AdsWizz automates buying host-read ads

• AdsWizz has added automated ad-buying capabilities on its programmatic platform, including the opportunity to buy host-read ad campaigns. The company notes that these have historically been difficult to do at scale.

• Google Podcasts for Web appears to now have a little subscribe button on podcast pages like this one; and has added, in the menu, a link to your subscriptions.

• Google Podcasts on iOS gets a good review in BetaNews.

• While you can’t go to live podcast shows any more, Melbourne-based Stupid Old Studios Presents is selling tickets to live podcast streams instead. Ticket sales, we’re told, are strong - with 800 sold within 24 hours. Supporting comedians and the creative arts, a section of the community that have been significantly harmed by the coronavirus, seems like a good thing right now.

• Scott Elchison says that the coronavirus will “prove to be not a disruption, but a temporary interruption”; while Shawn Cole from Pacific Content discusses how to set up a decent-sounding podcast studio at home. (Blankets, people.)

• The NYT focuses on daily podcasts - “an emerging category of intimate news programs offers a comforting voice”, they add.

• Podnews’s podcast is now on JioSaavn, the leading music and podcast app in India.

Podcast News

Start Here from ABC News celebrates its second anniversary this weekend. This week, the podcast was produced entirely out of the office, with host Brad Mielke recording in his makeshift ‘studio’ – a coat closet in his Brooklyn apartment – and the show’s producers and editors working from their home offices.

The Headliner Podcast has returned, with seven podcasters discussing how the coronavirus has affected them.

Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - hosted by Omny Studio and produced by Stitcher’s Earwolf - got a heavy promotion in Spotify’s PR email this week. Curious.

We shifted Podnews onto its own, bespoke servers earlier today (while avoiding any downtime). If you see any issues, please do let us know: and thank you to our personal supporters, like Shrey P, Chuck M, Steven G, Matt D and Rupert B, for making this possible.

It’s going to be a strange weekend: but have a good one. Podcasts might help.