Office Ladies is Podcast of the Year at the iHeart Podcast Awards

The iHeartPodcast Awards took place last night. You can watch the full ceremony here, and we’ve published the full list of winners here. Serial won the “Audible audio pioneer award”, presented by Hillary Clinton; the Best Podcast of the Year went to Earwolf’s Office Ladies. A truly inclusive event, only four shows out of the 27 awarded were iHeartRadio productions.

• Spotify has announced that Spotify Podcast Ads, using Streaming Ad Insertion, is now available in the UK and in Germany. BT Sport, a UK television channel, was the first to use it: advertising in the Joe Rogan Experience; while LinkedIn and MediaCom were first to use it in Germany. Unlike normal podcast ads, Streaming Ad Insertion lets advertisers know how many of their ads were heard, and by who.

  • Ava DuVernay, a US filmmaker, has signed with Spotify’s Gimlet to produce podcasts. Of note: the new closing line on this press release: “All podcasts on Spotify, including those exclusive titles stemming from this partnership, are available for free.”

• The Verge reports that on Anchor, the only sponsor that most podcasts have is Anchor itself. We spoke to one Anchor podcaster, who’s had more than 700,000 plays on Anchor over the last 18 months. They’ve had four sponsors - three podcasts, each of whom paid around $200; and Anchor, who paid $8,600 advertising itself - a $17.50 CPM.

• Dave Winer has written a blog post, “twenty years ago in podcasting”, describing his work on the first podcast feed. It was written, he says, to test the first podcatcher.

• The New York Times, including The Daily, appear to have quietly switched to host with Simplecast. They were hosting with ART19.

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• Netflix says, in its Q4/20 earnings call, that it no longer needs to borrow money for content, and is very close to financial sustainability.

• The Boston Globe reports that podcasts are perfect for TV adaptations. “Well-crafted podcasts are enticing to TV executives because they’re prefab content that comes with a proof of concept”.

• Pacific Content now offer a service to buy paid promos for their clients within other podcasts.

• TruOptik is to work with Targetspot to offer advertisers audience-based targeting capabilities for podcasts. The company has details of more than eighty million US households.

• The Real Agenda Network, a political podcast network in the UK, has added four new podcast series to its schedule.

• More creatives than ever? The Economics of Music Streaming, an inquiry by the UK government, has published 150 responses. Will Page, a former Chief Economist for Spotify, tells the inquiry that the number of music artists and songwriters in the country has doubled in just ten years.

  
  Aug 31 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

Tips and tricks - with Buzzsprout

• Social Media Marketing Options For Podcasts (We Edit Podcasts)

• YouTube now lets you search videos based on hashtag. Might be handy to know if you’re also posting your podcast over there.

Podcast News - with Podcast Network Asia

From Podcast Network Asia: QuickiePH is a narrative podcast of literotic short stories for your listening pleasure.

Follow Friday is the first original podcast from BumbleCast. “We all follow people online … but who do they follow? Every week on Follow Friday, we sit down with popular writers, podcasters, comedians, and other internet creators to find out.” It launches next week: the first guest is Avery Trufelman.

Podland this week looks at Apple’s subscriptions, Spotify’s “failing strategy”, and has interviews with, among others, Podpage and A Million Ads.

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