The 12 months of 1 trillion streams

Hello there! I hope you all had a pleasant break. Thanksgiving meals just isn’t my factor, however I did get pleasure from watching the final third of Saturday Night Fever with my dad and mom and in-laws (shockingly miserable!). 

Back to the grind. Today, Spotify Wrapped copycats make their debut and Google and iHeartMedia get a slap on the wrist for a deceptive advert marketing campaign.

Slow Burn wins Apple’s new podcast prize (and promo)

Today, Apple Podcasts launched an award for “Show of the Year,” with its inaugural honor going to Slate’s Slow Burn. In the weeks main as much as the Supreme Court’s determination overturning Roe v. Wade in June, Slow Burn printed an in-depth account of the historical past behind the landmark 1973 case. Honestly, the podcast was nice (and all of the extra miserable given the result).

Slow Burn was chosen by Apple Podcasts’ editorial staff. In addition to high quality, they took into consideration metrics like chart efficiency, listener engagement, and evaluations, in accordance with Apple Podcasts spokesperson Zach Kahn. As a part of the award, Slate has collaborated with Apple to publish six bonus episodes out there free of charge on Apple Podcasts. But the actual prize is all of the promo for the present, which dominates the Apple Podcasts touchdown web page. 

‘Tis the season for end-of-year music data

Spotify Wrapped has not yet dropped, and the other platforms are rushing to get out in front. YouTube Music and Apple Music launched their end-of-year recap features today. YouTube has brought its recap stats into the main app, bringing it closer to the experience enjoyed by Spotify users. Apple Music listeners still can only access their personal stats in-browser (as an Apple Music listener, this is extremely lame!!).

Luminate, the data firm behind Billboard charts, reported that listeners in the US have racked up over 1 trillion streams so far in 2022, which is a first. It also reported the top five songs in the country across platforms, which were “As It Was” by Harry Styles, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals, “Wait For U” by Future, “Super Gremlin” by Kodak Black, and “Me Porto Bonito” by Bad Bunny and Chencho Corleone.

Google and iHeartMedia will pay $9 million settlement over deceptive radio ads

Google and iHeartMedia got into some trouble with the Federal Trade Commission over a 2019–2020 ad campaign for Google’s Pixel 4 smartphone. My colleague Jay Peters stories that Google paid $2.6 million to iHeart (and an extra $2 million to smaller radio networks) for first-person endorsement spots by among the community’s high hosts with out really giving most of them the telephone to check out.

According to filings, iHeart raised the problem of doing endorsements with out the product and, on a number of events, requested the telephones from Google, which declined to offer them as a result of the telephones weren’t but stocked in shops. The marketing campaign was carried out anyway, with hosts claiming to have used the telephone of their private lives. “I’ve been taking studio-like photos of everything,” the standard spot learn. “My son’s football game… a meteor shower… a rare spotted owl that landed in my backyard. Pics or it didn’t happen, am I right?”

The firms have settled with the FTC and the seven states that joined the go well with for a $9.4 million high-quality and are barred from misrepresenting endorsers’ experiences shifting ahead. Google must file compliance stories for the subsequent three years, whereas iHeart can be required to file for the subsequent decade. Google stated in an announcement to The Verge that it was happy to resolve the problem; iHeart declined to remark.

Podcasting nonetheless makes up a tiny portion of digital advert spend

According to new data released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), podcasts represent lower than 4 p.c of all advert spend. That places it in the identical league as digital out-of-home promoting, like digital billboards. Grabbing the lion’s share of digital advert spend are digital video (19.3 p.c), paid search (13.7 p.c), social media (16.6 p.c), and digital show (16.4 p.c).

Although podcasting’s development prospects are strong, with IAB projecting that advert spend in podcasting will improve by greater than 8 p.c in 2023, it’s nonetheless falling behind digital video. IAB expects that podcasting will make up about the identical share in 2023 because it did this 12 months, whereas digital video will take up an excellent bigger share of twenty-two.4 p.c. 

The development helps clarify why extra podcasts are pushing into video. Even although the CPM charges are usually decrease on YouTube than Spotify or Apple, it’s one other income stream that may doubtlessly rack up a a lot bigger viewers. Even if many (most!) podcasts are higher off audio solely, the advert {dollars} could also be too laborious to withstand.

That’s all for right now — see you subsequent week!