Podcasts: radio's biggest advertiser

• Our photo story: Do you talk to the person sitting next to you on public transport? New podcast Mesto47 looks at human stories from one of the longest train rides in the world: the Trans Siberian Railroad. Above - handing out flyers in Siberia wearing a big KFC fries costume, an eighteen year-old who dreams of becoming a rapper, but is studying to be a mining electrician. A fun idea, and a fun picture - so we crowbarred it into today’s newsletter.

• The top three most-aired radio spots last week in the US were for podcasts. Ads for iHeartRadio’s The Ron Burgundy Podcast, Fake Doctors Real Friends and Missing in Alaska were all played over 64,000 times on US radio last week. We calculate that’s an average of almost two ads per hour (6am-midnight) on every iHeartRadio station.

  
  Aug 25 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.
  • Did it work? iHeartRadio’s campaign - we estimate it would cost $1.9m if they were buying it - did make a difference, it turns out. All shows saw a significant increase in the Apple Podcasts chart during the week - the chart is worked-out using new subscriptions. Ron Burgundy wasn’t even charting before the ad campaign (it’s in a break).

• Spotify have announced in-app offers for podcasts, adding visual banners allowing listeners to redeem offers “when the time is right”. They’ve alpha-tested it in the US and Germany (we’re told Last Podcast on the Left and Herrengedeck were the two shows). It’s a potential replacement for having to remember an offer code.

• iOS 14, the next version of Apple’s operating system for the iPhone, has been announced. Widgets will be available for the home screen, including one for podcasts; and Apple Podcasts will gain a “Smarter Listen Now”, which the company describes as: “a new Up Next — your personal episode queue that makes it easier to resume where you left off. Find the latest episodes of shows you already love or discover a new episode picked just for you.”

• Google is now promoting podcasts in their Assistant Snapshot feed, which appears on Google smart speaker displays and Android phones.

Get the free Podnews newsletter for more like this

Get it free

• Finding the best part of your podcast to promote - Headliner’s Neil Mody goes into the technology, and neuro-linguistic programming, that the company uses for their automatic podcast videos service.

  
  Aug 25 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Stay Forever is a German-language podcast, funded by more than 500 members, who pay almost €3,000 (US$3,400) a month. In an English-language article, they explain how they achieved it. Oder auf Deutsch.

• Ohana is both a Hawaiian term meaning ‘family’, and a new community tool for podcasters, allowing listeners to connect. It launches in alpha today.

• TuneIn claims a 27% year-on-year increase in online listening, and has unveiled a new ad campaign, “Hear Here”.

• Your privacy is important when you’re searching for a new job. On Podjobs, our podcasting jobs website, we’ve removed all third-party frameworks, font resources and analytics from the site.

Tips and tricks - with Podcorn

• John Gilroy writes about mistakes to make on the Apple Podcasts directory, especially focusing on your metadata.
• What is Podcast Metadata and will it improve the success of my podcast? by Gabrielle Corbett also looks at metadata - this time, getting it right for Spotify.
• Martin Bamford has got to episode 500 of Informed Choice Radio, a personal finance podcast. He covers 25 key learnings from the experience. (We hit episode 800 of ours last Friday, apparently).

This link is no longer available, as at Aug 25 2023

Podcast News - with The Jordan Harbinger Show

On The Jordan Harbinger Show Coffeezilla: a prolific YouTuber who exposes fake guru scam artists and alerts would-be victims to the tactics used to part them from their hard-earned money. Learn what to spot

180 Grams is a brand new podcast from Mushroom Group, the Australian music and entertainment group. The first season focuses on rock’n’soul group The Teskey Brothers. (180 grams is the weight of a collector’s edition vinyl record. Ask your dad.)

Essentialism, the pursuit of “less, but better”, is now a podcast. The first four episodes are available now, with a number of high-profile guests including Arianna Huffington, Tim Ferriss and the Gettings Things Done author David Allen to come.

Conservative Curious is a new podcast “exploring a more intellectually-constructive brand of cultural commentary … interviewing guests with unique perspectives, inviting heterodoxy and bending toward a contemporary-classical aesthetic”, according to a press release.