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Advertising | Perspectives

Top digital advertising trends for publishing executives in 2020

It’s that time of year – time to close the books, conduct annual reviews, and plan for the future. When it comes to online advertising, here’s what publishing executives should be monitoring in 2020.

Digital advertising is still a growth industry

In the U.S., advertisers increased spending on digital formats by 17% during the first half of 2019. That’s a net increase of more than $8 billion, far outpacing total advertising growth rates of approximately 5%. Digital is appealing because of its ability to target, comparatively low cost, and general ease-of-use. To capture more digital ad dollars, publishers need to simultaneously educate the market on the core value proposition – i.e., higher quality audiences – and make it easier to buy their products. Digital is a growth market, while growth in the overall ad business is expected to slow.

Podcasts are all the rage

Researchers from Reuters describe podcasting as a “worldwide phenomenon.” In the US alone, 90 million people are regular listeners, double the number as compared with 2015. Their appeal to established publishers is obvious: Podcasts offer an opportunity to repurpose and extend offline content into a new format, and generate new revenue opportunities along the way. The market is increasingly competitive and producing quality shows requires investment and talent. However, the ad appeal of podcasting iso longer in question. Marketers spent $479 million on podcasts ads in2018 and are projected to spend over $1 billion by 2021. We covered the topic of podcast advertising in March, and the underlying fundamentals have only strengthened since.

Creative is making a comeback

The mushrooming marketing technology industry and companion programmatic advertising sector of recent years allowed advertisers to target and scale at unprecedented levels. And brands invested aggressively on both fronts, to the point where the market is arguably oversaturated today. A byproduct of this situation is a subtle refocus on creative. What was once the cornerstone of the ad business – Why worry about creative when reach and scale was so cheap? – got shoved aside is re-emerging. But now that everyone is deploying adtech, it’s no longer a differentiator. Thus, market influencers are talking about the economic implications of creativity. And any advertising discussion that centers on quality favor publishers. It’s a talking point that can be exploited.

Brand safety: the rock in the industry’s shoe

No one really wants to discuss brand safety, or ad fraud, or transparency. It’s like planning for an economic downturn. Sure, it’s prudent, but the act of doing it feels like an avoidable self-fulfilling prophecy. Conventional wisdom says “the market is growing, benefiting both brands and platforms; let’s just keep plowing forward.” But this topic isn’t going away. And it could get more attention as market conditions soften and dollars become scarce.

During lean times, corporations reflexively look for cost-savings opportunities, and digital advertising is perfect target, as a growing and bloated line item. In recent years, brand safety, transparency and fraud initiatives have been molting; it’s no longer front-page news, as was the case with FBI investigations in 2018, but there are pockets of focus and expertise poised to emerge. This year, for example, we saw the launch of “data transparency labels.” And Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, has been a vocal advocate of identifying problem areas and offering solutions. This could be the year that these issues break out and get priority treatment, and it will favor publishers – who haven’t really been ensnared in these controversies to date – in a big way if it happens.

The future is bright

Though more than a decade old – Facebook was launched in 2004, Google in 1998 – the digital advertising category continues to evolve rapidly and offer myriad opportunities to established and upstart publishers alike. Sure, the duopoly will continue to dominate the category for the foreseeable future. However advertisers are exploring alternatives in a more meaningful way these days.

Advertisers are tired of being at the mercy of a couple of big platforms. They also have more infrastructure and know-how to wean their dependencies. Additionally, the biggest platforms are caught up in hailstorm of noise and distraction related to politics, privacy and governance. With the ability to offer compelling content, brand safety, and high-end audiences, savvy publishers are well-positioned to be prosperous in 2020. 

About the author

Tim Bourgeois is a marketing advisor who helps brands optimize ROI on advertising, technology and agency investments through digital marketing audits and strategy engagements. 

Featured Post | Industry-Research

What the Australian Broadcasting Corporation can teach podcasters everywhere

Research presented at Australia’s fourth national podcast conference offers some good news for media outlets that have yet to put a toe in the podcast waters. Ozpod, convened annually by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s public broadcaster, commissions a national podcast survey each year to accompany the event.

ABC’s 2019 Podcast research found that nearly 90% of Australians have now heard of podcasting, although just 19% listen to a podcast once a week. However, the number of regular listeners – people who listen to a podcast at least once a month – is growing by about 30% year-on-year.

Kellie Riordan, head of ABC Audio Studios, says that represents enormous opportunity for growth. “Because once people do start listening, they listen a lot. For example, if they’ve listened in the last week, they’re listening to more than one show, and consume between six and 10 episodes, so that’s fantastic in terms of growth,” Riordan says.

She says that about 80% of people who start listening to a show go on to listen to it all the way through. This is a particularly promising statistic for outlets keen to scatter advertisements throughout a podcast.

Search and discovery

The survey also looks at discoverability. According to the results, the most popular way of choosing a new podcast is via word of mouth, with 71% of respondents saying this was their favorite method of finding fresh must-listen content.

Riordan says the ABC takes advantage of this by cross promoting its own podcasts. It also uses its broadcast and social media channels to ensure the audiences who are most likely to want to listen to a particular podcast hear about it.

This approach “makes it a very sticky platform for us. For example if you listen to Richard Fidler on Conversations and he tells you we’ve got a great new true crime podcast, or we’ve got Ladies We Need To Talk, you’re going to go and check it out,” she says.

Spread the good word

There are plenty of pathways to build word-of-mouth momentum around a new show, even for outlets that don’t have the advantage of being a public broadcaster, Riordan adds. “You can leverage it through social media, through newsletters, through making short-form videos – and if you’re an independent podcaster who can’t lean on the ‘network’ effect’, you can tap into communities and influencers in your genre.”

Riordan says the ABC has done this successfully with No Feeling is Final. To promote the award-winning show that explores suicidal feelings, ABC asked national organizations like Beyond Blue and the Black Dog Institute to let their audiences know about it.

She says some audiences are also underserved, particularly children. This is particularly the case at a time when parents “are increasingly looking for ways to get kids off screens, and also to share in co-listening experiences with their children”.

In response to audience research, the ABC launched a children’s ethics show, Short & Curly, in 2016. It’s remained one of the broadcaster’s most popular podcasts ever since, and has been made into a book and a collaboration with WNYC in New York in 2017. “Building on this success, the ABC has created a whole suite of family shows that both kids and adults can enjoy, from Fierce Girls, to Animal Sound Safari, Imagine This, and Classic Kids,” Riordan says.

Make a splash

Just over half the survey respondents said they felt ‘overwhelmed’ by the increasing choice of podcasts. And, at first glance, the finding appears to give weight to suggestions that the podcast market may have peaked.

Riordan acknowledges that creating a splash in a crowded market isn’t easy. She urges outlets preparing to get into podcasting to thoroughly research their target audience and design a truly differentiated product. “People get it wrong if they think they have to pump out a podcast every week. You really need to think what your true podcast value is, what the audience is, and whether a [time-limited] series is a better fit,” she says.

She also points out that the gap in podcast awareness and listening, particularly among older audiences – who comprise just 8% of regular listeners in Australia – means podcast creators still need to explain to potential listeners how to find, subscribe to and download their show.

That’s echoed by the Australia-based editor of Podnews James Cridland, who presented the survey results at the OzPod conference. “My biggest recommendation is to have a big bang launch, and I’m not talking about an ad on page 5. I’m talking about ads throughout the day on your website, a strap on your newspaper for the week. Or, if you’re a radio station, it means promos every hour for the whole day of your launch, and instructions that make it easy and obvious for people to find and listen to it,” he says.

“If you do this, then you almost guarantee yourself a good position in the charts. Because podcast charts are trending charts, there’ll be some momentum because lots of people are subscribing to you for the first time.”

Building on a legacy

Cridland also has advice for legacy brands that are considering their first move into podcasting. “Firstly, use your brand and your talent,” he says. “There’s a temptation to launch a new brand around podcasts, rather than using your legacy brand. But if you do that you end up not having any heritage, and more importantly no points of difference from all the other podcasts out there.

“So if you are, let’s say, ‘The Sun’, you might launch a podcast called Bizarre – which is their big show business page – or a podcast with a star columnist, because your brand is your main asset here.”

Cridland says there’s also work to be done by many advertising departments on how to sell podcasts. He recommends approaching an agency that can provide specialist advice on how to sell a new podcast product to potential advertisers.

“People who sell full page ads in newspapers find it quite difficult to go out and sell audio, so having sales people and teams that understand the specifics of selling this kind of content is absolutely essential,” he says.

About the author

Corinne Podger is the Director of The Digital Skills Agency, which provides consultancy and training in mobile journalism, digital multimedia, social media and digital return on investment for newsrooms all over the world. She serves as a judge for the WAN-IFRA World Digital Media Awards, and as an advisor to the European Journalism Observatory at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Featured Post | Perspectives | Revenue

As podcast advertising grows, big advertisers await better metrics

There’s no doubt that podcasts are a growing business, as measured by audience and ad dollars flowing into the space. U.S. advertisers spent $479.1 million on podcast advertising in 2018, up 53% from $313.9 million a year earlier, according to a report released earlier this month by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Those who have advertised on podcasts are often pleased. “Podcasts are a phenomenal opportunity for brands,” said Michael Duda, managing partner at Bullish, a creative agency and consumer investment firm. “We’ve seen tremendous results for our early-stage brands who conduct marketing programs that are synergetic to their target profiles.”

But many advertisers—particularly large, established ones—still feel they need more solid metrics to justify their spending. Groups like the IAB work to address these concerns through initiatives like the compliance program it launched in December, which certifies that companies are adhering to its technical guidelines.

Measurement challenges

According to the IAB announcement, podcast advertising lacks uniformity in measurement systems and metrics. Their statement also notes that “meaningful measurement has been thwarted by an inability to connect, track, and analyze user requests; measurement products that use dissimilar, proprietary algorithms; and a lack of an agreed-upon set of metrics and their meanings.”

Though standards exist, marketers say podcast advertising generally performs better for burgeoning direct-to-consumer brands and other early-and mid-stage advertisers versus the multinational, established stalwarts. “The early and mid-stage brands do better with podcast advertising because they can measure it more effectively,” said Steve Shanks, partner at Ad Results Media, an ad agency specializing in audio and podcast advertising.

The top five business categories of audio and podcast advertisers were direct-to-consumer brands, followed by financial services, business-to-business, entertainment, and telecommunications brands, according to the IAB report.

Common currency

But larger, more established consumer brands need additional reassurance from a metrics perspective if they are going to invest more heavily in podcast advertising. “The reason some larger brands don’t get into it is because with their media mix models they don’t know how to effectively buy this medium, and therefore the direct-to-consumer brands are smarter in the way they approach it and take advantage of the channel,” said Shanks.

“What the industry needs is one common currency of how we count downloads and making sure that all networks and shows are abiding by it,” he said. He added that the best standard now is IAB’s, “but not every network or show is abiding by those standards. If a download means something different depending on who you’re speaking with, it’s going to be hard for some of the larger brands to trust this space.”

Although some podcast networks may not adhere to these standards, Shanks said he’s noted that several of them “are making the effort to switch over.”

Hurdles to accurately provide universal metrics standards are numerous. The IAB’s standards note that “the ability to track podcast content and ad playback largely depends on the player requesting the file” and that only a sliver of “the market share enables client-side tracking as it exists in other forms of digital advertising.” The IAB also said that the Apple Podcasts app, for instance, commanded about 50% market share for podcast players, and yet prevented any client-side tracking or even the ability to count a “play.”

Targeting Improvements

Marketers also have a need to better target their desired audiences on audio platforms. Spotify wants to prioritize advertising around podcasts, and we’re beginning to see what that looks like. This week the company announced that advertisers can now target ads based on the podcasts people are listening to, according to the Verge.

Though these ads won’t be inserted in the shows themselves (they will run in between songs on its free service), advertisers can now “target based on the category of podcast they consume, which is likely going to be much more specific and fruitful for the advertisers.”

Test marketers for the new targeting service were Samsung and 3M. With this new ability, Samsung can, for example, target people who listen to tech and business shows, versus the previous targeting which was by age, gender, and music genre.

Audiences abound

Still, podcasts represent the opportunity for brands of all types to reach a growing audience. The IAB/PwC report projects that podcast ad revenue in the U.S. will generate $1 billion by 2021.

The preferred ad type for podcasts remains host-read ads, representing about 63% of U.S. podcast ads in 2018. Just over half of U.S. podcast ads are still direct-response ads, though that has decreased since 2016 from 73% as brand awareness ads grow in popularity.

Dynamically inserted ads continue to grow as well. In 2018, they accounted for about 49% of ads, up from 41.7% in 2017. Host-read ads, whether baked-in or programmatically inserted, tend to perform more efficiently than produced ads, said Shanks. He said this can be looked at like ads on influencer channels. When executed well, these provide much more value for listeners and advertisers, assuming pricing is the same.

Services emerge

In addition to Spotify’s efforts, we’ll continue to see more companies develop solutions to bring hefty ad spend to podcasting. This week in Cannes, audio platforms, media companies and agency networks are touting new audio and podcasting services to take advantage of the rise of streaming audio and bring more advertisers into the fold.

WPP and iHeartMedia announced a new venture called Project Listen, which will offer “creative consulting and media planning covering multiple platforms, including broadcast radio, digital streaming, podcasts, smart speakers and live events,” according to Ad Age.

“Project Listen is about tapping into the scale of audio and moving from the traditionally transactional radio business to the future of audio advertising where insights and ideas lead the way to growth for brands,” iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman said in a statement.

Pandora is planning to promote Studio Resonate, “a consulting arm that aims to help brands navigate tasks like creating a ‘sonic logo,’ which is a tune or sound that listeners associate with any given brand,” according to Ad Age.

So, while established brands may only be cautiously wading into the shallow end of the audio advertising pool, a slew of players are testing the format. And new solutions are being developed from all sides of the ecosystem so that the marketing and advertising opportunities sound as good as the podcasts themselves.

About the author

Maureen Morrison is a consultant and writer, working with agencies, startups, publishers and brands on marketing, editorial and communications strategies. She previously was a reporter and editor at Ad Age for 12 years, covering agencies, digital media and marketers.

Industry-Research

The podcast market is booming. Research offers insights into monetization and the marketplace

Podcasts are not a niche market. One-third of Americans listen to podcasts monthly with one-quarter of these listeners tuning in on a weekly basis, according to a new report Investing in the Podcast Ecosystem in 2019 from Andreessen Horowitz. In fact, listeners now spend over six hours each week on podcasts, consuming approximately seven episodes per week.

While the term podcasting was first coined in 2004, it wasn’t until the creation of the iPhone podcast app in 2012 that podcast listening captured mainstream appeal. To date, Apple has 27M monthly active podcast users in the U.S. and accounts for the majority of podcast listening.

The five segments of podcast producers are:

1. Media Companies

Larger media companies with a variety of content formats (broadcast radio, newspaper, magazine, etc.), which monetize podcasts primarily through ads. Other monetization channels include circulation revenue (e.g. iHeartMedia, The New York Times, NPR, Slate, The Washington Post).

2. Podcast-Only Production Companies

Podcast production studios create their own content and distribute on other listening platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. They monetize podcasts through ad revenue, licensing to TV/film and exclusives with listening platforms (e.g. Wondery, Gimlet, Cadence13, WaitWhat).

3. Large Indies

These are primarily personality-driven talk shows with celebrity/influencer hosts. Often these podcasts are monetized mostly through donations, ads, and merchandise (e.g. Joe Rogan, Sam Harris and Tim Ferriss).

4. Non-Media Businesses & Non-Profits

Most often these have a stated goal behind their podcasting initiative. These are largely brand-building marketing efforts, rather than focused on driving revenue and are often reliant on working with a 3rd party.

5. Hobbyist Creator

Any individual creating and posting content. Often unmonetized.

Monetization

Podcasts are primarily monetized via ads, sponsorships, listener donations, membership, and subscription models. However, ad revenue is quite small (0.3B), as compared to other media revenues. I

Currently, podcast advertisers pay per guarantee per download. While this can work for direct response advertisers, it is not effective for brand advertisers that want to form an impression on consumers over a period of time. The accounting in this report shows that 56% of podcasts use dynamic ad insertion.

Still, podcasts are an attractive environment for a hard-to-reach audience. Some podcasters charge listeners for early access to content, ad-free listening, or exclusive bonus episodes. Apple Podcasts does not yet enable this, which has led to some creators to turn to iTunes or third-party sites to sell their content. Podcasting is still in the very early stages of developing monetization strategies for long term growth.

A new model of monetization comes from a company called Patreon, a membership-based platform that provides the tools needed for creators to run a subscription content service. The system allows podcasters to receive funding directly from their fans, aka patrons, on a recurring basis. Patreon charges a commission of 5% for each donation and 5% in transaction fees, leaving the podcasters with 90% of the donations. While a positive model for podcasters, profitability at this time appears limited.

Apps and the larger marketplace

Interestingly, the report suggests that users do not feel passionately about their podcast app. At the end of the day, the audio content is the core element users are engaging with, not the application. The app is a utility and, while Apple maintains the largest share of listeners, its market share dropped significantly last year from over 80% to 63% with the launch of Google Podcasts.

However, apps are being developed that offer new approaches to enhance the podcast market. For example, Castbox offers translation and transcription. This means that consumers can search within podcasts via the transcribed text. Other apps are add context with visual links to the podcast. Entale is a “visual podcast app” that uses AI to showcase relevant visual links for uses to view as the podcast is playing. Further, podcast publishers with larger follower base are creating their own platforms for distributing content. Slate Plus and The Athletic are great examples of using an established fan base to build a strong brand extension. Clearly, there’s an opportunity to build a network of creators and listeners.

New interactive podcasts talk shows and call-in shows, with social elements, are part of podcasting’s future. However, for the podcast market to flourish, podcasting needs to concentrate on finding new and easier ways for creators to distribute their own content, own their customers, and to monetize through alternative sources besides advertising and off-platform donations.

Featured Post | Revenue

Podcasts are booming. So, what are the revenue models?

If someone asked you five years ago which type of digital media would be seeing its renewed heyday, the podcast might not have been on the top of your list. But indeed, the format – still firmly connected to its broadcast radio roots – is in the midst of a renaissance.

Achieving new heights of popularity means that publishers of the audio-only medium have started to experiment with new business strategies to find a path to monetization.

We’ve seen some innovative approaches in the podcast sector like digital ad insertion, or having ad slots be dynamically filled by more up -o-date or geolocated content. But analyzing the recent business moves gives us an idea of what’s coming next in podcasting revenue.

Will Revenue Follow Audience?

In early February, Spotify purchased podcast publisher Gimlet Media for a cool $230 million. In a conversation with Recode’s Peter Kafka, Gimlet co-founder and president Matt Lieber explained that Spotify wasn’t just its second largest partner but also its fastest growing partner. He went on to say the reasons why the acquisition made sense was a “disconnect between the number of people who are listening and the amount of shows they’re listening to, and the amount of money coming into podcasting.”

With the size and scope of Spotify, Gimlet saw opportunity to overcome one of the fundamental challenges of podcasting: discovery. The competitive landscape means that to have your podcast’s needle found in the metaphorical hay stack, you either need to be lucky or know how to appeal to the right audience.

Lieber told Recode that the data found at the Swedish streaming platform (and its 96 million subscribers) would help with that process. The lack of relevant listener and audience data has held back the podcast industry in the past. Platform controllers like Apple weren’t releasing detailed enough listening data. This made it it difficult to fine tune advertising budgets and understanding your audience.

Value Proposition

That’s not to say this new found access to audiences will change the fundamentally open nature of podcasting at the publisher. While there will be most certainly exclusive productions on the streaming platform, Gimlet’s most popular offerings won’t disappear from other podcast platforms. At the time of the announcement, Spotify said they had no plans on putting the content behind paywalls.

Similar to this approach, there are efforts like the premium Stitcher service which removes ads from their free shows and offers bonuses to subscribers.

Subscription Business

So what about the companies who do want to publish content behind a subscription fee? Podcast publisher Luminary has set its sights on being the Netflix of podcasts. With a planned launch date of June, the service will charge $8 a month to get access to podcasts from the likes of Trevor Noah, Conan O’Brien, and Malcolm Gladwell. The media start up hopes the draw of big names will have people opening up their wallets.

Although, there are those who are a skeptical of the reach of direct to consumer efforts.

“Well everybody wants scale and they want people talking about [their show] and to engage with it,” said NPR’s senior vice-president of programming and audience development Anya Grundmann. “So you haven’t seen a lot of subscription [offerings] from the very beginning when trying to build audience.”

Grundmann pointed out that podcasts often end up being the “carrot” that drives consumer purchasing of subscriptions to news publications. Recently, the Guardian began running podcast ads in the shows they produce for their membership program, which seems to be having positive results.

Reaching the Masses

However, there’s also a drive to reach as many people as possible, much like its predecessor, broadcast radio. “I don’t see us putting our stuff behind a paywall,” said Grundmann of the public broadcaster. “Our goal is to reach as many people as we can and not just people who have money.”

That doesn’t mean NPR has not benefited from new ways to monetize the format. Grundmann said it has extended its podcast-related events business because there’s “so much energy of people wanting to meet people and be part of a community.”

Whether through the draw of exclusive content for power users or listening experiences without ads, direct to consumer offerings from podcast producers are beginning to emerge. But it’s also obvious that the traditional subscription model might not be the best fit for the resurgent industry, as many producers are hesitant to go all the way and lock content behind paywalls. Creators will need to continue to experiment and test strategies to determine the best ways to monetize the connections with their audiences.

Advertising | Perspectives

Why brands are changing their tune about podcast advertising

Though it’s been around in some form for well over a decade, podcasting has sort of limped along in its evolution. Unlike other digital advertising manifestations – such as search or social media – which enjoyed meteoric rises, podcasting has sporadically entered and exited the consciousness of marketers since its inception. Today it accounts for only a sliver of the global advertising marketplace – around 1% of total spending.  

One explanation for advertisers’ hesitancy to embrace the podcast channel is due to straightforward herd behavior: You don’t get fired for buying ads from Google and Facebook. These digital marketing stalwarts emerged almost literally overnight in the late aughts, enjoyed glowing press coverage for a decade, and attracted tens of billions of dollars in advertising during their ascent.

The other is guilt by association. It’s well known that while online ad spending has grown (particularly for Facebook and Google), other channels – television, print, radio – have shrunk. And, for better or worse, podcasting has been lumped in with radio advertising. So, it lacked the shiny new appeal of its digital channel brethren in mobile, search, social and video.

On The Hunt For Alternatives

However, there is one aspect of the digital ecosystem that everyone can agree on, and that’s insanely rapid evolution. There’s a saying among digital media buyers that captures this spirit, and it’s only mildly hyperbolic: “a campaign that worked just fine before breakfast might fail miserably after lunch.”

Today’s advertising environment is, of course, dramatically different than it was a decade ago, or even a year ago. A combination of questionable management practices (see: privacy; see also: safety), absence of customer governance (see: Russia), and aggressive tactics (see: exorbitant prices) has some brands seeking out alternatives to the duopoly. And podcasts are going to be one of the beneficiaries of this shift in the coming years.

Why the Time is Right for Podcast Ads

Though not a one-size-fits-all kind of advertising channel, we’re advising brands to seriously consider adding podcasting to their media mix in a meaningful way, for one or more of a variety of reasons.

The Price Is Right

Due to the relatively low cost of entry and ongoing management, as well as the influx of deep pocketed players like Spotify and Luminary – which are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up their podcasting capabilities and aggressively pursue market share – podcast advertising can be more cost effective than pricey online formats such as paid search or high-end social media. And attractive long-term deals are typically made available by aggressive players in the category. This makes podcasting easy to insert in planning conversations.

Ease of Implementation

Most podcast advertising involves a few lines of copy that is read by the host and/or an offer that might require an accompanying landing page. And that’s it. No pricey multimedia creative, or really any image-based assets are necessary. Indeed, for all but the earliest stage companies, these items are already in place.

The Future is Bright

From a certain vantage point, podcast advertising is, in fact, a “bright and shiny object.” Most prognosticators agree that both the volume of podcast listeners and their level of engagement will grow meaningfully over the next few years. However, while daunting and even prohibitive to some, the idea of getting in to a new channel as an early adopter is enticing to many brands.

The Duopoly Aren’t Dictating Terms

While it might seem trite, many brands are experiencing Google and Facebook fatigue. Though few can remove the duopoly from their media mix altogether anytime soon, the prospect of engaging with new and friendly outlets is enticing.

Be On The Lookout For Speedbumps, Not Obstacles

As with any new tactic, there are of course issues being worked out in the podcasting category. These include lack of widespread familiarity – necessitating executive education – a shortage of case studies, and the reality that most successful podcasting efforts to date have been part of a multichannel campaign. Also, in comparison to other online channels, the turnaround time on investments is typically longer, in part because podcast advertising is often used for general brand building. But the cost-benefit equation works in enough situations for the tactic to be considered in earnest by most advertisers, if not necessarily for every type of campaign.

A New Instrument, A New Tune

One explanation for the slow adoption of podcast advertising is that it has been historically lumped into the broad “offline” advertising category, which of course has been out of vogue for the past decade or more. And while podcasting doesn’t offer many of the bells and whistles we traditionally associate with digital advertising – like immediate response, easily identifiable last touch attribution, and aggressive acquisition – it’s unquestionably gaining momentum among advertisers. Its evolution in the coming years will almost certainly be unlike other online tactics that preceded it, which were pursued in stampede-like fashion, but it’s an interesting emerging tool in the digital advertiser’s toolkit, and worthy of a close look by most brands.  

About the Author

Tim Bourgeois (@ChiefDigOfficer) is a principal at East Coast Catalyst, a Boston-based advertising audit company.

Industry-Research

Audio audiences are on the rise

Podcasts helped reinvented the audio audience, attracting new listeners to a robust supply of binge-worthy news and entertainment content. Now consumers can listen to what they want, when and where they want. While podcasts had been around for over a decade, in 2014 they received an explosion of attention in the marketplace (with the incredible success of Serial and the debut of Apple’s podcast App).

Today more than 50% of people have listened to a podcast. In fact, according to the 2019 Infinite Dial Study by Edison Research and Triton Digital, at least one-third of the U.S. population reports listening to a podcast in the last month, up from 26% a year ago. That’s an estimate of 90 million people each month. Monthly podcast listening increased across all age groups year-over-year. Interestingly, adults 55+ report a significant increase in podcast listening from 33% in 2018 to 40% in 2019. Other demographics show smaller increases, persons, age 12-24 from 88% to 91%, and persons 25-54 from 73% to 74%.

Weekly podcast listening is up to 22% from a year ago (17%) among persons 12+, or 62 million people each week. Podcast listeners listen to approximately seven podcasts a week.

In addition, there are now 189 million listeners to online audio which includes listening to AM/FM radio stations online and/or listening to streamed audio content available only on the. In fact, online audio doubled since 2012 increasing from one-third to two-thirds of the U.S. population. Weekly listening to online audio is also growing, now at 60% from 57% last year. Weekly time spent listening to online audio shows a strong increase from 13 minutes 40 seconds to 16 minutes until 43 seconds.

Podcasting is not the only audio opportunity content creators should be focused on these days. Smart speaker ownership has reached 23 million, up from only 7 million two years ago. Amazon Alexa dominates the market (16 million) followed by Google Home (7 million). Audiobook listening is also on the rise, with  million people saying that they’ve listened to one, up from 44 million in 2018. And while AM/FM radio still dominates in-car audio, both Online audio and Podcasts rose slightly. Audio is an opportunity that smart publishers are listening to.

As Tom Standage, head of digital strategy and deputy editor at The Economist, put it: “The commercial model for podcasts is really good, much better than video pre-roll, which is a horrible business. Video is expensive to make, and the CPMs are low. Advertisers want to reach podcast listeners.”

Featured Post | Perspectives

Top 7 media trends in 2019

As the year comes to a close, we always get the reflexive compulsion to look back and take stock of what happened and consider what’s to come. And this year truly brought a sea change on a number of fronts in digital publishing. Facebook and other tech giants stumbled mightily from one PR disaster to the next, culminating in top executives literally telling Congress that they expect to be regulated. Who would have imagined that?

And the old, sad chase for eyeballs might finally be laid to rest, as digital pubs pivoted away from video, away from chasing mass audiences via social media, and toward reader revenues and putting the audience first. And while the digital ad duopoly of Facebook and Google face headwinds of regulation and a public backlash, Amazon is expected to make it a “triopoly” as their ad growth is skyrocketing.

Here are the media trends that made the biggest difference in 2018 and what to watch out for in 2019:

1. Facebook and Tech Giants Lose the Plot

It’s a lot easier to talk about what’s wrong at Facebook than what’s going right, and that goes doubly for its relationship with publishers. At the beginning of the year, Facebook changed its News Feed algorithm to downplay news pages and then saw its own usage flatten over the year. Things got worse when Facebook forced publishers to go through a verification process just to boost posts with political stories. Even at South by Southwest, a techie’s fevered dream, the “techlash” was in full effect with entire panels devoted to attacking Facebook.

Even worse for the technology behemoths was the continued pushback from regulators in the EU and U.S., including a rare bipartisan rebuke against executives. While Republicans and Trump have alleged anti-conservative bias at Facebook and Google, many others believe they need stronger regulation around privacy, especially after so many scandals related to politics (see Cambridge Analytica) and data leaks (see Facebook’s not-so-private photos). Expect more backlash and more regulation to come.

2. Amazon Joins the ‘Triopoly’

And if you’ve grown tired of the exploits of the digital ad duopoly, rest assured you have a new tech giant to worry about: Amazon. The Seattle behemoth has quietly slid into third place among digital ad purveyors and is set to grow a whopping 400%+ per year to grab 15% of U.S. market share by 2020, according to eMarketer. And the signs have been growing about Amazon’s dominance all year, from the time they beefed up agency and marketer support to the point where they had a scandal over sponsored wedding registry listings. Let’s celebrate another player to give Facebook and Google a run for their money – as long as they play fair.

3. Media Mergers Trump Trump

He tried so hard to penalize CNN. But in the end President Trump failed to block the AT&T purchase of Time Warner, or force a spin-off of CNN (which has been on a money-making tear). Instead, the mega-merger was approved by the courts, and we also saw Fox offload most of its assets, including the 21st Century Fox studio, to Disney, while Comcast skulked away in defeat.

And T-Mobile and Sprint passed their final hurdles to merge in 2019, leading to only three major mobile services in the U.S. They promise to cut prices for consumers, but less competition usually results in higher prices overall. How will all these huge mergers play out in 2019? For the media companies, it’s all about taking on the disruptive tech giants moving into entertainment and streaming. For the wireless carriers, it’s about moving toward speedier 5G to give us faster streaming (at higher prices). All those trends will come together as Disney unleashes its new streaming service next year.

4. The Digital Media Reckoning Continues

This year just reinforced growing trends in 2017, that will likely continue into 2019: Digital-only publishers cannot rely heavily on advertising or even sponsored content. Without diversified revenue streams, and especially reader revenues (subscriptions, memberships, etc.), most of these former darlings will end up hallowed out, like what happened to Mashable before and Mic recently. Even BuzzFeed had to move toward an NPR model, asking for $5-a-month memberships to support its news operation – complete with the cliché tote bag reward.

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti is calling for more consolidation. But most importantly, publishers need to put the audience first and take a user-centric view of sustainability. As Politico’s Tyler Fisher wrote in Nieman Lab:

“With a business model focused on reader revenue, the entire company can set its sights on making the best journalism product possible for the reader … The smartest of smart newsrooms will take one more step in their path to sustainability: They will become a trusted institution in their communities by respecting their users’ time, intelligence, and privacy.”

5. Snapchat, Flipboard, Pinterest Rise as Facebook Falls

As Facebook took a tumble this year, others stepped into the void and took advantage of the social giant’s missteps. The most ironic beneficiary was Snapchat, which had taken a beating from Facebook with copied features (ahem: Stories). The company stepped up its game by letting marketers target publishers in Discover and letting publishers use non-exclusive content in Discover. Even old stalwarts like Flipboard and Pinterest saw their stock rise as Facebook fell to earth. Why? As Facebook dealt with misinformation and algorithm angst, Flipboard focused on human curation and Pinterest on lifestyle. Of course, Facebook does own Instagram and WhatsApp, which continue to grow and thrive outside of the parent company’s shadow.

6. Linear TV Under More Pressure from Streaming

As noted above under the “Digital Media Reckoning,” the move toward reader revenues means more ad-free environments, and streaming giants like Netflix and HBO are leading the way. Even Facebook did some research on whether a subscriber-supported ad-free social network would pay off. Meanwhile, cable nets such as AMC Network saw their advertising revenues drop, while distribution revenues soared as they sold content to streaming networks and diversified.

Where does that leave our old friends, the purveyors of linear TV? They’ve had to up their game and innovate with “addressable TV ads” that target people better than mass market TV ads, which are on the wane. And AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner has given the telecom giant a chance to broaden its offerings with more content and data. Linear TV will continue to find ways to battle – and emulate – the streaming upstarts.

7. Podcasts Remain Strong After Some Contraction

Podcasts continue to mature and large publishers such as New York Times and Washington Post are pushing deeper into the audio-on-demand medium. There were some hiccups in 2018, with Panoply dropping its podcasts to focus on being a platform and infrastructure for podcasts. And BuzzFeed also closed its in-house podcast production outfit to focus on long-form video. But there were also signs of continued expansion, as Malcolm Gladwell and Slate’s Jacob Weisberg launched a new podcast company called Pushkin Industries, and iHeartRadio bought podcast producer Stuff Media (which makes “How Stuff Works” and more).

The reality is that as metrics improve, including the NPR-led open source RAD technology, more marketers will jump in and find that podcast listeners can be a very loyal bunch.

Conclusion

With the tech platforms hitting rough spots, this has been a year of retrenchment for publishers, who are taking stock of what’s really working and what’s leading them astray. The days of shiny new objects like VR and blockchain seem to be on the wane, and a laser focus on the user and serving the public are front and center. As VC funding becomes scarce, media startups need to be more practical and strategic. The chase for eyeballs is coming to a close, and now we can think about what’s real for our businesses – and for our communities.

Advertising | Featured Post | Perspectives

5 big takeaways from the NewFronts West

The Upfronts in New York were always about making big advertising deals before the TV season kicked off. Then came the NewFronts, which focused on digital offerings and innovative formats. Now comes the NewFronts West, an extension of the NewFronts that took place in Los Angeles this month, and which have evolved even further from the original Upfronts. Gone was the talk of making big ad deals. In its place was discussion of new platforms, new formats, and new ways to reach younger audiences with influencers, podcasts and, of course, online video.

In short, the personality and networking surrounding this event fits in perfectly with the ethos of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the major West Coast hubs that have insinuated themselves into the ad market like never before.

Here are five big takeaways from the inaugural edition of the NewFronts West:

1. Big Ad Deals Take a Back Seat to Relationships and Emerging Models

Closing major ad sales was hardly the focus at this event. One reason is was that  it took place outside of the traditional media buying season. Also, because there was a mix of digital-only and legacy media publishers, it offered a chance for all parties to stand out with new types of offerings.

In fact, it was the kind of space  where people new to the game could come in and introduce themselves. And it was a chance to think less about traditional models of advertising and more about emerging prototypes that are just beginning to gain traction, like branded content, custom sponsorships and opportunities for publishers within Instagram’s IGTV. These avenues are especially interesting to advertising execs as ad-free platforms take hold and audiences become more and more fragmented.

Even the New York Times, one of the more well-known heavy hitters at the event, saw the NewFronts West less as a space to close deals and more as a brand marketing opportunity to talk to people about how the Times works with advertisers. In this way, the event was much more future-focused. The hope, it seemed, was that building relationships now would reap benefits down the line.

2. Podcasts Are Not Slowing Down

Podcasts have exploded over the past few years, with nearly every publisher producing some or at least considering them. But after BuzzFeed and Slate’s Panoply cut back on offerings, it was easy to think that perhaps the hype had gone too far. Judging by the NewFronts West, those cutbacks might only be a hiccup.

The Los Angeles Times, Gallery Media Group and Ellen Digital all announced new podcasts. The L.A Times announced new podcasts about a drag racer, “Big Willie,” and a reporter’s search for a hospital patient called “Room 20,” following in the footsteps of its popular “Dirty John” podcast co-produced with Wondery.

Podcasts have always been favored for the intimacy that voice offers, but a compelling host is also arguably the best brand influencer for an audience. With 92% of consumers leaning toward product recommendations, according to a FameBit presentation, podcasts are a more personal way for hosts to promote products.

3. Vice Media’s Brand Safety Splash

While there have been a lot of efforts around promoting brand safety for advertisers, Vice Media made a big splash at the NewFronts West by countering widespread use of keyword blocking by pushing a more contextual approach from Oracle Data Cloud.

Vice executives released the findings of an 18-month long study abut keyword blacklists, which are meant to flag potentially objectionable content for advertisers. Turns out they place LGBTQIA-related keywords high on the list, including “gay,” “transgender” and “bisexual.” The study also found that the keywords “Asian,” “Muslim,” and “interracial” also appear at the top of these blacklists.

For a media brand that prides itself on diverse and inclusive programming (as its executives said), Vice’s announcement made a big statement. Vice then said it would be testing Oracle Data Cloud’s contextual brand safety solution, which offers deeper analysis and scores content based on its storytelling context. They also called for other publishers to follow suit. Now we’ll have to see if Oracle Data Cloud stands up to its reputation.

4. Advertisers Will Have to Work Harder to Reach Audiences

Part of why the West Coast’s approach to the NewFronts is so attractive is that advertisers have realized they have to work much harder to secure the attention of their audiences. Thus, they’re more willing to try new platforms and experiment with techniques that are still nascent like Alexa skills, brand-sponsored podcasts or e-commerce enabled videos. Platforms like Netflix and HBO have made commercial-free viewing experiences de rigeur, and readers on the internet can also easily block ads they don’t want to see.

What to do? Create advertising that consumers can’t not pay attention to is the answer. Advertising executives are anticipating that the traditional model of advertising will evaporate sooner rather than later. So, they’re trying to stay ahead of the curve for their own survival and efficiency. That’s a no-brainer. Having influencers on IGTV or other social platforms pitching products for them has become one way to do that.

5. Snapchat Pushes More Scripted Shows

As Facebook has struggled with battles against misinformation (and lost data), Snapchat continues to move forward with its own programming. At NewFronts West, the L.A.-based social app announced a host of new serialized, scripted shows for the launch of what it’s calling Snapchat Originals. It feels a little bit like Netflix’s foray into originals, except the projects will be shot in a vertical format and feature six-second unstoppable ads. It’s definitely a big endeavor, and one to watch – even if it means that other tech giants may want to, ahem, copy this strategy as well (looking at you, IGTV).

The bottom line coming out of this year’s NewFronts West is that it’s much more important to be strategic about new advertising models and partnerships than it is to partner with name-brand entities and existing prototypes. While tried-and-true advertising formats may sound good in theory and work for the time being, they may not be viable in the future. This event gave publishers a chance to zero in on those emerging ideas. If an event like the NewFronts West can continue to present itself as the more future-forward alternative to the East Coast’s spring NewFronts — and reiterate the fact that not all agencies and ad shops are in New York — it has the chance to develop an even larger following for future shows.

Featured Post | Innovation

7 reasons you should pay attention to podcasting

“Wayne’s World for Radio.” That’s one of the ways in which Steve Jobs described podcasting in 2005. That was the same year that Apple put podcasts on iTunes and The New Oxford American Dictionary named “podcast” its word of the year.

Citing low barriers to entry, Jobs observed how “anyone can make a podcast … and get a worldwide audience… We see it as the hottest thing going in radio,” he added.

Thirteen years ago, there may have been an element of hyperbole in that assertion, but it’s certainly true now. The so called “Serial Effect” – named after the phenomenally popular 2014 series has enjoyed more than 175 million downloads. Its success sparked new levels of interest in the genre, and is often seen as the catalyst for a new golden age of podcasting.

Great storytelling is only part of the story. Podcasting has growing interest from advertisers and brands, technological advances that make it easier than ever to listen, and increased consumer awareness of this medium. These forces have coalesced to help take podcasting to the next level.

Here are seven reasons you should be paying attention to podcasting’s growth:

1. If content is king, audiophiles are spoilt for choice

Anyone can create a podcast. As a result, the genre is home to everything from time-shifted radio broadcasts (from the likes of NPR, the BBC et al), through to content from publishers not traditionally associated with audio (like Trinity Mirror and the New York Times). And many others have jumped on board from students, stand-up comics, Hollywood celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Anna Faris. (Heck, I even produce one for my J-School.)

By March 2018, Apple Podcasts passed 50 billion all-time episode downloads and streams.

Fast Company, citing Apple’s own data noted, how iTunes alone is now “home to over 525,000 active shows, with more than 18.5 million episodes available, including content in over 100 languages.”

2. Podcast listeners are a growing – and attractive – audience

It’s estimated that 73 million Americans, listen to podcasts each month. That’s akin to 26% of the population aged 12+ (up from 12% just five years ago).

Typically, podcast listeners tend to skew younger, are more likely to have a college degree and have higher than average household incomes, according the annual report from Edison Research on podcast listeners, published last month, reinforcing 2017 findings from Nielsen.

Nielsen has also highlighted – in a quarterly podcasting insight guide for marketers – how “as the audience for podcasting grows larger each year, it also grows more diverse.”

“In 2010,” they wrote, “ethnic audience represented less than 30% of all people who said they listened to a podcast in the past 30 days. In 2016, the share of listening from this segment stands at 36% of the total.”

3. Podcast fans really love the medium and listen a lot

Diving deeper into Edison’s data reveals the extent to which podcast fans truly embrace this audio format. (A trend also apparent in their previous annual surveys.)

Although the number of weekly podcast listeners drops to 17% of the US population (from 26% who listen at least once a month), this group typically listens to 6 hours and 37 minutes of podcasts each week; with 17% of this cohort listening for 10 hours or more.

On average weekly podcast listeners consume seven podcasts a week. Their passion for this type of content is such that podcasting accounts for a third of all audio listening that they do.

4. Advertisers and Brands are waking up to podcasting’s possibilities

U.S. podcast advertising revenues were forecast to top more than $220 million in 2017. That means it is up 85% from 2016 – where the market was worth $119 million – according to a 2017 Podcast Advertising Revenue Study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC.

Within this, dynamically inserted ads are on the rise, accounting for 56% of podcasting ad spend in 2016, up from 37% in 2015.

As reporting metrics continue to improve, (one high profile example of this is Apple’s podcasting analytics service which launched in Beta form at the end of 2017) Lex Friedman chief revenue officer at Midroll predicted that “by the end of 2018, we’ll be able to sell on a listen basis.” He added, “At the end of 2018 none of the objections we get from brands will be based on measurement.”

5. New revenue streams are emerging

The financial potential for some media companies in the podcasting arena is perhaps best exemplified by Slate. In January, they revealed that podcasts now account for 25% of their revenue.

As well as growing their podcasting team, Slate also offers exclusive (and ad free) podcast content to people signed up to their Slate Plus membership program. The New York Times recently did something similar with their new Caliphate podcast, previewing it to subscribers before it was made available to everyone.

Gimlet Media, a digital media company and podcast network that’s also based in New York, previously raised $6 million in Series A funding as part of a $30 million valuation. And in a super smart move, the story of Gimlet’s early days was captured by their popular StartUp podcast, the first season of which documented how the company was founded.

Meanwhile, brands and content creators are also embracing the possibilities of having audiences pay for shows. Marvel has launched a scripted podcast, Wolverine: The Long Night, you have to be a premium member of the Stitcher platform ($4.99 a month or c.$35 a year) to access it. And Portland based journalist Corey Pein offers a weekly members only version of his “News from Nowhere” podcast.

Historically, both media and non-media brands like Slack and Red Bull  have used podcasts to build a “deeper connection” with their audiences and enhance their brand. GE (General Electric) sponsored the mystery series The Message. However, these efforts have typically been free.

6. Hollywood / TV waking up to it

Alongside a recognition that some audiences – both niche and mainstream – are willing to pay for high quality audio content, the creativity and reach of the medium is also attracting the attention of other media channels. A key trend to watch in 2018, as Variety has identified, is the potentially fertile territory podcasts offer for TV and Film companies.

“Last Halloween,” they wrote, “Amazon released “Lore,” based on the hit podcast by Aaron Mahnke about historical, supernatural tales. The digital giant has also ordered two seasons of “Homecoming,” a political thriller produced by Sam Esmail (“Mr. Robot”) that will star Julia Roberts. “Alex, Inc.” a workplace comedy starring Zach Braff, will debut on ABC this spring; it’s based on “Startup,” a podcast that chronicled the rise of Gimlet Media, one of the most prolific companies making podcasts.”

“And on the film side,” they add, “Annapurna Pictures has optioned an episode of “Reply All” for a feature directed by Richard Linklater and starring Robert Downey, Jr.

7. Tech’s new frontier – smart speakers

Many of podcasting’s great leaps forward have been as a result of technological innovations. (This interactive timeline from late 2015 showcases many of these.)

Innovations have included the creation of a dedicated section on iTunes in 2005, smartphone take-up, the creation of a standalone iOS podcasting app in 2012, and the increased ease of playing content from your phone in the car. Jump forward to 2018, and the rise of smart speakers is having an early impact on podcast listening.

Last summer, the annual Digital News Report, from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University, demonstrated the early potential for services like Amazon Echo and Google Home, which voice controlled digital assistants being used for breaking news by CNN, and other publishers such as the Wall Street Journal, BBC World Service, and German media organizations Spiegel and Bild.

“Today, 18% of Americans 12+ (an estimated 51 million people), live in households that have at least one Smart Speaker,” Edison Research said in March. “This means that Smart Speaker ownership has more than doubled from 7% just one year ago, which shows Smart Speaker adoption at a faster rate than the early days of the smartphone, which showed only 4% growth in a comparable timeframe.

What happens next?

There were just 8,000 known shows when Steve Jobs talked about podcasting at the 2005 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). At the time, monetization opportunities were typically limited to baked in ads and presenter reads. Since then, podcasting has witnessed phenomenal growth. User numbers, advertising dollars, and the sheer number of shows, are all at record highs.

The emergence of connected cars, new in-car dashboards, the continued rise of smart speakers and Google’s new podcasting strategy (explored in a five part series last month by podcast makers Pacific Content) will encourage further opportunities for growth. Particularly as podcasts begin to appear in our search results and opportunities for listening across different devices and contexts (e.g. in-home, in-car and on the move) becomes increasingly seamless. As a result, expect to see more brands, media and tech companies, as well as marketers experimenting with this space in 2018.

Podcasting’s golden era has only just begun. There are opportunities for sponsorships, subscriptions, brand extensions, and live events. Needless to say ,that not everyone will be able to leverage these opportunities. The podcasting space is already crowded and it’s growing and becoming more competitive. Standing out from the crowd, as with any market, is a key challenge when it comes to both reach and monetization. There’s no cookie cutter model for success, but there are already plenty of terrific examples out there that highlight the myriad of different podcasting paths that marketers, brands and media companies can explore.

Innovation

How mojo thinking scored Trinity Mirror a top-shelf podcast

As podcast ideas go, it was a cracker. Make a six-part show about Black Mirror and release the entire series for fans to binge on as an accompaniment to the show’s fourth season on Netflix. That was the genesis of Black Mirror Cracked, the brainchild of Trinity Mirror’s editorial trainer Suchandrika Chakrabarti. She  also championed the idea of “mojo” thinking, which leverages relatively inexpensive and accessible tools to create compelling content.

“Podcasts have had a huge resurgence, as we all know, and the editors were looking for ideas for new ones, as this format attracts sponsorship and all media companies are looking for new sources of revenue,” she says.

“Having written about Black Mirror in 2016 when the first Netflix series came out, and had good numbers and SEO value from that, I thought a podcast would give us an extra edge, particularly in the US where the show has such a good audience and where podcasts are so popular,” she says.

To promote the podcast on Trinity’s text channels, Chakrabarti arranged an interview with Black Mirror’s creators, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones. The interview was recorded on an iPhone, with a simple clip-microphone that can be bought online for $11, with a view to writing it up later.

But when Chakrabarti and her producer Daniel Jackson listened back to the recording, they felt it was good enough for a standalone seventh episode, as well as to provide content for the other six.  “We decided to put a clip from it at the top of each of our podcasts, because it’s great to have Charlie Brooker’s voice as the first thing you hear,” she says.

Smart Phone Thinking

Using a smartphone was a radical move at Trinity, where most podcasts are recorded in a sound-booth with a professional microphone – but less radical for Chakrabarti and Jackson, who have helped pioneer ‘mojo’ at Trinity for capturing video and doing Facebook Lives in the field. The audio wasn’t perfect, but the pair crossed their fingers that the audience would forgive a slightly rawer sound in return for hearing from Brooker and Jones.

It paid off. Black Mirror Cracked went live on 29 December, the same day as the Netflix series, and went straight to Number 2 in iTunes. In all, it spent four months in “Bingeworthy.”

“The numbers were insane – 20,000 listens in the first week – far beyond what we were expecting,” Chakrabarti says. “They were listening very far into each podcast, too, not getting bored or switching off, so we were definitely doing something right.”

Chakrabarti says American audiences were more tolerant of the podcast’s raw sound than British listeners. She attributes this to the high audio standards set by the BBC, which consistently reaches over half the UK population each week.

“It’s totally understandable that anything less will attract critics. I’d say that we also suffered from putting all seven episodes out at once, because we improved our technique and sound as we went along with the production, but the audience got to hear them all at once,” she says.

“And no one pointed out the Charlie Brooker episode as having worse audio than any of the others, so it definitely wasn’t the smartphone. It was the learning we needed to do along the way.”

A Smart Investment

Black Mirror Cracked added additional episodes, for a total of 22, and completed its run last week. The other equipment used to make it consisted of a podcast microphone from the Blue Yeti range ($130-$270), and a Mac software program called Audio Hijack for recording Skype interviews ($59). Audio editing was done on the free, open-source editor Audacity.

“So our costs, minus our time, were just a shade over 200 dollars, US,” Chakrabarti says.

Other Trinity Mirror departments are now considering swapping the sound-booth for smartphone recordings in the field, particularly when a sense of ‘being present’ is part of the story, like sports matches. Chakrabarti says she wants to see more text reporters give ‘mojo’ – mobile journalism – a try.

As she points out, text journalists are recording interviews all the time and much of what they capture goes to waste. She recommends going into those situations at least thinking the audio might be good enough to publish on its own. Besides, “the combination of my phone and clip mic are small enough to stay in my bag all the time, and of course the device takes great photos and video – so if the chance for a great story comes up, you’ll never miss it.”

Corinne Podger is a digital journalism educator and consultant for media outlets, NGOs and businesses. She is a specialist trainer in smartphone storytelling for television, radio, online and social media, and has taught more than 2500 journalists and communicators to use smartphones for TV and social video, radio, podcasts and photography.

She has worked as a trainer with BBC Media Action, Thomson Reuters Foundation, the Financial Times, Fairfax Media, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Konrad Adenaeur Stiftung and supported learning for journalists from over 30 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Australasia.

Corinne has also lectured on mobile journalism at universities and colleges in Australia, Europe and the United States, and speaks regularly at journalism conferences.

She runs bespoke consultancies and individual workshops on request. To contact Corinne, click here.

Innovation | Revenue

The strategy behind Slate’s engaging new design

Today, Slate unveiled a sweeping redesign that includes its logo, website, mobile, and events branding. But this redesign runs much deeper than a new aesthetic approach. Slate’s new look reflects the organizations’ emphasis on audience engagement over scale.

“Our last major redesign, in 2013, was at the height of the Facebook boom. Social was the driver.” That design was very successful, according to Slate’s editor in chief Julia Turner. However, like most websites, it prioritized social sharing over increasing user interaction and time on site.

The landscape has changed a lot since 2013. In fact, the only constant has been change—with traffic, audiences, and distribution largely reliant on the algorithmic whims of search and social platforms. This is evident in Facebooks recent decision to de-emphasize news articles and anything published by brands in user’s News Feeds. While many publishers are concerned over how the latest change will affect traffic, few are surprised.

Engagement versus Scale

However, the pursuit of likes and shares was just one symptom of a larger trend that dominated the thinking of digital publishers: the quest for scale. As Dan Check, the president and vice chairman of The Slate Group, describes it “social isn’t about increasing time spent on site; it is about touching more people. Scale is fundamentally the pursuit of uniques.”

According to Turner, “We began to see fairly early on—in late 2104, early 2015—that the pursuit of scale for scale’s sake, didn’t make sense for a brand like Slate.” In fact, last September the company moved to engaged time as its primary measure of success, which enabled teams across the organization to put loyalty at the forefront of their initiatives. “The Landscape has become inhospitable to cheap scale. But even more, it doesn’t suit our audience and values.”

The new design builds upon Slate’s commitment to understanding and serving its audience, which Turner describes as “a highly-informed omnivorous media consumer.” Given that they are looking for “sophisticated next-level analysis,” she said it was important that this new design help guide them to information that will offer a deeper contextual understanding of topics in Slate’s five verticals: News & Politics, Culture, Business, Technology, and Human Interests.

With the new design, regardless of whether the visitor is a regular or lands on a page via search or social, Check said “We wanted to give people stronger signposts and a better understanding of what they can expect from us.” The redesigned Slate (which doesn’t use a third-party recirculation partner) will “show people more relevant content and tell the story about who we are. For years, our message was ‘like us on FB, follow us on Twitter.’ Now, it is more about contextualizing what you’re seeing.”

Listening to Opportunity’s Knock

This, in turn, is intended to deepen visitors’ time-spent on the site and affinity for the brand, both of which translate into revenue opportunities. While Slate CRO Charlie Kammerer says that the company has been able to “baseline monetize purely with our programmatic dollars,” the new design will offer more premium membership prompts for SlatePlus as well as newsletter sign ups.

It will also better surface and integrate Slate’s popular roster of podcasts on the homepage and throughout the site. Check points out that for many years, podcasting was a medium awaiting a business model. However, in the decade between the company’s first podcast (in July of 2005) and the explosion of podcasting a revenue driver, Slate remained committed to the format—in large part because its audience was. “Podcasting was something that garnered a lot of audience interest for about a decade. There’s rabid listenership. So, though it wasn’t a business for a number of years, it always made sense from an audience perspective.”

Today, Slate claims 2% of the podcast market share. Kammerer said “We’re glad we stuck with it because when the model matured, we were already in a good position in terms of expertise and audience.” And, with this redesign, Slate will also be investing more in audio, further increasing its roster from a current 24 podcasts and putting out more original shows like its hit Slow Burn, about the untold stories of Watergate, which hit #1 on iTunes on its first day out.

However, Slate’s emphasis on audio and the written word is not an indication that it has “abandoned video” said Turner. “Our video focus is what we can do well.” And, as Kammerer pointed out, the “the case for the pivot to video was a case for scale. The CPMs were higher so a lot of outlets chased those CPMs forgetting that video is expensive to produce well, and that the margins aren’t that great.” In his experience, the CPMs for audio are as good or better than video. “It’s about focus for us and we continue to focus on maintaining a super-premium audience. The written word and podcasting delivers that audience in a very meaningful way.”

News Judgement

And, while engaging its existing audience is a critical piece of Slate’s strategy, they plan to continue to build a quality audience without embarking on an unbridled quest for scale. As Turner put it, “It isn’t that social isn’t a good way to drive traffic. But what you want is a real relationship with your audience that isn’t dependent on social media.” She reports substantial growth in Slate’s Google and Apple News-driven traffic.

Referring to Facebook’s decision to downgrade publishers’ content in News Feed, Kammerer said “If they really want to drive more meaningful interaction, I like our chances. But who knows what changes they’ll announce two months from now?”

As Check put it, “You saw big publishers reach huge audiences through Facebook; a lot of people discovered content they wouldn’t have otherwise. Unfortunately, it has also given rise to a lot of things that aren’t great like fake news and low-quality content.” He sees a genuine market opportunity for existing or emerging aggregation partners who “want to be more responsible.”

Ultimately, Turner sees a real upside for Slate in Facebook’s move to back away from media distribution. “My instinct is that being an arbiter around the news space requires a whole set of real responsibilities and rigor that they’ve been fairly freaked out about. Now maybe we’ll see the return of news judgement to the institutions that have been cultivating that judgment for years.”

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