RAIN Notes: Tuesday, February 21
Jottings of Note
— Podcast Programmatic Pickup (The Sonic Truth)
— Bubble Or Blip? (Bubble Trouble)
— From Bitter To Sweet (Sonic Seasoning)
James Cridland’s International Radio Trends: CBC to turn off transmitters (but not yet)
by James Cridland
A packed column this week from James. The CBC will stop broadcasting, in a projected move to all-digital. But the move doesn’t appear to be imminent, and James notes that in Britain the BBC laid out the same intent — they are planting flags in the future. Beyond that coverage, James gives us notes about Australia’s ABC network falling off the internet, interesting facts about the U.S. radio industry, and links to his personal blog.
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Sirius XM tops Edison ranking of top podcast networks
Edison Research has released its Top Podcast Networks for combined Q3-Q4, 2022. The list ranks podcast networks based on total audience reach from Edison Podcast Metrics, and reflects an expanded sample which now includes weekly podcast listeners age 13-17. Click through for the visual. Continue Reading
RAIN Notes: Friday, February 17
Jottings of Note
— Pre-Audible … Way Pre (NY Times)
— Taking the Measure (Westwood One)
— End of an Executive Era (YouTube)
Triton Digital January US Podcast Report: NPR retakes top spot; only one debut
Triton Digital released its January Podcast Report, which measures weekly downloads of Triton measurement clients. NPR regains #1, assisted with the highest number of episodes created in the month. Not much switching around within this stable ranking. Continue Reading
“Stuff You Should Know” milestone – 3B downloads. That’s billion.
iHeartPodcasts announced today that its acquired show, Stuff You Should Know, hosted by Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant, has been downloaded three billion times. “Chuck and I started this series with a passion for curiosity and had no expectation of ever being a leading podcast,” said Josh Clark. That’s the kind of rags-to-riches business story that launches thousands of newer shows. Continue Reading
From Joe Rogan to Freakonomics: Top 50 podcasts in H2 2022 (Edison Research)
Edison Research has released its measurement of the top 100 podcasts in the U.S. for combined Q3 and Q4. As the company emphasizes, this is the only podcast ranker which doesn’t count downloads, and isn’t restricted to clients. Edison builds this ranking through a survey of 10,597 podcast consumers ages 13 and older in the U.S. Continue Reading
Veritonic Audio Intelligence Summit: Power, Attribution, Myth-busting
On Wednesday Veritonic presented its second annual Audio Intelligence Summit, a half-day series of presentations whose main theme was the primacy of audio. A series of eight onstage discussions explored the power of audio branding, the monetization of podcasts, and much more. Part 1 of our coverage here.
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Acast: Revenue growth and optimistic outlook in Q4 earnings
Global podcast company Acast released its Q4 earnings, in a comprehensive, downloadable, fully designed PDF. Gross profit, net loss, and lots of detail, plus comments from CEO Ross Adams. Continue Reading
MusicWatch creates “Generation Audio” with eight age demos
“Audio is a category ripe for segmentation.” –Russ Crupnick, Managing Partner, MusicWatch MusicWatch has ingeniously (and laboriously) measured listening tendencies and habits across a wide age spectrum, breaking down the results by individual. The result is a more granular… Continue Reading
Grab attention on radio; blend into podcasts: New research from Audacy / Veritonic
Audacy and Veritonic have released SoundCreative, a whitepaper summary of research performed last year. The subtitle describes the work’s purpose: “How To Build Winning Audio Ads.” The consumer survey was combined with proprietary content analysis. Continue Reading
First-person sponsor endorsements under FTC scrutiny; one case resolved
A prevailing type of sponsor message in podcast advertising is the host-read personal endorsement of a product or service. If you listen to a lot of podcasts, you develop an impression that companies give away a high volume of samples as the basis of this marketing strategy. An FTC investigation — started last year and completed last week — potentially pokes a hole in that assumption. Continue Reading