Spotify leaves the IAB; no longer certified

• EXCLUSIVE: Spotify is no longer a member of the IAB, having quietly ceased its membership in the last three months. After a press enquiry from Podnews, Spotify’s Megaphone, Chartable and the Spotify for Podcasters host formerly known as Anchor were removed from the published list of compliant companies for podcast measurement. They last underwent certification in 2020.

  • “Spotify values our longstanding partnership with the IAB,” a Spotify spokesperson told Podnews. “For 2024, we’re taking a pause to make sure that we can participate in an active way and will reevaluate a formal membership later this year. In the meantime, Spotify remains committed to the IAB mission. We champion its efforts and remain deeply connected to the work supporting digital advertising without direct membership this year. While Megaphone, Chartable and S4P are not officially IAB certified at this time, all three platforms are compliant to the IAB v2.1 standard.”
  • Spotify is the largest global digital audio advertising company, with ad-supported revenue in Q4/23 of €501mn ($533mn), compared with SiriusXM $479mn; iHeart digital audio revenue $317mn; Cumulus digital revenue $221mn; Audacy digital revenue $69.1mn; Acast $45mn. All these other companies are IAB members.
  • We’d like to carry views from the rest of the industry about this news later this week. Please hit reply (or mail editor@podnews.net) if you’ve something to say.

• Podcast hosting company Podbean has been also removed from the list of IAB compliant companies. They were last certified in 2020. The IAB’s Compliance Certification Guide states (p12) that a company must submit for certification at least once in the past twelve months.

• Last week, Libsyn was recertified under the IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines v2.1. Captivate and Buzzsprout were last certified under v2.0 in 2020, but both companies are in the process of recertification.

  • The IAB doesn’t publish the costs for undergoing podcast measurement certification; they are - Member: $12,500 (new) / $​6,250​ (renew); Non-Member: $17,500 (new) / $8,750 (renew).

• Realm has selected Flightpath as an ad revenue optimisation tool.

• City, University of London is looking for a Podcaster in Residence. The position is open to early career practitioners, with under five years of professional experience. The university is also offering scholarships and bursaries to UK-based students, in a programme funded by Spotify and Goalhanger.

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• Spotify write about how the company approaches safety.

• From the archive - Dan Misener writes about Jimmy and the magic pizza shop, a parable on why he feels it’s important to have measurement guidelines that we all agree on.

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Moves and hires

• Want to work on one of the top fifteen podcasts in the UK? Global is looking for an Executive Podcast Producer for The News Agents.

The Tech Stuff - with RSS.com

• You can now follow your favourite podcast on the fediverse - Mastodon, Pleroma and similar. PodcastAP will help you find the automated accounts - you can even upload OPML to it. Podnews is on the fediverse properly as @podnews@social.podnews.net - we’d love to see you there.

• We’re now rate-limiting our podcast pages after significant, sustained crawling from IP addresses belonging to Microsoft. You (and they) can download a complete podcast database from the Podcast Index; extra costs for us have been well over $750. Anyone got Bill’s address?

• Spotify is supporting chapters - well, Podlove’s chapters. This show has chapter points in it; hosted by RSS Blue, the RSS feed is here.

• We’ve added an indication in our podcast pages for where podcasts use Podcasting 2.0 features, and are now showing “other shows you may enjoy” from both incoming and outgoing podroll mentions. The Podnews Weekly Review is a good example. Our podcast pages now only play the trailer (if there is one), rather than a list of episodes - we’d prefer you used a proper podcast app for that!

• Truefans got a good magazine article writeup in the City, University of London alumni magazine. (CEO Sam Sethi went there).

• Open podcast analytics service OP3 has added a new API and renamed one. They’re also looking for translations.

Tips and tricks - with Memberful

• Wondering how other podcasts like yours are doing in downloads? OP3 analytics are open to everyone, and our sister publication Podcast Business Journal publishes a selection of podcasts measured by the service, to help you compare.

• While the list of shows measured by OP3 is around 2,000 - and so is unlikely to be entirely representative of everyone - this shows the share of downloads over the past 30 days by podcast app. Spotify has a share of 49%.

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Dog parks are important public spaces, argues the new podcast Dog Parkology - a dog park is a space that allows our dogs to play with each other, but also a space that allows us to connect with strangers and build community in a way that we rarely have the opportunity for anymore. And someone’s bound to bring some snacks.

On the Media Voices Podcast this week, our Editor, James Cridland, talks about running a newsletter, and the podcast industry: “There’s a tale of two industries at the moment. There’s the US, which probably overheated. And then there’s the rest of the world where slow and steady wins the race.”