Media Roundtable Industry Edition #3; Apple’s Sus 100 Podcasts; Podcast Industry Get Serious About Brand Safety; Bye Bye HBO Max; Hold The Babies!

Media Roundtable’s “Industry Edition” returns to discuss the hot topics of the day, including a quick recap of the latest from PodNews, the industry’s latest solutions for brand safety, the loss of HBO Max, and much more.

This week, Dan Granger returns as host alongside other members of the Oxford Road team, Kristen Duenas, Spencer Semonson, and Stew Redwine, as they discuss the most critical topics in the world of marketing from those of us working in the media and audio industries.

Dan begins the episode chatting about the latest release from PodNews, which highlighted the craziness of Apple’s rating system, a new Podcast growth agency for creators called Bumper, Audio Earning Reports that show how legacy media channels are changing with the growth of their podcast involvement, and the monetary cost of misinformation as demonstrated by the Alex Jones civil trial.

For readers short on time, a recap of each topic is shared below, but to hear the team’s whole hot take, listen to the entire episode by clicking the link below.

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The Classifieds

Independent Show Prioritizes Camaraderie Over Partisanship

Oxford Road takes careful steps to address our clients’ brand safety concerns, especially those related to polarization, misinformation, and biases. Hosts Adaam James Levin-Areddy and Vanessa M. Quirk were of the same mindset when they launched Uncertain Things, a quickly growing society and culture podcast that specializes in well-balanced takes on current events. The show prides itself on being extremely diverse in its platformed opinions and includes interviews with guests on either side of the aisle (as well as those smack dab in the middle of it). We have championed similar podcasts that cover like-minded topics, and they have performed best for our B2B clients looking for even-keeled news content. The world may be uncertain, but we are certain you can find out more by clicking the link below.

Get The Deal

Major Podcast Network Offers Premium August Remnant

The folks at Midroll are offering August remnant deals to any advertiser interested. This inventory is available on multiple shows, but we want to call out some exceptional inclusions: CNBC Mad Money is an agency-wide high performer in the finance and business genres and is on sale for 40% off. Last Podcast on the Left, a true crime chart-topper with a high sell-out rate and hefty price tag, is available for the same low price. The Megyn Kelly Show, a conservative news podcast, is a top performer for multiple clients and is heavily discounted for an end-of-month flight. Finally, comedy bastion Your Mom’s House is a superb option for any client that performs well on older male skew comedy podcasts. For full details on these and other great remnant options for August, click the link below.

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In Case You Missed It

The Podcast Industry Gets Serious About Brand Safety

Inside Radio shared the news about the new brand safety tool, Sounder. Backed by iHeart Media, its founders believe that their tool will help Podcast grow by offering brands an automated way to ensure the content they’re supporting aligns with their values, with the addition of offering contextual targeting at scale in the future. We love the momentum we’re seeing with the industry as a whole demanding more insight into content and welcome new solutions to solve this problem. However, we’d be remiss if we didn’t give a quick plug to our partners at Barometer, who’s automated solution for brand safety is already up and running. From what we can tell it offers everything Sounder is promising – perhaps more. If you’d like to give Barometer a test drive – shoot us an electronic mail message.

Sacrificing Short-Term Sales For Long-Term Growth

This week in “Recession Talk”, we share a story from Media Post that urges marketers to shift focus from short-term goals to long-term goals during the economic downturn. History has many stories recounting companies that maintained or doubled down advertising efforts during an economic crisis and came out of it stronger than before, but is this realistic for most marketers? The panel discusses the pros and cons of this strategy and ultimately lands on the truth that it’s a gutsy move that ultimately depends on how long you can sustain a drop in sales to focus on the long-term. But for marketers simply doing the best they can with the resources available. In uncertain times, adjusting your creative strategy can be the most valuable move in your playbook.

Are You Ready for Some Football?

The Athletic has announced the launch of 17 local football podcasts for the upcoming NFL season, giving fans new content to choose from when the season begins this Fall. Sports programming consistently performs well for many advertisers, and at Oxford Road, we’ve found that content with a local and regional focus has excelled, presumably due to their rabidly loyal fanbases. This localization could signify things to come as more regional podcast content outside of the sports world is made available now that consumption and engagement is high enough regionally (as prognosticated by The Influencer for years). For now, go sports!

HBO Max Dissolves

It appears that HBO Max is going away and will be merging with Discovery Plus next year. While from a consumer perspective, we’re saddened to see our beloved streaming platform go the way of the dodo bird, as marketers, it presents a ton of opportunity. We already know that Netflix will be moving to an ad-supported model in 2023. Now it appears we may have the ability to advertise on the premium HBO content we all know and love. Expect more consolidation and more monetization in the streaming space as things progress which may be good for everyone.

Podcast Payola?

Broke by our friend Ashley Carmen on Bloomberg earlier this week, podcast guests are paying up to $50,000 to appear on popular shows. While this may seem astonishing to the general public, for our panel, it was common knowledge and becoming increasingly prevalent. But should podcasts receiving money for interviews disclose it to their listeners? The panel says yes, and it harkens back to the old days in radio where payola and plugola scandals erupted back in the 60’s and 70’s. What do you think? Should podcasts have to disclose which interviews are paid and which are genuine as they do in traditional broadcast? Let us know your thoughts by emailing us.

More Players in the Podcast Sandbox

As reported by the Podcast Business Journal, Lionsgate has entered the podcasting space with a new division called Lionsgate Sound, which will operate as a full-service podcast production company, handling podcast production for the studio’s film & television businesses while also overseeing all elements of podcast production for third party clients. Audio is hot, and everyone wants a piece of the podcast pie. Large production companies have a wide breadth of sources to pull from, plus talented production teams to produce high-quality content, and we expect to see more of this in the future. As an agency that works heavily in the podcast space, we say keep the original content coming.

Growing Your Brain and Your Mane

Even a Ph.D., versed in just about any subject imaginable, can feel helpless when it comes to hair loss. This is what The Brain Candy host Susie Meister teaches us in her ad read for Nutrafol, the number-one dermatologist-recommended hair loss supplement. After articulating the personal pain she experienced after a stylist overprocessed her hair, causing it to fall out, Susie praises Nutrafol as the godsend responsible for all the new growth she’s been seeing. Following it with multiple personal recommendations, Susie makes this a grade A endorsement, showing us that Brain Candy is the true godsend. This is who you want championing your brand.

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OXFORd In The News

Hold The Babies!

As a regular reader of The Influencer, you’re likely familiar with the portion about Koala Corps that sits quietly at the bottom of every week’s edition. If you’re not up to speed on the cause, there are babies in children’s hospitals who, because of various situations, are simply not being held. Volunteers to hold these babies are abundant, but hospitals need administrative support to facilitate the programs that aim to cuddle every child possible. Koala Corps goal has been to raise enough money to hire a full-time facilitator, starting with Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles—in the hopes of supporting hospitals nationwide-and, we did it! At least the first part. We have now raised the funds needed to afford a full-time professional to oversee the cuddler program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) for the next three years. But we’re not stopping there. To learn more about Oxford Road’s Koala Corps program and/or donate to the fund, please visit koalacorps.com

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.

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