Comprehensive coverage of the podcasting industry and its business ecosystem.
“2020 was the year none of us could have imagined,” New York Times CEO Meredith Kopit Levien said, and noted “an unending hunger for relief from it all.” Some business relief came from the NYT’s podcast performance — that unit delivered $36M in revenue, up from $7M in 2019. “”We expect podcast revenue growth to be strong into 2021,” she predicted. Click through for much more. Continue Reading
Acast is sending around a brag-worthy announcement that its programmatic ad sales for podcasting grew 215% last year. This disclosure might be viewed as validation of programmatic in an industry where ad revenue has historically been based on bespoke performances of commercials by hosts while recording the show. The company projects 10% of 2021 revenue will derive from programmatic.
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by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, The Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro rounds up recent earnings reports from Spotify, SiriusXM, The New York Times, and Amazon. (With stock charts.) A nice grab-bag of industry updates rounds out the issue. Oh, also a podcast recommendation. Continue Reading
Podtrac has released the January edition of the measurement company’s Top Podcast Publishers ranker. (See graphic below.) As always in this ranking, iHeartRadio (#1) and NPR (#2) reside at the top. We take an interest in remixing this ranker with an eye to the number of active shows for each publisher. The result reorders the list according to the average number of downloads per show, and average number of listeners per show. Click through for the original Podtrac table, and the RAIN remixes.
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by Steve Goldstein
In this guest column, Steve Goldstein lays out some Reality with a capital R for new and would-be podcasters. “The truth is well-funded companies with tools, talent, and resources at their disposal often fall into a similar trap of introducing merely adequate content along with vanilla marketing.” Steve itemizes three critical strategic components. A must-read column.
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by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, The Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro grapples with the often-overlooked, always-challenging topic of podcast content moderation. Should podcasting undergo the level of scrutiny that social networks do? Along with these ruminations, the column catches up with news from Spotify, Apple, and elsewhere. Continue Reading
Podcast advertising intelligence company Magellan AI released its December report of top podcast advertisers. This month’s roundup includes the single-month list, and a year-to-date (YTD) list which serves as a 2020 view of the top marketing money spent in podcasting. We have gathered the list data into three tables that sort advertising spend in three ways: Top December advertisers, top 2020 advertisers, and a concentration measure of money spent per show. Click through for the goods. Continue Reading
Spreaker has launched a new self-serve tool called AdHub. If it sounds like another do-it-yourself way for marketers to buy dynamically inserted commercials, it’s not. AdHub is directed toward Spreaker podcasters, who can place targeted ads for their podcasts into other Spreaker podcasts. Click through for deets. Continue Reading
Evergreen Podcasts, a four-year-old network representing 64 shows that were downloaded over 4-million times in 2020, has acquired an undisclosed equity share of Ars Longa Media. Ars Longa is a preeminent podcast company serving the health, wellness, and medical education genres. The group owns 13 shows. Continue Reading
by Steve Goldstein
In this guest column, Steve Goldstein describes high points of the recently concluded virtual CES from the audio business perspective. Podcasts, in-car audio, and autonomous cars are highlighted. Plenty of links to session video available to watch.
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by Jeff Umbro
In this week’s column, The Podglomerate CEO Jeff Umbro catches up after a mini vacation, rounding up the latest acquisitions, a prediction, a podcast recommendation, and other topical items. Continue Reading
That’s a lot of acronyms. To spell it out: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has given a $500,000 grant to Southern California Public Radio, to support SCPR’s LAist Studios division and its development of podcasts. Click through for details. Continue Reading