B (2:59)

It totally is. I feel like, yeah, about seven or eight years ago, I never listened to podcasts, and now it's like my go to. I would say I listen to podcasts more than I listen to music.

C (3:11)

Same here.

B (3:12)

And I just like it because I can just pick my topic and it's like reading a book without having to read. I can just drive and listen to something, and I think it's fantastic.

C (3:19)

Yeah, it's replaced my, my runtime content. It used to be music, and now I really do need someone talking to me and for me to be engaged in a story, for me to ignore the pain in my legs, to keep going. So, yeah, I, I agree with you. Podcast has actually put the scales on, on my audio consumption.

B (3:41)

I'd love to hear from you, Jen. You come from a great background, and we had chatted before that your growth and your career trajectory wasn't necessarily linear, that you followed what you thought was right, and you did, and you joined companies that you thought were doing the right thing. Can you just take me back to your career path and what brought you to DAX today, leading on their sales efforts?

C (4:04)

Yeah, for sure. I stumbled upon digital media as a Rutgers college student. I looked on the college board for, in our school of communication for internships, and I landed an internship at this tiny little website. And one of the greatest lessons I got was from my mentor at that internship who said, hey, no matter what you do, whether you go into sales or if you want to go into advertising or not, the most important part is, you know, those relationships and to never burn a bridge. Whoever you meet or you work with that's in the industry or adjacent to the industry, they could be your boss or your client the next time around. That's been really great advice for me. So because of that internship, I got my first job out of college, which was Ogilvy, and gave me a taste of agency life. I was there for a little bit before I went to a second agency. Agency life is hard. I have a lot of empathy and compassion for our agency clients. They have to do, they have to wear so many hats. And I, I, I remember doing that myself, and I ended up getting recruited by one of my salespeople to move over to the sales side. Um, for me, it was the Best choice I ever made. Um, I got to tangibly see, you know, however hard I worked, I was working for myself and I could tie that to my bonus. And that's how I landed at IGN Entertainment, which was fantastic. That was before we had apps, before the iPhone was really taking off. So working in content or a very well known website for gaming and entertainment content. And then that led me to really dive into audio. My first foray was Pandora and then ended up going to Gimlet Media because I was so interested in podcasts, which then get acquired by Spotify. And after a good time at Spotify, about six years, went over to Paramount. So, yeah, it's been a winding road, I would say. While I was trying to figure out my steps, even when I was at the internship, I had my mentor at the time and there was another gentleman who I met with quite a bit just for advice. He had a whole lot more experience and he just, you know, some of his, his advice really guided me of like, where, where can I learn the most to make a decision? I don't have to decide who I want to be or what I want to do right now, but what do I want to learn next and let that guide me. That's how it led me to the agency side. And it was a great experience because I got to be in the middle of the process and work with so many different teams, see so many different perspectives and see, oh, what do I like about, you know, creative. What do I like about, you know, the planning side? What do I like about, you know, potentially the sales side, which helped me make that decision to move over to sales. But it wasn't always very linear. I mean, even at Spotify, I had an amazing female leader, Julie Clark. She was a great example to me of, you know, leadership can come in many different forms. It's not necessarily always in the title. And I really wanted to pursue and understand the content side of really podcasts and really big podcasts. So that's where I got the opportunity to, to work on Michelle Obama's very first podcast. Bringing that to market with the incredible sales team at Spotify, like trying to package that up, trying to work with marketing and PR and the higher ground audio team. So, you know, that was a choice where I'm like, you know what, I really am so interested that I really want to understand that side. So I ended up doing that. In addition to my sales role for a couple of years, I ended up working on Barack Obama's first podcast with Bruce Springsteen. So, yeah, I've I've just taken some steps where I'm like, I could do that next level. I could potentially get that, you know, higher title. But the draw to learn something new is much bigger pull. And I think I'm really, really grateful that I did make that choice. I grew so much from, you know, taking that step and exposed me to so much more. It actually made me love podcasts even more. And I'm still, still part of the podcast industry and still still trying to help them monetize and, and make money and continue the shows that we love. But, yeah, that's a little bit about, I guess, way.

B (8:40)

No, I, I love it. I think, I think you gave me, like, a really good understanding of your background and where you come from. And podcasting in general is pot. Like, it really is a growing medium. It's becoming a bigger and bigger part of media budgets and how budgets are allocated for major brands. But there seems to be this middle area, this missing middle that you and I had chatted about prior in terms of the audience segments that aren't always being addressed or being reached from various providers in the market. I'm not going to say who or who not, but I would love for you to chat about that a little bit in terms of, like, how, how is Dax different? What are you doing in market for your brands and agencies and what do you do for your podcasts?

C (9:26)

Yeah, I'll take a quick step back to just address, like, the main issue that we're facing in this space. It's just that the pie for audio from advertisers is just too small, so we're not working with a lot. And our agency clients also are not working with a lot. So that money usually gets divvied up into maybe two streaming apps for audio. Very, very popular. But the problem is, and where the missing middle happens is that one of them usually skews very heavily in an older audience and an older demo, then the other one skews very heavily in a young demo. So they're missing out on quite a lot of their main target audience in terms of scale when they're only using maybe two partners for this audio budget. The other issue that's, you know, at hand is that, you know, a lot of clients are using MMM to measure, well, what is the outcomes of audio. But the share is so small it's not significant enough to really make any impact. So it works against our channel and it looks like we're not driving any sales. But when you're only spending 3% of your budget in Audio, of course, it's not going to show any sort of success. And the other issue with the missing middle, in addition to demo, it's like we're also missing many markets. Right? These are only singular apps. So these apps, usually they appeal to particular DMAs and you're missing parts of the country. You're not speaking to everyone. And so what DAX brings to the table and is premium audio that's ad supported across the entire country, that is sourced by dozens of apps that have music, news, podcasts, and hundreds of digital streaming broadcast stations where we truly can deliver local at scale. And I was, I, you know, I've worked at many companies before that are streaming music and I've had local campaigns there a lot of challenges with delivering in full. And I would say Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets in addition to Tier 1, and we did not have that problem. That was the first thing I learned within the first month working here. I'm like, wow, we are really great at scaling in these local markets in addition, you know, to our national reach. So that's where I'm trying to come to the marketplace to just share, hey, if we can really drive effectiveness and awareness of how audio delivers results, you absolutely need to be expanding your reach and maximizing that strategy with DAX in play. Because right now what DAX has, We exclusively represent 20% of the US audio marketplace. All of that is ad supported. So that's a fifth of the market that advertisers are not reaching when they don't include us in their audio mix, when they're only using one partner or maybe two partners.

B (12:31)

So when you look at the like, penetration rate of podcast listening or audio users versus television users, I would assume you can target a lot of people across audio. But you had mentioned the average percentage of media spend is somewhere like 3% on audio, while I believe media spend on television or streaming television in General, somewhere like 15% or 20% of overall media spend.

C (12:57)

Correct.

B (12:58)

Why do you think outside of what you mentioned, they don't lean in? Like, as a medium, it's fantastic. Attention span is great. Like, I pay attention to my podcasts. When I listen to podcasts, I don't ignore them. I do ignore my television as I play on my phone, but I don't ignore podcasts while I'm driving because I have nothing else to distract me. Why do you think they don't lean in? Is it like a measurement thing? Is it just an education problem? Would love to hear a little bit more about that.

C (13:23)

Yeah, I think it's definitely education and measurement, education, as in, like always, the visual assets, they get priority. They're also very costly. Right. So let's just be real. They're expensive to create. Clients want to use them as much as possible to justify that cost. But the reality as well is that no consumer is in front of a screen a hundred percent of the day. You know, you talk about TV and you know that being one of the competitors to the audio channel. So is social. But if you think about social, the average US consumer spends a little over two hours per day on social, but in audio they spend double that. They spend a little bit over four hours per day. And so that education is not happening enough. I think we have to be louder as a channel and as an industry bringing that education to place and also the measurement. So we are finally seeing audio catch up. It has not been getting the credit it deserves for the outcomes we do drive. And that was an announcement we made at CES a couple of weeks ago. We partnered with Disco D I S Q oho to actually provide brand lift studies for all of the campaigns that run on DAX at no additional cost because we want more ammo for our clients to show the effectiveness of audio, and we don't want cost to be a barrier to bring that to the table. Like, this is why this channel needs more investment.

B (14:55)

Right? And you know, one thing that you mentioned was the focus of podcasting. There's. There's one aspect that I think is. Is really often not as valuable to media buyers as it should be. Meaning I think it's greatly undervalued in market, which is the host red kind of branded content that people do when we as a network at marketecture, because we have multiple. I had mentioned this to you earlier, we have marketecture, we have Ad Tech God, we have Monopoly Report. We have so many podcasts in our network. But the host red scripts and the branding content that we run is so valuable to advertisers that we're basically sold out all year long. Like we sell these out three, four, five, six, seven months in advance. They don't even know who's coming on the podcast, but they want it because the listenership and the focus and attention from listeners are there. Do you feel that that's going to continue being a really strong piece of monetizing podcasts? Or do you think maybe Programmatic will somehow find a way to take those host red branded content types away? I mean, would love to hear your view on it.

C (16:00)

I think authentic voice of the host will always carry value and really, the. The magic of podcasts is that every consumer has opted in, they have chosen to listen to that voice for a set period of time, every week, every day, whatever the frequency might be. So that is the main, I would say, magic sauce of podcasts. That's why the engagement is so high. That's why it's so valuable to hear from this person. You care about their opinion and you are doing whatever you can to pay attention. Right? This is a leaned in behavior. It's. It's a little bit different with music, which can sometimes be in the background. So I think there's always going to be value there. I think what's going to happen with Programmatic is that there will be innovation on how do we combine the two in a meaningful way without cheapening the listener experience? Because listeners are very savvy in knowing their host voice, right? Like, it can't be similar. It has to be the same. It has to be that voice, right? You know, the intonations, you know, how they say certain words or how they tell certain jokes that. That can't be taken away. But I think there will be innovation so that we can streamline the process and take the friction out of the buying process. Because right now it is very tedious. And I understand, I have. I've been working with clients in podcast host reads for many years now, and it is just so much work. And so if we can figure out and continue in moving forward in that innovation to make it easier, like, we will still see that value, but it will come with more ease, I would say, with the process.

B (17:43)

Do you think that there's. I'm trying to think of the right way to word it because as, like, Programmatic pops its head into audio, the value of the voices you mentioned is so important. Yet I'm hearing more and more from people that they want to programmatically buy our inventory. And we've, in a polite way, not allowed it, and we've. We've kind of blocked it out because we believe that we have such a niche audience highly focused on advertising, marketing, media, ad tech, that opening up to programmatic markets are interesting and valuable to advertisers. What do you think would be the core reason why a podcast that currently has host red scripts would move into programmatically monetizing the inventory? Or do you recommend host red scripts more than that?

C (18:33)

I would say it depends, right? Because right now, I would say we're trying to take out the friction not only for advertisers, but also the hosts, the hosts have to make time to review the scripts to get in the studio, do the recording. If there's any potential feedback or flags from the client. Right. There's rounds of review. I think if there's a way, and I'm being coy about this because we are going at dax, we are going to be announcing something soon where we are trying to marry the beauty of Programmatic with host reads so that hosts have more time to focus on what, you know, they care about the most, which is their show and their content. And how do we get and grow this audience? How do we get people to come back next week? And it will free up their time and having to be in the studio to do the ad reads and have an avenue for revenue faster to monetize their show more easily and more quickly.

B (19:36)

What kind of. Because you had mentioned you had a very good audience in, like, the local markets. Just generally speaking, what type of advertisers do you usually work with? I know you probably work with national brands, but what type of local businesses or local establishments would run on podcast advertising? From what you're seeing, from your. Your perspective, Sure.

C (19:54)

I mean, they're national brands who are also spending with us locally. So McDonald's, Verizon, you know, you're. You're seeing like a Walmart spectrum, like all of the major brands that you're aware of, where they have local presence or they're trying to find customers at a local level. They're working with us that way as well. There's also smaller shops, too, but those are the big ones that come to mind. They are still doing both with us.

B (20:27)

What do you think, Jen, is the hottest thing to happen or the biggest change in audio over the next, I don't know, 12 to 18 months. What are you mostly excited about?

C (20:38)

I'm just excited for audio to be taken more seriously with the advancement of measurement. So the more measurement that comes to the table to make us comparable in those MMM results, the more that we'll start to see that shift. So no longer will it be 3% of overall spend, but it should be closer to, I would say, 15. You know, I think 20% of someone's day is in audio, so we would want it closer to 20%, but, you know, baby steps from three.

B (21:10)

I would love that. I mean, personally, I think that there's a lot of even, you know, for our clientele that work with us, mostly ad tech companies, publishers that advertise with us today, like they do it, but I don't think they lean in as much as they should. I don't think they realize what percentage of our audience or agencies and brands that could utilize their service. I don't think they realize how many are publishers or publisher employees that would love to hear about their tech company. Yeah, and I hope that that goes across the board, that just ad spend goes up on podcasting overall.

C (21:42)

Yeah. And I think that's just so much about the focus on the visuals. A lot of clients, sometimes their pushback is. But we want the, the consumer to see the product. They don't always have to see it though. And even when I think there's so many studies, like you can be looking at something but not really seeing it. You know what I mean? Like, sometimes when you hear something a few times, it sticks even faster because you're not actively looking at something, but you're actively listening. So there is something to be said about having that impact quantified for advertisers. But you know, sometimes just seeing the visuals, that's like the sexy thing, right? The sexy creative is something that's flashy and that they can watch and see. How do we make audio sound that way and translate it that way?

B (22:33)

I agree. As long as it's not AI slop. I'm totally good with good creative.

C (22:37)

I agree with you. I don't like what's happening right now with some of that AI.

B (22:41)

I feel like it's just killing it all. I don't either. I mean, some of the creative like to utilize it to improve your real video. I'm all for it. Like if it creates it up or gives it a graphic or gives it some sort of, I don't know, buzz to it and something that draws a little bit of attention, that's great. But after seeing that Coca Cola commercial with the 18 wheeler that had like 22 wheels and then the car after it had like six wheels and like you still find these errors, like it's not ready for prime time yet. And I think that concerns me. It's like, let's refine it and get better at it first. And then I'm totally okay with using it. But for now it's just obviously AI and I'm just, I'm not a huge fan.

C (23:25)

Yeah, it's, it's not ready and I don't think we should force fit it right now because consumers are, you know, you're hearing from consumers, they don't like it either.

B (23:33)

Jen, I wanted to thank you. Thank you for joining me today. It was great meeting you, by the way. And thanks for joining me on the pod.

C (23:40)

It was so nice meeting you too. Thanks for having me.

B (23:42)

ATG thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Adtech God Podcast, a podcast for the people about the people. Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of ad tech. Don't miss out on the latest updates, so follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.