The 'evolution' in the Podcast Evolutions trade show means finding ways to tie together platforms, markets and business models, if the first day of the show is any indication.
While downloads remain the default metric for measuring podcast success, completion rate and other variables are increasingly being used to determine value to advertisers. Data sources continue to multiply, as creators and analytics platforms work to weigh and combine datasets into actionable datasets, while the timing, placement, loading and spend on advertising remain fluid for individual shows, presenters told the audience throughout a series of panels and focus groups.
AI translation software has the potential to repurpose content into new languages, but in the developing world, multiple smaller or regional languages and dialects still haven't been put through AI learning yet, limiting the potential to more common languages.
Support models remain all over the map; but in Belgium, where Flemish-audience shows are ad supported but French-language programs are mostly government subsidized, even the maps can be misleading.
Some shows can be shipped across borders, but with different ads depending on where the listener is located. In some cases, the ads aren't even in the same language as the content, depending on the bilingual tendencies of audiences.
And, in a neat backdoor trick for shows with audio and video distribution, advertising platforms are sometimes targeting media buyers from big advertisers twice: an advertiser's audio/radio team might say no to supporting a podcast, but if the video/TV buyers are a separate team, they might dip into a different budget pool to support the same show in video format- or vice versa.
We'll be breaking down all of these topics and more in upcoming articles, so keep an eye out for deeper dives- and for tomorrow's recap of Day 2 here in Chicago.
-Dan
