Month: February 2022

Global Appoints Ryan Ladisa as Vice President of Sales for DAX, Canada

~ jen

Global, the Media & Entertainment group, has announced the appointment of Ryan Ladisa as its new Vice President of Sales, Canada, for its pioneering digital advertising program, DAX.

Ladisa joins the DAX Canada team from Media.Monks where he served as SVP of Growth for North America driving digital transformation for clients across a breath of industries. A veteran in the Canadian advertising and technology business, Ladisa brings over 20 years of experience across outdoor, television, programmatic, and technology.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Ryan as the new lead for DAX Canada,” said Jon Hales, Chief Growth Officer (CGO) of DAX North America. “His leadership and business growth experience will build on DAX’s solid tech foundation and unique publisher offering, all while helping advertisers increase their reach and connect with new audiences at scale via podcasts, online audio, streaming, gaming and audio video.”

Ladisa will be overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Canadian business as well as managing all DAX sales initiatives for the region.

“I’m thrilled join the skilled team at Global,” said Ladisa. “The world has transformed, and streaming audio has embraced the transformation with open arms. I’m excited to build upon the solid technology foundation DAX represents and deliver on the needs of advertisers with premium exclusive supply and unparalleled reach in the diverse audio landscape.”

Libsyn Releases Libsyn Studio Beta

~ jen

Liberated Syndication Inc. (“Libsyn”), the leading ‘Podcasting as a Service’ platform, announced the release of Libsyn Studio Beta, an all-in-one free platform for new and casual creators to play, launch, and distribute their podcasts. 

Designed for new content creators just beginning their podcasting journey, as well as those looking to keep their audio experience simple, Libsyn Studio is the fastest and easiest way to make a podcast. The free membership platform offers the most intuitive and reliable tools to simplify the creation of a podcast – from recording and setup to simple hosting and distribution – all at no cost to the user.

“Podcasting is experiencing explosive growth and listenership is at an all-time high. With Libsyn Studio, we’re democratizing access for a new generation of diverse podcasters at any skill set level to be able to start and grow their podcast with our free creation platform,” said Brad Tirpak, CEO, Libsyn. “We’re empowering anyone to make their voice heard from anywhere without a technical background or any special equipment.”

Among the key beta version features:

  • A simple content guide for quickly getting up to speed on setting up a podcast.
  • Free tools for recording and assembling an episode with music, fades, and professional leveling.
  • Allows you to connect to all the major platforms, such as Apple, Google, Spotify, and other podcast listening apps.
  • The beta phase of Libsyn Studio is expected to continue into the summer of 2022.

Libsyn Studio is part of Libsyn’s Industry leading podcasting platform, which has provided publishers with hosting, distribution, and monetization services since the advent of podcasting in 2004. Libsyn has been an official podcast launch partner for the most popular media companies, including Pandora, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

Podmatch Now Pays Podcast Hosts When They Release Episodes

~ jen

Podmatch, a popular podcasting service that automatically matches podcast hosts and guests together to record interviews, begins paying hosts whenever they release new episodes through their new initiative called PodValue, company founder Alex Sanfiilippo announced. Effective immediately, podcasts hosts using PodMatch’s interview booking system will earn monetary rewards when releasing new episodes. (Explore available membership options, features, and pricing at PodMatch.com).

At the start of PodMatch’s PodValue initiative, it is envisioned that a podcaster who has an interview format show can cut back on hours of administrative work and get paid for releasing new episodes when they utilize PodMatch’s interview management system.

“Podcasters, being creators, don’t make money for the art of podcasting. That’s something that’s been on my mind to change for over a year now,” Sanfilippo said. “I believe podcast hosts should get paid for the value they’re adding to the world. The PodValue initiative is going to revolutionize the podcasting industry and will quickly become the new standard.”

PodMatch has launched this new program with just three simple steps involved:

  • A podcast host must confirm a match for an episode.
  • Set an interview date and time using the PodMatch interview management system.
  • Once the episode is scheduled for release, PodMatch will pay the podcast host.
  • The goal of the PodValue initiative is to help offset the cost that podcasters incur for their show’s production.

To further cast the vision of this new initiative program, Sanfilippo stated, “Our goal is to help monetize and streamline the booking process for every podcast out there. No matter how big or small, we appreciate all they do and want to support them on their podcasting journey. I expect that the PodValue initiative will help offset podcasters’ cost and most of the administrative work, and ultimately, help them continue producing their podcast for years to come.”

“PodMatch paying hosts for the art of creating content via podcast interviews is a win for show hosts everywhere and the podcasting industry as a whole.” Sanfilippo added, “We’re honored to be part of podcasters’ journey in this new way.”

PodMatch is proud to report that during a 30-day soft launch of the PodValue initiative (Jan 14 – Feb 14), they experienced an immediate increase in podcasters utilizing the PodMatch system along with record-breaking signups of podcasters joining their platform.

Podigee Releases a Fully-Integrated User-Friendly Dynamic Ad Server

~ jen

Podigee, the podcast hosting & analytics provider, has released a fully-integrated, user-friendly dynamic ad server. It allows podcast publishers to put dynamic ads in their podcasts, straight from the Podigee interface.

Dynamic ad insertion is key for podcasters and publishers who want or need to effectively monetize the reach of their content. By dynamically adding and replacing ads, podcasters can leverage their entire back catalog of content, quickly replacing ads and sponsored messages.

For larger publishers, dynamic ads can also be used as a means of cross-promoting other podcast content.

The ad server is powered by technology developed completely in-house by Podigee. Benjamin Zimmer, CTO at Podigee, states “All you need is a podcast and an ad. Podigee will take care of the rest. It works like magic.”

The revolutionary aspect of the solution is that the Podigee Dynamic Ad Server is going to be available to podcasters in all shapes and sizes. From independents up to large media enterprises, anyone can now benefit from the power of dynamic ad insertion at a fraction of the cost of traditional ad servers.

“We designed the user interface and experience with simplicity in mind,” explains Mateusz Sojka, CEO and Chief Product Officer at Podigee, and adds, “With Podigee, you get everything you need to be successful with your podcasts. With our Dynamic Ad Server you can upload, distribute, analyze and monetize your podcasts without leaving Podigee, all in one place. Pre-roll, post-roll, mid-roll, impression analytics. You name it. This is definitely our biggest single release to date.”

Dynamic ad insertion is currently available to a select group of customers. Starting in March, Podigee will slowly roll it out to a broader audience.

Liberated Syndication Announces Agreement to Acquire Podcast Ad Reps

~ jen

Liberated Syndication Inc., the industry’s leading podcast hosting platform and advertising marketplace, announced that it entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Podcast Ad Reps LLC (“PAR”), a leading podcast advertising company. PAR and its team members will be combined with Libsyn’s AdvertiseCast business, one of the largest independent and fastest-growing podcasts advertising marketplaces. Rick Selah and Anthony Savelli, PAR’s founders, and Co-CEOs, will join AdvertiseCast’s.

“I am thrilled to announce this acquisition,” said Libsyn’s CRO Dave Hanley. “On the heels of AdvertiseCast’s continued growth, we looked throughout the industry for additional opportunities to connect great content with our growing roster of advertisers. We quickly identified PAR and its leadership team as best-in-class and believe they will be a great addition to the AdvertiseCast organization. On behalf of everyone at Libsyn, we feel fortunate to partner with industry leaders like Rick and Anthony and to embark on this new chapter of growth as we look forward to helping more creators thrive.”

Founded in 2018, PAR enables podcast advertising for over 120 exclusive podcasters on its network and allows advertisers and agencies to efficiently buy and manage advertising campaigns in the podcast sector. PAR revenue has grown rapidly, increasing over 100% year-over-year in 2021 to approximately $8 million.

Since inception, PAR has scaled profitably with no outside investment and serves such top podcasting shows as New Rockstars Inside Marvel, The Official Yellowstone Podcast, Almost 30 Podcast, and Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast. PAR provides Libsyn with more host-read inventory that Libsyn can begin to sell immediately as well as more publishers for Libsyn emerging programatic advertising business.

PAR founders and Co-CEOs Rick Selah and Anthony Savelli commented, “Our goal at PAR to empower the creator economy by offering a no-strings-attached, simple advertising service that can amplify the specific creative processes of our podcasters. We are incredibly proud that the vast majority of our original publishers have remained with us since our launch and credit the company’s success to our incredible team and our brand-friendly approach. We are excited to partner with Libsyn and AdvertiseCast and to deliver more services to even more creators on this larger platform.”

Libsyn’s CEO Brand Tirpak continues, “With the acquisitions of AdvertiseCast in June 2021 and now PAR, Libsyn is is well-positioned to continue to rapidly scale in the podcast advertising market, which PWC estimates will reach – $3.5 billion by 2025. We plan to continue to invest in our award-winning hosting platform, expand both our host-read and programmatic advertising efforts, and look for new ways to make Libsyn the preferred destination for both creators and advertisers.”

The acquisitions closing is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to occur in Q1 2022.

iHeartMedia to Utilize Veritone’s Synthetic Voice Technology

~ jen

Veritone, Inc., creator of aiWARE, a hyper-expansive enterprise AI platform, and iHeartMedia, the number one podcast publisher globally according to Podtrac, announced iHeartMedia’s planned use of Veritone’s synthetic voice solution that allows celebrities, athletes, influencers, broadcasters, podcasters and other talent across numerous industries to securely create and monetize verified synthetic voices that can be transformed into different languages, dialects, accents and more.

iHeartMedia will leverage Veritone’s AI platform to make more shows across the iHeartPodcast Network available in multiple languages, helping to make more shows across the iHeartPodcast Network available in multiple languages, helping to expand their podcast market. The first use case is to translate iHeart’s marquee podcasts for Spanish-speaking audiences.

“We have worked with the iHeartMedia team for more than four years in various aspects of their business, and we are very excited to collaborate on expanding their podcast audience and unlocking new revenue streams for the broadcast industry leader,” said Ryan Steelberg, president of Veritone. “iHeartMedia has always been a pioneer of innovation, and now with the power of Veritone’s synthetic voice solution, iHeartMedia will not only be able to scale to new markets with localized language transactions but retain the brand value of their top talent’s voice – which is fundamental in podcasting. We are also partnering to develop synthetic voices for advertising and engaging content while reducing time-to-market and production costs for radio, podcasting and the metaverse.”

In addition to a self-serve application for voice projects leveraging stock voices, Veritone’s synthetic voice solution offers custom synthetic voice cloning that takes a professional approach and works with clients to the approvals necessary to create the cloned voice as well as approvals required to use the voice appropriately. Additionally, this new technology will offer increased revenue streams for the branded synthetic voice.

“With the hyper-growth of our podcast network over the past decade, we are always looking for what is new and next in the medium, too – and Veritone’s synthetic voice solution is a great example of that,” said Conal Byrne, chief executive officer at iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group. “Being able to easily offer our podcasts in other languages, in the talent’s unique style, will be an awesome and innovative way to grow market share in the global marketplace.”

Veritone’s synthetic voice solution allows iHeartMedia the opportunity to reach new audiences at scale with the current top podcast talent. With no additional studio time, voice talent can authorize Veritone’s synthetic voice solution to automatically produce more podcasts, advertisements, and additional audio in multiple languages with the same energy, cadence and uniqueness of top talent.

Ausha Offers Podcasters a Social Media Promotion Tool

~ jen

After recently adding the ability to create multi-format Video Clips and add custom CTA’s to all its marketing materials, Ausha now offers podcasters the Social Media Manager. A powerful tool to boost the promotion of your podcast on all social networks.

Social networks are one of the most important level of discoverability for the promotion of podcasts. Because this is how listeners discover new podcasts and how they start the word-of-mouth (which is, you know it well, the key for a new podcast).

For this reason, Ausha has developed a powerful and innovative model to create, plan and publish its communication on social networks.

Until now, podcast creators had to pay services like Buffer or Hootsuite to be able to create their posts in advance and schedule them on social networks. Now, they don’t need to go through an additional service because Ausha is connected to Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Ausha’s new module makes it possible to add media to each new publication (custom Video Clip, link to the episode or the show’s website) and to schedule an unlimited number of posts on all social networks, independently of the publication of a new episode.

In addition to being able to create and schedule posts, Ausha displays data that will allow podcasters to measure the success of their communication.

For each publication, they can now analyze the number of impressions, the number of interactions and the engagement rate of their audience, directly from Ausha.

“Our goal at Ausha is to help podcasters find their audience and we sincerely believe in the power of marketing to grow a podcast,” explains Maxime Piquette, CEO of Ausha. “That’s why we’re developing tools to help podcasters promote their show. Our Communication Module will evolve in the coming months with new and more innovative features. Our new Social Networks tool that we have just developed is one of the first steps.”

iHeartMedia Partners with Sounder to Launch Best-In-Class Brand Safety Tools

~ jen

iHeartMedia, the largest audio media company in the U.S. and the top podcast publisher globally according to Podtrac, announced a partnership with Sounder, an audio intelligent platform that builds foundational podcasting technology to drive monetization, brand safety and discoverability for audio content.

iHeartMedia will leverage Sounder’s Audio Data Cloud to provide both established and emerging podcast creators the best AI and Machine Learning (ML) tools to help them gain critical, real-time insights to accelerate growth and improve monetization. With more than 750 iHeartRadio Original podcasts — including some of the biggest podcasts and creators in the world – now using this technology, these new capabilities will rapidly become the industry standard.

iHeartMedia will leverage Sounder’s Audio Data Cloud’s automated best-in-class AI and ML brand safety solution to ensure advertisers can confidently invest in the iHeartPodcast Network’s expansive and rapidly growing line-up of diverse content with more than 392 million downloads and streams a month (more downloads than the next three podcast publishers combined).

The brand safety solution enables iHeartMedia’s marketing partners to buy across a wide array of creators with the assurance that the content adheres to industry safety standards. The technology will quickly expand to also allow advertisers to customize their brand safety guidelines, unlocking new and more diverse publishers to provide even more effective ad placements.

Sounder’s Audio Data Cloud enables large publishers the ability to perform brand suitability analysis, topic analysis, content summarization, and dynamic segmentation. These solutions help accelerate the size and engagement of the iHeartPodcast Network’s large and growing audience from the biggest and most diverse shows in the network, to the rapidly growing number of up-and-coming creators. Audio Data Cloud leverages Sounder’s proprietary automated speech recognition technology and powerful AI/ML models. In doing so, it unlocks uncultured value for all enterprise audio content.

In addition to this commercial partnership, iHeartMedia has also announced a strategic investment in Sounder, as lead investor in the company’s Series A round.

Acast Appoints Tim Batt as Creator Network Developer for New Zealand

~ jen

Acast, the world’s leading independent podcast company, has announced the appointment of Tim Batt as Content Development Director for New Zealand. As the first New Zealand-based hire for Acast’s Creator Network team, Batt will work closely with local podcasters of all sizes, helping them to find their audience, build and grow their shows, and make money from their craft.

An iconic name within podcasting in New Zealand, Batt is an independent podcaster – and already part of the Acast Creator Network – as the founder of the Little Empire Podcast Network and co-creator and host of New Zealand’s most successful comedy podcast, The Worst Idea of All Time. The show has had more than 18 million downloads since its launch in 2014.

In addition to his podcasting experience, Batt has a deep understanding of the local creator landscape, with a career spanning stand-up comedy, live show production, writing and guesting for television, and commercial broadcasting with major New Zealand networks MediaWorks and NZME. Batt is also a current board member of the New Zealand Comedy Trust.

Guy Scott-Wison, Creator Network Director, Acast Australia and New Zealand, said: “It’s no secret that the podcast industry is booming, and the market in New Zealand is no different. Local creators are doing amazing things with quality content, so we felt now was the perfect time to increase our footprint here and work even closer with the podcasters powering that growth.

“It’s so important for us to have local expertise in all our markets globally, and Tim’s understanding of independent creators makes him the perfect person to help even more creators in New Zealand to tell their story through podcasting.”

Tim Batt, Creator Network Development Director, Acast New Zealand, said: “I’ve been using Acast’s tools and services to host, distribute and monetize my podcast for several years now – so know the huge potential this company has, and how much it cares about supporting its podcasters. Aotearoa New Zealand has so many independent voices who deserve a bigger audience, and I can’t wait to work with them to build and grow great podcasts.”

Podcast Movement Evolutions Announced Keynote Speakers

~ jen

Podcast Movement Evolution will take place on March 23-26, 2022, in Los Angeles, California. You can attend the live event or virtually from around the world. Podcast Movement Evolutions announced two featured Keynote speakers. 

Will Ferrell joins Conal Byrne (CEO, Digital Audio Group at iHeartMedia) to discuss his experience hosting The Ron Burgundy Podcast, and growth of his Big Money Players Podcast network.  

The Big Money Players Network is a destination for comedy podcasts – both scripted and unscripted. BMP features long-running hits like Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, alongside new shows like The Nikki Glaser Podcast and POOG with Kate Bering and Jacqueline Novak.

Podcast Movement Evolutions 2022 will have another huge keynote announcement next week. 

There will be several parties at Podcast Movement Evolutions 2022:

Acast Evolutions Kickoff Party

  • Wednesday March 23 (time TBA)
  • Tom’s Watch Bar
  • Join Acast and the rest of the PM family for an open bar, custom podcast-themed cocktails, passed appetizers and more!

iHeart Party

  • Thursday, March 24 (8:00 PM)
  • GRAMMY Museum Rooftop Terrace
  • iHeart throws the biggest parties at Podcast Movement, and this one will surely rank amongst the best. Everyone is invited for an open bar, passed appetizers, and live music, including a DJ set by Paris Hilton!

Friday Morning Snacks with Produce Your Podcast and Blubrry

  • Friday, March 25, 9:30 AM
  • Gold Foyer
  • Get fueled up while also chatting about growing your podcast audience with the experts from Produce Your Podcast and Blubrry!

Friday Afternoon Glassbox Media Party

  • Friday, March 25-4:30 PM
  • Gold Foyer
  • After the last sessions of the day, get the weekend going right with a drink and music courtesy of Glassbox Media.

Friday Night with Simplecast

  • Friday, March 25 – 7:30 PM
  • Location TBA
  • Before you hit the town, stop by the Simplecast Creator Connection for an open bar, passed apps, live chain-stitching for your merch, a Photo Booth, the latest on exciting new Simplecast features, and more – come for good vibes with fellow creators.