Keeping Audio Weird: The Pitfalls to Programmatic
Chief Audio Officers, the Media Roundtable’s back with a roundup of all the industry news you need to know up this week, preserving and celebrating audio quirks.
On the host microphone again is Oxford Road Founder and CEO, Dan Granger. Joining him are fan-favorites Kyle Jelinek (Oxford Road VP of Client Strategy), James Cridland (Podnews, Podcast Business Journal), and special guest Scott MacDonell, (Former Oxford Road Managing Director and 5x Oxford Road client 🤯).
“We're chasing something that's easier to transact, but not nearly as valuable as what they could be selling.”
– Dan Granger, Oxford Road founder and CEO
We’re talking-stretching ad budgets through digital audio, getting IAB de-certified, the foretold rise of programmatic, and more. Let’s dig in.
Getting with the Program(matic)? 🤖 – Programmatic audio spend is expected to double by the end of 2025 to $4B. But CAOs… tread with caution: programmatic has nowhere near the impact compared to host reads – It threatens to devalue the audio content it’s interrupting by cramming it full of impersonal ads. Turning podcasts into radio with skippable ads is no one's dream.
This Time I Mean It… 😤 – 10 companies are in line to lose IAB certification after being uncertified for over a year. The IAB made strides in standardizing the podcast industry, maybe it’s time for an audio-specific organization to give the industry a core and preserve its unique flavor.
YouTube’s Podcast Era ▶️ – As promised, RSS feeds are a go for YouTube. As it is for all things audio, there are some quirks and caveats. There are no dynamically inserted ads allowed, and although an October 2023 study showed YouTube as the most used channel for podcast consumption, viewing/listening habits… volume might be very different. The takeaway? For creators and CAOs, YT’s a big enough player to warrant adding it to your audio toolbelt, especially if you want a baked-in ad buy to show off a visually deserving product.
If you’re short on time, recaps of some of these stories and more are below, but for audio insights you won’t find anywhere else, tune in to the full episode by clicking one of the links below.