iHeartMedia announced an upbeat Q3 earnings report this week. At the top line, the company might have wished it could splash a billion-dollar figure, but settled for $989-million — a seven percent year-over-year gain. Following the examples of recent quarters, the Digital Audio Group led the way directionally. Click for details. Continue Reading
The fifth annual iteration of The Spoken Word Audio Report has been released by Edison Research and NPR. While the research continues to measure basic trend lines of listening to spoken word content, such as reach and time-of-day metrics, this year the two companies bring a special emphasis on listening locations. This post takes a fairly deep dive and provides a download link. Continue Reading
Global podcast company Acast, which lately seems intent to remove all middle-layer interference in the advertiser/podcast planning relationship, has brought those two parties closer with an expansion of the company’s self-serve platform. A new collaboration feature saves time in the planning and booking stages, and also make it easier to distribute a marketing budget across multiple podcasts. Continue Reading
The average cost per thousand (CPM) for podcast advertising remained within a narrow four-month range in October, about one dollar lower than the average rate in May. This according to AdvertiseCast’s monthly tracker. Click for graph. Continue Reading
Media giant Audacy has released a “State of Audio” PDF presentation called “Level Up.” It evangelizes the benefits, formats, and best practices of audio advertising, and fashions itself a “Modern Blueprint.” Click for a sampling of details, graphics, and a download link. Continue Reading
Part 2 in our coverage of the IAB’s Podcast Advertising Revenue Study, a mid-cycle supplement to the annual report which comes out each spring. This portion analyzes trends and recommendations related to programmatic ad buying, show-based vs. audience-based campaigns, and the need to develop revenue in video podcasting. Continue Reading
Podcasting has grown more than twice as fast as total internet ad revenue, a remarkable metric among many in this data-intense report from the IAB. Part 1 of RAIN’s coverage. Click for latest trends in revenue, ad type, delivery mechanisms, and campaign types. Illustrated with IAB graphs. Continue Reading
Spotify released Q3 earnings this week. We covered basic money metrics elsewhere. In this post, we scrutinize information gleaned from the earnings call. Below, three main topics: User growth, podcasting, and the audiobooks initiative. Audiobooks were of particular interest to investors, partly because it was difficult to coax financial predictions about them. Click for lots of detail and quotes. Continue Reading
In the Q3 edition of Share of Ear, an Edison Research subscription product, podcasts gained a point to reach an all-time high of 11%. That’s the percentage of all daily time spent with audio among people age 13 and over in the U.S. AM/FM radio listening also gained a point. Click for details and the graphic. Continue Reading
In his latest piece, guest columnist James Cridland notes an odd finding from Edison Research’s Share of Ear study: “AM/FM is still the #1 audio source; but total listening goes down by a third. Everything else – music streaming, podcasts – doubles.” It’s a user-experience (UX) effect, James claims: “Make it simpler to listen to other things, and people will.” He emphasizes the shared experience and human connection of radio. Also, interesting corporate manoeuvrings in Australia. And more. Continue Reading
In an interesting and extraordinarily detailed report that merges financials with company performance, acquisition plans with research reports, management profiles with listener demographics, PodcastOne published an investor presentation on the SEC website. We dig in. Continue Reading
Audience research firm GWI released a research package of results from the company’s monumental annual survey of 970,000 internet users in 52 markets, via an online questionnaire. Called Meet the Millennials, the research topics cover broad swaths of lifestyle, general attitudes, and media consumption. This year’s report includes dedicated coverage of podcast consumption. Continue Reading