Newsweek wants to provide readers with contextually relevant podcast recommendations. Headliner, which creates short video promotions of podcasts and other online entertainment, is providing those recommendations to Newsweek in a deal announced today.
The Headliner product in play here is called Disco by Headliner. It enables users to convert website visits into podcast listens using a proprietary Disco Widget that gets attached to a piece of website content. In Newsweek’s usage, the Widget will appear next to articles.
“At Newsweek, we are committed to provide readers with thought-provoking news and opinion. This includes leveraging the power of audio through a variety of news, political, and pop-culture themed podcasts that we launched over the years,” said Jesse Edwards, Director of Radio and Podcasting for Newsweek. “Disco by Headliner enables us to convert our website traffic into podcast listens, support new revenue streams, and connect with a new generation of highly- engaged mobile audiences that prefer audio and video-based storytelling and news consumption.”
“Podcast discovery continues to be a major hurdle, especially for traditional publishers and
news sites,” said Neil Mody, Headliner CEO. “While YouTube, Spotify, and Apple are the leading
podcast platforms, there is a great opportunity for Disco to fill the discovery gap for forward-
thinking publishers like Newsweek, and is something that no media outlet with a podcast should
overlook. Most publishers aren’t taking advantage of their core web audience yet, which Discowas built to do. For many of our publishers, we drive more audience than Apple and Spotify,combined. We’ve done that by unlocking the audience that was always there.”