How to Get Your Podcast Reviewed by the Media

Jeff Umbro:

For anybody who is not, one of the panelists, we’ll just ask that you mute yourselves, and and I will say that again several times, I’m sure, but

Give this just another minute. Thanks for all… thanks for being here, everyone.

I am going to get started. My name is Jeff Umbreau. I’m the founder and CEO of the Podglomerate. The Pogglomerate is a podcast services firm that focuses on production, marketing, and monetization. And coincidentally, it was just named to the best podcast production and marketing agency by PR Daily. We work with folks like Netflix, PBS, MIT, Harvard, and more.

to help them develop their audio properties, audiences, and monetization strategies. If you want to learn more about our free service…

Sorry, if you want to learn more about our services and our free events, make sure to follow the Pogglomerate on LinkedIn or go to our website, Podglomerate.com, where we have more resources on attribution tech and a dozen other similar topics.

You can find links in today’s Zoom chat as well. Joni Deutsch, Agglomerate’s SVP of Marketing and Audience Development, will be sharing a bunch of items, and then we will have a Q&A at the end, so if you all have questions throughout this process, please make sure to throw them in the chat as we go along. And again, thank you all.

For being here

Today, we are proud to present a rock star panel of guests to discuss the podcast attribution landscape. Before I introduce them, I want to set the stage just a little bit.

Podcast attribution, in its base form, is a tool that allows us all to know how effective our various campaigns are at driving podcast listeners to a product, a website, or another podcast. It’s a really important way for us to be able to show various stakeholders how impactful the work that we’re doing all day really is.

Though some of our panelists today may disagree, when Spotify shut down Chartable in 2024, it left a void in the podcast attribution technology, that the industry scrambled to fill.

One year later, the dust has settled, and the new landscape looks dramatically different for podcasters, marketers, and advertisers.

So today, we’re going to do a deep dive into the podcast attribution ecosystem, and explore how platforms like Magellan, Podscribe, PodTrack, Swap FM, and Spotify’s own Megaphone are reshaping measurement and tracking, from pricing and capacity to actual capabilities and limitations of their tools.

Whether you’re a podcaster looking to prove return on investment, a marketer looking to track success and cross promos, or an advertiser seeking better campaign insights, this session will give you the strategic intelligence you need to navigate a post-chartable world.

And also, I know we’re talking a lot about Chartable. I… I will just say that…

Everyone on this call is probably looking at different things when it comes to podcast attribution, whether it’s trying to prove, like, that your advertisements are working successfully, or that your, you know, podcast marketing campaigns are effective.

We’re gonna touch on all of that today. Probably not gonna spend enough time on any of it, so definitely ask any questions and follow up as well if you all are interested in, like, any particular thing that we don’t cover today.

So at this point, I’m going to introduce our panelists, or rather, I’m going to ask our panelists to introduce themselves, so that I make sure I get everything correct. So we will start with Cameron Hendricks, the co-founder and CEO of Magellan AI.

Cameron Hendrix:

Awesome. Thanks, Jeff, and thanks for having me. So I’m, I’m Cameron. I’m one of the co-founders at Magellan AI, so we’ve been operating in the podcast ecosystem, it’s hard to believe, since back in 2017. We are audio, attribution and ad intelligence.

working with advertisers to plan and measure their campaigns and help them understand what’s happening in the market, and equally working with podcasters who are looking to, figure out what advertisers are doing, but also figure out how their own podcast promo campaigns may be performing. So, I do disagree that, you know, that charitable going away left a massive void. I think we’ve, as an industry, certainly come to

together to fill it, so I’m looking forward to chatting through that, later today.

Jeff Umbro:

I… I will just say, and we’ll get into this in a moment, that, I agree with you 100%, and also,

it was… it was the go-to for a lot of, at least, podcast marketers, and, required a little bit of education to bring them back to… to reality on that front. So, next up, we will have the, head of audience development at Bloomberg, Alana Sussnow.

Thanks, Jeff. And that’s specific to podcasts, just… Yes, sorry.

Ilana Susnow:

I do not oversee audience growth for all of Bloomberg. But thanks for having me, happy to be here.

I… so I think, you know, my… my value add and relevancy here is I’ve played in a lot of the spaces with the various platforms, I was a charitable user.

Before being at Bloomberg, when I was at Podcast One, and now, I use PodTrack, Swap.fm, and just am in that pod-to-pod attribution space every day.

Jeff Umbro:

I love it. And I’m a big fan of a lot of your podcasts, so thank you for doing everything you do. Next up, we have Matt Shapo, who is the Director of Digital Audio and Video at the IAB.

Matt Shapo:

Yeah, hi everybody, it’s a pleasure to be here. Jeffer Hat, thanks for having me. I will also sort of throw my hat in the ring. Like you said, I run for the audio practice here within the IAB Media Center, and I’ll also throw my hat in the ring as somebody who hasn’t personally felt like there’s been a massive void. I think that, to Cam’s point, Camera’s point.

You know, we’ve been watching the development of other pixel-based attribution platforms within the podcast space for a while. What’s been personally gratifying and exciting for me is to see, just to your point, Jeff.

how well the education process about the existence of these other attribution platforms seems to have been going, and I think that we have really got to a pretty important tipping point with respect to the understanding on the part of brand advertisers, how effectively you can measure and attribute in podcasting, and I’m very glad to be here to talk about all this.

Jeff Umbro:

I love it. And finally, we have Rebecca Dalby, who is the VP of Demand at Triton Digital.

Rebecca Dalby:

Thank you, Jeff, and again, I’ll echo what everybody else says.

Jeff Umbro:

Right.

Rebecca Dalby:

Thank you for having me on the panel today. So, yeah, I’m from Trident Digital. We’re an audio SSP. We provide the technology for podcasters, broadcasters, online music services, and other audio publishers to build their audiences, maximize their revenue, and just basically streamline their day-to-day operations. Bloomberg being one of those. I lead the demand side of the business, specifically for

for programmatic, although we do dabble in direct sales and also some sponsorship, too. So I run teams such as marketplace management, market operations, ad ops, business development, and sales. And my interaction with attribution tools is, again, like I said, mostly on the demand side. Buyers wanting to measure the effectiveness of the campaigns that they’re running.

And I also would argue that there hasn’t been a huge void left, since… so you’re on your own here. Maybe I should say…

Jeff Umbro:

Maybe I should say, there was a void from a commonly used service that has been filled, so…

Rebecca Dalby:

I am joking saying that, but we, you know, we’ve never seen more, in my experience anyway, we’re seeing more and more buyers who are… who are wanting to use, attribution tools, and so there seems to be an uptick of it, rather than any type of a void, or people not sure what to… what to use, so it’s positive.

Jeff Umbro:

I love it.

Cool, so now we’ll get into our Q&A. I’m sorry, my Q&A with these panelists, and then we’ll go for approximately 40 minutes, then we’ll leave about 10 minutes for a Q&A at the end.

for… I’m gonna direct questions at each of you individually, but for anybody that would like to jump in, any of the panelists that would like to jump in with any responses to what was said, please feel free. I will start with Cameron, and I would love for you to walk us through

what is attribution tech? How does it function? Like, what should people pay attention to? Bird’s eye view, or as detailed as you want? Over to you.

Awesome. I’ll be careful with, as detailed as I want, because we could… I could just go for… for hours. So…

Taking a step back, when I think about attribution, the way I like to think about it is that there are two sides of the equation. So there’s exposures, and there are outcomes.

On the outcome side of the equation, that’s what you’re looking to measure.

So that could be a visit to a website, it could be a purchase, it could also be a podcaster, you know, that… if you’re a podcaster, you’re trying to get new listeners to download your show, so that’s the outcome you’re trying to measure. So that’s one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is all of the advertising that you’re doing to basically lead to that outcome.

And it doesn’t just have to be advertising, it could be other organic efforts, so, you know, kind of thinking through the lens of Chartable for a second, and some of the tooling that, you know, we’ve rolled out. We have tools like ListenLinks that podcasters can use to share, you know, their, podcast on LinkedIn and Facebook, and that’s more of a, you know, tracking that someone came through that channel

That you just shared on your social, in order to, like, drive a download or, a conversion.

So, those are the two pieces, exposures and outcomes, and, you know, within, kind of, like, the things that matter most in that context, I would say the devil’s in the details around everything from, you know, you’ll hear terms like device graph.

Like, how are we actually, you know, looking at… when you’re talking about exposures and outcomes, you’re really talking about IP addresses.

So, how are you actually thinking about those IP addresses in the context of, A, privacy-compliant frameworks, but B, like, you know, the fact that I’m sitting here on a laptop, I also have a phone where I listen to podcasts, and I need some way to tie those two things together. And then, all the way down to, in terms of, and I’m sure we’ll get into choice of tools, there are, you know, we think of ourselves as kind of an enterprise tool that

We’ve built a lot of features that can be extremely specific to, you know, big advertisers and big publishers that have unique needs, like in podcast advertising, measurement, or advertising measurement more broadly. So, it can get pretty granular, even to the level of

you know, what’s your attribution window for display ads, and can that be different than the attribution window that you’re using for an audio ad? So, it can, it gets into the weeds pretty quickly with attribution, is what I’ve learned in the last few years of being in the space.

Jeff Umbro:

Love it, thank you. And, and we’ll get into, like, some of what those terms mean, if anybody’s unaware, but I want to turn it over to Matt, actually, and I want to ask, why does this matter? Why is this important in the broader scheme of things?

Matt Shapo:

you know, one of the reasons it matters is related to the last thing Cameron just talked about, right? The fact that you can get into the weeds matters, and the fact that you can measure on par with the measurement expectations that advertisers have in all the digital channels in which they activate matters. You know, the simple answer is that it matters because

for all of the wonders of audio that everybody on this call knows, if you can’t really validate and prove those outcomes through very well-developed measurement tools, then it’s ultimately not going to matter, right? And so the reason it matters is because tools like the ones, the cameras built and tools like the ones that we’ve been talking about over the course of this call are vital to building the trust and the confidence that advertisers require in order to increase their podcast investments, and most importantly.

importantly, In order to assess how

how their relative contributions in podcasting are stacking up against the contributions that they’re also having in the rest of the channels that they’re doing in the context of their omni-channel campaigns. So that’s, in a nutshell, why it matters.

Jeff Umbro:

And actually, Matt, I have a second question for you, because you’re at the IAB, which is the Internet Advertising Bureau, and I think it’s important to note that, like, your organization is trying to kind of set guidelines across all different mediums on the internet, and your specific mandate is for audio, but what you look at day-to-day is audio as compared to other

Like, medias, is that correct?

Matt Shapo:

Yeah, so what we do is we look at all media, and we try and, again, help the buyers and sellers of ad-supported media suss out the relative incremental contributions of those different forms of media, and sort of align and optimize their media mix as they go along, right? And so, audio, as many people on this call know, and I think it’s sort of one of the topics we’re kind of getting at today, audio has historically underperformed when advertisers when it comes to simply

level of investment as matched against the amount of consumption that is occurring from all of us who actually sit with media and sit with music and with podcasts and with radio all day long. I’m not saying anything new, I’m sure, to the people on this call. There’s a lot more consumption of audio content going on than there is investment in the audio space. And so one of the things that we do at the IB

Is try and make sure that we have a situation in which the engagement that is occurring in any channel is relatively well matched.

by the amount of investment that’s coming from advertisers, so that advertisers can drive the outcomes that they’re looking to drive against whatever KPI they have. And so you’re right, as somebody who’s focused on audio, I try and do everything that I can, and webinars like this are a good example of it, to educate the community about just how measurable audio is, and how you can, in fact, model out its impacts alongside other forms of media. And again, go ahead and be better able to

optimize your omni-channel campaigns. I’ll just say one other thing. You know, something we’ve been working on a lot, and I see a couple people on this call who have been a big part of that process, but something we’ve worked on a lot in the IB Media Center this year, in particular, and we’re going to continue into next year, is figuring out ways to improve the visibility of audio, specifically within the measurement rubric of MMM, media mixed modeling, right? And so, companies like

you know, Magellan are doing an excellent job, through the use of pixels, to actually let us

better standardize and deliver audio measurement data to modelers in ways that’s going to increase that visibility and make it all the easier for brand advertisers to truly understand at the highest possible level what the impacts of audio advertising is. And so, really, it all just starts with the foundation of what we’re talking about on this call. The better the measurement tools are, the better you’re going to be able to prove out the outcomes, and the better you’re going to be able to optimize campaigns, including audio, which we all know.

is a spectacularly wonderful brand storytelling medium in which brands can tell their stories. So that’s kind of my long-winded response to your second question.

Jeff Umbro:

I love it. It’s almost like you’ve done this before. So…

Rebecca, my next question is for you. Could you please share some real-life case studies of advertisers who have asked you about attribution and, like, how effective that was? And then, if relevant, could you share an experience that you had

When you didn’t use attribution, and, like, whether that was good or bad for that client relationship.

Rebecca Dalby:

Yeah, of course. So, this year we’ve been working with a specific

Brand Direct. So whether it’s Brand Direct, or whether it’s an agency that we’re working with, we get asked often to use attribution tools, where we’re not using them ourselves, but basically that they’re measuring the results with attribution tools, and we either get feedback, or we don’t get feedback.

maybe you can tell by my face, that’s one of my pet peeves, when we don’t get feedback, if that wasn’t clear. But in this particular case that I’ll tell you about, we were working with a very well-known pet brand in the US, and it was a fantastic example of

Closely working with them, sharing information and partnering with them so that we could understand

performance. They were feeding us with, with the, with the data so that we could refine

And improve the supply that we were providing for them in terms of the campaign.

And that collaboration really led to fantastic results, and obviously their… their success is our success. Just to name a couple of data points or KPIs that they were tracking, their CPO, so their cost per order, was 33% more efficient than the benchmark, so obviously they were working with other supply partners at the same time.

we were one of them. They were feeding this information, I can only imagine, to everybody. But the CPO with Triton Digital was 34% more efficient than the benchmark, the CPM was 4% more efficient than the benchmark, and they saw a brand awareness lift of 5%, which performed significantly better than across the board than the benchmark. And so that ended with us being able to secure

all of that budget for that campaign in the end. Like, we were able to work with them in a close partnership to deliver those results. So, that’s a really good and exciting example of,

the importance of us being able to work with a partner that I thought, who’s using an attribution tool.

On the flip side of that, we often… it’s a little bit of a black box, like, we often… sometimes we work with, advertisers who don’t want to share that information. We know that they’re potentially using an attribution tool, and they… they’re not sharing the information with us, the campaign might not be performing, and we don’t get the opportunity from a… from a market operations or ad operations perspective to refine

that supply… and curate that supply to fit their needs, and so that’s a real lost opportunity. So the takeaway, kind of, from that example, is if you are a brand or an agency, you… it’s really in your interest if you are using an attribution tool, which you… which we would recommend, that you share the information with your supply source, because it will yield better results for you if that supply source is willing to… to work with you and partner like… like we would.

Jeff Umbro:

Yeah, and I think anybody who’s been in podcasting for more than, like, 5 years, will remember a time when, like, 90% of all ads had, like, a vanity URL, or, like, a promo code attached to it, and that is a wonderful way to track the effectiveness of your campaign if you do not have access to attribution tools.

But, it is night and day trying to compare, like, the results of the two. So,

I’m always shocked when people don’t ask for attribution nowadays, and it’s always one of the first things that, at Pogglomerate, we talk to people about, like, hey, you should really set this up, and here’s why. So thank you for sharing those examples, Rebecca. Alana,

What are the various ways that you use attribution tracking tech to learn more about your campaigns when it comes to marketing various Bloomberg podcasts?

Ilana Susnow:

So a few ways. There’s the… the standard, like I mentioned earlier, and we talked about pod-to-pod marketing, so if I’m looking to grow a show, or launch a new show, where is that lookalike audience?

There’s the places we assume they are, you know, run some tests there, and the pixels allow us to know exactly how many new downloads and new listeners we were able to get, and you know, obviously, you can just

Spawn off from there to, you know.

continue cross-promoting with our… with our other podcast friends in the industry. As the creator economy continues to evolve and grow, and every podcaster, every journalist, every, you know, creator has a newsletter, has a substack, has a…

you know, everyone has a podcast, and just the various, places they can meet, their social handles. I’m now with the SmartLink, SmartLink’s able to double down, and

literally, you know, plant something with every piece of content they’re putting out there to see if that then links back to their podcast. And obviously, for me, that’s the sweet spot, but they can learn a lot from it, too. Where is their crossover audience? How can they be growing their various platforms? And then also from just a… where I sit within a big organization, we have a lot of those resources that may or may not be specifically connected to a

podcast host, for example, but maybe are on brand with something, so I’m able to test out these platforms to see if the topics, or just that

the brand sentiment, what the topic of the episode might align with a .com episode. I’m able to test all that back and forth, and also that way I can learn what favors to call in when I know something’s gonna actually, you know, lead to growth for someone. It’s really helping me collect all those learnings, and then share it internally.

Jeff Umbro:

Love it. And so, for anyone listening, you can kind of get the idea here that we’re looking at ultimately, like.

two different buckets of attribution. One is, like, podcast marketing, the other is advertising. They’re both extremely important, and they kind of intertwine with one another, but they are different. The tools may be similar, but, like, the… what we’re looking at as results are going to be very different.

So… Cameron.

Do you feel that there are different uses for each of the attribution tools out there? So, for example, like, is Magellan generally better at one thing, whereas SwapFM may be better somewhere else?

It’s a great question, and I guess, you know, actually, the… I get asked this all the time, you know, we’ve been around in podcasting for years, and…

you know, Matt brought up the topic of, like, we’re at a tipping point.

You know, in terms of adoption of things like attribution. And, you know, I couldn’t agree more. In the market that we’re in today, you know, advertisers are showing up and saying, we, you know, they’re starting the conversation with, we need attribution, and we need to have measurement that’s similar to digital. And just a few short years ago, you know, we were out there, like, knocking on doors, trying to convince people that attribution mattered.

So, I think it’s really been an exciting turning point, in the ecosystem to see that there’s, like, this expectation that, you know, reporting exists and, you know, in, podcasting the same way that it exists alongside other digital channels.

But kind of to answer your question, like, the, you know, we’ve taken our platform a different direction, you know, Swap FM has taken their platform a different direction. Still, Podscribe goes their own direction, so I think what’s really been interesting about it is, like, you know, number one, you know, come on in, the water’s warm, it’s, like, a great, time to be in podcasting and podcast attribution technology. You know, the other piece is that

You know, everyone’s had their own kind of, like, specialization they’ve been able to, like, kind of push on. So, for example, like, Swap, you know, has a marketplace component of, you know, being able to kind of trade promos. We focus more on some of the measurement tools that we’ve specialized around for enterprise, such as, you know, being able to track, like, guest interviews and feed drops in the same way that you track ads.

We have some unique metrics, like, repeat listenership, that we report on, compared, you know, when, for each of the ads that you’re running in market to promote your podcast. And that’s specifically within the context of, you know, pod-to-pod, you know, attribution. So I’m tracking a podcast growth campaign.

But equally, and, you know, kind of going back to the promo code example, you know, we still are… well, we work with, for example, a very long-time SaaS advertiser in the podcast ecosystem, has been advertising for, you know, many years in the space, and was doing some measurement and internal modeling using, you know, promo codes. And, you know, what we found when we plugged in pixel-based attribution is that

They were massively under-attributing audio.

They were also massively under-attributing, like, a couple… a couple particular shows, that were really driving, you know, key outcomes for them. And, you know, we were able to do that and show that to them with, you know, not just… it’s easy to put a number out there and be like, here’s the conversion, you know, number. What we’re able to do is actually report, like, order IDs. Like, here are the ones we actually think, you know, came from podcasts.

here’s why. So, I think that’s the level of execution that, you know, advertisers expect, and, you know, podcasters equally should expect on the pod-to-pod attribution side.

Jeff Umbro:

I love it. I want to open that question up to everybody, because I know all of us are probably using different tools out there, and Cameron, maybe, that was a very kind answer, but also maybe a tiny bit biased.

But, so, I assume this is more relevant to Rebecca and Alana, but, like, are there differences that you all notice in the different attribution tech tools that are out there?

Rebecca Dalby:

I think from my perspective, it really depends on the need or the desire of what the buyer is tracking. And like Cameron said, they all do kind of play their own part, let’s say.

Jeff Umbro:

Amazing.

Rebecca Dalby:

depends on your preference in terms of the UI and what you want to be able to see, how complex you want the tool to be. I think that’s another piece of feedback that we get all the time, is like, I don’t like that tool because it’s… the UI, you know, it could be for whatever reason, and it’s that basic, you know what I mean? So, some buyers want a more simple solution, and some want a little bit more complex.

And so it depends on the size of the team that’s behind it and managing it as well.

Jeff Umbro:

That’s a very political answer, I guess. But it’s the truth, it’s the truth.

I love it.

Ilana Susnow:

Yeah, I would… I would align with the same. I think about it both internally, honestly, like, I’m… I’m a party of one here, so which tool am I just the most comfortable with, or is easier to use for different purposes? But then I do also think about it from, especially with smart links, from the user journey experience, so how easy am I making it for somebody to find my content? They’re already clicking on a link, so do they have… how many more times do they have to click? How obvious is it?

They can go here for Apple, here for Spotify.

Some are now including YouTube, not all of them is my podcast on YouTube? So, I really do factor that in, and I’m working with more than one tool to just…

Make ends meet on that front.

Jeff Umbro:

All amazing answers, and… and I will say.

Some other factors that I consider all the time at Pogglomerate is just, like, cost of the product. You know, especially if I’m going to be using multiple. Like, what am I really looking at? Is it a fixed rate, or is it, like, based on bandwidth usage?

what would I anticipate that growth in cost to look like in the future? And frankly, another one I really pay attention to is, like.

and maybe unpopular opinion, but, like, how long is this tool going to exist as an independent entity in the future? Because, you know, we all, as marketers and advertisers and everything in between, we try to build these tech stacks so that we don’t have to remake them every year or two, and so that is a big consideration, and no need for any, any, like, you know.

chat around that, but I’d want to mention that for anybody on this webinar who’s… who’s considering that, it is worth paying attention.

So, my next question is for Matt.

How often do podcasters and publishers come to you with questions about how all of this works?

Matt Shapo:

Sorry to get up.

Jeff Umbro:

I would say that people were coming to me with questions about how all of this works much more a year or two ago.

Matt Shapo:

And so that kind of circles back to what we’ve all been talking about so far on the webinar.

We’re at a point now where there is a baseline level of understanding

about the utility and probably the need for at least some level of attribution, and also a baseline understanding of what it is. The basic mechanics

of podcast attribution through the use of a pixel is pretty well understood, and so I don’t actually get a lot of questions these days. It does still happen from time to time, but for the most part, those questions are kind of a thing of the past, which is exciting. I’m very glad about that.

Jeff Umbro:

And are there any, like, common…

Like, mistakes or, like, roadblocks that you see publishers running into when they do consider, like, how they should be implementing this into their stack?

Matt Shapo:

I don’t personally get typically into that level of

you know, detailed conversation about roadblocks or challenges they may experience with one platform or another. I’m very happy to report that I speak with people throughout IAB who use every single one of the different attribution tools that we’re talking about today, and I have yet to hear anybody

say anything particularly across about any of them. I think Rebecca made a really good point.

a lot.

of what it’s going to come down to, and this isn’t just true for podcast attribution tools, it’s for any tool. It could be, like, a drill at your house when your wife is stupid enough to let you run a ladder. But, like, you know, ultimately, it’s going to come down to a question of simple preference. Maybe somebody wants an interface that’s a little bit more organized this way. Maybe somebody wants an interface that’s a little bit more organized that way. So some of it’s going to come down to personal preference. A lot of it, by the way, is gonna come down to the relationships

that you can form with the people who actually have these tools. And I’m also happy to say that whether it’s Cameron or anybody who has, you know, built some of the other tools that we’re talking about.

for the most part, and this is true of the audio industry generally, but I think it’s also specifically true of podcast attribution gurus. Really nice people, easy to get along with, and they want to help you solve your problems. So whatever your marketing problem is.

The great thing about, at least what I know, of the podcast attribution landscape is that if you roll up your sleeves and you have a detailed conversation with the folks that are actually designing and creating these platforms, you’re likely to be able

to solve the problem you need to solve. And it’s just great that the tools exist, because we actually can solve problems now at a level that we could not solve in this industry even two years ago. And so that’s… I think that’s probably what I would say.

Jeff Umbro:

I love it. And it is true. I’ve emailed Cameron a hundred times with sometimes very silly, like, stupid questions, and sometimes complicated ones, and I get my answer pretty immediately. So,

Rebecca.

Are you trying to measure video at all with any of your clients?

Rebecca Dalby:

So, right now, the answer to that is a simple no. We are an audio-first SSP, but now that you ask about video or bring that up, we are actively working on video. I don’t think that’s exactly an exclusive, but it is

But we will have some very exciting announcements coming… coming soon, so we are… we’re looking into that.

Jeff Umbro:

I love it.

And Alana, same question to you. Is there anything that you’re doing on the video side where you’re trying to run cross-promos, or track interviews, or anything like that?

Ilana Susnow:

We haven’t gotten that granular yet. We are… we are rolling out, video in a big way, on YouTube, but, in terms of tracking, I think we’re still getting our rhythm and

the publishing side of it, you know, and again, I… I alluded to earlier, like, as these… as the attributes and tools allow for tracking to YouTube, and finding out where that audience is coming from, and then again, how can I route them back into some of my shows that are just gonna always only have an audio experience? I’m really…

interested and excited to see how that unfolds, but I’m not even sure, and I mean.

Matt, Cameron, if there are tools out there, you know, please tell me, but I’m not sure the industry’s there yet either.

But I’ll learn with everybody else here if I’m wrong.

Jeff Umbro:

Well, and Cameron, my next question is for you, like, whether that exists today or not, like, how is Magellan thinking about tracking video?

Yeah, well, I think worth kind of taking a step back for a second and thinking about, like, what do we… video means a very specific thing when we… Sure. …in the podcast ecosystem. Like, specifically, it often means, like, you know, my podcast is posted not just on an RSS feed, but also either on Spotify Video, or YouTube, or both.

Or other platforms that have video as well.

And, you know, so, I guess.

first of all, like, worth drawing the distinction just because a lot of advertisers come to us and ask about, like, CTV, OTT, and, like, digital video that’s, like, actually, like, is trackable on the web that they might be transacting in, and so that, you know, creates confusion when you’re like, oh, well, this, you know, video for podcasts means, like, a slightly different thing.

That said, so it is a…

moving target, perhaps, is, like, a way to put it, in terms of, like, how video, like, video attribution works. You know, the way… and, you know, we have, like, our flavor of video attribution, and other folks in the industry kind of have their approach. You know, generally speaking, like, I’ll describe our approach, so, you know, and it’s also worth noting, like, Spotify Video has, you know, different capabilities that they enable

you know, of folks who are publishing to Spotify Video to implement than YouTube. And, you know, YouTube is also, you know, out and launching new features that help advert… that help, you know, publishers, you know, insert ads in different ways, so there’s a lot of, you know, really exciting changes happening in the platform, or I should say, in the market. But, like, the way we think about, like, YouTube specifically as an example for

or, you know, podcasters, and how do we measure that? Number one, you know, we’re looking at

embedded ads within YouTube. So, you know, we think about, like, you know, baked-in, or spots that are either… it could just be audio, but there could also be, like, literally a video component, so sitting within the YouTube video, there’s a segment of that video that is, an advertisement. So we basically go through and we scan for those, and we identify that this particular ad occurred.

this particular ad had this many views associated with it, or rather, the video had this many views associated with it, and then we also look at data coming from the pixel on the advertiser site, so we are able to glean when, you know, the thing that we do that I think is a little bit different is that we

look at pixel data and say, okay, if someone… if someone at some point, you know, came from YouTube.com, then we assume that there was a YouTube exposure, there was an ad that effectively they were exposed to on the YouTube side. And so, we’re kind of, you know, what we’re…

what we’re doing is, you know, almost maybe more conservative, because we’re actually looking for someone who has taken… they’ve clicked from YouTube.com over to the advertiser website. So it’s a little bit more conservative than just, say, what… you know, with podcasts, you obviously have the advantage of a longer attribution window to say, oh, someone heard an ad, and then 3 weeks later, they came back and went to an advertiser site. You don’t have a lot of that same

level of granularity that you can get with YouTube. So, that was, you know, somewhat of a long-winded answer, but that’s kind of how we think about, you know, YouTube specifically, but again, different for Spotify video, different for other video platforms, and still a different thing that a lot of advertisers even think about.

Jeff Umbro:

Yeah, and I will say.

I actually don’t know if this is available for everyone, or if it’s just available for select megaphone clients, but you can do what’s called SAI streaming ad insertion on Spotify videos, and that actually does have a very robust system of determining, like, who has clicked on an advertisement on the video platform on Spotify.

And…

I… Rebecca, I’m curious if you interact with this at all, but I have heard from some, like, very large brand advertisers that the data is excellent, and the results are even better.

So I don’t know if you’ve ever engaged there.

Rebecca Dalby:

Not too much.

Jeff Umbro:

I have done it on, like, an extraordinarily small, like, sample size, so I really can’t speak to it, but, okay. I have, one…

additional question for Cameron, and then, we have… we got a fairly robust question from the audience, so, I want to spend a few minutes on that. So I will also say to anybody listening or watching right now,

if you have any questions, now’s the time to throw those in the chat, and we will curate those and be ready to answer them in about 5 minutes. So let us know. So Cameron,

Can you speak to any, like, benchmark data that you typically see?

I know that’s an incredibly broad question, but I’m just kind of curious, like, is there anything that you find really interesting or insightful? Because you have this, like, bird’s-eye view of thousands of campaigns that are run every month?

Yeah, you know, I think we, there are a couple things I would point to. Some of this speaks to some upcoming research that we’re, you know, like, working on. But, the… I guess, one, you know, kind of piece, going back to a few months ago, we did a…

I moderated a panel on programmatic advertising, and I think one of the themes that we always hear in podcasting is, like, you know, there’s a lot of skepticism that programmatic is, you know, going to, you know, negatively impact listener experiences and, you know, ultimately not lead to advertiser outcomes, which of course we all care about because that, you know, drives more, you know, business for podcasters and creators.

And, you know, what we’ve seen is, there are, kind of, you know, the general feedback is that,

programmatic advertising can perform poorly, but it can also perform really well. And so I think that’s one of the things that’s maybe been a little bit counterintuitive versus the narrative of, you know, that, that host red ads are the only form of execution advertisers should consider. And I think it really… what it really comes down to is one metric we track, which is return on advertising spend.

So we look at, like, the amount of dollars that this ad costs versus the outcome, and if the numbers are right there, then the metric makes sense for, you know, programmatic to be potentially a very successful part of an advertising campaign. Of course, we love a good host right ad, both personally, and then also see lots of great performance for those as well. But that was one thing that kind of, like, jumped out as maybe a little bit counterintuitive as we started

looking at some of the data across campaigns. And then, the other piece I would point out is just the opportunity to…

audio is a pretty broad set of podcasts, streaming, like, there’s a whole set of… and those are not one… you kind of think that, like, oh, if I’m a big podcast listener, maybe I’m also just listening to, like, streaming music. And that’s… there’s… oftentimes.

not as much overlap as you’d think. There’s actually a lot of opportunity to go get reach in those two different, you know, channels, really, within audio.

Matt Shapo:

Can I… can I double-click on that a little bit? .

Jeff Umbro:

Please.

Matt Shapo:

This is one of my…

Favorites, maybe not exactly the right… this is one of my most absorbing topics, right? You know, as you said at the top, Jeff, you know, I work in an organization that is obsessed with ensuring that publishers are able to monetize and advertisers are able to find outcomes at the highest possible level across all channels, right?

And the reality is that for our wonderful medium of audio, which is…

I think on the launching pad, and, you know, experiencing it a turning point in a lot of different ways with respect to the appreciation that people have for it in the wider marketing community. We have to be mindful of the fact

that… If you really want to experience growth.

You need to be able to be bought in really efficient, easy ways.

And as special as host red ads are, and as important as they are to the medium, and as critically important as the relationship between hosts and the people who come to their shows is for making podcast advertising the wonderful place for brands that it is, the reality is

that if you want to be able to buy against audiences across in the middle and the long tail, you gotta make it easy for advertisers who aren’t necessarily going to always have the opportunity to sit down and work at a truly custom, bespoke campaign filled with a lot of host rate ads. You’re going to have to also supplement

the host red experience with increasing levels of programmatically bought, efficiently bought ads. And one of the things that excites me about podcasting is that we do now have, incredible, to Cameron’s point, reach.

We have audiences for days, and you can, and I think a lot of people on this call would tell you the same thing, you can now start to see the results of people buying, not just show by show.

but against particular audience cohorts, which obviously is done in a very powerful way, programmatically. And I think that, you know, a lot of the insights to be gained from pixel-based attribution, show the power of it. And I’ll just say one last thing, you know, in relation to something else that Cameron said.

So much of the conversation about advertising bang for the buck.

comes down to efficiency, and it’s kind of a dirty word, nobody likes to talk about it, but it’s just what it is, right? So if we want this very special medium that has all these incredible special creators, that have all these incredibly special relationships with all of us that consume their shows, if we have this medium and we want it to succeed for all the reasons that it’s special.

We’ve got to acknowledge the fact that advertisers who are, in fact, going to get crazy bang for the buck, because we know how attentive people are to podcasts, how intentional they are about consuming them, and how engaged they are when they are consuming them, but we have to understand that it…

ultimately comes down to cost-effectiveness in the long run for an advertiser. And so, there are times when a $20-plus CPM and a host-rate ad is going to make all the sense in the world, and it’s going to drive the outcomes they need. But there’s also a lot of times where the growth of this industry is going to depend to one extent or another on being able to get

A programmatically bought ad.

that will come at a lower price point. It matters. And so, the fact that we now have programmatic capabilities in this space, I think, is tremendous, and I don’t think that people should fear it. You know, Rebecca, I’ll just say one thing anecdotally to you. My very first activity at IAB was hosting an audio committee meeting, for which I was wholly unprepared. This is back in, like, you know, early 2022, I think. And Sharon Taylor came to that meeting.

And Sharon Taylor, as people on this call knows, is enormously brilliant, and I’ve told her on multiple occasions that if there was, like, a czar of the podcast industry, I think she’d be sharing.

Anyway, so, so, so Sharon, like, sort of…

She didn’t beat me up exactly, but she sort of was helping me understand that there were legitimate reasons to be concerned about

an overrun of programmatic ads, right, in something as special as podcasting. But I don’t… I really have come to believe in the years that I’ve been at IB, in the years that I’ve been spending time with this industry, that the place for and the importance of programmatic in podcasting

is critical, and I just wanted to double-click on that and say that I think looking to buy audiences across the mid and the long tail of podcasting is something whose time has come, and I’m excited to see more rather than less over time. Again, complimentary to the host rate ads, because don’t forget, you don’t have to have a host rate ad.

for the incredibleness of a given podcast to create that halo effect that all the advertisers are looking for. If I am engaged with a podcast.

the odds are, I’m going to be more attentive to the ads that are served in it, even if it’s not host red, just because I’m really paying attention and I care deeply about the podcast, and in some case, sometimes, I might even want to go out of my way to support a sponsor or an advertiser just because they’re supporting a podcast I care about.

So, I don’t know, that’s a lot of supreme thought, but…

Jeff Umbro:

No, no, it’s a good thought, and… oh, Rebecca, go ahead.

Rebecca Dalby:

If I can… if I can add to that, Matt, I… I violently agree, with what you’ve just said in terms of programmatic there. I… I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve… what you’ve just said, and also, on Sharon’s excellentness as well. She is my… actually, she’s my… my boss now, so I am very lucky, to… to report into Sharon, but…

the case study that I had mentioned earlier on in the conversation, it was a programmatic campaign, if I hadn’t stated that completely, obviously, but that was where we were working with curated audiences, not necessarily a direct sale on one show, or… and definitely not a host reader. So, we’re seeing more and more buyers entering the space and wanting to work with programmatic

I think probably down to the fact that there are such, intuitive attribution tools really, really helps to… to promote programmatic in the space, because it creates a reliability, right, and a trust between, result… result…

And so it just benefits the publisher and the buyer. It’s fantastic.

Jeff Umbro:

And to really, like, sum that up, if an advertiser wants to come into the space and spend $10 million, they can buy host-right ads on 100 different shows.

For, like, a $25 CPM with all the overhead and admin that goes into doing that, or they could spend $10 million programmatically, and… and based on all of the data out there, and I’m…

This is very squishy, but like, you may get a better conversion rate on that host red buy that is super curated, but it’s not going to be significantly different than a programmatic buy that will save you a lot of money on, like, the overhead expenses of actually getting the thing set up.

Rebecca Dalby:

Where they can split that money as well, they take their budget and split it between the two, you know? Like, that’s sometimes what we recommend for buyers, oftentimes, to do that, and they can measure the results of both, and then see how they want to proceed. And oftentimes, programmatic…

Takes the cake.

Jeff Umbro:

I completely agree. And I am seeing, anecdotally, a lot of the bigger publishers are

really prioritizing selling programmatic as well, but that is a topic for a different webinar. So, so we have an audience question that I want to get into, and this is a big question, so, I’m gonna direct this for advertising to Rebecca, and for podcast marketing to Alana.

But, can the panel go into the nitty-gritty of the attribution platforms that are currently available for podcasters? And there are follow-up questions to this. So, Rebecca, what are some of the names of select attribution platforms that you are engaging with and interacting with on a day-to-day basis?

Rebecca Dalby:

So, Magellan, Podscribe, Swap as well. They would be the main ones. Chartable was very popular when we… when it was around, but not so much anymore, of course. But yeah, they’d be the main ones that we’d be

Again, we don’t deal with them on a direct… I don’t use it directly myself, but they would be the ones that our advertisers will be using most of the time.

Jeff Umbro:

And Alana, same question, but specific to, like, podcast-to-podcast, or podcast-to-web attribution.

Ilana Susnow:

So I would say the two I use the most are PodTrack and Swap FM. I guess the biggest differences… is that sort of… we’re sizing them up? Is that the.

Jeff Umbro:

Yeah, well, so the follow-up questions are, what are the least and most expensive, and which is better for, like, newer entrants to the space versus more established shows?

Ilana Susnow:

This, to be honest, I don’t…

some of these are baked into other projects, so I can’t necessarily speak to the financials, but I would think for someone just entering this space, based on my experience, and based on the relationships

needed to engage in a swap, for example. Swap.fm is probably a better tool at the moment, only because part of what the offering there is, is you’re actually able to go in, search for a specific podcast, and then reach out to

Someone at that show and engage in a negotiation conversation about an impression swap.

You can ask, you know, there’s a messaging tool on the app, so if you don’t already have those built-in relationships in the industry, I would say for that reason.

you know, I think that’s where Swap FM’s kind of a differentiator, at least in my experience. Podtrack has been in the space. They do also have an ad attribution, side to them, so I think their analytics, you know, they’re offering different things, but that is, like.

You have to know the other…

podcast folks that you want to be swabbing with, so I would say that.

Jeff Umbro:

Ilana Susnow:

It depends on where you are in your podcast journey.

Jeff Umbro:

Great answer.

Rebecca Dalby:

I believe. I believe some of the platforms is on the offer, I could be completely wrong saying this, but, like, a free trial, or to be able to go in and get a demo… Yeah, I think they do.

I’ll lean on it again. The UI and what you’re looking for, what you’re looking to track, is such a huge factor in your decision of what’s best for you. It’s really hard, I think, for Lana to answer that question.

Ilana Susnow:

It’s totally preference in what your need is today. You know, they all are great tools, they just cater.

And they do the same thing. I think it’s just how you prefer to… what you need them for.

Jeff Umbro:

Ilana Susnow:

And, and…

Jeff Umbro:

So, ultimately, there are, like, 3 major ways that people are using these tools across all of what we’ve talked about today. There’s pod-to-pod attribution, there’s pod-to-web attribution, and then there is, like, web-to-pod attribution, which would be, like, a smart list… a listen link, or a smart link, or something.

And they’re all very… They’re all slightly different in how they actually track this stuff.

like, Magellan offers a little bit more flexibility when it comes to how you’re tracking attribution over time, whereas Swap gives you, like, more of a marketplace to, like, be able to engage directly with the folks who are actually, like, running these, like, audio swaps and cross-promos. Whereas Podscribe, in addition to Magellan, will lean, like, very heavily into, like, the market

data, that you can glean from, like, how people are buying across these shows.

And then I’ll spend one minute just talking about cost, as somebody who has recently, like, chatted with all of these folks about that. And I’m going to leave Magellan out, because I don’t want to speak for Cameron. But, generally speaking, there’s some entry point to all of these platforms that is going to be based on the size of your audience. So, some of them are going to have, like, a minimum spend threshold.

Which will go up based on how many downloads you’re bringing to their platform.

And then, on the advertising side, at least.

I know that a lot of publishers and or agencies will actually charge more to use attribution tracking to the client. So, you know, let’s just pretend you’re using Magellan, and it’s, like, X… it’s an extra dollar for every thousand downloads to actually use that attribution tool. You can put that dollar on top of the CPM for the ad you’re selling.

and charge that back to the client. Or $1.50 if you want to make some money on it. So, there are a lot of different ways in which people play with the pricing, and I encourage, I don’t know who asked the question, but whomever it was, to reach out to these platforms. They have amazing customer service. And to be blunt, like, they’re going to charge people differently based on the size of their shows.

So, Kevin, I don’t know if you want to add anything to that, but but that’s how I understand it.

Yeah, I think that’s right. It’s volume-based pricing is in general for attribution, and that’s just because not all campaigns are created equally, and, you know, a podcaster looking to start their first campaign that has, you know, with a, you know, swap that is more of a promo swap that’s more of, like, a handful of shows that they’re going to, you know, is going to have a whole different set of needs than, you know, an advertiser or a publisher, for that matter, that’s going to

They’d be, you know, wanting to

track millions of impressions, and so, yeah, there’s definitely a… it’s not a one-size-fits-all, kind of model in general.

Jeff Umbro:

Yeah. And I should just say out loud, I know everybody on this call is very smart and, like, probably knows this, but…

an impression is not a download, and a download is not an impression. So, if you’re running 5 ads on every episode of the show, then you have 5X the impressions as downloads, or some variation of that, based on consumption rate. So, important to keep in mind.

We have another question,

and this is for Matt, or I guess this is for everybody, but it references something Matt was speaking about. What happens to the math that Matt was speaking to when host-red ads become AI-generated?

I don’t know that that’s an attribution question, but I will throw it out there anyway.

Matt Shapo:

I’ll take a crack at it. I don’t know…

that the math of the CPM changes Unless… we have…

I mean, there’s just so much that is behind that question, right? The question becomes, A, are we really going to see widespread adoption of synthetically voiced AI ads for Host Red? I don’t know the answer to that question.

I understand that we live in a world where people’s expectation may be that that starts to happen on a wide-scale basis. I’m not sure it’s true.

Then the question becomes, if it is happening, is there any notification to that fact? For instance, in show notes, to the effect that, oh, the voice of the host red ads are listening are

in fact, synthetically generated, and then the last part of that equation is, if it’s happening, and if there is notifications so that people know it, does that, in fact, cause advertisers to come back to publishers and say, well, we want to pay less for this because it isn’t

the real thing. I… I don’t…

I think it’s very hard to predict. I don’t think we know. I wouldn’t be able to…

usefully or truthfully answer the question of how the math changes. I just don’t know, there’s so many variables, there’s so much left to come in this… this… you know…

Jeff Umbro:

I think a simple way to answer that is that quality of the ad may change, and that would impact conversion rates on these campaigns, but it’s not necessarily true that quality of the ad would change, although, you know, it probably would.

And somebody who did something interesting in this space recently, I think Headgum may have done something like this, but I’m referring to Red Circle. They built a tool using a bunch of, like, AI prompts to quantify, like, the quality of an ad based on a checklist of questions that it’ll ask. So, a human will record the ad.

they’ll upload that MP3 into this system from Red Circle, and then Red Circle will give it a score, essentially, of, like, did it hit all the topics that it was supposed to?

So I think there are really smart ways that people are considering using this that don’t mean, like, the robots are taking over human jobs, but, they’re additive to, like, what we’re all doing.

So, you know, there’s gonna be good and evil with any new technology.

Rebecca Dalby:

I might also add that I think one of the things that’s potentially impacting the CPMs of sponsorship or host red ads is actually the performance of programmatic, as in positive performance of programmatic.

Jeff Umbro:

That’s very interesting.

Rebecca Dalby:

taking away from potentially advertisers being willing to pay such high prices for sponsorship and host… host red, so that’s an interesting, I guess that’s a different viewpoint, let’s say.

Matt Shapo:

Yeah. And you know what? It just occurred to me? It also…

circles back to the very top of the conversation, you know? Rebecca, you’re right, it’s a question of relative performance, and how are people evaluating whether they’re getting the outcomes that they’re looking for, and so it all comes back to the importance of the fact that we can do the kind of attribution that we’ve been talking about on this call, because ultimately.

it’s going to be attributing and evaluating the outcomes that determines whatever the CPM, whether host red or other or not.

Rebecca Dalby:

pops it.

Jeff Umbro:

I love that. Well, that is a perfect place to end.

If anybody has any questions that they didn’t get to, please feel free to reach out to myself, Matt, Rebecca, Alana, Cameron, everyone is active on LinkedIn. You can reach out to the Pogglomerate email, and I can route it to the right person. And thank you all so much for everything. It was… it was a pleasure chatting today, and really appreciate the time.

And especially thank you to the panelists.

Rebecca Dalby:

Thanks for having us, Jeff. Thank you.

Ilana Susnow:

Thank you.

Jeff Umbro:

Thanks, everyone.

Matt Shapo:

Bye, everybody.

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