The podcasting business, it turns out, is not entirely certain what a podcast is.
This may seem like the sort of existential confusion better suited to a philosophy seminar than a trade conference, but the ambiguity has real commercial consequences. Since July, a group of 12 industry executives — representing Spotify, SiriusXM, YouTube, and a collection of advertising agencies and platforms — has been meeting in what might be described as a definitional support group, trying to agree on what exactly they are all selling.
The taskforce was organized by Oxford Road, a podcast advertising agency, and includes representatives from United Talent Agency, the hosting platform Libsyn, the metrics company Podscribe, and two of the medium's most persistent advertisers, DraftKings and BetterHelp. (The latter two have surely earned a seat at any table where the future of podcast advertising is discussed, if only through sheer repetition.)
The definitional crisis has been brought on by the rise of video podcasts, which increasingly resemble — and compete with — television programs. When a podcast is also a video, advertising buyers find themselves in jurisdictional disputes over whose budget should pay for it.
"There's oftentimes a tug of war, or it gets orphaned, because nobody knows," said Dan Granger, the chief executive of Oxford Road.
The measurement problem is equally tangled. Advertisers once relied on pixels embedded in RSS feeds to track whether listeners became customers, but as YouTube emerged as a dominant platform and some distributors abandoned pixel tracking, the ability to compare performance across Apple, Spotify, and YouTube has eroded. According to an Oxford Road survey, 76 percent of brands said they would increase podcast spending if YouTube attribution could be standardized with audio — a shift that could represent an additional $1 billion in advertising.
The taskforce plans to present its proposals at Oxford Road's advertising summit in July. Members will vote on a shared definition and measurement standards, though participants who disagree may attach a formal dissent. (A provision that suggests the conversations have been lively.)
Whether the industry adopts whatever the group proposes remains uncertain. Mr. Granger acknowledged that no one is legislating standards, and the best the taskforce can do is explain the commercial logic of alignment.
"We are excited to help move the industry forward," said Keri Degroote, senior vice president of research and campaign effectiveness at SiriusXM Media, in the measured language of someone who has attended many such meetings.
The podcasting business, in other words, is growing up — and like most maturing industries, it is discovering that the questions it avoided in its youth have a way of returning, usually around budget season.
Original story published in The Hollywood Reporter: "What Is A Podcast? Podcast Industry Taskforce Forms to Determine Definition and More"