As advertisers look for ways to scale the performance of host-read ads without overburdening creators, Triton Digital, the global technology and services leader in the digital audio, podcast, and broadcast radio industries, is introducing a new solution, powered by AI voice technology.

To power this new capability, Spreaker, part of Triton Digital and the iHeartMedia family of brands, has partnered with ekoz.ai to bring scalable, programatic host-read ad inventory makes using AI-powered voice cloning.

ekoz.ai uses its AI-driven solution to deliver host-read podcast ads across a wide range of shows, especially in the mid- and long-tail of the podcast market. The integration gives advertisers a new way to programmatically plan, buy, and deliver ads into one of the podcasting’s most effective formats at scale, while enabling creators to access premium campaigns without taking on additional work.

“We’re always looking for more partners who help us bring new opportunities to podcasters,” said Sharon Taylor, EVP, Podcast and Content Delivery, Triton Digital. “ekoz.ai does exactly that. By enabling scalable host-read ads that preserve the authenticity and control creators value, they’re helping us unlock a new revenue stream for podcasters and deliver more value to advertisers.”

Through the ekoz.ai platform podcast hosts opt in to clone their voice sample “eko,” making their voice and ad inventory available to advertisers. Scripts are generated by AI from advertiser talking points and personalized to each host.

The ads are then created in the host’s own voice, host-approved, and delivered to their show, preserving authenticity while reducing manual workload. The integration launched through private marketplace deals with select Spreaker podcasts and is already delivering millions of impressions to market.

“We’ve built the first AI solution that allows advertisers to get host read ads at scale, and lets podcast hosts expand their influence, without losing what makes them unique,” said Marty Avalone, CEO of ekoz.ai. “Hosts keep full control over how their voice is used and which ads run. They boost revenue and deliver a better listening experience, without taking on more work. After all, it’s still their voice, just working harder for them.”

Spreaker, part of the Triton Digital and iHeartMedia family, continues to focus on expanding monetization access for independent creators and publishers across its platform. This new partnership adds a programatic option for host-read ads, bringing AI-driven scale to one of podcasting’s most trusted formats.
To learn more about how Triton Digital and Spreaker are helping podcasters maximize revenue

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.

Triton Digital, the global technology and services leader in the digital audio, podcast, and broadcast radio industries, announced a next step in its partnership with Audiboom, the leading global podcast network, as the publisher implements Triton’s Sounder solution across its extensive catalog.

Advertisers looking to target Audioboom’s content will now be able to leverage Sounder’s advanced contextual targeting capabilities and brand suitability tools. This provides Audioboom with enhanced intelligence and control over Showcase, its podcast advertising marketplace. Key features include:

Best-in-Class Contextual Targeting: Sounder’s advanced contextual targeting ensured ads are placed alongside the most relevant content, maximizing campaign effectiveness across Audioboom’s audio content.

Premium Brand Placement: Sounder’s robust brand suitability measures provide peace of mind for advertisers engaging with Audioboom’s diverse audience.

“Implementing Triton Digital’s Sounder solution marks another transformative moment in our partnership,” said Stuart Last, CEO of Audioboom. “Having worked with Triton Digital for years on podcast measurement and recently fully moving to TAP, we’re excited to enhance our advertising capabilities through the use of Sounder. This integration not only strengthens our position as a leader in podcast monetization, but also empowers us to increase monetization for content creators and provide better value to advertising partners through more intelligent content understanding and ad placement capabilities.

“This collaboration strengthens a partnership that began with Audioboom’s exclusive participation in Triton’s U.S., Latin American, and Australia Podcast Reports, which provides content creators, marketers, media buyers, and the audio industry as a whole with validated metrics on the most popular shows who opt-in to participate. The integration of Sounder’s technology represents the next evolution in this relationship, enabling a more sophisticated, data-driven advertising experience that benefits content creators and advertisers within the growing podcast ecosystem.

“This expansion of our partnership with Audioboom demonstrates our ongoing commitment to advancing podcast advertising technology,” said Sharon Taylor, Executive Vice President of Podcast and Content Delivery Triton Digital. “The integration of Sounder’s capabilities with Audioboom’s extensive podcast network creates new opportunities for publishers and advertisers to connect with audiences more effectively while maintaining the highest standards of brand suitability.”

The partnership comes as Audioboom continues to demonstrate its market leadership, ranking among the top sales networks in Triton Digital’s U.S. Podcast Report for 2024 with 13.2M average weekly downloads, with top shows including the Broski Report with Britanny Broski The Tim Dillon Show, Smosh Reads Reddit Stories, The Bulwark and Canceled with Tana Mongeau & Brook Schofield in its network.

Triton Digital, the global technology company and services leader to the digital audio, podcast, and broadcast radio industries, released its third annual U.S. Podcast Report. The report provides insights into the evolving U.S. podcast landscape for 2024, including listening habits, audience demographic data, and insights into the top podcast, networks, and debuts from the Triton U.S Podcast Ranker, and more.

According to the report, the number of monthly podcast listeners continues to rise with 23% growth over the past three years and almost 10% over the past year. InIn 2024, 44% of the U.S. population reported listening to a podcast within the past month. These listeners were found to be younger, more educated, more affluent, and more diverse. Podcasting has proven to be an engaging and powerful medium for storytelling, conversations, current events and entertainment. Other notable findings include:

• YouTube continues to be the preferred platform for most listeners, capturing 33% of listeners in 2024 — its highest share yet — marking a steady rise from 27% in 2021.

• The top podcast genres of 2024 were News (25% of downloads) True Crime (19%), and Comedy (13%). Of True Crime podcast listeners, 67% were female, of Comedy podcast listeners, 61% were male, and of News podcast listeners, 56% were male.

• The top sales networks of 2024 in the Triton U.S. Podcast Ranker were iHeart Audience Network at #1, SiriusXM Podcast at #2, and NPR as #3.

• NPR News Now (NPR) remained the top podcasts in 2024. Crime Junkie’s “SERIAL KILLER: The Alphabet Murders Part 1” episode was the most downloaded, while MURDERED: JonBenét Ramsey was the most popular, based on downloads in the first 30 days.

• Bongino Report Early Edition with Evita (Cumulus Podcast Network) had the #1 debut in 2024.

The report incorporates data from multiple sources, including IAB Tech Lab certified Triton Digital Podcast Metrics service, which measures server log data from the Triton Omny Studio platform and a variety of other industry hosting platforms. It also includes the data from Triton Podcast Metrics Demos+ solution, which provides demographics and audience characteristics for podcasts of all sizes, as well as Demos+ survey of 12,000 mostly podcast listeners in the U.S., done in collaboration with Signal Hill Insights.

“2024 marked another year of remarkable growth for the podcast industry, with listenership broadening across demographics and becoming more mainstream than ever,” said Daryl Battaglia, SVP Measurement Products and Strategy, Triton Digital. “As new audiences dive into podcasts and spend more time listening, fueling deeper engagement, genres like True Crime, Kids & Family, and History drive the highest back catalog consumption, creating untapped opportunities for programmatic advertising. At Triton Digital, we remain dedicated to providing deep insights into listener behavior and platform preferences as this dynamic media continues to evolve.”

Triton Digital, the global technology and services leader to the digital audio, podcast, and broadcast radio industries, announced the release of the October 2024 Australian Podcast Ranker. 

The Ranker provides insights into the Top Publishers in Australia, and the Top Sales Representatives in Australia from October 1 through October 31, 2024, as measured by Triton’s Podcast Metrics measurement service.

The Top Podcast Ranker and Top 200 Australian-Made Ranker are ranked by monthly listeners, in accordance with the latest IAB Podcast Technical Measurement Guidelines. 

For this reporting period, the top three publishers were ARN/iHeart again at #1, LiSTNR (SCA) again at #2, and Australian Broadcasting Corporation again at #3.

The top three podcasts for both the Top Podcast Ranker and Top 200 Australian-Made Ranker included Hamish & Andy (LiSTNR (SCA)) again at #1, Casefile True Crime (Audioboom) at #2, and ABC News Top Stories (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) at #3.

The Top Podcast Ranker saw many debuts in the month of October, which included Missing Niamh (Audioboom), Kill List (Wondery), Call Her Daddy (SiriusXM Podcast Network), Take Me To Your Leader! (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), The Kick It Forward Podcast (Clubby Sports), and more.

Menendez Vs Monsters (Podshape), Where’s Your Head At? (NOVA Entertainment), and SACKED: AFL (News Corp Australia) debuted in the Top 200 Australian-Made Ranker.

Inherited (Shameless Media), Rotten Apple (Nine Radio), and Racing Pulse with Michael Felgate (RSN Racing & Sport) debuted for both the Top 200 Australian-Made Ranker and Top Podcast Ranker.

Triton Digital is set to introduces a new ranker capability that will rank the podcast category by monthly listener and integrate Triton Demos+ data will include 10 audience characteristics, such as: Adults 18-24, Adults 24-39. Adults 25-54, Female 25-54, Male 25-54, Parent with child (<18), Podcast < weekly, Radio streamed – past month, YouTube – past week, and TV catch-up – past week; as well as the index versus the monthly podcasts 18+ population against each of the characteristics. The data will serve to further help inform buying decisions.

To view the full results of this Ranker, participate in the ranker or sign up to receive future rankers, please visit: http://australianpodcastranker.com/

Triton Digital’s Podcast Metrics measurement service is certified by the IAB Tech Lab as complying with Version 2.1 of the IAB Podcast Measurement Technical Guidelines. It provides accurate and insightful data around how, when, and where podcast content is being consumed across multiple hosting platforms with the ability to view metrics by date range, location, device, podcast name, episode, title, and more.

Triton Digital, a global technology and services leader to the digital audio, podcast and broadcast radio industries, announced its integration with Amazon Publisher Services (APS), expanding access to premium audio inventory at scale for Amazon DSP advertisers. This integration enables Amazon Ads’ unique interactive audio ads on Alexa-enabled devices to appear across shared APS and Trition Digital publishers, delivering an engaging experience to listeners and enhanced inventory monetization to publishers.

Interactive audio ads are a creative ad format developed by Amazon Ads that invites customers to request more information via email or push notification (“Alexa, send more info”), set reminders (“Alexa, remind me”), or even add items to their Amazon shopping cart (“Alexa, add to cart”), without ever leaving the streaming audio content they were enjoying.

The Triton Audio Marketplace offers access to one of the largest single pool of audio audiences with more than 100 billion audio impressions per month, allowing marketers and agencies to transact on all forms of audio inventory. This breadth of supply paired with Amazon Ads proprietary audience signals offered by Amazon DSP, helps advertisers build more meaningful connections and publishers drive monetization for their inventory with a cutting-edge solution.

“Amazon has had a long-lasting impact in the advertising space, introducing new ad formats and delivery vehicles that have transformed the audio industry,” said John Rosso, President and CEO, Triton Digital. “We’re delighted that APS has invited Triton Digital technology to provide interactive audio ads to shared publishers and are confident in its enhancement of the listener experience.”

According to a recent study conducted by Amazon Ads and Kantar, audio streamers are 75% more likely to respond to an and when the ad has a voice-command. Kantar also found that interactive audio ads achieved higher consideration (1.3x) and purchase intent (2.3x) compared to standard audio creatives.

“We’re excited for publisher that use Triton Digital and APS to make their quality content more easily available to advertisers using Amazon DSP,” said Steve Rabuchin, VP of Third-Party Supply at Amazon Ads. “We look forward to learning more about how audiences engage with interactive audio ads, which enable listeners to respond to advertisements without being distracted from the stream.”

Triton Digital, the global technology and services leader the digital audio, podcast, and broadcast radio industries, released its first Canada Mid-Year Podcast Trends Report.

The report accompanies its monthly Canada Podcast Ranker and provides insights into the evolving Canadian podcast landscape, including trends in podcast listening, a snapshot of the podcast listener, top genres, downloads, debuts, sales networks, and more.

According to the report, Canada’s most popular podcast genres were True Crime, News, and Comedy, with an average of 3.0 hours of content downloaded per listener, per week. Other notable findings include:

Listeners downloaded 4.4. episodes per week, on average, and 92% of podcasts were listened to on a mobile device.

The top day of the week for listening is Wednesday with peak times being between 10am-12pm EST.

The top sales network in the Triton Canada Podcast Ranker, in terms of average weekly download volume, is SiriusXM Podcast Network, followed by CBC/Radio-Canada and Wondery. 

Top podcasts include Dateline NBC (NBCUniversal News Group), SmartLess (Wondery Network), and Front Burner (CBC/Radio-Canada).

“As the Canadian podcast scene continues to evolve, we’re excited about the chance to highlight insights into Canadian listening habits,” remarked Daryl Battaglia, SVP Measurement Products & Strategy at Triton Digital. “Podcasting stands as a captivating and influential medium for storytelling and our debut mid-year trends report underscores our dedication to provide our clients with dependable and trustworthy data on podcast consumption and listener behaviors.”

The 2023 Podcast Trends in Canada Report incorporates data from numerous sources, including Triton’s Digital IAB Tech Lab certified Podcast Metrics service, which measures server log data from Triton’s Omni Studio platform and a variety of industry hosting platforms.

Triton Digital, the global technology and services provider to the digital audio, podcast, and broadcast radio industries, announced that it has acquired Manadge, an advertising intelligence platform that specialized in programmatic advertising, Manadge will enable Triton Digital publishers and demand partners to see advertising-related data and analyze performance in real-time via an intuitive analytics platform.

With this acquisition, Triton Digital is diversifying its portfolio as Manadge offers analysis and comparison dashboards and KPIs for programmatic market participants as well as direct orders. Integrated with over 60 Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) and ad servers, Manadge offers real-time philosophy, Manadge provides agnostic and unbiased reporting the simplifies the recording and tracking of advertising revenues, leveraging an elegant UI, with expansive graphics and change alert notifications.

“Through this acquisition, we further demonstrate our commitment to providing robust tools to enable growth in the global audio industry,” says John Rosso, President and CEO, Triton Digital. “The Manadge platform will enable Triton’s publisher, sales house, and demand partners to better analyze advertising data and use Manadge’s powerful UI to make data driven decisions for their business.”

“At Manadge we give companies the ability to increase resources and support, expand into new markets, and innovate faster than they could before,” says Nathan Venezia, Founder and CEO, Manadge. “We are excited to be joining a team that truly understands our vision and to be providing Triton Digital a better way to analyze and track advertising revenue for all audio types.”

As part of the acquisition, the Manadge team will join Triton Digital’s team, bringing a high level of talent and expertise to Triton’s product and engineering efforts.