The audio opportunity; REmade topics revealed
The audio opportunity; REmade topics revealed
Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade. Today: As the PodPoll survey adds to the evidence of podcasting’s growth, what do media planners want?; Another networking opportunity at next week’s REmade; and a better day on the Unmade Index.
If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to an Unmade membership, this is the perfect time. Your membership includes:
A complimentary ticket to all of Unmade’s events, including HumAIn (2025), REmade (1 October), Unlock (31 October), and Compass (November);
Member-only content and our paywalled archives;
Your own copy of Media Unmade.
A retail media problem shared: announcing the REmade round tables
Cat McGinn, REmade curator, writes:
As we prepare to welcome the retail media community back to REmade next week, we have one final announcement to make.
REmade, running in Sydney on Tuesday for a third time, has evolved into a full-day program. For the first time, we will be holding round table discussions during the lunch break, to give attendees the opportunity to take deeper dives into key retail media topics and the opportunity to workshop solutions.
Delegates will benefit from the insights of subject matter experts hosting the discussions, and an opportunity to connect with peers in a focused, facilitated setting.
The round tables will be run under the Chatham House Rule which encourages participants to share the information and opinions they hear, but not the identity of fellow participants.
The topics, developed in consultation with our advisory panel, are designed to focus on the issues that matter most, allow delegates to learn how their peers are managing similar obstacles, and build their networks:
Finding the Balance: Explore the balance between revenue and customer experience, and discuss the role of endemic versus non-endemic advertising.
Connecting the Dots: Discover how to integrate in-store, online, and off-platform activities for omnichannel success.
Measurement and Attribution: Learn how to harness the power of data to unlock greater investment in the retail media landscape.
Ways of Working: A facilitated discussion into the organisational challenges faced by retailers and brands, the evolving role of agencies, and best practices for collaboration.
Data and Privacy: Gain insights into the implications of new privacy legislation for retail media, ensuring your strategies are compliant and future-proofed.
Registration for each round table is now open, with places available on a first come, first served basis. Existing ticket holders have the opportunity to take first pick by making a selection here.
Tickets for REmade are still available on the website. Unmade’s annual paid members are entitled to a complimentary pass.
Podcasting is still on the rise, but turning audio into one advertising ecosystem is the name of the game
Tim Burrowes writes:
It’s one of the oddities of mass media that 400-and-a-bit years in, we’re yet to devise a precise means of audience measurement.
For any medium, all that’s available is an approximation, and often via a system devised by people whose incentives are to record as large a number as possible in order to impress the advertisers.
For the most part, the best we can hope for is to observe the direction of travel. That includes podcasts.
The latest contribution arrives today from production house Deadset Studios, which commissions the PodPoll, conducted by research agency Insightfully. The online survey features 4,151 respondents, which makes it a decent sample size.
The number that stands out the most is the finding that 8.2m people, or 39% of Australia’s 15+ population, are listening to a podcast at least monthly.
That’s close(ish) to a similar stat in the latest wave of the Infinite Dial survey, conducted by Edison Research under the auspices of industry body Commercial Radio & Audio. According to Infinite Dial, released in July, 48% of the 12+ population had listened to a podcast within the last month.
So that suggests that, at least in terms of reach, podcasts are on track to becoming a mass medium. The question remains one of monetisation through advertising.
According to those PodPoll figures, that 8.2m is made up of 2m listening weekly, 4m fortnightly and 2.2m only once a month.
That suggests that the number of minutes of podcast content the average consumer is hearing in a given week is still quite low.
Because PodPoll a recall-based survey as opposed to log-based data, the numbers come with caveats. It’s the consumer’s best approximation of how much time they spend listening; that’s not far off how radio is measured through the diary system.
But perhaps the most informative PodPoll stat is the one around consumption.
The most common listening pattern (35%) amongst people who have consumed a podcast in the last month is just one to two hours per week. That amounts to a limited opportunity for advertisers given the relatively low ad load in most podcasts, particularly in pre-roll.
For media planners, the name of the game in most campaign plans is adding incremental reach. If these podcast listeners are people not being reached by radio, then switching in some podcast spend from radio or elsewhere becomes quite an interesting strategy.
Indeed, the audio industry’s next biggest challenge is to start delivering the sort of measurement the TV sector is getting to grips with. Paramount, which has pillars in linear, FAST (free ad supported TV), BVOD (broadcast video on demand), and SVOD (subscription video on demand), looks likely to be first to market with the ability to plan and buy across all four with Paramount Connect. Nine is close too with its Total TV proposition, while Seven has so far gone with seperate sales offerings.
While audio is a smaller sector and the tech investment is considerable, allowing for planning across broadcast and podcast will be the name of the game. It’s what advertisers want.
Declarations of interest: Unmade was CRA’s trade press partner in this year’s Infinite Dial study; via my super fund, I have investments in all the radio players including Southern Cross Austereo, ARN Media, Nine and Sports Entertainment Group, and in programmatic audio company Sonnant.
Unmade Index improves
The Umade Index staged a mild recovery on Tuesday, improving by 0.78% to 442.7 points. Any further fall would have taken the index to a new record low.
Tuesday’s biggest mover was Domain which improved by just over 2% and in turn lifted majority owner Nine by 0.8%. IVE Group also improved, by nearly 2%.
Southern Cross Austereo improved by 1% to although it still remains close to last week’s low point.
Time to leave you to your Wednesday.
We’ll be back tomorrow with an audio-led edition in which I talk to the CEO of Vinyl Group, Josh Simons, about a tumultuous few months for the owner of Brag Media and now Mediaweek.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media
