This Week's Influencer: What Monica Lewinsky Knows About Trust that You Don’t; Your Audience Data Is Wrong; New Laws Coming for AI Ads; and More "

A great podcast doesn’t just transform the lives of its audience. It also has a profound impact on its host. This week’s guest has found a new calling – not to mention a new following – through her powerful podcasting work.

On the latest episode of The Media Roundtable, Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) welcomes Monica Lewinsky (anti-bullying social activist; Host, Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky) to talk about conversational cocoons, mission-based marketing, and her show’s reclaiming journey. Let’s dive in.

“When you hear the catch in someone’s voice, when you hear authenticity, or inauthenticity, I think that’s what is really magical about podcasts.” – Monica Lewinsky (anti-bullying social activist, host of Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky)

Finding Purpose – Every great podcast needs a reason to exist, and needs a deeply connected host who can convey the show’s mission statement. So, what’s Monica’s elevator pitch for her show? As she puts it: ”Reclaiming is a conversational show about finding the things that we’ve lost in a moment, or over a decade, and how we got them back.“ Marketers, ask potential partners why they make their show, and listen for the passion in their words.

Cocoons and Conversation – Podcasts are one of the few spaces in media where vulnerable, long-form conversations can still happen. It’s why Monica wanted to not only reclaim her story through podcasts, but to also “create this cocoon to have a conversation” with her guests. Brands want there to be trust between the audience and host, but trust starts between host and guest. Monica’s experiences under media scrutiny make her uniquely suited to build that “cocoon,” and invite others to join her there.

Missions and Marketing – The best brand-creator partnerships come from shared beliefs, not just a transactional relationship. Monica goes out of her way to work with anti-bullying orgs because that’s the mission she cares about, even if they tend to pay less than others. Brands: When you’re looking for creators who will go the extra mile with you, consider ones that truly care about the same goals.

For more insights on how Monica has reclaimed stories through the power of podcasting, check out the full episode of The Media Roundtable below.

The Classifieds

There’s No Need to Overkill the Drama of These Stories

Network: Big Little Media / Episodic Downloads: 125k

True crime has seen a lot of backlash in recent years, due to some hosts’ decision to frame crimes as lascivious, while promoting perpetrators over victims. Brooke Makenna strove to change that with her weekly podcast with Big Little Media. Overkillers deliberately puts victims and survivors first, and covers cases that are stranger and more disturbing than most true crime shows dare to explore (one episode focused on a psychologist who spent her career researching homicidal teens, only to be allegedly killed by her own daughter).

Brooke does diligent research and delivers enticing stories while giving the content a different moral weight than the genre usually carries. Highly recommended for lifelong learners who love true crime and researched reporting. If you want to get your hands on this opportunity, click the link below…

Get The Deal

Cheese + Beer + Football = One Good Sports Podcast 

Network: Blue Wire Podcasts / Episodic Downloads: 75k

For Green Bay Packers fans, the offseason is long, and the noise is loud, which is exactly what Pack-A-Day was built to cut through. Host Andy Herman and a rotating crew of writers and podcasters from across Packers Nation deliver a new episode every day of the year, covering team news, rumors, game reviews, player grades, roster analysis, NFL Draft intel, and training camp dispatches with the kind of detail that only a deeply committed fan base expects.

Episodes are typically under forty minutes, and listeners view Andy as a reliable voice in a sports community where others tend to overreact to every snap. With thousands of published episodes, Pack-A-Day has more than earned its daily spot in the feed. This show is greatly suited for a male-skewing client, or anyone looking for tune-in opportunities in local markets. Click below, and Go Pack, Go!

Get The Deal

In Case You Missed It

Congress Throws AM Radio a Lifeline

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act on September 15th, sending the bill to the Senate. Broadcasters and advocacy groups welcomed the move, citing AM’s role in emergency information and local programming as reasons to protect this essential service. If enacted, the legislation would require AM radio as standard equipment in new passenger vehicles at no additional charge. While the radio industry celebrates the news, don’t expect it to change consumer behavior. Radio still enjoys mass listenership, but that listenership declines a little each year as listening share shifts to streaming and podcasts. Keeping AM in the dashboard preserves distribution and removes one potential accelerator of that decline.

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California Sets Precedent for AI Voice Disclosure

California’s SB-1050 mandates disclosures for prominent AI-generated voices in ads (including audio-only media) starting January 1st, 2027. Unlike New York’s law, California lacks an actual-knowledge exception and penalizes violations under state false-advertising laws, exposing advertisers to significantly higher financial liability. The laws may be at the state level, but the implications extend to national campaigns. As Kilpatrick puts it: “When national advertising uses what appears to be a real human, but is not, the safe bet is to disclose.” Starting January 2027, that increasingly looks less like best practice and more like the emerging standard.

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Follow the Audience, Not the Format

Acast’s “Podcast Pulse 2026” report shows that 88% of podcast consumers move between audio and video formats throughout the day based on their routines. This cross-format audience is highly responsive to ads, with 81% taking brand-related actions, while audio-friendly video ad creative performs best across both mediums. Remember, consumers decide where they get their podcast fix. Some may have preferred podcasting to remain audio-only, but that ship has sailed. Video broadens reach, and audio and video complement each other. The smart play is to follow the audience and build content that works wherever they choose to consume podcasts.

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#SaveTheLiveReads

Whatnot Makes the Search Worth It

Morgan Adams and Brooke Barry of Hear Me Out with Morgan Adams & Brooke Barry deliver this week’s #STLR with a fun, family-driven endorsement for Whatnot. Morgan kicks things off with a story about her mom searching for a pair of cheetah-print Brooks walking shoes, only for her brother to score the hard-to-find pair on Whatnot (which completely makes her mom’s day). By capturing the excitement of finding something you’ve long been looking for, Morgan’s personal story immediately demonstrates the appeal of Whatnot.

Morgan also highlights the platform’s live shopping experience, where shoppers can interact with sellers in real time, ask questions, get a closer look at products, and discover items they might not find elsewhere. After seeing the shoes in person, Morgan says she finally understands the “Whatnot obsession,” making the endorsement feel authentic and rooted in her own family’s experience. It’s a great example of turning a simple product discovery into a relatable story that makes listeners want to start hunting for their own finds.

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OXFORd In The News

Oxford Road and Bumper Just Called Out the Industry’s Dirty Little Secret

Oxford Road has partnered with Bumper to back the Bumper Score, a new audience-verification metric that rates podcasts based on verified delivery data, app engagement, and actual ad consumption across audio and video. The Bumper Score moves beyond downloads and gives advertisers a clearer picture of whether their ads actually reached real listeners. The announcement landed across Podcast News Daily, Podnews, Sounds Profitable, Podcasting Today, Roastbrief, Ads of Brands, and Podsubs, all of which picked up on the same core argument: Namely, that confusion about audience quality costs the industry deals, and the Bumper Score is a meaningful step toward fixing that. Read Dan Granger’s take here.

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