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Upfronts for Podcast Ads?

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Filmtv Law
Upfronts for Podcast Ads?

There’s no secret that entertainment has moved into our homes in a big way. We’ve already seen the boom from the streaming industry in the last year. Perhaps unappreciated by many entertainment-focused businesses, however, we’ve seen a boom in the podcast industry as well. It’s enough to see upfronts for podcast advertising now becoming a normal practice. BLAKE & WANG P.A Entertainment Attorney Los Angeles investigate further.

The impact of the podcast

While streaming has been the de facto winner of the entertainment wars over the unprecedented time in human history we have recently lived through, the podcast has, in many significant ways, been the runner-up. From podcasts focused exclusively on the health crisis itself, to news coverage, to simple entertainment to keep busy minds occupied, we can trace a podcast boom that’s left its own marks on the entertainment industry. We’ve even seen one true-crime podcast attract significant attention and accolades for helping to reveal new evidence and drive arrests in a 25-year old murder case.

As with streaming, the podcast offers a format that can be produced at high quality with smaller production teams, yet offers a versatile and easily adaptable broadcast. With regards to advertising, we’ve even seen advertisers opt to be less squeamish about advertising alongside hard news podcasts, vs the same genre in other formats. 

Approaching $1 billion in revenue

This is a boom that isn’t entirely linked only to the home-focused nature of many people’s lives last year. Growth in the podcast industry was already earmarked to rise by 15% from 2019 levels, and was slightly slowed by the lockdowns on public transportation and production, leading to some adaptations within the industry. This growth is typically linked to an ‘audio renaissance’, with innovative ad tech, spikes in listener interest, and the evolution of premium content services all driving it. 

However you look at it, we’re in the boom era for the podcast, and advertisers have proven keen to cash in on this new and versatile field too. In fact, where we once would see traditional media and online/OTT sources treated very differently, the advertising lines have blurred considerably over the last year. Including the introduction of an upfront model for podcast adverts

Moving to the upfront for podcast advertising

Once purely a feature of the broadcast TV industry, the upfront involves an advertiser committing a negotiated sum for a specific run of ads over a specified time period. In return, the broadcast offers some guarantees on the audience numbers receiving it. 

Advertisers have now become confident enough in the appeal of podcasts to offer the upfront format. We’ve now seen Sirius XM, Pandora, and Stitcher create a new ad sales group to cover their combined resources, under the banner of SXM Media. With a combined reach of 150 million listeners and the status of the largest digital audio ad platform in North America, the new entity will control the radio, streaming music, and podcasting ad sales jointly. It will also act as advertising/sales representative for other companies, including NBCUniversal News Group and SoundCloud, holding exclusive ad representation for NBC News and MSNBC podcasts, as well as having additional rights to CNBC’s offerings. 

It’s certainly a bold move that could position them as the premier audio entertainment leader. With the era of the podcast firmly underway, to the extent we’ve seen advertiser confidence soar to levels that allow upfronts to be offered, it’s certainly an arena in which we predict exciting developments to follow. As always, BLAKE & WANG P.A entertainment law firms los angeles will be there to keep you in the loop. 



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