The State of the Podcast Business with Bryan Barletta

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If you want to understand the future of podcast advertising, spend 5 minutes with Bryan Barletta. This week, The Media Roundtable gives you almost an hour with the self-described “Podcast ad-tech by day, dungeon master by night.”

“Nobody in this space comes from other spaces… 95% of the people in this space haven’t worked in other media, haven’t worked in other advertising channels, and definitely haven’t touched ad-tech before.” -Bryan Barletta

Barletta is a towering authority when it comes to podcast ads. With an ad-tech background from Claritas and Megaphone (and someone who worked on the world’s first shakeable ad in 2009), he founded Sounds Profitable, a weekly podcast ad-tech newsletter and podcast jam-packed with industry insights that are actually enjoyable to listen to.

You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone else who understands the state of the industry as clearly as Bryan. If you want to feel smarter in your next media planning session as you look at your podcast ad buys, you need to hear what Barletta has to say.

Tune in to hear:

Why “it sucks” that we’re using podcasting as a catchall phrase
Bryan’s take on Joe Rogan that’s actually informed
Why Podcast needs nutrition labels
Where the next big global podcast audience will be
How to release a podcast in your own voice, in any language

We don’t care how long you’ve worked in the industry. If you listen to this episode, you’re going to see podcast ads in a new light. Click below to hear everything.

Listen to the Interview

The Classifieds

Anna Aptly Acquired by Acast

That’s right, funny woman Anna Faris is moving her hugely popular and extremely successful podcast to the Acast network. Faris started her career as a comedy queen in films such as Scary Movie and The Hot Chick but became a household name with her CBS television show Mom. On her podcast, Faris interviews a variety of celebrity guests before they both give their very unqualified advice to call-in listeners. With a very relatable and empathetic approach to advice-giving, Faris and her guests speak on topics such as motherhood, finding fame, family drama, and romantic relationships. This podcast has seen the most success for advertisers in the mental health and direct-to-consumer categories and routinely lands on best-of lists in the comedy genre. Trust someone who’s actually quite qualified and follow the link below for details.

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Zeitgeist Cult Members Get Deprogrammed

Dissidents of societal trends rejoice! The All Things Comedy original Sounds Like a Cult is moving from a seasonal to a weekly publishing schedule. Hosts Isa Medina and Amanda Montell look to the zeitgeist for brands, pop culture trends, and organizations with “cult followings,” to determine: Are they actually cults? Whether they’re diving into the product loyalty associated with Trader Joe’s, the evangelism connected to LuLaRoe, or the unquestioned protocols and rituals of the British Royal Family, the hosts are always determined to understand the fervent loyalty and unhealthy attachments associated with these movements. This show falls within the Comedy genre but is definitely a good option for those interested in education and society & culture. This is the perfect time to test for those with a budget in Q1. Hopefully, the Influencer has enough of a cult following to get you to click the link below.

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In Case You Missed It

What Can You Buy Instead of a Super Bowl Ad?

An ad on the Super Bowl. It’s what many marketers aspire to achieve, but is it the right move for your business? First off, the price tag for a 30-sec spot in this year’s Super Bowl, at a reported $6.5 million, is prohibitive for most marketers. But Radio evangelists Pierre Bouvard and Christine Travaglini, offer an alternative to an ad in the “big game”, Radio. The two argue that for 40% of the cost of a Super Bowl TV ad, brands can reach 74% more people while saving $4 million. Yes, Radio is a more efficient play and is still a viable avenue for many marketers, but comparing an ad in the Super Bowl vs. a radio campaign is like comparing a $123k Model S Plaid Tesla to a $30k Chevy Bolt. Both vehicles will get you where you need to go. One is much more affordable, but the other makes a statement. If you didn’t make this year’s roster of Super Bowl advertisers, fear not. As this article shares, there are plenty of other options out there including Radio that will get you to where you need to go.

Rumble Saves The World With Joe Rogan

This week in Joe Rogan’s battle over proposed cancellation due to alleged COVID misinformation and past racial slurs, Joe finds a new ally. Monday, Chris Pavlovski, CEO of Rumble (The Right’s Answer to YouTube), posted a letter to Rogan on Twitter offering the Podcast host $100 million for 4 years, saying “this is our chance to save the world.” Meanwhile, Rogan’s current employer at Spotify, Daniel Elk said in a statement that although he “strongly condemns” Rogan’s words, he does not believe “silencing Joe is the answer.” Yet, the Swedish streaming giant has quietly removed 133 questionable episodes from their service (according to jremissing.com). We teased it last week, but this ongoing saga underscores the need for content labels in media, especially on podcasts. We’re cooking up something that will help. Stay tuned…

Invasive Audience Targeting is Dying

Weeks ago, Meta announced that they would be removing detailed targeting options from their platform. The following excerpt is our friend and partner, Dan Pantelo, Founder and CEO of Multi-variate ad testing platform, Marpipe giving his take on what this means to advertisers:

Changes in Meta are being made between now and March 17th to reduce audience targeting capability and Google is following suit.

Reinventing’ niche targeting is futile – Proposed solutions that attempt to do ‘detailed audience targeting without invasive tracking’ are either A) too ineffective/watered-down to matter or B) if they work well, they present a big enough target to privacy zealots to whack-a-mole them.

What do we do? – Since the main performance lever is on its way out and we can’t replace it, we must look to other performance levers. The other methods are underdeveloped and aren’t as easy to operate, but now need to rise to fill the vacuum. The two emerging alternatives are:

1) Contextual placements – Instead of targeting a new mom and following her around the internet, I simply show my ads next to content about ‘how to change diapers.’ This has been around for a while (IAS, DoubleVerify, Moat), but is only recently having its big moment.

2) Creative data – This is the most underdeveloped and, as a result, highest in growth potential. If you haven’t heard this phrase yet, you will soon: “Creative is the new audience targeting.” This flips the paradigm upside down by suggesting we should focus on automatically adjusting our ad creative to maximize appeal to broad audiences (rather than adjusting audiences to find the ones who like our creative).

This can be done with existing ad spend on Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc – but it requires learning a new workflow and bringing creatives in much closer to the action. To help companies adapt, Marpipe just published The Definitive Guide to Modern Creative Testing for FREE. Using Marpipe, advertisers can produce data on which visual variables most influence performance (the same way you used to collect data on which audience interest groups worked best.”

A Stoic Read with a Lot of Heart

While a personal recommendation like the one recently given by host Ryan Holiday on The Daily Stoic podcast, for Shopify, might be a thing of dreams for some advertisers, we find it’s quite common. The truth is when a host speaks from the heart about a brand they’ve had a great personal history with only good can come of it, even on a podcast that focuses on the teachings of Stoicism, not the first place you’d expect to hear brand appreciation. Ryan accredits Shopify as the reason his podcast is still on, then goes on to laud it as “the single best place to create an online store and eCommerce business that you could possibly imagine.” Even a Stoic to see the virtue in that.

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OXFORd In The News

Winning in Your Category; Granger on DUrso

Last week, Oxford Road Founder and CEO, Dan Granger was asked to be a guest on the popular Tony DUrso Show, which aims to help entrepreneurs learn from the success of others to help them on their vision path. Dan chats with Tony not only about the formation of this agency, newsletter, The Media Roundtable, and our podcast, but also shares the secret sauce behind Oxford Road’s success. Tony’s show is one of the best performing podcasts for nearly every advertiser we put on, so it’s exciting to turn the tables and share our story on such an impactful show.

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!