Spotify’s Audio Domination Plans; Radio’s Latest Try At Becoming Digital; Another Tik Tok Star Launches a Podcast; Indeed’s Baseball Success Story

Happy Wednesday. May this week’s message find you well as you seek out the last-minute gift for dad (we refuse to do the dads and grads thing here).

The biggest story in our world comes from our friends at Spotify.

Spotify has been on a voracious binge to take up as much of the audio market as possible over the past couple of years, and last week during their INVEST DAY 2022, shared their plan to increase “The Spotify Machine’s” capabilities by developing a unique set of software, services, and products and business models tailored for each vertical they’re conquering.

This year’s Invest Day included the typical, financial recaps and the obligatory, “first and foremost, Spotify is a music company” talk, but quickly turned to the innovations and expansion their making in the non-music audio space.

The company is proud of their growth in Podcasts, and they should be. According to their Chief Content & Advertising Business Officer, Dawn Ostroff, six of the top 10 podcasts are Spotify exclusives, and since 2018, Spotify has gone from less than 7% of their listeners spending time with podcasts to 30% of users monthly. These massive wins make Spotify a necessary player in a space that, just 2 years ago they were very far down the list.

The biggest news to come out of the event (in our opinion) is that they are setting their sites on Audiobooks. After purchasing the platform Findaway last year, Spotify is still working with the US Department of Justice’s antitrust division to get the deal done, but the enthusiasm about the space hasn’t waned. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in his speech, “while it’s still early, we expect audiobooks to also have healthy margins, above 40%, and be highly accretive to the business. If Spotify can pull off in Audiobooks what it has in Podcast, this could be a massive addition to their already impressive arsenal, allowing advertisers to reach a completely new audience–book nerds.

In addition to these leaps forward, Spotify also revealed their plans to expand the tools that they’ve acquired (Podsights, Charitable, and more) into their business as a whole. A topic that we share later in this newsletter (keep reading).

If you’ve been waiting on the sidelines about testing into Spotify because of their high minimums and restrictions, it’s time to reconsider. At Oxford Road, we have made massive strides with the company and we can say that they are extremely valuable partners for advertisers looking to grow their audio footprint. It’s time to get in the game.

Keep reading for more news and opportunities! Happy Wednesday and happy Father’s Day to the Dads out there.

The Classifieds

They Came, They Saw, They Reported the News

Tik Tok star and bite-sized news anchor V Spehar has created this podcast to tackle broader topics within trending headlines. Their content is a mix of edu-tainment, news, and long-form interviews with current figures within political circles, grassroots coalitions, and social media. The first episode covered topics such as citizen journalism, the student debt crisis, and censorship. Similar internet-focused education and news podcasts have done exceptionally well for advertisers across our entire agency, especially those targeting female and LGBTQIA+ audiences. Presenting sponsorships on this Lemonada podcast are open for the quarter, so if you’re interested in a surefire budgetary play in a chart-climbing news podcast this is the opp for you. Bad news travels fast, but if you want some good news click below for more details.

Get The Deal

Host Uses Synergy to Create Success through Sensuality

In her new podcast with Backyard Media, sex symbol and social media star Mercedes Terrell is bringing candid and thoughtful self-improvement advice to her legions of male admirers. Serving as a distinct alternative to the misogynistic dating coaches and pick-up artists of the past, Mercedes and her guests have covered recent topics such as confidence, showing clear intent when you’re in the friendzone, and excising toxic behaviors to achieve personal success. While Mercedes is a certified life coach with multiple seminars to her name, her advice feels like it’s coming from an extremely authentic and relatable source. The content is mostly targeted to a male audience but this opportunity is perfect for any client that performs well on self-improvement, health & fitness, and education podcasts. Self-help yourself to success by clicking below for more information.

Get The Deal

In Case You Missed It

Spotify Shares Audio Domination Plan

We shared a more robust breakdown of the important details of Spotify’s “Invest Day 2022” above, but for those skimmers out there, here you go… Invest Day is Spotify’s chance to share the progress they’ve made over the years along with details about how they’ll continue to innovate and grow over the short and long term. To sum it up–these guys are now a major player in audio and they’re only going to get bigger.

Radio Still Trying to Be Digital

We have a soft spot for terrestrial radio at Oxford Road. Many folks on the team actually cut their teeth in the medium, and we believe it still holds a valuable place in a marketer’s tool kit. However, what radio doesn’t do well is stay in its lane. Rather than expanding into new mediums like streaming audio, podcast, and satellite (as iHeart has very effectively done) some radio holdouts are still trying to make the century-old medium more like these emerging technologies. In a recent article, InsiderRadio shares tech company Xperi’s new ability to recommend other radio stations, either in your market or as you drive out of the market based on your listening habits like Netflix or Spotify–all in-dash. The issue is, we have Netflix and Spotify and they work better. The beauty of radio is its simplicity. It’s standard in nearly every vehicle on the road and everyone, even your dad knows how to use it. As kids, when we had to tune an analog dial to find our favorite station, we had no problem finding the content we wanted–Xperi’s toy is useless. This “innovation” will undoubtedly end up in the radio graveyard along with countless other efforts to make radio something it’s not.

The Gamers Take Over

The latest report from eMarketer is on gamers. According to the report, eMarketer estimates that more than half (54.2%) of the US population will be digital gamers this year! Though video gaming has been around since the 80s, many shifted their focus to gaming during the pandemic. According to The NPD Group, the average time spent gaming jumped 16.5% between 2019 and 2020, from 12.7 to 14.8 hours per week, and in 2021, time spent gaming jumped another 2 hours per week. Mobile gaming is the largest segment by far, accounting for 48.3% of the population, with 9 out of 10 gamers having played video games on their mobile devices. The article goes deeper into the details of this growing segment and the ways companies are monetizing, but it’s behind a paywall. If you’d like to see more, reach out to us by clicking here. For marketers, this is a segment often overlooked. With the growth of gamers overall and the number of gaming podcasts growing every day, you should consider testing this genre in your next podcast expansion.

A Baseball Podcast Success Story

Proclaiming yourself an Indeed Success Story means you’ve gotta deliver the goods by demonstrating why. The host of Baseball America’s podcast does just that in his ad read for the renowned hiring platform, and he doesn’t disappoint. Taking us through his experience, providing lots of specificities—specificity is key—we get an in-depth account of what it’s like using a tool that makes hiring loads easier. Baseball America drops weekly to deliver news on the majors and minors, with extra attention paid to pro baseball’s prospects. When it comes to brand endorsements, it goes without saying, these guys have got the talent.

Listen Here

OXFORd In The News

James Ingrassia, Marketing Brew Debut

Earlier in this week’s edition, we alluded to the technological advances Spotify is implementing in the near future. Well the news hit the good folks at Marketing Brew and they reached out to James Ingrassia, our EVP Client Services, to get his perspective on the news and asked how we, as an agency, plan to leverage the new opportunities ahead. It’s definitely worth the read and if you’re not subscribed to Marketing Brew already, we suggest you do so immediately. And, not just so we can get the swag through referral credits!

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!