Research, True Crime, & What Brands Want - Recapping Podcast Movement 2024

The Media Roundtable is back! Fresh from Podcast Movement 2024 in DC, we’re here to alleviate FOMO (ICYMI) and share the biggest takeaways from speakers and attendees.

Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) recaps and reminisces with fellow Oxford Roadies Miranda Romano (SVP, Media, Oxford Road), Neal Lucey (EVP, Strategy & Product, Oxford Road) and welcoming Tess Ryan (Associate Media Director, Oxford Road).

The team is talking: Two Kinds of True Crime, Research Superpowers, What Brands Want, and more. Let’s dig in.

“The beauty of podcasting and its greatest challenge is this fragmentation.”

Two Kinds of True Crime 🕵️ - True Crime’s a juggernaut of genre, but it’s not uniform, as Miranda’s panel addressed. While some advertisers avoid it altogether, smart CAOs should consider this question first: Is it exploitative or productive? There are amazing podcasters helping to solve cold cases (shoutout to our friend Ashley Flowers of Crime Junkie), and producing great journalism that’s morphed into a form of public service. These types of shows are worthy of your brand dollars.

Research: Your Superpower 🦸 - Great research guides the industry. Per Neal’s panel on research, we don’t know where we’d be without the work of Signal Hill Insights, Edison Research, Sounds Profitable, and many others. Neal’s tip to make sure you’re getting the most from the data? Consistency. ‘When I see consistency across sources, that validates the value of the research to me.’

What Brands Want: The Report 👀 - Adding to the realm of research, we’ve unleashed our Oxford Road PodLoad Report with Podscribe (now in the WSJ!) and our Oxford Clock. Plus, we teased a new report on What Brands Want, straight from our CAOs. One stat that’s currently driving discussion: 80% of brands surveyed say the tools available to them in podcasting are substantially less useful than what they get from other media channels.

Don’t miss all the ‘you had to be there’ moments.  Catch the full episode by clicking the link below.

Bianca Gorodinsky