Simon Owens's Tech and Media - How healthy is the podcast industry?
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button: Let’s jump into it… How healthy is the podcast industry?There's this widely-held view that the podcast bubble has burst, but a huge portion of the turmoil in the industry has occurred at a single company: Spotify. For podcast producers outside of Spotify, it's more of a mixed bag, with some networks claiming they're still seeing robust demand on both the audience and revenue side:
An essay in Slate made a similar argument:
Adam Davidson had a front row seat to the explosive growth of the podcast industry, and he gives his diagnosis on why it's currently facing headwinds:
What do you think?
Why your Facebook engagement is probably droppingFacebook's feed has been overrun with "suggested" content from accounts you don't follow. If you've noticed a large dip in your engagement, it's likely because your content is getting buried under posts from "meme" pages that are being boosted by Facebook's algorithm because they're not divisive and don't contain links to outside websites:
Link: How a former Cosmo editor built Australia's largest women-focused media companyMia Freedman started Mamamia as a one-person blog and bootstrapped it into a multi-media outlet that reaches 7 million people. Adventures in non-traditional book publishingA bestselling fantasy novelist decided to ditch her traditional publisher and launch a Kickstarter campaign, which ultimately raised over $1 million for her latest book:
The destruction wrought by programmatic advertisingEvery piece of available research we have access to shows that programmatic ad tech is absolutely decimating the publishing industry by siphoning away revenue that was specifically meant for publishers and placing it on websites that provide no marketing value to the brands purchasing the advertising. Every publisher that has open programmatic installed is enabling this:
This has not only siphoned money away from publishers, but it’s also lowered the ROI on publisher-related advertising, thereby incentivizing brands to ditch publishers in their advertising spend. I’m looking for more media entrepreneurs to feature on my newsletter and podcastOne of the things I really pride myself on is that I don’t just focus this newsletter on covering the handful of mainstream media companies that every other industry outlet features. Instead, I go the extra mile to find and interview media entrepreneurs who have been quietly killing it behind the scenes. In most cases, the operators I feature have completely bootstrapped their outlets. In that vein, I’m looking for even more entrepreneurs to feature. Specifically, I’m looking for people succeeding in these areas:
Interested in speaking to me? You can find my contact info over here. (please don’t simply hit reply to this newsletter because that’ll go to a different email address. ) Tinyletter’s mercy killingMailchimp announced it’s shutting down Tinyletter next year. This really is a mercy killing. Tinyletter essentially kickstarted the rise of creator-centric newsletters, but Mailchimp did absolutely nothing to improve the product and therefore provided an opening for Substack to swoop in and take its place as the default platform for editorial newsletters. I wrote a piece a piece all the way back in 2020 arguing that Tinyletter was one of the greatest missed opportunities in tech. The enduring legacy of Morning Brew and The HustleSeveral former employees of Morning Brew and The Hustle have gone on to launch their own successful companies:
Want a daily dose of media industry news?I only send this newsletter out twice a week, but I curate industry news on a daily basis. Follow me on one of these social platforms if you want your daily fix: You're currently a free subscriber to Simon Owens's Media Newsletter. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
Older messages
Are LinkedIn newsletters worth the investment?
Tuesday, December 5, 2023
PLUS: Reddit's increasing importance as a traffic driver
What’s going on with Google traffic to publishers?
Friday, December 1, 2023
PLUS: Substack moves in on Patreon's turf
How Living Cozy leveraged product reviews to build a successful ecommerce business
Friday, December 1, 2023
Founder Ash Read explained how he built up search authority in a crowded content niche.
The oversaturation of “Morning Brew for X” newsletters
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
PLUS: It's time for publishers to outsource their subscriptions to Facebook
Are video podcasts worth the time investment?
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
PLUS: How new literary stars are minted
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