As the summer heats up, people are turning to travel-themed podcasts for tips as they head out on vacation. Marketers are taking notice.

Zoom in: Take Danielle Desir, who hosts a podcast about travel and personal finance called The Thought Card.

• When she reached about 80,000 downloads total, she found that brands wanted to sponsor the pod for the first time, and she opened it up to ads in 2021.
• Tourism boards in cities like Rochester, New York, and Tempe, Arizona, “were really excited about audio,” each becoming sponsors last summer, Desir said. She also worked with travel brands like Expedia in 2021.
• “I was able to actually quit my job in September 2021, and being a podcaster is one of my biggest income streams,” Desir told us.

Big picture: Travel and tourism brands haven’t been the biggest investors in podcasts, accounting for just 1% of podcast ad revenue in 2020 and 2021, per the IAB. But as travel rebounds, brands in the category could find opportunities to reach listeners ready to spend.

Prepare for liftoff

Travel writer Aaron Millar started his podcast, Armchair Explorer, in January 2020 to positive feedback and media attention despite the bad timing, he said. Advertisers first started showing interest when it hit about 5,000 downloads per episode, Millar told us, and that interest has only increased since.

• In fact, riding the success of that show, Millar went on to start his own company, Armchair Productions, which creates audio projects for travel brands like Qatar Airlines, the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development, and Travel Oregon.

”The travel industry, through Covid, really began to look at alternative ways that destinations could promote themselves to potential visitors. Things like webinars became really, really big, and still are, and I think that they started to realize the effectiveness of telling travel stories through these different new mediums,” he explained.

It’s not just indie podcasters who are finding success with travel shows; major networks are also investing in the genre. Keep reading here.—AM

During Spotify’s investor day this week, execs shed some light on their plans for the audio giant’s advertising business as it grows beyond music.

It’s no secret that in recent years, Spotify has dedicated more money and resources to podcasts, which brought in close to $215 million in revenue last year. That effort is “still largely in investment mode and not yet profitable,” said CEO Daniel Ek.

Reverse Uno: Nevertheless, in some regards, Spotify’s podcast advertising tools are actually leading the way for music.

• Take Podsights, the podcast ad-measurement company Spotify acquired earlier this year—making some waves in the industry.
• “Long-term, we intend to extend Podsights’s capabilities beyond podcasts to music,” said Spotify Chief Content and Advertising Business Officer Dawn Ostroff.
• Applying Podsights’s tech to music would be “a big step towards Spotify’s walled-garden approach being a necessary part of all audio campaigns,” Bryan Barletta, founder of podcast ad-tech publication Sounds Profitable, told Marketing Brew.

Another one: The Spotify Audience Network, or SPAN, is going a similar route. The network debuted more than a year ago to connect advertisers with podcasters, leveraging Spotify’s listener data to target campaigns across shows.

Spotify plans to add music inventory to that network in the future, Ostroff said.

• “I’m honestly a bit surprised it’s taken them this long to include music inventory in SPAN, considering the idea behind audience networks is to hit people wherever they’re consuming audio content,” said Jacob Schwartz, associate media director for national audio investments at Mediahub.
• Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of podcast distribution and monetization company The Podglomorate, said while this “is a great business decision…the jury’s out on how effective the ads will be,” in that the same ad could have less of an impact on listeners between songs than it might in a podcast.
• James Ingrassia, EVP of client service at audio ad agency Oxford Road, who currently uses SPAN on behalf of some clients, said he’d be interested in testing this potential new approach as long as CPMs remain cost-effective.—AM

Next week marks the debut of Future Social, a newsletter written by Jack Appleby, a Morning Brew creator who’s worked in social media for 10 years at companies like Beats by Dre, Microsoft, and Twitch. Check out an excerpt from one of his pieces below, and sign up for Future Social here.

New social media best practices emerge from brands and creators of all shapes and sizes, including…puppets.

Meet @starwarsdinx, a sweet-as-could-be puppet who parades around TikTok talking about Star Wars. Might seem odd to you, but there’s a reason Dinx grew from 30,000 TikTok followers to 130,000 in just one week: a focus on friendly fandom.

Fans as community managers: Dinx needed help getting to all the Star Wars canon questions in their replies after gaining more followers. That’s why the puppet empowered fans to answer each other’s comments.

• “If you’re a knowledgeable Star Wars fan, and you can be respectful, and you know the difference between facts and fan theory, I need your help! Please, answer any questions that you see that you actually know the answer to, and will be very grateful! I want this to be a place where everybody can come to get their answers.”

Follow the rules: Most creators and brands are reactive to commentary—it’s rare to see rules of engagement displayed so clearly. Because Dinx aspires to keep the often persnickety Star Wars community as family-friendly as possible, they made a full TikTok on how commenters should interact with Dinx content—something every brand could learn from.

Read how brands can put the puppet’s strategy into practice here.—JA

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Count ’em: 17 SEO metrics to keep track of for your next report.

Keep track: TikTok added new features to help users manage their time in-app, including scheduled breaks.

Inspo: A look at how Airbnb, Dropbox, and Reddit convinced people to sign up in their early days.

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Planning to job hunt this weekend? Be sure to check out 300+ new openings on the Marketing Brew Job Board!

Today’s featured openings:

• Sr. CRM Campaign Manager at LQ Digital
• Marketing Services Client Success Manager at Third Door Media
• Sr. Director - Brand Marketing at Validity

See more jobs or post your job opportunities here.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• A sonic branding agency analyzed and ranked the audio efforts of 250 brands
• Influencers are charging more for their services across social media platforms
• One year in, BECA is training the next generation of Black marketing execs

Which headlines are real marketing news, and which one is fake?

1. Living la dolce Velveeta: New nail polish leaves your fingers smelling like melted cheese
2. Diplo and Crocs release “Dipglow” light-up shoe collection
3. Forever 21, Barbie launch summer collection available in the metaverse
4. Hershey’s partners with Pandora to create s’mores summer soundtracks

Keep scrolling for the answer.