Articles by: "Micaeli Rourke – Independent Media Reporter"

Why video might be the key to podcasting success

December 9, 2021 Micaeli Rourke – Independent Media Reporter

Video is the hottest thing in audio right now. Don’t worry, this is not another “pivot to video.” However, an interesting fact emerged as Reuters Institute was formulating the 2021 Digital News Report: YouTube is currently the number one podcasting platform in the United States. According to the report, the video platform is responsible for 26% of podcast consumption in U.S. markets, compared to Apple Podcast’s 22% of listenership, and Spotify’s 17%.

So, why is a platform pretty much synonymous with video dominating the podcast market? We spoke with Damian Radcliffe, digital media analyst and Professor of Practice and Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism at the University of Oregon, to better understand how publishers can tap into “platform agnosticism” and capitalize on the momentum of this video podcasting trend.

At stake: the ability to deepen audience relationships and build subscriber numbers. Oh, and let’s not forget the $1 billion dollars in ad revenue predicted for the podcasting industry this year ($2 billion by 2023).

Ease of podcast discoverability

Discovery has always been a huge challenge for podcasters. As Radcliffe points out in the report, if you aren’t on the iTunes top 10 or not in the ‘top picks’ on a homepage, it can be really hard to reach audiences.

However, by diversifying away from audio-only products, and incorporating audio into supplemental forms of media, publishers can address that discoverability issue, simply by being in more places. Video platforms like YouTube not only make podcasts easier to discover, they also make them easier to share and to share on social feeds.

“Word of mouth has always been the most powerful marketing tool,” explained Radcliffe. “Being able to tap into the power of peer recommendations is potentially a really powerful and potent tool that podcasting could be doing more with.”

If a dedicated listener is learns from their favorite podcasting platform that they are in the top one percent of This American Life listeners, for example, they may want to let their social network know. When shareability and discoverability are predicated on distinctions or superlatives, as Spotify’s “Wrapped” feature has so deftly demonstrated December after December, the potential reach of the program within that individual’s network is exponentially expanded.

“People are sharing podcasting recommendations with their friends. But that kind of conversation is happening off-platform and podcasters don’t know where those referrals or audiences are coming from,” Radcliffe points out. He thinks that if podcasters can “find a way to close that loop and reward people for spreading the word around their podcasts, I think that could be a really interesting development.”

Widening your distribution strategy

Despite YouTube’s unexpected dominance of podcast distribution, most podcasters aren’t sharing their programs on video platforms exclusively. Rather, they use sites like YouTube as a secondary distribution channel. As a platform with an existing audience base of over two billion users and robust content discoverability, YouTube offers an attractive means for individual podcasters and established media players to reach new audiences.

“Think about this in terms of being a part of the wider distribution strategy for your podcasts and trying to find as many different ways for audiences to find you,” Radcliffe explained. For example he suggests that publishers use RSS feeds to distribute content to as wide a variety of places as possible. And that “video podcasting is just a part of that mix.”

When watching a video podcast that audiences would otherwise only consume through audio, audiences may also feel they are privy to certain “behind the scenes” elements, particularly when watching video versions of their favorite interview podcasts. As an example, Radcliffe cited a 2019 episode of Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson, featuring Tyson Fury.

“It was a video podcast, and you could absolutely just listen to it. But there was something quite intimate about being able to watch it and see the interaction and pick up on some of the body language nuances that you can’t necessarily get just through audio alone.”

Leading interview podcasts like Crooked Media’s Pod Save America, the Black Girl Podcast, SmartLess, and others have leveraged video to make audiences feel almost as if they are in the room or ‘part of the gang’ as the interview transpires. Given the increased isolation of audiences at the start of the pandemic, that inclusion has become a value proposition for podcasters.

The advantages of micro-content

As print and online media continue to distill content into easily digestible micro-formats, the same appetite for bite-sized content abounds in video podcasting. (This may be credited, in part, to platforms like TikTok that amplify short video clips across the internet.) This shift in format is something many podcasters have learned to use to their advantage.

“There are opportunities to atomize content to produce clips. [Podcasters] can take an hour-long video podcast and break it up into a series of smaller clips. And those smaller clips may well yield larger audiences than the entire full piece,” Radcliffe explained. “That’s going to help in terms of SEO and search results.” It also helps “in terms of content potentially being shared or reaching different audiences.”

By “atomizing” content and creating shorter, standalone clip videos of key moments from full episodes podcasters are more likely to go viral and gain wider audiences who will then go through and relisten to their archive of episodes. (A great example is this clip from Glennon Doyle’s We Can Do Hard Things podcast.)

“Creators have figured out how to make podcasts work on a platform that wasn’t designed for them, leveraging YouTube’s search algorithm to meet new audiences, make more money, and expand into a medium that’s expected to grow rapidly in the coming years,” The Verge’s Julia Alexander wrote back in 2019. “Creating a separate channel for clips lets podcasters take advantage of YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which surfaces content on specific subjects a viewer is already interested in.”

Bonus: It’s free!

Another big draw for audiences to consume podcasts on YouTube is a simple one… it’s free. According to Edison Research, the number of Americans paying for audio subscriptions has doubled since 2015. With more and more podcasts and platforms going behind paywalls, and more and more consumers encountering subscription fatigue, YouTube is a (seemingly) egalitarian platform where podcast audiences can consume as much content from shows as they desire, regardless of any paywalls the full-length podcasts may be behind.

Lights, camera, action!

If you don’t have video as a part of your podcast offering, don’t panic.

“The thing I would advise against is thinking that you 100% need to do this right now,” cautioned Radcliffe. “You can still have a successful podcasting strategy that doesn’t include video. But increasingly, we will see video as a part of that mix because it enables [podcasters] to reach audiences in different places. It also opens up further opportunities for engagement and interaction.”

Podcasting in the digital age is more than simply audio content, just as written stories are much more than text-only these days. As our digital appetites shift towards brief, shareable video, other media products are certainly not destined for obsolescence. But multimedia is irrefutably the name of the digital game. So it’s only natural that, as podcasting matures, it is branching out of our headphones and onto our screens.

The newsletter boom: capitalizing on the intimacy of the inbox

October 21, 2021 Micaeli Rourke – Independent Media Reporter

When it comes to building direct relationships with readers, newsletters boast a superpower: intimacy. In addition to being a direct avenue for relationship-building with readers, newsletters are also major drivers of revenue diversification and provide insights from first-party data. As such, they have become an all-purpose survival tool for publishers.

“There are so many ways technology has helped email newsletters become a replacement for the newspaper and magazine as people’s view into the world and how they get news and information,” says Kerel Cooper, CMO of email service provider LiveIntent. “It’s in your inbox. It’s there almost on-demand when you’re ready to consume it.”

LiveIntent’s Industry Pulse Survey, published in July, found that 87% of publishers and marketers were actively investing in email and 94% were prioritizing scaling their email programs this year.

“Prior to the Covid pandemic, we were seeing newsletters trending in a very positive direction. People were spending more than five hours a day between their personal and work emails,” Cooper explained. “With the pandemic and everyone being home, that growth accelerated.”

The FT’s newsletter machine

Sarah Ebner, Head of Newsletters at the Financial Times, agrees with Cooper that newsletters were already “having a moment” before Covid struck.

“Newsletters have been ‘the big thing’ and then ‘not the big thing’ for probably a decade,” says Ebner. “[In] the last year, with the pandemic, because many people found themselves in a situation where they were stuck at home and hungry for information, newsletters became a very big tool. People wanted information and news sources they could trust.”

To quote journalist Faisal Kim, “What could they deem more trustworthy than emails they’d chosen to receive in their inboxes?”

Currently offering 32 curated newsletters and counting, FT was early to embrace the newsletter distribution channel. Way back in 2019, shortly after crossing the 1 million subscriber threshold, they began using newsletter polls to increase subscriber retention.

“We know that the engagement rate is very high for FT subscribers,” Ebner explained. “It’s even higher if they’re newsletter readers, which is a really good thing.”

According to Ebner, readers on a trial are 134% more likely to be retained if they subscribe to a newsletter. “[Newsletters] drive traffic and engagement. They also definitely enhance loyalty and create habits and they really can push people to subscribe and donate,” Ebner told me. “You can also promote events or other newsletters through them. So, they do a lot of things in a really simple way.”

The personality-driven future of newsletters

Again, given the intimacy of the inbox, it isn’t a surprise that readers develop a relationship with newsletter authors, not just the publishing brands behind them.

Last April when David Leonhardt was appointed to lead The New York Times’ flagship morning newsletter, he was given the title of “writer, host, and anchor.” For a newsletter that reaches the inbox of over 17 million subscribers, Leonhardt has the equivalent audience of some primetime news programs. “Host and anchor are the language of TV, which I’m sure isn’t accidental,” wrote Nieman Lab’s Joshua Benton. “Morning shows have used the personal connection between anchor and viewer, reinforced daily, to build extraordinarily profitable businesses.”

Independent publishing platforms like Substack are leveraging this connection and luring top writers from newsrooms like salaried moths to a self-employed flame. In response, publishers have begun to embrace the personality-driven content structure more boldly in their newsletter offerings.

“One of the amazing things about newsletters is that you build up that direct relationship with the writer and you trust them,” FT’s Ebner said. “When we relaunched Brussels Briefing as Europe Express, I spoke to [Britain After Brexit newsletter author] Peter Foster and asked him, ‘Can you mention it?’ Because he wrote it in his own words, saying ‘This is really good and you should sign up for it,’ it didn’t look like it was from an advert. That was the most clicked-on link in his newsletter that week.”

Publishers are not blind to the power of personality-driven newsletters. In fact, many are embracing it. Just last week, The Atlantic announced it would be hiring independent newsletter authors to write under their brand (and behind The Atlantic’s paywall). Still remaining semi-autonomous, newsletter writers will not be full-time employees and “will have some light oversight from Atlantic editors.” They will earn base pay and additional incentive payments if their readers convert to Atlantic subscribers.

“When you think about how brands and publishers want consumers to spend more time with them, the more of a direct relationship you have, the more you can understand who the users are and their likes and their intent, the better you are in a position to provide them services to continue to stay engaged with your brand,” said LiveIntent’s Cooper.

“It’s definitely part of the strategy to have a strong anchor to many of these newsletters,” said incoming VP of Audience at Axios, Ryan Kellett. “You’ll notice that some of them come from teams. And some of that is the sustainability of the newsletter. It is very very hard to write a daily newsletter.” Kellet joined Axios last month after over a decade at The Washington Post. He most recently worked as Senior Director of Audience where he oversaw digital strategy and subscriber growth.

Axios Local’s rapid expansion

While some publishers like The Telegraph have recently chosen to embrace the “less is more” newsletter strategy by offering “fewer, more focused newsletters,” other leading media organizations are maximizing their newsletter model by replicating it in local markets.

Late last year, Axios launched a free-to-readers newsletter model for local news markets called Axios Local. According to Axios, “The daily morning newsletters cover the most consequential news and developments unfolding in each of the cities.” Their editorial model embraces personality-driven content by recruiting the most prominent writers from each of those local markets to “anchor” Axios Local’s newsletters.

Kellett cites Axios Chicago’s Monica Eng and Justin Kaufmann, two veteran reporters and “former pillars of public radio in Chicago,” who began co-anchoring Axios Chicago’s morning newsletter in August, as examples of how personality-driven content is integral to the success of certain newsletters. However, speaking on broader terms than just one company, Kellett emphasizes the challenges of newsletter writing that often go overlooked.

“It is often underappreciated how hard it is to put out [newsletters] on a day-to-day basis and do a number of other things like attending community events, actually reporting stories, engaging on social media…” said Kellett. “Obviously, we want to have the strongest writers and the strongest personalities to be the anchors. But part of it is thinking about sustainability and the teams that are required to feed some of those newsletters as well.”

First launched in Charlotte in December 2020, Axios Local has expanded to morning newsletters in 14 cities across the US in less than a year, with plans to expand to 11 more during the first half of 2022, according to Kellett. Axios Local is forecast to make at least $5 million in newsletter revenue this year, with $2 million alone expected to come from its Charlotte newsletter.

Leveraging first-party data in a cookie-less world

Source: LiveIntent’s Industry Pulse Survey

Apart from the outward benefits of fostering engagement and revenue, the email address itself has become all the more valuable with regard to first-party data collection, especially considering the impending death of the third-party cookie. According to LiveIntent’s July survey, “99% of survey respondents believe that the email address is vital to the future of identity resolution after the third-party cookie’s demise.”

LiveIntent’s Kerel Cooper supports this position strongly by saying, “Third-party cookies have been a staple of targeting and monetization for a very long time in our space. As a publisher or brand, you have to think, ‘Okay, if this data set, this foundational element that I’ve used to build my business is going away, I need to replace it with another data set.’ First-party data and first-party audiences are going to be super key to that transition.”

“The email channel has already operated in the same manner in which the browsers have been wanting to get to forever,” Cooper continued. “There’s no third-party cookies. You have to opt-in or in some cases double opt-in to receive content from publishers or brands. And there are heavy privacy rules and regulations. Think CAN SPAM. It’s an environment where browsers already want to go.”

However, the value of email addresses may prove to become even more coveted, given Apple’s recent rollout of the iOS 15 update, which introduces Mail Privacy Protection to Apple Mail users.

As AdWeek’s Ronan Shields explained, “Mail Privacy Protection will prevent brands from knowing whether a user opens one of their emails and hide IP addresses so that senders can’t link that action to other online activity or determine a user’s location.” The jury is still out on just how detrimental this change will be to publishers existing strategies for leveraging first-party subscriber data.

As our digital sphere barrels forward to 2022, newsletters rightly serve as a powerful multi-purpose survival tool for publishers. Now that the churning momentum of independent newsletter platforms has gained the attention of tech giants like Google, Twitter, and Facebook, each of whom has announced plans to “get in the newsletter game,” publishers must plan to keep this particular survival tool very sharp. At the same time, while exploring all of a newsletter’s advantages, they must never forget the simplicity of the medium and its eternal superpower: intimate, welcomed, and frequent access to readers’ attentions.

TREE KEY ‘C’S FOR NEWSLETTER SUCCESSES

Newsletter expert Ryan Kellett outlines three basic tenets to foster reader loyalty in newsletters:

1. Create high-quality content on a frequent and regular basis

“As we all know, that email address is very valuable. You want to really try to deliver as consistently and as best as you can and at as high a quality as possible on a day-to-day basis.”

2. Consistency yields dependability yields loyalty

“Consistency is really important in developing that relationship so the reader trusts that you’re there on a certain cadence, be it daily or weekly or bi-weekly…I think one of the reasons why daily works so well is because it says ‘Every day at 7am, that [newsletter] is going to be there for you consistently.’ You could have anything happen in your life and it will be there.”

3. Community-building capabilities

“I think with newsletters being so intimate, oftentimes it can be a little bit tough to say ‘newsletter community.’ It may or may not actually exist. But I think with really great newsletters, you are building a community there, despite it sort of being a one-to-one experience…It just depends on the medium… Podcasts, websites/comments sections/forums, and newsletters all have their own type of community.”

Advertising | Featured Post | Revenue

As podcasting soars, advertising follows

September 2, 2021 Micaeli Rourke – Independent Media Reporter

Although the pandemic has revolutionized many of our media consumption habits over the past 18 months, one thing has become increasingly clear: podcasts are not going anywhere. Even as new work-from-home regimes supplanted daily commutes at the height of the pandemic, audio programming continued to find its way into the ears of its consumers.

According to The Infinite Dial, an annual report released by Edison Research and Triton Digital earlier this year, over eighty million Americans ages 12 and up (roughly 28% of the U.S. population) are weekly podcast listeners. That’s a 17% increase in listenership, which is sizable compared to the 9% increase recorded from 2019 to 2020.

“Let me be the first to admit — the increase from 24% to 28% year-over-year did surprise me,” said Tom Webster, SVP of Edison Research and co-author of the report. “In a year in which absolutely nothing was normal, podcasting grew even more than it had the year before.”

Once society enters a truly post-pandemic era, Edison Research’s Webster is confident that listenership will remain loyal, particularly with the resurgence of the daily commute. “Habits are habits. And when people go back to the office, we’re going to see a lot of these habits stick.”

A formidable playing field for ad spending

Advertisers are banking on this habit retention and focused audience attention. The podcast advertising market continues to rise steadily, quarter after quarter. By next year, the global podcasting industry is anticipated to reach $1.6 billion.

While leading podcast providers like Spotify have reported less users than they projected for the second quarter of 2021, their advertising sales are up 110% from last year. Congruently, their ad revenue has jumped from 10% to 12% in the past 12 months.

“It’s clear to me that the days of our ad business accounting for less than 10% of our total revenue are behind us. I expect ads to grow to be a substantial part of our revenue mix,” Spotify CEO Dan Ek told investors in a conference call last month.

According to research conducted by Magellan AI, podcast spending in the second quarter of 2021 rose by a sizable 22% from the first quarter of this year, a 40% increase year-after-year. It’s worth noting that, according to Magellan AI, sports podcasts added the most new advertisers in Q2 than any other genre.

Impactful advertising

Which brands packed the biggest ad-spend punch? For longtime podcast listeners, direct-to-consumer brands like HelloFresh, Casper Mattresses, or BetterHelp may come to mind. Although, in recent months, larger corporations have risen to the top of the list of biggest ad spenders.

What makes the podcasts so valuable to advertisers, especially the behemoth brands that seemed to have gone “all in” on podcast advertising in recent months? (In particular, what’s in it for those like Amazon or Geico, which seemingly have no lack of demand for their products/services?)

“When you look at that [podcasting] audience, that audience is typically more affluent, more educated, has a higher disposable income. So, it’s very attractive to advertisers,” according to Damian Radcliffe, digital media analyst and professor of Journalism at the University of Oregon. “The other big factor here is that podcast advertising tends to be pretty limited & there’s a value in that exclusivity for podcasters which is quite appealing.”

A season of exclusive brand extensions

As the podcast industry continues to rise in listenership and sponsorship, we can also expect a growing wave of corporate partnerships and exclusive podcasting networks. This month, HBO Max and WWE both announced they would be launching exclusive podcast programming for their subscribers.

HBO Max will be producing a number of ad-free podcasts as in-app exclusives to subscribers, beginning with “Batman: The Audio Adventures,” a scripted series featuring the voices of A-list actors Jeffrey Wright and Rosario Dawson. HBO already has over 25 network-specific podcasts that expound upon its programming including “The Chernobyl Podcast” and “Allen vs. Farrow.” However, “Batman: The Audio Adventures” will be the first audio program exclusively available to HBO Max subscribers beginning this fall.

WWE has teamed up with The Ringer, a subsidiary of Spotify, to create an exclusive audio network specific to wrestling-related content, in what will be a multi-year audio content partnership

“I think this is a model we’re going to start to see also in the podcasting space,” explained Radcliffe. “Instead of this content being available and distributed via an RSS feed to any number of podcast platforms it’s going to be locked in, behind a paywall. The only way [listeners] are going to be able to access it is by taking a subscription to that platform.” Radcliffe also points to an interesting development that’s emerged over the last couple of months, the ability to subscribe to specific shows with a paid relationship.

As media Goliaths and corporations continue to expand their purview to the podcasting sphere, brands across every industry are finding ways to appeal to even the most obscure of consumer niches. Considering that some podcasts have as much listenership as prime-time television viewership, there is no lack of ‘big fish’ in the podcasting pond. All advertisers need to do is find ways to reel them in.

Best practices for embracing the ‘podvertising’ future

Focus on presenter reads

The Super Listeners 2020 study from Edison Research found that 48% of respondents reported paying greater attention to podcast ads than any other form of media advertising. A big reason for this is due to presenter reads.

“If you look at things like presenter reads as a format…It is seen as a very effective way to reach an audience because it feels more integrated into the show, a more seamless part of the content,” explained Radcliffe. “It doesn’t feel as intrusive as ads coming in the same way as pop-ups, banner ads online, or TV advertising.” Radcliffe added that when it comes to presenter-read advertisement, tone matters. If advertisement copy is read casually and informally, it has a tendency to be less obtrusive to listeners.

Select podcasts that make sense for your brand

According to Radcliffe, “As [podcast advertising] continues to grow and as we see more specialized content being offered, that creates more opportunities for targeted advertising.” Although, Radcliffe was quick to emphasize an overlap in listeners and brands’ target consumers. “There has to be a cultural fit there. A fit in terms of style and content.”

Benchmark ROI with listener discount codes

If you’ve ever listened to a podcast, you may have heard advertisements that provide discount codes to listeners of the show. Not only do these discounts incentivize potential consumers, they are “quite a quick way to get a benchmark of ‘Is this advertising working? Am I actually converting listeners into consumers of my product?’ which matters a lot to advertisers,” said Radcliffe, adding, “They know exactly where that consumer has then come from.”

For larger brands, small conversion rates can still be valuable

“Because the reach of a lot of these shows is large, brands don’t need a large percentage of conversion,” Radcliffe articulated. “Their equivalent ‘open’ rate could be small but because brands have got scale in terms of that audience reach. That could still be very valuable for them.”