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Ep. 95 Podcasting’s Next Wave: Growth, Metrics, and Monetization with Sharon Taylor
00:35:46
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- [00:01]
Sharon Taylor
Exclusive inventory, fragmented tech, high minimums. Programmatic is built for the few, but advertisers need scale without the complexity. Adlib sits above it all, orchestrating activation, optimizing 24, 7, 365 and giving you back 40% of the time spent juggling multiple DSPs and media partners. 1 Login every platform, no trade offs. Go to getadlib.com G-E-T a d l.
- [00:36]
Host (Tech God)
I b.com this podcast is brought to you by Vyant. Still investing in paid search? Hoping to grow your business? Tides are shifting, AI tools have arrived and in the end search is simply capturing existing customers that already know your brand. The real growth is it's in creating new demand on CTV where attention is high and co viewing is the norm. Vyant's AI powered DSP puts your brand on the largest screen in the home across premium streaming content including live sports driving real outcomes. See why Vayant leads in ctv@vyantctv.com that's vayantctv.com welcome to the AdTech Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host at Tech God. Welcome to the AdTech God Pod where we speak with the revenue drivers of our industry. Today's guest is Sharon Taylor, the Chief Revenue Officer at Triton Digital, which is one of the biggest names in digital audio tech. They power streaming, podcasting and audio advertising for publishers all over the world and work with brands like BBC Audioboom and many, many others. In 2021 it was acquired by iHeartra 230 million. So I'm really interested in digging into the podcasting space and the audio space with Sharon today. Sharon, thank you for joining me on the pod.
- [02:02]
Sharon Taylor
Thank you for having me. I can finally say thank you God for asking me about podcasting.
- [02:06]
Host (Tech God)
You're officially blessed. I love podcasting. It's probably one of my passions. I don't know how I got into it, but I really enjoy it and I hope that I do it forever. So thank you for being here and I'm really looking forward to hearing about just the the audio space overall. So Sharon, you were acquired by iHeart in 2021. You were the chief revenue officer for the company. I would love to hear about how you got into the audio space and really what kept you around for so long. Not just specifically at Triton, just in the audio space overall.
- [02:43]
Sharon Taylor
Yeah, sure. I mean I think it sounds a lot like you where once you touch audio and podcasting like it just kind of gets its claws into you and you realize what a very exciting space it is. And so I got into the audio space in 2016. I had spent almost a decade in like tech companies, managed services, web firms, et cetera. And I kind of took a left turn and there was a startup in Australia called Omnistudio who was building one of the very first podcasts hosting and distribution platforms. And I took an eight week contract to help them with business related things and that turned into the CEO role. I was there for a couple of years before we sold that company in 2019, two years into that partnership to Triton Digital and that's still in Australia. At the time, Triton was owned by Scripps, which was a, and still is a very large news provider in the United States. And then as part of the acquisition of iHeart from Scripts of Triton, I moved up into Montreal from Australia, still kind of looking after Omni Studio, but getting to look after a larger amount of like the audio technology through Triton Digital.
- [03:58]
Host (Tech God)
You know, as an Australian living in Canada, do you see different trends happening for podcasting in Canada than the United States, or are you seeing very similar trends in terms of its growth? How is it differing even with Australia? Because US Seems to be booming in especially the last couple of years. Like it's everywhere. Everyone has a podcast. Some get 50 listens, some get 50 million listens, but every, it's. It's a very low barrier of entry to start a podcast. But are you seeing different Trends across the two countries, Canada and the U.S.
- [04:30]
Sharon Taylor
Through Canada and the U.S. i mean U.S. is obviously the behemoth and it always has been. Podcasting is doing different things in different locations. So we operate in 86 different countries with publishers, publishing, podcast networks, broadcasters, everything in kind of in between. Everyone wants to have the commercial model of the US like that's where obviously the lion's share of revenue and the most advanced systems are. Canada is very similar, I think, because we obviously are just across the border. Australia is a different microcosm, like it's a lot smaller and everyone has to work together more closely. And so it's more collaborative and it's more of like a rising tide. Whereas I think in the larger markets like the US there's obviously a much more healthy competition. Canada is very broadcast heavy, which is great for the country. And I think podcasting as independence up here has been a little bit slower to come to fruition than the US because buyers look at it as just North America as opposed to differentiating the audience and the audience in Canada is quite a bit smaller for most publishers.
- [05:33]
Host (Tech God)
Than the U.S. what do you think is. And again, just your perspective. It doesn't have to be Triton's perspective, but what do you think is driving the growth of podcasting overall? Like what, what's making people so attracted to listening to people such as myself or others so much more today than three or four years ago?
- [05:53]
Sharon Taylor
I think for the same reason that you and I fell in love with it. Like, it's just such an intimate, beautiful experience. So myself, I am bombarded with news on a daily basis. Like I wake up and every headline more nightmarish than the last at the moment, you know, media is becoming, I guess, more polarized and there's. It's harder to seek out the information that you want. And I find podcasting is the door to be able to do that. You know, if I want to hear 20 or 30 minute episodes about industry, then I can listen to this and a few other pods. If I wanted to hear like very specific news coverage on a matter that is important to me, like, I can go and find that. I think it's this beautiful mix of depth of information across a range of different publishers. Like there's, you know, the top tier international news brands that have always been in the space and then there are others that like the barrier to entry is so low to get these new voices, much like, I guess, influences on social media. And I think it's just quite a nice, like trusted environment to be talking to people in. Like a. A nice, like for me personally, camera off, like casual setting.
- [07:05]
Host (Tech God)
Nothing makes me happier than camera off.
- [07:07]
Sharon Taylor
I love camera off.
- [07:08]
Host (Tech God)
Like for me, I've done interviews on camera prior to this. It is the most awkward thing for me. Yeah, just don't record me and publish it. To me it's, it's very awkward to me. I think when your camera off in your more traditional podcasting way, there is something about being able to express yourself and not worry about the way you look, rather just hear your voice and talk openly. It just creates a little bit more of a comfort zone, 100%.
- [07:38]
Sharon Taylor
It's why lots of talent got into it. Like Conan o' Brien launched a pod because he'd spent a career in nighttime TV where he had to be fully made up, fully everything. And so we now you can just go into a podcast studio. What's interesting in the space though is our pivot towards video and obviously chasing those ad dollars out there. And we're kind of coming more full circle to having to have lights, camera, Action vibe.
- [08:03]
Host (Tech God)
Again, I know I don't want to. I don't want to comb my hair.
- [08:07]
Sharon Taylor
Correct.
- [08:08]
Host (Tech God)
Like, everybody says this. Like, after I record with them, they want to hear the podcast because they're concerned about something they say or how they said it. For me, it's more like I'm concerned. Like, is my mouth look weird? Is, like, is it crooked? Like, do my eyes look all awkward? What's going on? Why is my facial expression this way? Why do I do that?
- [08:27]
Sharon Taylor
When I talk, I stare off into the distance when I'm thinking really hard, and it makes me look like I'm ignoring the person. And so it's a difficult visual medium.
- [08:36]
Host (Tech God)
I look up so it looks like I'm rolling my eyes at you, when in reality I'm not. It's just my way of, like, thinking. I'm, like, looking up into my brain to see what's going on. So podcasting has been growing. My question to you is the growth has been pretty quick in the last couple of years. Do you think that we're reaching, like, a maturity point in the US or do you think that there's still a lot of upside for growth and listenership?
- [09:02]
Sharon Taylor
I think there's still upside. I feel like that's a question. I've been in the space nine and a half years now, and at every point, Like, I still remember sitting in Omni and watching the ticket go past our first million downloads and thinking, oh, have we plateaued? You know, now the space is so frothy and so active. I think that we are at a maturity level in terms of the brands like that are creating shows, like the publishers. I don't know that there's many big media companies out there or, like, podcast networks to be formed that are fresh anymore. Like, it feels like those who have dipped their toe in and are now, like, swimming in the water to push that analogy all the way through. That's how, like, we're kind of at the almost ceiling of that. But I think that new shows being created by those people in the space, different shows changing hands, et cetera, finding more audience. And I know that we don't like doing cameras on, but video is really helping find a new audience. And some of that audience is going to become video viewers of podcasts. Some are going to translate to the audio version. Like, there is a large. I think it's something like between 50 and 60% of the US population are regular podcast listeners, and a lot more have heard about podcasting. So I think there's heaps of upside to gain more listeners. I think the challenge of that is that more shows are being published and you can really only consume so much content in a week. And so the need to like, cut through and stand out is going to become more and more. More and more of a must, I think, for shows that are coming up.
- [10:34]
Host (Tech God)
Yeah, I read a stat that said, I think the. The average podcast was like 40 to 60 listens, which is not a lot. And that means there's a lot of people that are getting five or 10 and others that are getting, you know, a hundred thousand, but that the average was 40 to 60 listens. So that creates like a really long, long, long tail of publishers that can be monetized if the opportunity is there. Do you guys work with kind of the, the podcast looking to monetize? How does, how does Triton work with publishers overall? What are the solutions you have in market? What are you doing in the space?
- [11:11]
Sharon Taylor
So Triton has two owned and operated podcast cms. So we have Omnistudio, which caters for the enterprise, like very large, complex publishers. They're commercial broadcasters, they're big podcast networks typically have their own ad ops systems, et cetera. And then we have another CMS called Spreaker, which is for the more independent podcast networks that, you know, don't have their own ad ops teams and just want to set and forget and sit back and kind of monetize without having to worry about making deals themselves. And so we cater to both of those. Between us, I think there's something like 150,000 podcasts that we host at the moment. And so we're quite large in our own inventory. And we have everything from the independents that are still firing up a podcast and wanting to talk about a show close to their heart, all the way up to the very top end of town. Then Triton also operates. The world's oldest programmatic SSP for audio was originally called A2X, then it was called Yield Op. Now we call it the Triton Audio Marketplace. And connected into that as well as our own supply is we have a range of other podcast CMS in there. So the Libsyns and Podbeans, et cetera, of the world that are coming to us to monetize that own content as well. And so we kind of have a really quite broad range of everything.
- [12:33]
Host (Tech God)
When did podcasting or audio move to programmatic?
- [12:38]
Sharon Taylor
When I got into podcasting, it was all burned in host red ads. So, like the show was reading them to camera and an advertiser might be paying for a 30 second slot. And then, you know, someone was doing a 10 minute rant like the Bill Burr, Sherry's Berries is kind of law in the podcasting space, where he ran on 10 minute rant about this berry advertiser. It's on YouTube separately and you can take a listen. It's hilarious. And the Berry producer loved it and then kept rebooking. And so that was the very early days. And then it was maybe three or four years of a real big push to get people to do dynamic ad insertion. So with an ad server like Tritons or others in the space where they could load up that same host red ad and then dynamically insert it, Programmatic was really, really slow for podcasting. And I think it's still got so much growth left in it. Podcasting is such a, you know, going back to one of our first conversations, such a beautiful medium, and it's so intimate and it's so special and the inventory is so valuable. And so I think Programmatic was a little bit slow to start off because truthfully, the exchanges going back nine, eight or nine years were all kind of like rad spots and dots and they didn't feel on radio and so they put those into the audio exchanges. And so you'd have this really lovely, intimate conversation with people and then all of a sudden like come on down to like Bill's car show, like that kind of experience. And it kind of soured it for a lot of podcasters for a while. Whereas now we've, we've understood as a medium that Programmatic, which is like fit for purpose for podcasting, is a great way to scale, is a great way to, you know, even if you only want to put your back catalog into a programmatic exchange, like it's. There are advertisers that will only buy in this way and we need to meet them where they are. And so I think that the, the mindset of it is changing and we're becoming more open to it. Like the exchange that we have has grown by, you know, factors like each year, and then we continue to see that growth. And so I don't think that we have really even kind of like scratched the tip of what we could be providing to podcasters as revenue in the programmatic space.
- [14:57]
Host (Tech God)
So a lot of my guests come from the streaming television world. Adtech in particular has a fascination with television. I think just because it is the sight, sound and motion aspect of it. Attribution is a really hot topic that's always hot and will always be hot. And A lot of the credit is being sent to connected television, but audio in itself is a fantastic medium for attribution and understanding where they first heard your brand and then actioning on it. Are you finding that advertisers in particular are seeing audio as a better channel now for driving brand recognition for, you know, maybe, maybe not bottom of funnel, but lower funnel transactions? What are you seeing in the space as it relates to attribution and measurement across audio in particular?
- [15:48]
Sharon Taylor
Attribution and measurement is improving. I remember. I mean, as an industry we're quite good at promoting things mostly on stage and then wondering why people didn't give us money for a lot of years complaining about, like, how things are hard to measure. I think that, you know, we've got an IRB guideline for podcast download. There's prefixes and pixels that are able to be trafficked for attribution measurement. There is still a large amount of the industry that is kind of hearing a narrative around, oh, is the podcast listened to or not? You know, this whole download versus a stream versus listen, which I think is something that we continue to try and educate on. I think audio does not get enough of the revenue share that goes to these other like, mediums. It's just about getting it on the media plan and making it really tantalizing and easy for a buyer to put on there. And I think that it's our job to make sure that it's easy to like, report that back. And in lots of cases it's still challenging because you do have like such a, a wide variety of podcasters and networks, which I think is why buying through an exchange makes the most sense, because you can get kind of uniformed reporting and you can traffic pixels and do whatever you need in order to prove that, like, things we listen to, brand lift studies, etcetera, Are very popular in the space now. But it is an ongoing education campaign between like us and like other large players in the space to show that not only are people listening and engaging with the content and the advertising, but that it's proven as a method to drive like, brand awareness or to result in, you know, you know, actual shopping behavior and those types of things.
- [17:26]
Host (Tech God)
Question for you, because you mentioned this and I'm glad you brought it up because as a podcaster, I can't figure it out. What metric do they want? Do people want download? Do they want streams? Do they want listens? Like, is one more valuable than the other? Or do I list all of them? Because we have a media kit. So sometimes they're like, how many downloads do you get? And I look at the downloads, but those are different than the listens. And the listens can be sometimes higher. And I'm like, I don't know which number I should be sharing and which number they actually want to see. So I usually send them everything, like, here's all our numbers.
- [17:58]
Sharon Taylor
Yes. And then they get overwhelmed and they don't know what they're.
- [18:01]
Host (Tech God)
And then they don't know the difference. And I'm like, neither do I. All I know is this number's bigger. So that's the one I'm sharing.
- [18:06]
Sharon Taylor
Yeah. In our continuing effort to be as helpful as possible to the industry, we kind of have like, really bamboozled them. I was in a closed door session with like some podcasters and advertisers and agencies a little while back and one of the agencies was saying that, you know, they don't have clarity on certain things. And one of the networks, the podcast networks, like, threw their hands up and was like, what do you want? I've got everything. Like, I'll print you out. Like, you just tell me the one metric that you want and I'll create it for you if I don't have it and I will make sure that you get it every week. And so I think it's on both sides that there's so much data. You know, historically the podcast world has been traded on the download, you know, and that got a lot closer to an actual listen as we started deduplicating things as Apple made some changes to how automatic downloads work. And then on the flip side, you've got platforms like Apple and Spotify, probably the two largest, and YouTube, who are all kind of competing for audience share at the moment. And with that and their own aims, both business and stock related, you know, they are obviously showing a wider variety of metrics, including the listen or the play, which can be even more confusing because then you've got, you know, I've got a listener, but there's an IB metric for a listener, which is a deduplication. So a single person listened to this podcast. If they come back and listen tonight to this same episode, and why wouldn't you, Then that only counts as one download and one listen in a system like Triton's. But if that person happened to listen to Apple, then you would see one listener, two plays. And so it becomes like hard to get like a single pane of glass to be looking through. And as an industry, that's where we need to get to, like, we need to get certainty in these, like third party platforms to move that back. I would say the industry in general is moving more towards like it wants streaming and it wants listeners. As, you know, those buyers come into the space and then the education, you know, wheel starts again where you have to explain that, you know, the download is the methodology and you can overlay all these things. I don't know if I've made it worse or better for you in your brain, to be honest.
- [20:14]
Host (Tech God)
I don't know. I was confused going into it. I'm just as confused coming out of it. But it helps. Like, I think, like for me it's the listens, the downloads, the streams, like I just send it all because I don't know what they really want. So we share whatever we have as a market overall.
- [20:31]
Sharon Taylor
And I think it comes down to what you're like, how you're working with that advertiser or agency as well. Like if you're doing dynamically inserted ads, then they're just going to want impressions and like an idea of the reach of your show in terms of like how many downloads and how many people you reach. And if you're doing like a sponsorship for something else, then they probably want a range of other metrics.
- [20:52]
Host (Tech God)
And we do, we mostly we run some programmatic, but it's like a backfill to the backfill. Like it's a backfill to our house ad. Everything's host red that we run. But even, even looking at the breakdown of the podcast, like I'm looking at it now because it's something I'm working on. Like 24% is coming from Spotify. I thought the number would be higher. Turns out 54% is coming from Apple. And then I have Overcast that I've never ever used. Then I have Chrome and Pocket Cast. And then there's like this long tail of other ways to listen that came up with another 7%. And so when I'm looking at the numbers, I'm like, this is crazy. There's so many different ways to consume this content that the metrics may differ from each platform to platform. But it's like I need to consolidate these numbers into one number overall, correct?
- [21:39]
Sharon Taylor
Yes, you need to. All of those numbers should roll up into a single download number. The joy of podcasting and why it kind of took off is, you know, ironically now the thing that is making it most confusing. Like RSS as a download mechanism was free and open and anyone could have it. All these podcast players like Overcast and Pocketcasts could build these beautiful apps and ingest this content and democratize it and put it into the hands of. Of anyone. You didn't have to kind of like pay for a cable channel or streaming, all of those types of things.
- [22:09]
Host (Tech God)
Right.
- [22:09]
Sharon Taylor
And then obviously, as the market has shifted, your stats are very similar to everyone else's that I look at, which is Apple and Spotify are at the top competing for the lion's share of your downloads and your listens. And then there's a trickle of, like, other apps that come through behind.
- [22:23]
Host (Tech God)
When you're looking at cultural differences and the impact of podcasting for the newer generation, we've seen radio to streaming radio. We're looking at. Podcasting has grown across the board. What do you think about the format is so attractive to the new generation? Because the older generation enjoys the radio. We have now moved towards streaming radio and radio on demand or music on demand. Why do you think that is and how do you think that that's going to continue to evolve? And what does that mean for existing radio companies?
- [22:58]
Sharon Taylor
Radio needs to. Again, it comes back to the media plan. Do you know? I mean, I think that they need to make sure that they remain on there. And that means proving that there is a listenership, you know, that we know that exists that are still engaging with the content. To your point, like, it used to be a lot easier when the car just had a radio or when you turn the radio on at home, and now we've kind of moved into that digital space that on demand. I mean, that's why Omni was built, like, why we have so many radio clients. Because the tech premise was take your content from on air to online in seconds. And so we kind of got to watch that on demand shift kind of ripple through. I think in the same way that that was just a listener habit of Spotify coming into the mix. People wanted to consume what they wanted when they wanted to consume it. That is where podcasting really kind of blossomed. The newer generation knows that podcasting is there and we are seeing some listenership from that. But I do think that's also why video is such a huge takeoff, because that Gen Z, it's the first time I've not said Gen Z, and, like, that's how an Australian says it. But anyway, wow, I'm being North Americanized. Gen Z, that Gen Z, they're on Instagram and social media and YouTube, and that's where they're getting their content. And so I think that's why we're now kind of pushing the podcasting side over there. And I think that's why radio is looking for new listeners and new users there as well. The reality is that I think Spotify and YouTube are just so large and command such audiences that, you know, they are in a position of being able to kind of like, dictate consumer trends to a point now. And so unless they build something completely different, like, I think this is. This is the world that we will exist in for audio for the foreseeable future until, you know, the next generation comes up and they decide that being online is far too much and they swing back towards, like, the audio world, which I kind of always thought would happen. Like, I love podcasts because it's a sanctuary from the bombardment of everything else that's happening in social media. And I think that that audience will catch on. Like, that new audience will catch on to the audio side as well. And so we'll see a bit of a seesaw between numbers of that generation back and forth between social media and podcasting.
- [25:16]
Host (Tech God)
You know, I. I think there is something that. To say about that. I think there is something as, you know, being overly stimulated when you're talking about social media in general, like, it's too much, right between the audio, the visual, the million and one opinions that swipe through within seconds. Podcasting is, in a weird way, very therapeutic and calm. So, like, when I listen to my podcast, I listen to, like, NPR every morning. I listen to other industry podcasts. Like, Eric Paparos is like one of my regulars. And so when I listen to the podcast, it is in a weird way, like, it's on the radio in my headphones or in the car, and I can just drive and just listen. And there isn't a million and one things being thrown at me at the same time.
- [25:57]
Sharon Taylor
Yes, exactly. Like, you can't multitask. Like, my attention is on the podcast. I could clean my house, I could go for a walk, et cetera. But it's very hard to, you know, really multitask when listening to audio. And I think that's also the beauty of it from an advertiser's point of view. Like, this is a captive audience who aren't just, like, stumbling around and, oh, there's a radio on the floor and it happens to be playing a podcast, or they've gone past their friend's house and there's a smart speaker playing. Like, it's very intentional. It's an audience that really wants to engage with you and is giving you their full attention. And I just think that's always. There's always going to be a need for that, especially as the world gets busier and noisier and you know, all the other adjectives that probably are not appropriate for a podcast.
- [26:44]
Host (Tech God)
Agree, agree. Sharon, I wanted to thank you for being my guest today. I really truly appreciate the time and thank you for sharing your insights on Triton. And thanks for being my guest.
- [26:54]
Sharon Taylor
Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it.
- [26:56]
Host (Tech God)
Same here. Thank you. A word from our Sponsors Imagine if solving every marketing challenge was precise, intelligent and lightning fast with Zeta's AI Agent Studio. It is our purpose built AI agent turned insights into action, executing high impact workflows, optimizing spend and accelerating performance across the customer journey. Use pre built or customized agents to drive results that matter. See how we do it by going to zetaglobal.com atg again, that's zetaglobal.com ATG.
- [27:36]
Kate (Merchitecture)
Foreign welcome back to the Refresh, your weekly download on what went down in advertising. I'm Kate with Merchitecture and Today is Tuesday, September 2nd. This week on the Refresh we're covering Magnite launching Pause Ads, Anthropics, cloud extension for chrome and the ANA's Q2 2025 Programmatic Transparency Benchmark Report. Before we kick off, shout out to our sponsor Adform for their support. 40% of Internet users are unreachable on cookieless browsers due to identity fragmentation causing wasted impressions, inflated CPAs and revenue loss. Reclaim your audience and find your 40 with Adform. Now let's get into it, starting things off with Magnite, who's rolling out the ability to buy pause ads programmatically across streaming providers including DirecTV, Dish and Fubo. Inventory can be purchased through their own product, Clearline as well as third party buyers and DSPs like Curve, AI Mountain and Yahoo. The announcement marks a moment of triumph not just for advertisers, but for publishers and the broader ad tech ecosystem. Making a non standard ad format like a pause ad available across a variety of streaming platforms, devices and ad tech partners is a complex task given each of these may have their own technical specifications that they're working within. As non standard ad formats like pause ads continue to be rolled out within the CTV ecosystem, fitting these formats into a standardized framework like Vast, AKA Video Ad Serving Template allows for more universal transaction of these formats in programmatic environments. To help move the entire industry toward a unified framework that enables scalable programmatic transaction of these formats, the IAB Tech Lab has launched an initiative called Ad Format Hero and expects to issue guidance in Q4 of this year. The pause ad represents a rare phenomenon in advertising. It's a format that both advertisers and consumers actually enjoy a unified response that's virtually non existent in the rest of the advertising world. Advertisers want CTV ad formats that give them the ability to create measurable user actions, whether that's scanning a QR code, visiting a website, shopping for products, or texting a phone number for a promo code. Pause ads provide this, but they also hold another benefit for advertisers. They offer extended visibility. 54% of viewers who pause content do so for one to five minutes, while 11% report pausing content for up to 15 minutes. On the consumer side, a Magna and DirecTV study found that two thirds of Millennials and Gen Z prefer pause ads over a frozen screen. And IAB data demonstrates that just over half of overall viewers take an action after viewing a pause ad. Personally, I love pause ads. I think they strike the right balance between a novel high value ad experience and consumer choice in a way that isn't found within other ad formats. And you'll never catch me advocating against making more unique opportunities available via programmatic pipes, whether that's ad formats, inventory selection, or data and measurement capabilities. However, I do worry that offering these ad formats in a programmatic capacity could enable a degree of carelessness when it comes to their actual execution. Pause ads are most brilliant when the message directly aligns to the context of the programming someone is watching. It makes the ad feel like it's part of an inside joke. But running these ads programmatically could have an unintended consequence in the form of generic creative messaging that plays well within any CTV content. Generally speaking, buyers usually only have so much control over and transparency into where their ads will show up, making that creative to content alignment difficult to achieve. I've already started to notice this shift in my own viewing experience. My pause ads have gone from that inside joke feel to generic messaging that I kind of glaze over. If I was purchasing pause ads programmatically, I'd make sure I could have control over the viewer experience, aligning content to creative messaging to maintain that relevance and unique contextualization that the format does so well. Switching gears a bit to Anthropic, who's begun piloting a new Chrome browser extension that allows its AI Claude to browse alongside users and assist them with tasks or take those tasks on entirely. Similar to other emerging AI agents, these browser based tools aim to support user actions and workflows, for example Researching family friendly travel spots, building out the itinerary for that trip, and even booking travel or activities the user has approved. Anthropic is taking a cautious approach to rolling out this browser extension with their blog post announcing its launch, emphasizing their prioritization of ensuring user safety and security. One major risk they're addressing is prompt injection attacks where malicious actors insert covert instructions into websites, emails or documents to manipulate the AI agents agent into performing unintended actions. For example, in an early test, Claude followed hidden instructions in a malicious email that told it to delete user emails due to security concerns without confirming with the user before it did so. To address this, Anthropic has introduced several safeguards. These include site level permissions, allowing users to control which websites Claude can access, and action permissions which require Claude to check in with users before engaging in high risk actions like publishing content, making purchases or sharing personal data. Claude is also automatically restricted from operating on sensitive categories like financial services, adult content and pirated material. Alongside these guardrails, Anthropic is also training Claude to detect suspicious behavior and unusual data requests. The pilot will initially be rolled out to 1,000 ClaudMax plan users, giving Anthropic a controlled environment to collect feedback from trusted users and refine both the product and its guardrails. A waitlist has also been opened for others who are interested in trying the extension Anthropics pilot is launching as several players race to secure their spot as an exclusive access point to the Internet and control the future of AI powered browsing. Perplexity has launched its own assistant enabled browser, Comet. Google continues to integrate Gemini into Chrome, and OpenAI is also reportedly working on an AI browser. Whoever can capture meaningful market share within the browser environment could carve out a strong position for themselves as a next gen advertising services provider for advertisers. Browser integration of these agents is another step toward upending the ways consumers and advertisers have traditionally engaged with the Internet, and they bring us one step closer to a world where AI to AI interactions must become a part of our media strategies. For now, it's nice to see Anthropic and Google to some extent taking a more measured approach to how these tools are rolled out, giving the general population and the advertising industry alike a bit more time to prepare rather than to just react. Finally, a quick update in the world of media quality. The ANA has just released their Programmatic Transparency benchmark report for Q2 of 2025 and the results are equal parts progress and setbacks. Getting the setbacks out of the way first, the report found that Programmatic Ad spend waste continues to increase, jumping up to $26.8 billion compared to 22 billion in early 2024. The waste is fueled by redundant or inefficient supply paths, low quality inventory like MFA, and insufficient ability to measure what's going on behind the scenes of programmatic transactions. The percent of programmatic ad spend going toward working media has also declined quarter over quarter in 2025. The ANA uses a metric called the True Ad Spend Index to measure this, with the percent of effective ad spend slipping from 41% in Q1 to 37% in Q2. Alright, let's round things out with some more positive news. Advertisers do appear to be taking steps towards ensuring more of their programmatic ad spend goes towards effective or working media. Private marketplace or PMP transactions accounted for 88% of transactions, a significant jump from 64.5%. And in another shift towards more effective media, programmatic CTV spending has increased from about 30% to 44% of ad spend. As for MFA spending, this has been steadily declining down to 0.8% in this most recent report, a massive improvement on the 15% of budgets that were being consumed by MFA in 2023. One thing the ANA is still struggling with is getting log level data from every participant in the study. Among the 39 participants in this most recent study, only 21 could provide full access to log level data, leaving blind spots in the ANA's understanding of exactly where every percent of programmatic AD spend is going. That's all we have time for this week. Thanks for joining us for the refresh and we'll catch you next week.