Spotify's Premium Subscribers Grew YoY Despite Setbacks / Managing Burnout in Podcasting / Influencer-Led Podcasts Better for Ads?

Plus, podcast ads' avg conversion drops as frequency rises, Warner Music Group's new culture-forward network, Triton's Canada Podcast Ranker

Inside.com Part of   Network April 28, 2022

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Despite the Joe Rogan vaccine misinformation controversy and losing 1.5 million users in Russia, Spotify's Q1'22 earnings call reported a 15% YoY growth in premium subscribers. This was in keeping with estimates, reports TechCrunch.  More: Refresher: Earlier this year, musician Neil Young pulled his music from Spotify in protest of the audio app not taking definitive action on Joe Rogan's show and guests spreading COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. Young was followed by musicians including Joni Mitchell. Podcasters including Dr. Brené Brown, The Obamas, and Harry and Meghan expressed their displeasure with this as well. I covered this in detail here.  Despite these setbacks, Spotify reported growth in YoY premium subscribers to 182 million.  Ad-supported subscribers grew 21% YoY from Q1'21 to Q1'22 and are currently at 252 million.  Spotify currently hosts 4 million podcasts on its platform, which is an increase from 3.6 million in Q4'21. The earnings report also shares that the loss of subscribers in Russia was offset by "outperformance in Latin America and Europe."  While earnings grew, stock prices are currently down by more than 12%.

The number of brands advertising in podcast ads has grown 67% YoY to now reach 870, while ad spend is now at $408M, per Podsights' Benchmark Report. While the average conversion rate has fallen, the attributed purchase conversion rate has grown QoQ.  More: Advertising with two to 10 publishers yields the highest conversion rates for brands.  The average conversion rate experienced an all-time low last quarter as ad frequency continues to rise.  Purchase conversion rates grew from 0.039% in Q4'21 to 0.045% in Q1'22. Pre-roll ads performed better than mid-roll for the first time, but only by a margin of 0.05%. While post-roll performance saw the most growth YoY, it still ranks last in effectiveness.  Source: Podcast Advertising Benchmark Report by Podsights Q'22 Brands from the industries of Retail, Fashion, and Beauty enjoyed the highest purchase intent.  Download the full report for free here.

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An Invitation to Talk About Burnout There's been much talk about burnout in podcasting this week. Tal Minear wrote a piece on "avoiding and managing burnout when crowdfunding for audio drama." Arielle Nissenblatt led a Twitter Spaces on overcoming burnout in podcasting. In light of these conversations, I wanted to invite questions from fellow podcasters and colleagues in the space on dealing with burnout. My email and Twitter DMs are open to you.  In the meantime, here are two resources I fall back on:  Hillary Russo and her podcast "HIListically Speaking."  A "Ten Percent Happier" episode with Emily and Amelia Nagoski for "the burned out, fried, and exhausted."

PODS ON THE BLOCK  "Square Peg" is a series following the story of Rob Collins, an American suburban dad, and his quest to help Frank Carver get his brother imprisoned. A "bizarrely heartfelt story," it weaves through England, Berlin, and finally, a funeral.  "Lives Less Ordinary" is a new show from BBC News that welcomes listeners to step into someone else's life and story. The first episode shares the tale of an Olympic hopeful turned audacious thief.  "Spit" is returning for a new season today. Host Baratunde Thurston is joined by a guest host and their podcast for each episode, the common theme being, "can DNA influence your health?"

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PODCAST EVENT UPDATES Salescast is hosting a webinar on how to organically grow your podcast audience on April 29 at 11 a.m. PT (2 p.m. ET.)  Reminder: The Outlier Podcast Festival, a traveling event for both independent creators and industry giants in podcasting, is being held in Austin on May 5-6. PodCode is hosting a free webinar on finding new listeners through cross-promos with other podcasts with the same audience profile on May 11.

QUICK HITS Over 5,000 global customers trust Outreach as their Sales Execution Platform. Find out why it’s the right solution for your team.* Warner Music Group announced a new podcast network that will produce "culture-forward audio content," featuring podcasts from artists including Lupita Nyong'o and Jason Derulo.  Marketing Brew reports that influencer-led podcasts prove more lucrative for advertisers.  Triton Digital released its first-ever Canada Podcast Ranker for March 2022. "Dateline NBC" was the top overall show.  If you've just finished watching Netflix's "Archive 81" and are wondering where to pick the podcast up from, Reddit has your back.  To deliver real-time analytics on massive datasets, developers must balance latency, throughput, concurrency, and data freshness. Watch Molecula's Webinar.* *This is sponsored content.

Upcoming events at Inside: May 03 - Venturing in VC - Episode #17 with Ryan Holmes (LOI Venture) (Register Here) May 05 - [Live Webinar] Women in Sales: How to Build Your Personal Brand to Drive More Sales presented by Introhive (Register Here) * May 12 - Making Metaverse Dating a Reality (Register Here) May 18 - Need To Know NoCoder: Jatin Arora (Utilize) (Register Here) May 19 - Understanding Fractionalization (Register Here) May 24 - Meet Our Fund 3 (Register Here) May 31 - Ethereum Merge with Anthony Donofrio (Ethereum) (Register Here) June 01 - Selling Consumer Goods in Web3 (Register Here) June 09 - Empowering Content Creators with No Code (Register Here) June 22 - The Future of Open-Source Software Security (Register Here) *This is a sponsored listing.

This newsletter was curated by podcast geek and marketer, Shreya. She loves storytelling in all forms but podcasts are her favourite. A resident of Vancouver, her favorite podcast genres are sci-fi, comedy, TTRPG, and a combination thereof. Follow her adventures on Twitter. Do you or anyone you know host an indie podcast? Hit reply to tell me about it. I might feature it on Pods On The Block!     Editor Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford.

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