Spotify’s Skip Button and AMP's Future w/ Glenn Rubenstein (Adopter Media)

Today’s edition of The Influencer is brought to you by– [SKIP]

As you’ve undoubtedly heard, Spotify is testing a “skip ahead” feature that will let some users bypass ads. Will it help or hurt marketers? Find out on this week’s episode of The Media Roundtable.

Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) and Giles Martin (EVP, Strategy, Oxford Road) welcome podcast industry veteran Glenn Rubenstein (CEO & Founder, ADOPTER Media) to give his view on not only Spotify’s button-pushing decision, but also the AMP Accords. Let’s dive in.

“Spotify is making an editorial decision on podcasters’ content to label anything that’s promotional as an advertisement. Therefore, they’re saying: ‘This is worthy of being skipped. Here’s a button.’ And I think that’s fundamentally wrong.” –  Glenn Rubenstein (CEO & Founder, ADOPTER Media)

Not All Ads are Created Equal – Glenn’s main issue with Spotify’s “skip ahead” button is that it treats all ads the same, whether they’re host-read or programmatic. He argues that host-read ads are content that just happens to be sponsored. Honest endorsements are the special sauce of podcasting, and to lump them in with the same produced ads popping up everywhere is a disservice to creators, brands, and the industry.

Pressing Pause on the Skip Button – While Glenn believes creators should be protesting the skip button, their best defense against such technologies is to ensure their work doesn’t lose the human touch. A live read in which the host demonstrates how much they actually care about a product or service matters more than completion rates or skip buttons. When brands and hosts find partnerships that actually matter to everyone involved, it creates reads strong enough to withstand the allure of a skip button. Good content is skip-proof.

AMP’s Greatest Hits (and Misses) – While the AMP Accords don’t deliver all of the industry changes Glenn wants to see, he feels they’re a good starting point. His dream next step? A creator dashboard for verifiable attribution on YouTube. Creators are leaving money on the table because they can’t prove consumption for brands. Brands wouldn’t just pay a higher CPM; they’d also scale up buys because there’d be less guesswork regarding measurement. (Agree? Join the AMP Accords here.)

For more unskippable insights from one of podcasting’s savviest experts, check out the full episode below.