This Week's Influencer: Spotify Hits Skip; The IAB and AMP Are Becoming Aligned; Why Video Podcasts Aren't TV; and More…

Today’s edition of The Influencer is brought to you by– [SKIP]

As you’ve undoubtedly heard, Spotify is testing a “skip ahead” feature that will let some users bypass ads. Will it help or hurt marketers? Find out on this week’s episode of The Media Roundtable.

Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) and Giles Martin (EVP, Strategy, Oxford Road) welcome podcast industry veteran Glenn Rubenstein (CEO & Founder, ADOPTER Media) to give his view on not only Spotify’s button-pushing decision, but also the AMP Accords. Let’s dive in.

“Spotify is making an editorial decision on podcasters’ content to label anything that’s promotional as an advertisement. Therefore, they’re saying: ‘This is worthy of being skipped. Here’s a button.’ And I think that’s fundamentally wrong.” –  Glenn Rubenstein (CEO & Founder, ADOPTER Media)

Not All Ads are Created Equal – Glenn’s main issue with Spotify’s “skip ahead” button is that it treats all ads the same, whether they’re host-read or programmatic. He argues that host-read ads are content that just happens to be sponsored. Honest endorsements are the special sauce of podcasting, and to lump them in with the same produced ads popping up everywhere is a disservice to creators, brands, and the industry.

Pressing Pause on the Skip Button – While Glenn believes creators should be protesting the skip button, their best defense against such technologies is to ensure their work doesn’t lose the human touch. A live read in which the host demonstrates how much they actually care about a product or service matters more than completion rates or skip buttons. When brands and hosts find partnerships that actually matter to everyone involved, it creates reads strong enough to withstand the allure of a skip button. Good content is skip-proof.

AMP’s Greatest Hits (and Misses) – While the AMP Accords don’t deliver all of the industry changes Glenn wants to see, he feels they’re a good starting point. His dream next step? A creator dashboard for verifiable attribution on YouTube. Creators are leaving money on the table because they can’t prove consumption for brands. Brands wouldn’t just pay a higher CPM; they’d also scale up buys because there’d be less guesswork regarding measurement. (Agree? Join the AMP Accords here.)

For more unskippable insights from one of podcasting’s savviest experts, check out the full episode below.

The Classifieds

Self-Help for the Non-Traditional Mind

Network: Amplitude Media Partners / Episodic Downloads: 20k

This week, our classifieds are all about the independents: What they have, what’s working, and how to best get in touch with them. Our first selection comes from Amplitude Media Partners and covers all manner of advice. Each week on Weirdly Helpful, host Zak Rosen invites a different contributor to share one odd experiment, ritual, or practice that’s made their life profoundly better, no matter how weird it might be.

Their advice tends to be stranger than anything you’d find in a self-help book, and includes everything from picking berries with your dog to leaving small art pieces on the bus. Weirdly Helpful is for people who find conventional wisdom to be too generic, and the show has proven to be a top performer for B2B clients who trend well in educational properties. Click below for your regularly scheduled dose of the unexpected.

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The Boyz are Back in the Studio

Network: Star Light Ads /  Episodic Downloads: 300k

Music is often viewed through technical, historical, and academic lenses, but what about the personal? On Shawn Stockman’s On That Note, the Boyz II Men member asks the questions no one else thinks to ask, while providing insights into his own world.  Each episode features a different guest–including artists, producers, athletes, and actors–who trace the specific songs that shaped their lives.

Recent installments have included in-depth conversations with the likes of Magnus Ferrell, Muni Long, and Travie McCoy. The conversations run long and go deep, and episodes typically close with a live musical performance. Because Shawn Stockman’s On That Note is hosted by an industry professional, it’s been a staple for B2B clients, as well as for DTCs with a large male consumer base. Stay in tune with the rest of the industry’s harmony, and click below for additional details.

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In Case You Missed It

IAB & AMP are Singing From the Same Hymnal

The IAB Tech Lab released updated Podcast Technical Measurement Guidelines (v2.3) aimed at improving consistency in how podcast audiences, downloads, and ad delivery are measured across audio and video. Open for public comment through August 19th, the update is intended to reduce discrepancies between platforms and create a more standardized foundation for reporting and campaign evaluation. Measurement standards don’t always generate headlines, but they make markets work. The AMP Accords argued that podcasting needs common definitions and consumption-based measurement to give marketers a common standard for audience delivery. The IAB’s work is another step in that direction. Better standards mean more confidence, more comparable data, and ultimately more investment in the medium.

Read More

When TV Thinking Collides with Podcast

Media buyers are starting to include video podcasts alongside television and CTV buys, viewing creator-led shows as a modern replacement for traditional talk programming. The shift reflects growing confidence in podcasts as premium video inventory while raising new questions about how marketers should plan, measure, and value the format. Buying podcasts with a TV budget doesn’t make them TV. Standard video ads may fit neatly alongside CTV inventory, but host-read advertising remains podcasting’s differentiator. As podcasts expand across video platforms, marketers should preserve what makes the medium different, not treat it as another version of television.

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The Creator Era Is Here (But Maybe It’s Always Been)

In a recent article, Fast Company argues that the influencer era is over and that the creator era has arrived. The difference is authority: Brands like Rocket Companies, Chime, and E.L.F. Beauty are already making the shift, and LLM search engines are accelerating the change by prioritizing creator content and community comments as authoritative sources. Podcasts have been teaching this lesson for years. Audiences don’t respond because a host has millions of followers; they respond because they trust the person behind the microphone. As marketers consider creator partnerships, the focus should be on the strength of the creator-audience relationship, not the size of the talking head.

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#SaveTheLiveReads

You Too Can Afford Anything, Thanks to Wayfair

Paula Pant of Afford Anything delivers this week’s #STLR by demonstrating how Wayfair can solve a real-life challenge while helping you decorate your home. After moving into a 600-square-foot Manhattan apartment, Paula explains how maximizing vertical space became the key to making her new home work. She shares how Wayfair shelves transformed everything from her kitchen to her entryway and even her bathroom, while also highlighting a cleverly designed daybed that doubles as a couch, guest bed, bookshelf, and storage solution.

She even turns one piece of furniture into the perfect example of getting more out of every square foot. Those specific examples make the read feel less like a product pitch and more like practical advice from someone who’s actually figured out how to make a small space functional. By tying the brand’s versatility back to her own apartment, she makes a compelling case that the right furniture isn’t just about how a space looks—it’s about how much more you can do with it.

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OXFORd In The News

The Hollywood Reporter Called – Oxford Road Answered

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve heard our take on Spotify’s new ad skip button; we covered it extensively on The Media Roundtable. But when The Hollywood Reporter needed a voice to put the story in context, they reached out to our CEO and Founder, Dan Granger. As Dan notes in the story: “Ad skipping is maybe scarier in theory than in practice, and so I don’t think this is going to have a major material direct impact on the brands that advertise.” This is a big deal, one we’ll continue to monitor closely to keep you informed as the story develops.

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