Politics in Podcast Ads, Spotify Removes Ad Floor, & More

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This is the download from Sounds Profitable, the most important news from this week and why it matters to people in the business of podcasting. I'm Gavin Gattis, in for Manuel O'Harea and Shreya Sharma PERSON. It's the last few days of prep before we jet across the Atlantic to the Pod Show London, so you get an oops-all-Gavin episode this week. Lucky you. The download is brought to you by Podscribe ORG. Find out more at Podscribe. This week, Spotify removes price floors from span, podcasts and political ads, are they an acceptablerisk? Streaming surge puts up fronts to the test, and advertisers have underinvested in Hispanic audiences. Let's get started. This week, a new email from Spotify announced that as of July 1st, publishers on Megaphone will no longer have the ability to set price floors on the Spotify audience network, heretofore referred to as Span. To put this into perspective, the current ad ecosystem on Megaphone ORG operates as a waterfall. Whenever a request for an ad is sent from a podcast, it hits each layer of the waterfalland continues down to the next if the ad is not filled. The layers on Megaphone go direct sold inventory, span, and then finally Vastag ORG slash programmatic inventory. Today, some publishers on Megaphone ORG are given access to set Vast higher than span in the waterfall, but it's not the norm. In this method, each layer can only compete with itself, not each other. By removing the price floor in a programmatic space, one can drive competition for inventory that will increase the win price for ads over time.However, Span ORG is not programmatic, and it's not clear if the change will introduce bid ranges for Spotify campaigns that take advantage of the new lack of price floor. It's possible Span ORG will begin consuming more inventory before allowing calls out to programmatic solutions. A quote from Sounds Profitable founder Brian Barletta PERSON. Quote, this is an action that will have a sizable impact for publishers on Megaphonewho have put considerable effort into their own programmatic relationships. Spans ORG sitting on top of programmatic and not competing with it, prevents a publisher from maximizing their own ad inventory and relinquishing control to Spotify fully. End quote. Publishers have also been given the ability to set inventory to direct sales only for ads uploaded to megaphone. This Wednesday from Tom Webster, with a hotly contested presidential election approaching in the United States GPE, the topic of political ads in their place in podcasting, is a lot of peas, is once again making the rounds.While radio is certainly taking part in the political campaign ad money over the coming months, podcasting is a different medium with a potentially different audience sensibility. Webster breaks out several slides from Sounds Profitable Studies, Safe and Sound WORK_OF_ART. I'm just really big on alliteration today, in which respondents answered questions regarding brand safety and suitability in podcasting, including questions specifically about political content. Podcast listeners are more likely to vote than observed rates in the general population.In 2020, two-thirds of eligible voters cast a ballot, the highest percentage in the United States since 1900. Narrowed down to podcast listeners, the number climbs to 81%. Respondents to safe and sound were asked how likely they would be to stop listening to a podcast if they heard a political ad from a campaign who does not share their views. 33% say somewhat likely, while 23% say very likely. Totaling out to over 50%chance, podcast listeners have a good chance of leaving if that happens. Respondents to safe and sound were asked how likely they would be to stop listening to a podcast if they heard a political ad from a candidate who does not share their views. 33% say somewhat likely, while 23% say very likely. Add those together and that totals out to over a 50% chance. A podcast listener will simply leave. Not great odds.However, when asked the opposite, how likely one would be to stop listening of a political ad from a candidate they did share views with appeared, the likelihood of someone leaving still totaled out to about 38%. A quote from Tom Webster PERSON, quote, yes, these data don't appear to be as polarizing as the previous slide, but even still, I don't know that I would relish potentially blowing off nearly 40% of my audience to run an adfor any candidate, revenue or not, end quote. Podcasting has an opportunity to circumvent identity politics and instead present itself as the platform where discussion and advertisements can spread issues, not candidates. Webster says in his decades of doing political research that more often than not, local issues have a higher likelihood of people agreeing with each other than not. Quote, in San Antonio GPE, people are concerned about water rights. In Kansas City, infrastructure and too rapid growth. In Maine GPE, preserving a lobster industry, and so on.These are the kinds of issues that voters on both sides of the aisle often find themselves an agreement about at the local level, as long as party ID is stripped from the communications. And with a podcast, an issue ad could be more than just a soundbite. It could be a featurette or even some other form of integrated content. Educating listeners about state and local issues is something a podcast can pull off in a way that local radio cannot, outside of Sunday early morning public service programming.End quote. Last Friday from Ryan Barwick at Marketing Brew ORG, it's upfront season, and this year's advertisers are projected to spend around $18.8 billion or one-third of total TV ads spend and 17% of the year's digital video spend. As the TV upfronts leave the starting line, strong parallels are beginning to form between the streaming side of the industry and podcasting. With the abundance of inventory, prices have come down forbuyers who want to compete. This year's upfronts are focused more on tech capabilities instead of upcoming content, similar to the podcast upfront. And Nielsen ORG's value as a standard has been debated for years, and streaming still uses Nielsen ORG numbers heavily, even though it's not a perfect solution. Quite like podcasting's relationship with the download. That's the metric, not the show you're listening to. Har-har.This Monday for Michael Roca at Ad Week, the summer of 1999 was a high watermark for Latin music in the US GPE culturalS. cultural moment. Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Mark Anthony PERSON, many artists experienced the flood of support during the so-called Latin boom, leading to the creation of the Latin Grammy Awards EVENT the following year, as well as doubling marketer investment in reaching Hispanic NORP audiences. Total advertising spend on reaching said audiences went from 1.5% total to 3% in 2000.In the 24 years since, that same investment has only increased to 4%. Since the late 90s, Hispanic numbers in the United States GPE census have doubled, accounting for nearly 20% of the U.S. population with $3.2 trillion in projected annual buying power. Roka ORG interrogates several issues that need addressing to fully embrace authentic advertising to the U.S. Hispanic NORP audience, which include capturing in-language consumption,for example, research tools need to collect data in Spanish LANGUAGE, properly validating data sets, and building first-party brand data. Podcasting has an opportunity to be a front-runner here, being an industry known for its ability to target niche audiences with authentic, relatable content. That, combined with podcast advertising's inherent wealth of first party data, it could move the needle on Hispanic NORP audience targeting.Finally, it's time for our quick hits. These are articles that didn't quite make the cut for today's episode, but are still worth including in your weekend reading this week. Horizon Next partners with Arts AI ORG on proprietary cross-platform audio measurement framework. The partnership will allow for enhanced audio analytics and increased transparency in a channel historically difficult to measure and optimize.Audio in the AI Age by Brian Morrissey PERSON, with generative AI tools flooding text and visual mediums with sludge content, Morrissey PERSON argues podcasting's authenticity will make it a safe haven for audiences seeking human connection. Julie McNamara exits as head of Spotify podcast studios by Todd Spangler PERSON. McNamara says she's leaving to go back to her quote-unquote creative roots. And open letters warned government of disastrous impact of ad-funded BBC podcasts by Ella Cigar PERSON.Multiple UK companies have signed an open letter in a coalition calling for the BBC ORG to work with regulatory boards to reconsider running ads on audio served through third-party sources. That was the download by Sounds Profitable ORG. I know we went through today's stories fast and by we, I mean me, so be sure to check out the links to every article mentioned right in your podcast listening app or at Sounds Profitable.com.Thank you for sticking with us as we get through the top stories you might have missed this week. I'm Gavin Gattis PERSON. Our producers are myself, Brian Barletta, and Tom Webster PERSON. Special thanks to Spreaker PERSON for hosting the Download. And thanks to you for joining us. Robot.Download complete.