Media Roundtable: Industry Edition - August 24

Back by popular demand! This week’s Media Roundtable: Industry Edition tackles the news you need to hear about, including Spotify’s new brand safety tool, the panic and perils around hidden persuaders, and what a CNN transition means for the direction of journalism in this country.

This week, Kyle Jelinek takes the panel out for a spin as the new host alongside returning Oxford Road team members, Dan Granger, Spencer Semonson (who finally corrected our mispronunciation of her last name), and Stew Redwine, with hard-won insights for those of us working in the media and audio industries.

The show begins with a rapid-fire discussion on the top news stories like Audacy’s recent layoffs, MediaPost’s terrible Ad Spend Index report for July, TikTok’s mission to control misinformation, and how Finland’s Prime Minister likes to dance with friends.

Quickly, the roundtable joins in to discuss the most important topics facing the media world. At the top of everyone’s mind is how to integrate imperfect data sets (Podsight’s Benchmark Report, Apple’s new podcast charts) to make better decisions when planning your media. Spencer gives her expert opinion on separating signal from noise that you’re definitely going to want to hear.

Short on time? A recap of each topic is shared below, but if you want the team’s whole hot take (and trust us, you do), catch the full episode by clicking the link below.

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Podsights “Insights”

Podsights released their Q3 Benchmark report, which continues to share recommendations that seem counterintuitive for some of us in the business. Podcast optimal frequency, the efficiency of Pre-rolls vs. Midrolls, whether Dynamic or Baked In ads perform better, and how many impressions an advertiser should buy are shared in this report as buying guidelines for the uninitiated. Yet based on our experience, this requires a much more nuanced approach. So take the data for what it is, but proceed with caution.

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Spotify’s Walled Garden Gets A Little Higher

Spotify just announced a new service that will create the ads you air on their podcasts. So now you can get your ads made and graded (for brand safety) and placed with content all owned by the same company. Not to mention, with their recent acquisition of Podsights, Spotify will tell you how it all worked too. Talk about vertical integration! Would you trust this level of control in any other industry? It’s like buying a house directly from the seller, who is also your real estate agent, appraiser, home inspector, and tax collector. It’s convenient for sure, but is this the best way to approach? We love the innovation, and Spotify is a valued partner of ours, but the answer is probably not.

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The Hidden Persuaders 2.0

Acast’s new “conversational targeting” sounds a bit like buzz-word soup. It works by using advanced speech-to-text transcription technology combined with artificial intelligence and natural language processing to analyze hundreds of thousands of individual podcast episodes. Each episode is then categorized according to the industry standard IAB content categorization taxonomy (v2) to ensure that ad campaigns are automatically served against episodes of the highest relevance for their brand message. We’re seeing others in the industry doing similar things, but does this strategy lead to optimizing yourself out of a channel? It sounds similar to the almost Godlike powers attributed to marketers in Vance Packard’s 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders. Like most things in this week’s episode, we recommend looking at this as just another tool for planning, not a solution.

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Huel Advert on Steven Bartlett’s Podcast Banned

The brand Huel had an ad from a March podcast drop on The Diary of a CEO banned in the UK, as the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) deemed it wasn’t obvious that it was an ad. A thorough onboarding is the key to ensuring the creative services who craft the copy are properly heard when the content creators record their ad. As brands venture into foreign markets, this onboarding is even more important to ensure local protocols are met. However, this begs the question, does knowing you’re listening to an ad affect the performance of that ad? If listeners like the host, and feel a part of the audience (which is part of the two-prong “intentionality/intimacy” power of podcasting), they simply don’t care. So why not just be transparent, and aim to get the best, most honest message to your audience? Sounds novel.

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Brian Stelter to Leave CNN

CNN’s Chief Media Correspondent and anchor of the show Reliable Sources since 2013, Brian Stelter, is leaving the network following the cancellation of the long-running media news program. Our panel suggests this may be an indicator of less polarizing content in the media. Fox and CNN have been in a race to the bottom for years, hopefully, balance and integrity will prevail.

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Apple’s New Podcast Charts

Apple Podcasts is introducing a pair of new top 100 podcast charts that track subscription podcasts and subscription podcast channels. These include shows from all categories that offer exclusive content, early access to new episodes, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, and more premium experiences. Currently, the top US subscribed shows include Smartless, Something Was Wrong, and Fed Up, all attributed to podcast network Wondery, which is owned by Amazon. Podcast charts are the focus of much debate between agency folks and network contacts, useful for some aspects of planning rationale but not a sure indicator of the performance or even reach for a particular show. Again, another tool, but not a definitive answer to every question.

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