Podsights raises $1.5M, expands team

Podsights, a podcast research and ad measurement platform, is announcing today a successful $1.5-million fundraising round and new hires.

Podsights is one of a vanguard of companies attempting to shine light on podcast advertising effectiveness. The key word of this trend is attribution. Across all of advertising, attribution refers to metrics which indicate success in motivating the audience to engage with the advertising brand. That can mean going to  a store because of a TV ad, making a phone call because of a radio ad, or visiting a website because of a podcast ad. (Those examples are randomized and interchangeable.)

The money comes from at least six sources listed in the company announcement: Greycroft, Betaworks, BDMI, Rooks Nest, Howard Lindzon (Social Leverage), Michael Kassan (Founder MediaLink) and Ilia Papas (Founder Blue Apron).

Along with the funding, Podsights has increased its lean team: Brigid Judge (previously at Horizon Media where she was Digital Audio Investments Manager) and Samantha Rivera (from Translate Media and the Bite Agency before that).

Some Context on Attribution

Attribution is relatively new in podcasting, though Podsights got started in 2018. Podcast ad campaigns founded on a promise of high-tech attribution can be contrasted with podcast sponsorships that give listeners coded URLs — e.g. www.advertiser.com/podcast. Branded URLs offer crystal clear metrics of a single type of consumer effect — visiting a website, usually to capture a discount. But that doesn’t help brand advertisers which are not selling direct-to-consumer (DTC) online.

Whether with brand advertisers (whose big budgets are much sought by podcast publishers) or DTC advertisers seeking better insight into campaign effectiveness, Podsights and a few others in the attribution space seek to provide solutions.

Andy Pellett, Cofounder of Podsights, told RAIN News in a phone conversation that up to 60% of campaign-driven site visits go through a Google search, not through a coded URL. That makes a case for better attribution metrics, and Pellett told us his company works with both publishers (the sell side) and advertisers (the buy side). The work involves installing pixels on both the advertiser site and the podcast hosting company. Since an ad campaign might run across many shows hosted by several platforms, that work is fairly complex. Podsights builds ongoing relationships on both sides of the fence to facilitate implementation. “We go at it in every direction,” Pellett said.

 

Brad Hill