Podcasters targeted in Facebook scam

• Johnny Jet, a travel blogger, is the latest victim of a scam aimed at podcasters. It was a Facebook hack, where someone promised to pay a guest fee of $3,000, and gained control of his Facebook page under the guise of setting up a live event. Here’s someone else reporting the same thing; and Podnews knows of a very high-profile podcaster who fell for a similar scam in September (being promised $2,000 to remotely speak). He told us: “We should warn podcasters about this. They’re PHISHING, but targeting podcasters specifically. This pitch was tailored to me personally.”

• Acast has signed with Proximic by Comscore, allowing cookie-free targeting across more than 100,000 podcasts. As the third-party cookie goes away, this tool allows the company to target using what’s described as “privacy-friendly contextual signals”.

• Airwave has signed with Motley Fool Money, and will look after distribution, monetization, marketing, and promotion of the show which achieves 5mn downloads per month.

• PodCal is a new way of subscribing to podcasts in… your calendar app. Weird, but it kind of works: quite useful to look back at publish times. Here’s our podcast if you’d like to try. You’ll find it listed in all our podcast pages. It’s from the folks at PodLP.

• Stop cramming so many words into your audio ads, and the copy works better - says a study highlighted by Cumulus Media and Westwood One.

• Female and mom podcast company Adalyst Media has signed up parenting podcast Voices of Your Village.

• Best known for adapting local podcasts for new countries, Podster is to develop an original show for children. The company was co-founded by people who produced a kids audio app.

• It looks like support for the podroll, a way to link to recommended podcasts, is coming to Triton Digital’s podcast platforms, according to this maintenance note. Meanwhile, Buzzsprout has written up its implementation (“linked by us, not an algorithm”). We like their podroll.

• Three new pages have recently appeared in YouTube’s podcasting help section. They are: countries where the RSS ingest tool is available, detail on how to deliver podcasts to YouTube via RSS, and specific details about handling episodes.

• A developer called Dan Rowden is blogging about building a podcast host called Huge. And podcasting about it too.

• Don’t want to win an award at The Ambies this year? You’ve got just three days to not bother entering. Submissions end on Fri Nov 17, and if you’re not in, you won’t win.

People News

• Michael Fischer has been hired as VP Business Development at Soundstack. He joins from AirKast, RAIN and Triton Digital.

Podcast News - with Airwave

From Airwave: The Red Line is a weekly podcast, hosting a panel of international experts that dive into the biggest geopolitical stories shaping the news both in the US and overseas.

What Now? with Trevor Noah hit #1 in various Spotify charts, and even the #1 in Apple Podcasts. Spotify’s fancy graphic doesn’t mention it, but the podcast is also #1 in Spotify South Africa, we notice: not a surprise, but good to see.

Voiceworks.ai has launched a new podcast with builders merchants Travis Perkins. Trade Talk is aimed at those working in the trade, keeping them up to date with latest news and advice for the industry, through conversations with those working within it.

Podcast promotion in the wild

58% of Americans haven’t listened to a single podcast in the last 30 days. The number is similar in other English-speaking countries, too. So, we welcome back our “Podcast promotion in the wild” section, which aims to share ads for podcasts that are in the real world, where those 58% might see them.

Today: a large billboard promoting Monash University’s What Happens Next, which just won gold in the Signal Awards. Hosted by academic and social commentator Dr Susan Carland, it suggests that fictional dystopias have never seemed so close to becoming reality. Is it too late to change our course?

Spot some marketing for podcasts? Hit reply and send us a (landscape) photograph.