the sponsorship opportunities around the upcoming NFL 2020 season, which will be assertively covered by both platforms. Pandora will carry some curated analysis originating on the SiriusXM NFL Channel, and also program game-time music playlists. Continue Reading
Patreon, the patronage crowdfunding platform, is now valued over $1-billion, the threshold for “unicorn” status — a popular venture-capital term for companies which stand at a pinnacle in their niches. The milestone is publicized in the wake of a recent fundraising round which yielded $100-million based on a valuation of $1.2-billion. Click through for examples of high podcast earners in podcasting. Continue Reading
Magellan AI has posted its Top 15 spenders, movers & shakers list for July. NBCUniversal is perched as the biggest advertiser, mainly for Peacock, its new streaming TV app which launched on July 15 — $668-thousand was spent across 69 shows to promote Peacock. Click through to hear one of its ads. Turner Broadcasting and Quibi also received spotlight treatment from Magellan. Continue Reading
Google has raised its game in programmatic audio. Google’s broad digital advertising platform, Ad Manager, is getting audio programmatic for the first time. Additionally, Google’s DV360 is enhancing its existing tools. DV360 is the abbreviated brand name of Display & Video 360, formerly called DoubleClick. The systems stumbles over RSS feeds, perhaps slowing adoption ion podcasting, though independent distribution platforms like Spotify and Pandora work fine. Continue Reading
An item in today’s Podnews nudged our attention to the New York Times Q2 earnings statement. As Podnews mentioned, the Times disclosed that its leading podcast effort The Daily (the top news podcast in the U.S., and one of the most successful podcasts across categories) serves 3.5-million downloads per daily episode. We do some back-of-envelope math to estimate annual revenue. Click through for meeting quotes about podcast strategy at the Times. Continue Reading
The Hidden Brain podcast, hosted by Shankar Vedantam, has moved its ad representation exclusively to Midroll Media, the ad sales division of Stitcher. (Stitcher has recently been acquired by SiriusXM, from E.W. Scripps, in a deal which will close by Q3). Alongside this deal, Hidden Brain will be produced independently by Hidden Brain Media, starting October 1. The podcast will continue to be distributed by NPR. It’s a chart success — click through to see its placements.
Continue Reading
Podcast tech and attribution company Chartable has launched a feature called SmartPromos, which traces listener action from hearing an ad for a podcast, to downloading that advertised podcast.The intelligence behind this technology can be helpful to advertisers as well. Continue Reading
Audioboom released information about its finances for the first half of 2020 in a blog post. The document, signed by CEO Stuart Last, contains the main bullet points at the top, followed by interesting discussions of various aspects of the podcast industry, COVID-19, Audioboom’s partnerships, and more finances at the bottom. Revenue increased 20% year-over-year. EBIDTA loss was trimmed. Continue Reading
In a two-way press release from Westwood One, Magellan AI is announcing an expansion of its podcast insights service. Westwood One, already a subscriber, is expanding its buy-in to take advantage of the broader service. The company’s scope covers 22,000 podcasts and millions of ads. Continue Reading