What’s wrong with IAB’s Podcast Upfronts. (A statement, not a question)

Some people criticize the effectiveness of live reads of advertising in the podcast medium. So one wonders how podcasters are presenting themselves to advertisers. It's hard to know because the podcast upfront presentation being hosted by the International Association of Broadcasters (IAB) next month in New York is a new phenomenon, only in its second year, and IAB has not set up much of a mechanism for media to cover it.

While other events, such as July’s Podcast Movement event in Chicago, next month’s Mid-Atlantic Podcast Conference near Philadelphia, and the upcoming DC Podfest in November, are dedicated to promotion of podcasts, which is fine, they do not have direct impact on where it may really count for podcasters – attracting advertising.

So it’s very disappointing, after asking IAB about provisions for media (and hopefully, having built a track record for those of you who do read this blog, as a concerned and credible venue for critical thought about the podcasting industry), to receive no specific response about how to attend, other than notice of how to sign up for a vague waitlist – without any differentiation about the purpose of the waitlist. That waitlist could possibly be for podcasters who are hoping to present to advertisers. There’s no way to tell from IAB’s materials.

Broadcasting – especially radio – could in some ways be seen as the enemy of podcasting, or at least a major competitor. So why are podcasters allowing IAB to mediate their relationship with advertisers? Especially when IAB is not well organized to promote its event, the way TV networks clearly do so professionally with their upfronts. It’s time for members of the podcasting industry to band together and organize their own upfronts, and do so the right way.

Podcasts of the Week

Mystery Show, episode 1 – about a video store that suddenly disappeared. This is a shorter length inquiry podcast reminiscent of “Thinking Sideways”, but more about personal phenomenon than stories that are known about somewhat in other forms.

Modern Love podcast from the New York Times -- (check out three episodes in which Jason Alexander, Sarah Paulson and Judd Apatow each read a non-fiction story about matters of the heart in one form or another).

Considering Ad Servicing

Even if podcasting is a medium that only has about 2% of all audio entertainment listeners, as Edison Research says, it still has a pretty mature ecosystem.

This is evident in the existence of companies that perform functions like distributing advertising, handling both the business and technical aspects of placing ads on podcasts. A couple of the more notable newer players in these spaces are Art19 and Performance Bridge, the former combining business support with technology to measure audiences, and the latter providing technology for advertising affiliates to support podcasts.

The closest analog to the advertising support functions these companies are taking on for podcasting is “ad insertion” in the TV broadcasting industry, which is a decades-old sub-industry within television. Yet this industry is itself trying to innovate, and seeing introductions of new technology such as “dynamic ad insertion,” according to a Wall Street Journal story from July 2015, which reports that this new wrinkle on TV advertising is a response to dropping ratings, but has yet to take off. 

Google is said to be working on its own dynamic ad insertion capability for TV or video programming, in partnership with DoubleClick. In “conventional” TV, Black Arrow was established in 2005 and AdGorilla, which specializes in cable TV, in 2011. The structural similarities that ad insertion as a piece of TV operations and business has with podcasting are not the only area where comparing the two industries can be instructive (a la carte bundling, or the lack thereof, is of interest, as written in this April 13 post).

The ways that podcasting does or can serve advertisers, and can best present their programming, are likely to play out in a manner similar to what is happening in television, and they can cross-pollinate. That podcasting already has the foundations for a mature advertising services industry in place is remarkable. It’s even more remarkable that a much more mature industry, television, is still striving to innovate and improve upon this function in its own operations. It’s unlikely podcasting could support companies like Art19 and Performance Bridge if it was only reaching 2% of the audio programming audience. If companies like these are succeeding and growing, that shows the strength of the medium.

Podcasts of the week:

The Bill Simmons Podcast episode 113, July 22, 2016, (38:30 mark) – a truly hilarious moment where Ringer writer and comedian Brendan Lynch discusses how his obsession with true crime and in particular the “Serial” podcast led him to go way out of his way to see the non-descript Best Buy parking lot, near Baltimore, that figured in the Adnan Syed case covered on that show.

“True North Story” episode 2 – Bruce Bavitt, the co-founder of Subpop, the independent label record label that released Nirvana’s first album and singles, discusses 8Stem, his new venture that aspires to bring an innovative approach to consumption and distribution of music. 

Real Crime Profile – “Making a Murderer” has become like the Bible, with a raft of podcasts and podcast episodes serving as its Talmud, dissecting every fact from the case as depicted in the Netflix series, as well as how the makers of the documentary series may or may not have distorted the picture they presented by omitting certain information. The best and most level-headed of these, however, might just be this series, which devoted its first six episodes to Steven Avery’s case (and has since gone on to dissect the murder cases of O.J. Simpson and Oscar Pistorius).