Return of Roundtable’s Industry Edition; Celebrating Black History Month; Exploring the Rise of Video; Right Wing Rumble; Yes I Paid For The Underwear

This week on the Media Roundtable: Industry Edition, the agents of influence are tackling the rise of the video podcast. Let’s dig in.

Oxford Road’s own Stew Redwine is back on the host microphone, joined by fellow Oxford Road luminaries Neal Lucey, Spencer Semonson, and Kristen Duenas.

At the top of everyone’s mind:

Listen Here

Video Can’t and Won’t Replace Audio Podcasts – Audio-only is great for listening while doing something else, but people generally prefer video content to audio. The result? Expect higher production-value video podcasts to steal share from TV in the future–there’s only so much watch time in the day.
Podcasters Want Your Eyes Too – YouTube has a bigger reach than Cable TV (68% vs <50% of US HH), and it’s preferred as a podcast platform over Spotify and Apple Podcast. If podcasters can tap into the YouTube market, it would represent a massive boost for their audiences.
No Google Podcasts in Google Search – It used to be a Google search for a podcast that let you play an episode right in the search results. Not anymore. Could this be a nudge towards YouTube for consuming podcasts?
Right Wing Throw Down – The Daily Wire and Steven Crowder feud over contract negotiations that fell through. A key clause was multi-million dollar salary losses from getting demonetized–a real risk for the controversial personality and a sign of brand safety conversations to come.
A Smarter Alexa? – ProKNX launches the first ChatGPT-enabled smart speaker. But this goes deeper than AI conversations in your living room. Consuming AI-created content is only increasing from here.

The Classifieds

Come Shake the Money Tree

In February, The Influencer will be exclusively highlighting black hosts and creators to celebrate and acknowledge Black History Month properly.. Our first selection comes from our friends at Redcircle Technologies and is hosted by Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings. Financial literacy has become a huge topic of conversation in podcasting due to the economic fluxes of the past fourteen years. Elitists have been gatekeeping this information for generations, but Bilal and Millings are here to show that money management is attainable for everyone. In every episode, the twosome discusses business topics in sports, entertainment, or finance and digs into the backstories of successful entrepreneurs to understand their long-term growth strategies.Clients who see success on business-related podcasts are best suited for this show, regardless of age demo. Make money moves by clicking the link below.

Get The Deal

Jump Up, Jump Up to Get Down

The yearly UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report showed an increase in leading roles for people of color in 2022, effectively quadrupling the stats from 2011. Even with that immense progress, a vast disparity still exists in the film industry, and it has been a consistent source of pain for many minority communities. The Slate-produced podcast, Black Men Can’t Jump [In Hollywood], is hosted by Jonathan Braylock, Jerah Milligan, and James III, comedians from the Astronomy Club and Upright Citizens Brigade. Every week they watch a film starring an actor of color and discuss the racial undercurrents and diversity issues permeating Hollywood. This is a top-rated podcast that has seen both critical praise and fervent listener loyalty since it premiered in 2015. This is best suited for advertisers looking to reach an educated, diverse, and involved audience interested in entertainment and film history. Jump on this opportunity, if you can, by clicking below for more information.

Get The Deal

In Case You Missed It

Video Can’t Kill The Audio Star

A recent article from ThePodcastHost.com explores the importance of audio podcasting in the digital media landscape and why it will remain a popular form of content consumption despite the rise of video. There always be a place for audio-only podcasts, as they can be consumed while doing other activities. However, when given a choice, consumers generally prefer video content over audio. So should advertisers explore more video opportunities and cut back on audio? No. Audio is its own unique and very powerful medium, and it’s here to stay–use the Audio and Video together, playing each other’s strengths to your benefit.

Friends, Romans, Podcast Listeners, Lend Me Your Eyes

We’ve established Audio isn’t going anywhere and advised you to use it alongside Video in your marketing mix, but what does that look like? Morning Consult explores the growth of podcasts offering audio with accompanying video content for consumers to watch AND listen. Given the massive reach of YouTube – reaching 68% of US consumers, which compares to the reach of all digital audio services COMBINED (MRI) not to mention Cable TV (less than 50% of US HHs subscribe (MRI), – video presents a massive opportunity to increase the reach of Podcasts.

“Hey Google, Where Are My Podcasts?”

Google has removed the ability to autoplay Podcasts directly via the search engine results page (SERP). Google has positioned this as an improvement in user experience. Call us cynical, but somehow we find it difficult to see how this change benefits consumers. Maybe just maybe, Google would prefer consumers to get their Podcast content on YouTube, where they monetize views with video ads. If it doesn’t make sense, it probably makes dollars.

Have You Seen An Elephant Fight?

The right-wing news community is splintered over the recent feud between Steven Crowder and Daily Wire, which started when Crowder ranted about a contract offer gone wrong during an episode of his show. To sum it up, Daily Wire offered Crowder $50m for a 4-year deal but had a clause that if the show were to become demonetized (which it constantly balances on the edge), the fee would be reduced. This resulted in multiple jabs across social media. The discourse around the industry has heightened, especially around the marketability of creator skillsets and the monetary gain of specific personalities. This also brings up the ever-growing focus on brand safety, which often broaches timely controversies vs. controversial content.

This Week in The Robots Are Taking Over

ChatGPT is at the forefront of our minds, and everyone is exploring new usecases for this incredible technology. The French company, ProKnx has released the world’s first smart speaker enabled with ChatGPT, a natural language processing system that can respond to voice commands in a conversational manner. While we’re using this technology to build our own protocol droid, we want to stress that “Voice” is not going away. It will be a crucial part of the future of computing, and marketers need to get smart about it.

Unbelievable Underwear & Fore Play

When you’re spending money on underwear you probably could have gotten for free, you’ve either got a problem, or that’s true brand dedication at play. You’ll be happy to know it’s the latter for the hosts of Fore Play, Barstool’s weekly podcast about all things golf.. As longtime partners—and evangelists of Tommy John’s ultra-comfortable underwear you might say the bar has been set high, so when you hear one of the hosts refer to them as ‘life-changing,’ you’re inclined to take their word for it. If you don’t have this relationship with your favorite underwear, don’t worry. A lot of the credit can be paid to the hosts’ unique voices. While they might seem like a couple of regular guys just talking golf, they’re pros at it, and it’s no different for the products they support, making thist another hit podcast for you to consider from the Barstool Sports network.

Listen Here

If you’ve read this far, thank you!

The Influencer is a production from the team at Oxford Road.
If you like our sometimes sassy, mostly informed POVs on the wonderful world of audio advertising, you should see what we do for our clients.

Interested in seeing how we could help your business?
Contact us at influencer@oxfordroad.com!