Month: April 2025

Podcast Powerhouse Nick Viall Inks Exclusive Landmark Deal With Libsyn

~ jen

Liberated Syndication Inc. (“Libsyn”), the leading podcast platform for creators and advertisers, announced an exclusive, multi-year advertising and hosting partnership with renewal with multi-hyphenate Nick Viall, his widely-popular podcast, The Viall Files, and his leading audio-first lifestyle media company, Envy Media, which specializes in pop culture and relationship-themed shows. 

This renewal follows a fiercely competitive bidding season, underscoring Libsyn’s commitment to fueling growth for top-tier creators and independent voices in podcasting.

This milestone marks a pivotal time for Nick and Libsyn, cementing Envy Media as the top pop culture podcast destination for listeners. As one of Libsyn’s most significant deals yet, it extends the successful partnership with Nick and Envy Media over the next three years.

“Speaking on behalf of everyone at Libsyn, we are honored to continue our partnership with The Viall Files and Envy Media,” says Libsyn Ads Chief Revenue Officer Rick Selah. “Nick Viall is the consummate professional in our business, and his group is simply incredible to work with, making it seamless for our sales team to drive successful brand campaigns within their content. We’re ecstatic for the opportunity to continue bringing millions of dollars of revenue to The Vial Files for years to come.”

Nick Viall is a TV personality, award-winning podcast host, and best-selling author. Since appearing on The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise, and The Bachelor, and competing on Dancing with The Stars and Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test. Nick has become one of the most well-known talking heads in the dating/relationship and TV space. 

His widely successful weekly, multi-episode podcast, The Viall Files, explores relationships dynamics and reality TV through exclusive interviews with celebrities and reality TV recaps. Since its inception 2019, the show has amassed over 250 million downloads, continuously charts at #1 in Society & Culture and #3 Globally on Apple Podcasts, and last year’s Spotify Wrapped Report named the show in the Top 50 Podcasts in the U.S.. It has also been nominated for a People’s Choice Award and was voted one of the Top 10 Podcasts by the Associate Press.

“Over the last six years, I’ve had the pleasure of having the best job in the world. My mission has been able to the ultimate destination for the things I love: pop culture, relationships, reality TV, and more. The team at Libsyn have been the best partners imagine in helping me reach that goal,” Nick Viall shares. “I’m beyond lucky to have my wife, Natalie, as my co-host, and I’m so excited about Envy’s growing family of hosts, including Katie Maloney, Dayna Kathan, Crystal Minkoff, Cynthia Bailey, and more to be announced soon. Above all, I’m grateful for our household of listeners who make this show possible every day.”

“It is so rare in the entertainment business to find a network that wants to get up every morning and be in the foxhole with you, and I feel so lucky to have found that in Libsyn,”says Byron Ashley of Settebello Entertainment, Viall’s manager and Executive Producer of The Viall Files. “The entire Libsyn team is insanely hard working, extraordinary sophisticated, and above-all, fair and honest, and I could not be more excited to spend the coming years continuing to build with all of them.”

Audacy Unveils Creator Lab

~ jen

Audacy announces the launch of the Audacy Creator Lab, an initiative designed to support podcast creators and deliver advertising opportunities at scale. The announcement was made a Podcast Movement Evolutions in Chicago.

Developed on the foundation of Podcorn, acquired by Audacy in 2021, the Audacy Creator Lab expands upon Audacy’s creator marketplace over 20,000 shows and 40,000 creators, enabling advertisers to reach highly engaged, precisely targeted audiences at scale across multiple hosting platforms.

The Audacy Creator Lab is also designed support creators of all sizes – form small independents to emerging shows — by providing monetization opportunities through host-read sponsorships and dynamically inserted pre-recorded ads.

Underscoring Audacy’s commitment to helping podcast creators grow their business, the Audacy Creator Lab will also offer free hosting and monetization services for emerging podcasters, connecting them to more advertisers so that more of their resources can go toward fueling their passions and making great content.

“When paired with The Audacy Podcast Network and our owned and operated shows, the Audacy Creator Lab expands our podcast offerings to now include deeply engaged, niche communities and the next generation of creators,” said Chris Oliviero, Chief Business Officer, Audacy. “As additional advertising capabilities are introduced on the platform, it will open even more opportunities for both advertisers and creators.”

Podcasters can apply for access and explore opportunities at creators.audacy.com.

Triton Digital To Expand US Podcast Ranker To Include All Publishers

~ jen

Triton Digital, the global technology and services leader in the digital audio, podcast, and broadcast radio industries, announced that it will add survey-based listener rankings to the existing U.S. Podcast Ranker to provide a holistic view of podcast consumption. 

Every quarter, in addition to downloads, the U.S. Podcast Ranker will feature survey-based listener rankings, where all publishers and podcasts will be incorporated, not just those that participate in Triton Digital’s download measurement. 

It will expand including top 200 podcast. The survey asks participants what podcasts they listened to or watched, which will include video podcasts consumed via platforms including YouTube. This will supplement the data that is already provided to publishers via Triton Digital’s YouTube integration, which offers insights into how their content is consumed on YouTube in conjunction with their overall podcast downloads.

The ranker will also leverage Demos+ measurement, which utilizes Triton’s proprietary modeling approach, combining listener surveys with download measurement, to list which podcasts most efficiently reach different audiences. The ranker will list the podcasts whose audience has the highest percentage of various age and gender, socio-economic, lifestyle and purchase intents segments.

This will be an impotent resource for advertisers and media buyers looking to identify the podcasts that reach their desired audiences at scale. This portion of the ranker requires publisher participation in Triton measurement.

“The combination of census-level download measurement blended with survey measurement provides the most comprehensive understanding of podcast audiences and their consumption habits,” said Daryl Battaglia, SVP of Measurement & Analytics at Triton Digital. “By adopting new methods to measure audience and augmenting our current tools, we are enriching the podcast information available to advertisers so they can feel confident in reaching their target audiences.”

The survey and Demos+ data will continue to be conducted in collaboration with Signal Hill Insights, Triton Digital’s trusted reach partner since 2021, maintaining the highest standards of data integrity and analysis. With a robust sample that is nationally representative, this survey ensures deep insights into audience behaviors and preferences. 

“We at Signal Hill are always focused on moving the podcast industry forward, and we’re excited to take this next step with Triton Digital,” said Paul Riismandel, President of Signal Hill Insights. “The addition of holistic industry-wide, survey-based rankings to the U.S. Podcast Ranker is another significant step, enhancing the depth and value of the insights we provide to the industry.”

For more than a decade, Triton Digital has remained focused on developing leading and best-in-class audio measurement tools and practices, and that includes operating and distributing streaming and podcast rankers in various countries and regions.

For each ranker, the team takes into account the needs of each local market, working with a local industry body or committee. In addition to producing monthly rankers, Triton Digital also produces annual reports that are an invaluable resource for the podcast industry.

Original Audio Lands As Australia’s AI-Driven Audio Creative Agency

~ jen

Creative Fix founder Aaron Matthews and NOVA Entertainment’s Adam Johnson announce the launch of Original Audio, an audio creative agency committed to delivering audio advertising effectiveness through technology.

Despite ad revenue in digital audio continuing to grow faster than any other medium in Australia, it remains under-monetized when compared to audience reach. Original Audio is built on the core belief that creativity and proven commercial effectiveness will drive the next wave of investment into audio and, to accelerate this, they have unified market-leading creatives, producers, and the best audio platforms from across the world.

With personalization at the heart of their offering, Original Audio have signed exclusive representation deal with AudioStack, a world leader in AI-powered audio production. Original Audio will have unique access to AudioStack’s AI-powered toolset and learnings to deliver dynamic creative campaigns that ensure listeners hear the perfect message at the perfect time.

To ensure seamless delivery and scaling of campaigns, as well as on-the-fly creative optimization, Frequency have also come aboard as a launch partner, with Original Audio’s workflows built on Frequency’s best-in-class infrastructure.

“Like other more traditional audio production businesses, I found myself experimenting with some of these tools” said Creative Director and co-founder Aaron Matthews, “but more as an ad-on to the core techniques that everyone else is using. Original Audio is an end-to-end offering with technology at its core, where the right set of world-class tools can be activated for the right brief. This spans everything from full audio branding projects to creating infinite versions of the same ad, ensuring each unique listener is more likely to act having heard one of our ads.” 

Co-founder and Managing Director Adam Johnson added, “There are many clever people developing fantastic audio ad products across the world, but we felt nobody was making them meaningful and accessible to Australian agencies, publishers and brands. We want Original Audio to rectify that and to help anybody buying audio campaigns ensure their investment works harder. We will ultimately be judged on whether the returns on the campaigns we deliver far exceed the modes extra investment it takes to harness these tools.”

On the partnership with Original Audio, Audiostack’s VP, Global Commercial Partnerships – Agency & Adtech, Silke Zetzche said, “Original Audio are leading the way in showing how AI creative tech can enhance, not replace, creativity. By choosing AudioStack as their preferred creative tech solution in Australia and across the APAC region, they’re making a clear statement about the power of AI to deliver smarter, more personalized advertising. We’re proud to support they vision and excited to see how our AI audio production infrastructure helps them drive better results for their clients.”

Pete Jimison, CEO & founder of launch partner Frequency added, “Original Audio represents the future of audio creative — combining cutting-edge technology with world-class storytelling to deliver highly effective, personalized campaigns. We’re thrilled to be a launch partner, providing the infrastructure to help bring these dynamic creative innovations to life at scale.”

Original Audio is already working on a number of campaigns with partners including Mastercard, BetterHelp, Aldi, and Salesforce.