🌐 Ad Revenue Forecasts, Podcast Performance Abroad, & More

Things are looking cautiously optimistic for the advertising world in the back half of 2024. GroupM’s 2024 Global Midyear Forecast predicts worldwide ad revenue will increase 7.8% in 2024, reaching $989.8 billion. Narrowing down to the U.S. level, every category of media is predicted to grow save for newspapers, magazines, and traditional TV. MAGNA anticipates Australia’s total ad revenue will increase 7.3% this year, a noticeable upgrade from their December prediction AU revenue would only increase 3.8%. 

The 2024 Reuters Institute Digital News Report finds 44% of respondents in Span and the U.S. reported listening to a podcast in the past month, the highest reach for podcasting in the 20 countries surveyed. Ireland and Sweden trail close behind at 31% and Germany at 30%. Meanwhile, the University of Canberra Digital News Report: Australia 2024 finds 40% of all Australians listen to podcasts.

Accessibility captions have been a commonly-provided, if not industry standard, for television, movies, and music for quite some time. Podcasting’s first significant step towards that level of accessibility, outside the years-long efforts of individual podcasts to provide hand-written transcripts, is Apple’s recent launch of automatic transcripts for every podcast on the platform. While others have dabbled in generative AI-based vocal transcriptions and translations in pilot programs, the Apple Podcasts initiative is notable both for its scale and accuracy.

Spotify is preparing to launch an in-house creative agency called Creative Lab. The streaming platform is looking to expand its facilities for collaboration with brands and agencies, providing new tools for audio campaigns within the app. Spotify is also testing generative AI for a voiceover tool called “Quick Audio” within the Spotify Ads manager. Spotify aims for this tool to enable brands to generate scripts and voiceover for future ad campaigns.

The new integration makes Pandora the first digital audio platform to implement the UID2 alternative ID. It’s also Pandora’s first partnership with a third-party ID. With the integration, AdsWizz has more addressability, including matching email addresses of logged-in users to UID2 tokens that can be passed on to The Trade Desk and other ad platforms that use UID2. The move is in part motivated by brands regularly asking for alternative ID integrations and addressable audio audiences.

…as for the rest of the news:

• Potcast Productions secures pre-seed investment to expand Egypt’s podcasting scene

• iHeartMedia and Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment have debuted the initial slate of Women’s Sports Audio Network podcasts at Cannes Lions.

• Transistor shows how to optimize and customize show notes for different podcast player apps.

• AdExchanger interviews Mundo Hispano Digital’s CEO to discuss what advertisers miss when trying to reach Hispanic audiences.

Jobs in Podcasting

Press Release Hub

Submit a press release or job posting for free

Made possible by Spreaker