Woman 1: On this episode of the Sonic Truth, Steve Goldstein of Amplify Media joins Veritonic, Kristin Sharon, to discuss the advantage of programmatic audio, the importance of sonic identities for brands must haves for creating a successful podcast and more. Thank you for joining us and welcome back to the Sonic Truth.






Kristin: Welcome back to The Sonic Truth. I am pleased to have the one and only, Steve Goldstein joining me today. CEO of Amplify Media and Audio strategists and advisor. Welcome Steve.






Steve: Good to be here. I'm probably not the one and only Steve Goldstein. There're probably many of them and there's at least one other in the broadcast business, but I appreciate the kudo anyway.






Kristin: Fair enough. It is a pleasure to have you here. I have seen so much of your work as of late, and it's always just insightful and really positive as it relates to promoting audio, and all of the wonderful ways that it's being utilized as an effective marketing channel, so thank you again for all that you do. I actually wanted to open this podcast by discussing one of the recent blog posts that I've seen from you, why programmatic ads are vital for podcasting.






You had Christiana Brenton from Acast on, and it was around her comments at the IAB podcast upfront this year about the dominance of dollars through her handful of podcasts and how that is, if I can quote, "damaging to the business", about 44% of the advertising allocation reaches just the five hundred podcasts. Can you give our listeners a little insight into kind of the genesis of that blog post, and why you think it's important for the industry to be aware of?






Steve: Yeah, I think it's really important and I think it's really telling, and we've all probably seen the upfronts at the IAB and everybody talks very cheerly about the business, and how wonderful podcasts are, and that caught me because she was talking about a problem with podcasts. One that I certainly agree and have seen and have a sense. If you are not in that 1% of podcasts, so the real rarefied air, you're going to have a tougher time getting revenue, and it's probably going to need to be more automated.






That's programmatic and so I think that solution which wasn't available 3, 4 years ago, is now scaling and becoming more available, and I think it's going to be a savior for a lot of podcasters, not all of them but if you have a decent sized audience, not a mega audience, this may be how you stay in business, so I think it's really critical. It's also happening in TV and other media. You think about Trade Desk, what is that? That's programmatic ads.






You think about programmatic video on websites, so it really shouldn't be scary for podcasters, and yet I sort of feel like everybody is worried about that. I have the opposite view. I think it saves a lot of podcasters.






Kristin: If a creator came to you and said they were interested in pursuing monetization, but they didn't really understand programmatic or really how it works, anything about it. How would you at a 101 level explain the benefits of it?






Steve: Yeah, I thin it's real simple, so if you are in that upper 1% of podcasts, a salesperson will go out and represent your show, your individual show. I think about this like network radio, for network radio, that's what they would do. They would take their super big shows and they would sell them individually, but then they would take the next tier of shows and sort of put them in a pile, and I don't mean that negatively. I actually think the pile is important, so they would take a pile of sports shows or a pile of shows targeted at women, 25 to 34.






Whatever the target might be, and they sell that as a group, and that's the way I think we should be looking at programmatic for podcasting. Very similar to network radio, it's taking your podcast and putting them in with like podcasts.






Kristin: You talk a lot as of late as well about the right sizing of the podcast business, and why we as an industry are kind of moving past the throw something against the wall, and see if it sticks phase of the business. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?






Steve: Yeah, of course, so the first phase of podcasting has been try something and it's been fantastic, but a lot of people have tried stuff and they wonder why they don't have hits, and hits are hard. They really are anybody who thinks that they're just going to whip up a podcast and it's going to be a hit and it's going to be durable. That's where you see pod fade come from, so I think we're moving past this phase where companies are spending a lot of money, and you see this from companies all over. I don't care whether it's Spotify or CNN.






Everybody is being more thoughtful about the content that they're publishing and putting more rigor behind it, and so what does that mean? That means that the business gets a little smaller right now. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think there are a lot of people who have titles like audio producer who have never produced any audio, and I think it's always good to think about stuff when you get out of your business, so if somebody had never done video editing and they were your video editor, some people are going to be fantastic at it, but most will not.






That's the same thing I think on the audio side. You get a couple of people who are just brilliant, they bring fresh angles and stuff, admire them so, but a lot of it just turns out to be unlistenable, not very good, and those things should fade away and it should become more difficult to make a hit. Unfortunately, it is becoming more difficult to make a hit.






Kristin: Absolutely, and you mentioned that it's a lot of thoughtfulness and rigor now that's being placed behind podcast strategies. How much of that is being powered today by data? Competitive intelligence and just understanding the landscape, testing amongst their target audiences from a content perspective, from the voice at the host perspective. How prescriptive and thoughtful are they being?






Steve: I think that's a wonderful question. I think that the best answer is it's both. It's still going to be the magic that happens when somebody puts together a podcast, doing something that's never been done before, and I don't think there's going to be science to make that happen, but the science is incredibly helpful in trying to figure out and fine tune what people are doing with their podcasts today and make it more useful and valuable because in a sea of podcasts, I think people are certainly narcissistic with their time, they always have been.






They're going to choose you or they're going to choose something else because they have a limited amount of time, and so that becomes the critical factor then is using the research, the science, the data and the data's better and better. It's not fantastic yet, but it's way better than it was say, 3 years ago where you can do some testing, and of course you guys are heavily involved in this so I understand the genesis of the question, but it's the right question.






What can we do to help creators be smarter and better, and know that they're reaching the audience that they need to reach and that their time spent, and you see this from several sources today, where they talk about not a download number, but an engagement number and just is the right way to look at it. It totally is the right way to look at it, so the data that you're providing, and some other firms that we work with, I think are going to be really valuable tools for podcasters going forward.






Some people will be scared of them, some people will embrace them, and I think the ones that embrace them will benefit.






Kristin: Absolutely, and for every brand that is really embracing audio podcasting, having a sonic identity, there are hundreds if not thousands of brands that have yet to do so. What would you say to a brand that is uneducated around the power of a sonic identity if they were interested in learning more, and interested in just kind of figuring out how to work that into their current marketing strategy?






Steve: Yeah, so we should define what sonic identity is. sometimes it could be a 3 second chime or something. NBC chimes come to mind. Maybe the best example ever of sonic Identity or the Intel sound. Those things are really remarkable and you guys of course, have put together data and charts on all of that stuff, which I think are really, really valuable. We ran a radio station when I was in the radio business, which what I did for a long time, we had a radio station in Milwaukee called the Hog, and its sonic Identity was a snort, which I will not do here because someone will cut it up and that will be bad for me.






It ran between songs so we didn't have to do anything to identify the radio station orally. We did it through the sound effect, and yeah, of course, you can heighten the awareness and so forth by marrying some words with some sounds and things like that. Whether you do or you don't, sonic identity is really, I think smart because in a sea of choice, this helps make you more distinctive.






Kristin: Do you feel as though with consumers seemingly always being connected to audio, where it is such a companion medium and it's anywhere and everywhere at the time and place where consumers can are interested in consing it, whether it's a smart speaker or you're in the kitchen or your earbuds when you're out running, or walking your dog or gardening or doing whatever it is, do you feel as though brands are starting to really understand the reach potential that always on engagement potential?






Steve: Yeah. I think the stats here speak loudly, there's more audio than ever in a time in which everybody's forecast was TV, YouTube would all Usurp audio and radio, which has its own set of challenges, we'll go down that were past the audio era. Well, that's not exactly the way it's worked out. There's more audio than ever, but what you just said is really so. There's more devices, and so you sort of have to customize the audio for those devices, which you put on a smart speaker. It's probably not the same thing that you put in earbuds in streaming, but they're all engagement with audio, which is just miraculous.






Kristin: Absolutely. I want to jump back to podcasting for a second. Amfi publishes something called the Grid of Pain, which I think is just a genius title from a marketing perspective, but from what I can tell, it's a scale of generating good awareness around your podcast and producing high-value content. Is that true? And if so, can you give us any more background on what it is and how it's used?






Steve: Sure, sure. I'm glad you liked the name. I have to credit it elsewhere. A good friend of mine, David Libo and a guy named Jimmy DeCastro, who were at a company called AMFM at the time, it's now iHeart, but they created the term, the grid of pain. We adapted it for use in podcasting, the chart looks very different, but if you're in the lower left-hand corner of the grid of pain, that means that you have low awareness and low indexing in terms of content value, and if you're in the upper right-hand corner, or the upper right-hand quadrant, that's the opposite.






It means you have high awareness and high value content, and that is the nirvana. That's where you want to be, but most content lives in that lower left-hand corner, and yes, it's frightening to see it on a grid. We actually take clients and we put them on the grid, so that they can see where they are, and we use data for that, and it can be sobering. I think sobering is a polite term there but that's the one I'll go with.






Kristin: Absolutely, and obviously if you're stuck, if you will, in the lower left quadrant, low content value, low awareness, the competition for better or worse, and the being able to cut through the noise, it must be tremendously difficult to elevate yourself to the upper right quadrant, if you will, which is high on both ends of that scale. What are the 2 or 3 things that a content creator should do to move in that direction?






Steve: I think today, marketing is more important than ever. It's certainly the conversation that we have more often than ever. I'd say when we started our focus was on content strategy. Now it's become a combination of content and marketing strategy, because you need to be found, and just because you're in the app doesn't mean you're found, and just because you're in the app doesn't mean you're listened to, because there's so many choices, and we've also done some chart work about 80% of podcasts that were created are no longer in production. Again, part of that's okay, so be it.






It also means that there's just a lot of stuff in your way. If you're launching a new podcast today, you want to launch a True Crime podcast, boy, you better have something special and interesting, because you're not going to jump ahead of some of these fantastic shows that are already there, so you would be in that lower left. What do you do? Well, the first thing you need, I think it's something unique. You need what I call HVC, high value content.






That means something different, so it doesn't mean just being good, it means being different, and we say often internally here, different is good because if you're the same as the other guy, then why do they need you? And then you get onto attention, and attention is really hard and getting harder. At the beginning when we started Amplify, which is about 8 years ago, if you had a social media following and you put in a link to your podcast you were in, and you were up and you were going, and that's not the case today.






Kristin: Of the 80% or so of podcasts created that are no longer in production, would you say that that lack of being different, that HVC, is that really what's causing that many to fail if you will? Or is it kind of the perfect storm, or is it really vary?






Steve: Yeah, I think it's varied, but I would say it's these 2 things. It's HVC, the content isn't good enough, and the awareness is low, and I've worked with many podcasts who were quite good, who never got the attention that they needed, and that was sad to see them go, but if the content isn't good and they do garner the attention, that's like buying the bar of soap and it doesn't get you clean, you're never going to come back to it again, so you really do have to get the blend right, and it is not easy, which takes us back to that earlier conversation about why the business is shrinking a little bit.






Kristin: Right and going back a little bit as well to the data conversation when somebody is thinking of creating a podcast, or they're in that ideation phase, is it really a mix of data and insights, and just understanding the landscape that will help them land in that perfect range of being different enough, and having that high value content, understanding their audience and what they're interested in?






Steve: What their mission is? Yeah, so we put our clients through what we call the pod quest. It's a 17 question process, and the questions are kind of the table stakes. It's the answers that make the difference, but part of that is looking at the competitive set, and when you look at other podcasts in the sector, you really have to be honest with yourself and say, "How am I better? How am I different, and is it going to be noticed readily and easily by a potential listener?"






Kristin: How successful has the pod quest been? If they tend to do really well and nail all the answers, if you will, in a way that indicates that they will be successful? Have you seen that success rate pretty consistently?






Steve: No. No, because all of that is just a collection of information. It's positioning the show strategically, it's looking at it from really a ten thousand foot angle at the beginning and then zeroing in on the components, but then you get to execution, so it's a document until you turn it into audio. What it's really done, this is my favorite part of it, is everybody looks at the questionnaire and thinks we're going to be done in twenty minutes and we hit the three-hour mark. Not kidding. As we're working our way through it, and people always come back and say, "This has been so useful in focusing what we want to do or what we should be doing." And that's the point of the podcast.






Kristin: Absolutely. It forces a lot of examination and questions. I bet that otherwise potentially go unanswered or thought.






Steve: Yeah. It's really the cold water on a lot of things, but it's also fun because we find something as we're doing it that maybe we as the advisor didn't see or didn't feel, but the potential podcaster is able to really shed some light on it in an interesting way. I was on a call earlier this week where I thought the podcast was going to be one thing after we did the pod quest, and one of the participants said, "Well, what if we did this?" And I just love the fact that they were creating a solution, based on everything that we had done with the pod quest.






Kristin: It's interesting. It must be really, really interesting just to kind of have that total end-to-end view if you will, and be a part of that process.






Steve: I got to say, it's really valuable.






Kristin: That's excellent. I have a couple of kind of fun and off-the-wall questions for you as we look to wrap up this podcast, but before we get into those, is there anything else, Steve, that you'd like to discuss or promote or just leave our listeners with, as we wrap up here?






Steve: No, I think we've covered a lot of ground. By the time this thing is published, we will have released some data at podcast movement. I'm doing a study with another company on YouTube. I think it's a really important study about what people should be doing. There's a lot of consternation for all the right reasons. I know Veritonic has put out some great data too. It's the big subject right now for all the right reasons. We've seen the, the little apps go away. Sorry, Stitcher, you were great, but it just doesn't have the same need and functionality and awareness today, so YouTube is the giant that everybody needs to be thinking about, and it's going to be different depending on the type of podcast you create.






Kristin: Absolutely. Well, I should take a step back. Do you consume a lot of podcasts yourself?






Steve: I do, but I look at some of the Edison data on that, and I see that on average people are consing about 5 or 6 podcasts, meaning titles, and about 8 different shows over the course of the week, and so you got to think that the shelf space is just really rarefied air, and those are averages. There are people who are consuming way more than that, but I would say I'm pretty average. I'm getting to about 5 different shows over the course of a week. I'm doing a lot of sampling just by nature of the business, but the ones that I choose to listen to when I'm driving along or whatever it may be, yeah, it's a small number.






Kristin: Are you consuming any of them on YouTube, or are you just primarily listening audio only?






Steve: I am. I favor Spotify, I use Apple. I am not using YouTube. That's my own habit, but I have 3 science projects, a 32 year old, a 30 year old, and a 25 year old, and each of them listens to podcasts differently than I do.






Kristin: Sure, sure. I believe that. There's lots of opportunity for sure.






Steve: Oh, yes.






Kristin: Okay. so jumping into some, , lighter and a little out of the box questions, which we just....






Steve: Way we go.






Kristin: Yes, exactly. Let's see. If you were to produce a memoir, an audio memoir, who would you choose to voice the memoir?






Steve: Yeah. Yeah. My first thought was a guy named Ernie Anderson, was a legendary radio voice, but I actually am thinking it would be my very good friend, Jim Cutler, who is the voice of MSNBC and ESPN, and hundreds of radio stations around the country. He would do it because he knows me.






Kristin: Well, that's wonderful. That's a great choice. If you had to pick a career entirely outside of radio and audio, what would it be?






Steve: It would probably be in marketing somehow, somewhere. I really love using data to solve problems. I really like as they say, looking at the package from the outside in, and that is marketing, that's what it looks like on the store shelf, so that's probably where I would've gone.






Kristin: Absolutely. All right. Third and final question, if you could wake up tomorrow and play one instrument better than anyone else in the world, what would it be?






Steve: Yeah. Okay. That would assume I could play an instrument, and I could assume that I could be good at it, but I would have to choose the guitar. It's the one that I tried when I was a kid, and I still remember the teacher's name, Mr. Frag Nano. He tried really hard to get me comfortable with the F's and the D's and so forth, so I would say mastering that would feel pretty good, but beyond that, I don't know.






Kristin: Absolutely. Can you sing?






Steve: No. No. No and no.






Kristin: Okay, so you would just be playing guitar. Hey, that's a great instrument. That's high on my list as well. Well, thank you.






Steve: Eric Clapton has nothing to worry about.






Kristin: Well, thank you so much, Steve. It is always, always a pleasure. We love having you on and hope that you can come back and join us again soon.






Steve: I thank you for the time, and it's good to speak with you. Thanks.






Kristine: Thank you.






Woman 1: At Veritonic, we remain committed to helping you get the most out of your audio strategy. If you're interested in learning more about audio research, testing and measurement, visit veritonic.com or contact marketing@veritonic.com.










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