In yesterday’s Day 1 of the IAB Podcast Upfront, presenting sponsor NPR hosted a Q&A with Lauren Russo, EVP and Managing Partner, Innovation & Performance Audio at Horizon Media. Russo is renowned as a thought leader and activist for digital audio, representing buy-side needs and expectations on behalf of advertising clients.
Gina Garrubbo, President and CEO of National Public Media (NPM), that national sponsorship sales division of NPR, moderated the well prepared and tightly executed conversation. As a final question, Garrubbo asked her guest for podcast industry predictions. Lauren Russo was ready for it and delivered a full slate of predictive outlooks:
- “Revenue will be higher than anticipated.”
- “Measurement and attribution via third-party providers will become the norm, and part of every campaign.”
- “Due to strategic partnerships and acquisitions, the top podcasts will be from major radio broadcasters — we’re seeing engagement from iHeart, Audacy, Westwood One, certainly NPR.”
- “Spotify, Sirius, Pandora, and Amazon will continue to solidify their commitments to the space with further acquisitions in content, data, and technology.”
- “Dynamic ad insertion will continue to play a significant role in podcast campaigns as more publishers convert to that model — this will not come at the expense of host-read ads. Smart speakers will be the top source for podcasts.”
- “Brand awareness campaigns will continue to grow, getting closer to matching direct response DTC volume.”
Earlier in the conversation Russo held forth on the enduring question of podcast measurement, advocating for industry movement toward third-party standard measurement of downloads and other metrics.
“The industry is relying on individual podcast publishers to provide audience downloads using their first-party data. […] Podcast industry publishers are challenged to move toward uniform measurement to understand audience delivery from a third-party source.”
Interestingly and importantly, when talking about the need for podcast campaign attribution, Russo defined Horizon’s mission as providing real-world business outcomes to clients that are marketing in digital audio and podcasting.
“Horizon is moving toward business outcome guarantees. We need the ability to report on environments that are delivering the best results on behalf of our brands. […] Because there’s so much growth and so much content alignment [in podcasting], clients are interested in the space. But at the end of the day they want to know that it delivered against their KPIs.”
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