This Week’s Influencer: How the AMP Accords Can Build Podcasting's Future; Spotify and Amazon Partnership; YouTube Launches Paid Subs, and More…

A few months ago, we revealed Oxford Road’s role in creating the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting, or AMP. It was launched by a top-secret group of podcasting leaders who’ve spent the last year working together on new measurement standards that could help our industry evolve.

This week, we’re finally unveiling the full result of all that hard work.

The AMP task force focused on three big questions: What’s a podcast? What’s an impression? Did the ad work?

If you’re looking for the answers, turn to this week’s Media Roundtable, hosted by Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road). He’s joined by expert guests Giles Martin (EVP, Strategy, Oxford Road) and Bryan Barletta (Partner, Sounds Profitable). Together, they talk through AMP’s findings and discuss the most important question of all: What comes next?

“This is key to the whole AMP story: Any standard is better than no standard, even if it’s not exactly the standard that you want. You want to have something that is clear and consistent.” – Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road)

Once and for All: What Is a Podcast? – The podcast industry is selling a product. The problem is: If we can’t agree on what that product is, how can we get people to buy it? After plenty of debate, AMP defines a podcast as “an on-demand show rooted in the spoken word and fully intelligible as audio. Typically episodic and conversational, podcasts cover wide-ranging themes and formats. They are accessed as audio or video via open RSS feeds and other distribution methods.” If that’s too long, try this instead: “If it works with your eyes closed, it’s a podcast.”

Plays, Not Downloads – Downloads are not impressions. To convince marketers to invest, the industry needs to sell exposure, not potential. AMP’s recommended metrics are a podcast play, which occurs when a user consumes at least 30 consecutive seconds of a podcast (audio or video). AMP also defines an ad impression as happening when any portion of an ad airs for a user. Once the podcasting industry adopts these definitions, marketers will have clarity on what they’re paying for, and what they’re getting out of it.

Do The Ads Work? – AMP made several recommendations that could boost confidence in every podcast campaign. The biggest, and most easily implemented, is a randomized hold-out group for each platform. The ability to keep 5-10% of an audience as an ad-free control gives marketers a gold-standard ability to measure true incremental lift.

Clear definitions, metrics, and measurement tools are closer than ever for our industry. Help us improve podcasting by reading the AMP Accords and supporting and implementing their guidelines. For more details on the accords and their power to change our industry, check out the full episode below.

Kara and Scott Answer Your AMP Questions

We realize we’ve been talking a lot about the AMP Accords: How they came together, what they include, and why they’re so important to the industry. But you don’t have to take our word for it anymore. Pivot co-hosts Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway star in a new explainer video that walks you through AMP’s background and big definitions, and demonstrates why AMP is so crucial to everybody in podcasting. Check out the video below, and share it with your friends to help amplify AMP!

The Classifieds

Excommunicating the Largest Secrets About the Mormon Church

Network: Algebra Media / Episodic Downloads: 230k

Our second creator this week has also been making waves since launching her channel in 2023. Author Alyssa Grenfell has been hard at work deconstructing her religious trauma ever since she left the Mormon Church in 2017. Born and raised Mormon, Grenfell has become wildly popular in recent years for her insightful (and often critical) coverage of the religion and its practices.

Buoyed by the success of recent Mormon-skewing reality television such as The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, the channel has grown exponentially in the past two years. Grenfell digs into her personal experiences while also covering Utah-specific trends (think: dirty soda and splotchy tans). Advertisers who’ve tested this offering have found great success, thanks to Grenfell’s strong personal endorsement and her work’s high production value. If you’re ready to confirm your intentions with the secret handshake, click below for more information.

Get The Deal

Hanging Loose with his Tubular YouTube Legend

Network: Outloud Talent / Episodic Downloads: 350k

This week, we’re venturing over to YouTube to bring you some of the agency’s best-performing channels. Our first is a long-time smorgasbord of internet peculiarities and hijinks. Wavywebsurf began his channel with coverage of 2000s web culture and has since expanded his interests, chronicling everything from influencer merch to real-life stories on Reddit. He specializes in providing updates regarding various YouTuber drama, hilarious memes, and content creators who have since faded out of popularity.

For nostalgic millennials, this channel has consistently provided smart commentary, all of it delivered with a light touch of humor to diffuse the tension. This channel consistently performs well and has a notably high success rate for male-skewing DTC brands. Commentary as a genre is also a safe bet for new testing because it covers trending topics, and the publishing cadence is generally more predictable. If you’re ready to say “cowabunga” to some seriously good performance, ride that gnarly wave by clicking the link below.

Get The Deal

In Case You Missed It

Spotify Opens New Impression Shipping Lane, Supplied by Amazon

Spotify has expanded its Amazon DSP integration to include global access to podcast inventory through the Spotify Ad Exchange. Advertisers can now use Amazon’s shopping, streaming, and browsing data to buy Spotify podcast ads alongside other audio and video inventory, while having more control over planning, frequency, and optimizations. Spotify is also positioning this direct connection as a more transparent path to inventory with fewer intermediaries. Integrating with Amazon’s DSP may make Spotify easier to buy, target, and measure alongside other channels, but it also creates more dependence on Amazon’s version of performance. The real test is whether advertisers get better business outcomes, as opposed to just a cleaner buying path through the Amazon dashboard.

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Business-Minded Individuals Are Not Where You Think

Podchaser analyzed six months of Apple’s U.S. Business charts, finding a highly fragmented category, with 202 publishers appearing at some time in the Top-100 list, yet no single publisher accounting for more than 3.3% of chart-weeks. Audience scale varies sharply by subgenre, from a median estimated reach of 875,000 for Business charts to about 1,000 for Non-Profit content. The analysis also shows that the largest shows increasingly depend on YouTube for reach. While this analysis is useful, the important caveat is that business decision-makers have broad interests, and there are a plethora of ways to reach them outside of exclusively business content. Use this data for business genre insights, along with audience data, to find your target wherever they consume podcasts.

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Smash That “Paid” Subscribe Button Now

YouTube is pushing podcast creators toward channel memberships as recurring revenue, arguing that podcasts’ natural fandom and surplus behind-the-scenes material make them strong subscription candidates. The numbers imply that success hinges on consistency, not scale: Creators who post two or more members-only videos or livestreams monthly see 15 times more member growth than those who don’t. Common pricing starts at $4.99, and 95% of earnings come from programs older than a year. In a world where audience metrics aren’t consistent, paid membership numbers for podcasters and creators provide evidence of audience commitment. A creator with a smaller but paying community may offer more value than a larger show with weaker engagement.

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#SaveTheLiveReads

Host Turns Fear Into a Sales Pitch for Shopify

Mark Narrations of the eponymous podcast Mark Narrations – Reddit Stories earns this week’s #STLR because of his stellar ability to present Shopify as the cure for a common phobia: The fear of starting something new. Instead of selling you an e-commerce platform, Mark explains how Shopify removes barriers that often prevent people from taking the first step towards starting their own business, making the platform a confidence-booster as much as it is a business tool.

He also ties in how Shopify’s plethora of features not only save you time, but also make you look like you’ve had your website designed by a professional, even if you’re just putting it together by yourself. By the end of the read, Shopify isn’t just helping people build online stores; it’s helping users turn “What if?” into “Why not?” If you want to hear this slam dunk of a sales pitch, click the link below.

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