Nielsen has selected David Kenny as its new CEO. He was previously the senior vice president of cognitive solutions at IBM. Kenny joined the tech company in 2015 when it acquired the Weather Company. He will assume the role when Mitch Barns steps down from the helm on December 3 after more than two decades. Continue Reading
Podcasts remain a hot topic for listeners and entrepreneurs alike. A new service called Piqd Audio is joining the podcast discovery space. The platform bills itself as a “slow news” startup curating quality audio content and delivery expert recommendations. Continue Reading
Tencent Music Entertainment had been working towards an IPO in the United States, but the Chinese company is reaching crunch time to do so before the year’s end. It has been laying the groundwork for an offering of up to $2 billion for several months. Continue Reading
Spotify has some noteworthy news for the denizens of Mexico City. The capital city has the most Spotify listeners in the world. Mexico City was Spotify’s first launch in a Latin American market in 2013. Continue Reading
Voxnest, the podcast company formed from the merger of Spreaker and BlogTalkRadio, has hired a new head of content. Jonathan Zenti joins the company in this newly created position. Zenti is the award-winning podcast producer and host of the show Meat, as well as a member of the PRX Google Podcast creator program advisory committee. Continue Reading
The IAB released a new report showing that U.S. digital advertising revenue in the first six months of 2018 totaled $49.5 billion. The record high is a spike of 23% over the year-ago period. Digital audio advertising revenue for the half reached $935 million. This puts the segment on track to exceed the 2017 annual total of $1.8 billion in revenue. Continue Reading
Ad tech company AdsWizz, wholly owned by Pandora, announced new integrations with Google’s Display &Video 360 platform. The deal connects the AudioMax supply side platform, which is used to power Pandora’s programmatic buying solution, and AdWave, a global audio marketplace with more than 3 billion audio ad impressions each month worldwide, to Google’s massive footprint of buy-side users. Continue Reading
Podtrac published its ranker of the top twenty podcasts in October 2018. Serial topped the chart for another month on the strength of a newly-released third season for the true crime program. Continue Reading
ESPN Podcasts announced another record-breaking month. The network’s audio shows reported 43.6 million downloads in October, a new high after September’s previous record of 39.3 million downloads. “ESPN Podcasts continues to set new highs,” said Tom Ricks, vice president of digital strategy and marketing. Continue Reading
Echo Nest was once a top name in music recommendations. The startup was acquired by Spotify in 2014, and since then its technology has been leveraged into some wildly popular personalized playlists for that streaming service. Now, a former Echo Nest exec has flown the Spotify coop and is striking out with a new approach to personalized discovery. Continue Reading
Pandora announced that its full on-demand subscription tier can now be accessed via Amazon Alexa. Pandora Premium has added support for voice commands, meaning subscribers can issue commands to control playback for songs, stations, and playlists on Alexa-enabled devices. Continue Reading
iHeartMedia announced that it has acquired Jelli, a specialist in programmatic audio advertising for radio and the creator of the SpotPlan platform. Jelli’s technology has been pivotal as audio moves toward programmatic buying and selling. Its work has been especially relevant to the broadcast industry. Continue Reading