Jeff Umbro: The Podglomerate Approach

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast, the show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:12  
This week, I'm speaking with Jeff Umbro from the Podglomerate. If you've ever wanted to make a great sounding podcast. This is a company you want to pay attention to. They started back in 2017 making great sounding shows, shows that needed to be marketed. So they figured that out and began marketing podcasts, the shows also needed to be packaged right, possibly put into their network. So they did all that too. Okay, so all that didn't necessarily happen in that order, but here we are today. We're going to talk a lot about that, and also something I'm very curious about, and that's podcast promos, how they can grow your show, how easy they are to make, and how to measure their success. We're definitely going to dig deeply into that. And now Jeff Umbro joins me from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Jeff before podcasting, what did you do?

Jeff Umbro  1:03  
I was a book publicist, so I did a lot of things, but the most recent professional job was book PR. I worked at this boutique PR firm that all the publishers would hire, and it was a really, really interesting situation. I'd had an internship right after college where I designed iPhone apps, of all things, or at least that's what the company did. I was the guy that sat in the corner and tried to learn, like, what I should be doing. So then when I got this job as a publicist, they looked at me as this, like digital guru who knew everything about the internet. And it didn't hurt that I was, you know, the youngest person there by a decade. So anyway, I was a book publicist. I did a lot of work with the Internet back in like 2010 when that was very much a thing, but kind of new for some industries. I worked with a lot of business authors, because that's kind of the track that I was placed in. And through that, weirdly, I got to work with a lot of, like, really big names today, like Eric Schmidt, Ariana, Huffington, Ben Horowitz, and a number of others. So it's been really funny, because I feel like a lot of podcasting is just like the new version of writing a business book. It's like your version of a business card. So

Matt Cundill  2:13  
I started this podcast looking for the intersection between radio and podcasting, and I I've kind of sort of found it, but I think it's really books, writing, blogs, magazines, as more in common with podcasting than radio?

Jeff Umbro  2:27  
Well, it's more than anything. Podcasting is just like another vehicle for, I guess, influencer marketing or thought leadership. And you know, at it's like, podcasts are cool, but at the end of the day, it's just a vehicle to, like, get your message across. So, like, the message isn't changing, or at least not as quickly as some of us would want, but this is just like the new way of delivering that message. So it's very similar to radio to TV to books, and it's cool because now you have all kinds of other vehicles too that are doing really unique things. There's social media, there's video games. Who knows what's going to happen in the world of like, you know, AR and VR and that kind of thing. Like, I don't really play in that sandbox. But anyway, the medium is the message.

Matt Cundill  3:10  
Marshall McLuhan,

Jeff Umbro  3:11  
yes, what was the first podcast you published? Published? It was something called writers who don't write, which is a show that I made. I think it launched in 2014 maybe 2013 but it was with a buddy of mine, Kyle, who I'm still very close with, and I still make podcasts with, but we would interview authors about the one story that they could never tell. That was a conceit. Anyway, it never really worked out, because why would they tell a stranger that one story? But it was super cool. We got to talk to a lot of our idols. I was a publicist at the time, and like, you know, one of the the tricks about podcasting is that it is usually, in many cases, an application for just lead generation. And I would bring in authors to the book PR firm that I worked at, and I'd get a small commission. But more than anything, I just really loved doing it. And I got to talk to all of these people that I really admired in this super intimate medium, and I had fun. We published about 100 episodes, and I learned more doing that than probably anything else that I've done in podcasting.

Matt Cundill  4:18  
When and why did you start podglomerate?

Jeff Umbro  4:23  
I started poglomerate officially in January of 2017 but I'd been working on it for about a year before I started it for a few reasons. The main one was that I really wanted to work in podcasting, but the only people that wanted to hire me wanted to hire me as an editor, and I was a very bad editor, so I started the poglomer as a way for me to be able to tell people that I worked in podcasting. But in hindsight, I've realized that, like a bigger part of why I did it, was that I had been working in corporate America, or at least my version of that, for about a decade, and I don't know it was a little bit. Soul sucking, like I loved my my job, my colleagues and everything, but like, after doing the same thing, it just felt like I was on the hamster wheel and I wanted to try something new. I just so happened to have, very recently, come from San Francisco, and I don't know if you ever like spent time there, but it's just like every person is building something and inspiring you to do something new and getting out of their comfort zone. And so like all of those things combined, really are what drove me to start the company.

Matt Cundill  5:30  
So I've known about the company for quite a while, and I gather it's been through a few iterations. So when you first start it, I think it's the poglomer I'm not going to edit your podcast, and I'm in charge. So when you first started, what were you doing? And what were the first what was the first year, like, you know, that first lap around the track?

Jeff Umbro  5:50  
Yeah, so we were doing a lot of editing work. It just wasn't me that was doing it. So I worked with a small army of contractors, and most of them were friends of mine. I went to, I was a writing major, but I went to a film school, so all of my friends at that point in time were looking for, you know, extra work, and were all bored at their jobs too. And so I had these, like, super talented editors for film that would come in and do work with podcasts and brag to everybody about how they only had to do half the job, but they still got paid. So it was really fun. And there was a, I mean, there's a bunch of memories I have where it was just like me and a few of my college friends, like, you know, sharing hotel rooms at third coast and that kind of thing, and things I would not be able to get away with today, because I, you know, this current iteration of the business is like a what, what I hope is a real business. So the first lap around the tracks was really just me trying to get in front of people who were active in the medium. We had a couple contracts with, like, small media companies that were looking to make shows. We were doing a lot of work in the monetization front. So we found a bunch of shows that were significant. Ish, like 10 to 20,000 downloads a month, and we were the goal was to really, like, put them all onto a platform and sell ads on them, so that they would be a more attractive purchase for a big brand to buy all at once in bulk, which is the idea behind most podcast networks. What I think I underestimated at the time is just like, how important it is to really curate those buys. It's not really just all about scale. It's about curation and scale. You know what works on a sports show is not going to work on a relationship show is not going to work on a business show, etc, etc. So learn that over time. But that's that's really what I was trying to do initially, and then I was still doing a little bit of, like, freelance, book, PR and some promotional stuff on the side to pay my rent. And through that, somebody said, why don't you just do that for podcasts? And I did, and because no one really, at the time was spending a lot of time, energy or thought into like, what a podcast promotion vehicle looks like I really got a lot of phone calls, and that really was kind of like the initial driver of new business. And it's funny, because it was the thing I was trying to get away from and the thing I liked doing the least.

Matt Cundill  8:13  
Yeah, I've had a similar conversation, actually. I had it with Jeff Fiddler from Signal Hill, and I said, Boy, I love working on all this stuff. The only thing I don't like to do is, you know, the marketing and promotion side. And Jeff said, well, that's kind of everything, isn't it?

Jeff Umbro  8:26  
I just spoke to a friend who is working in a newsroom. It's a brand new newsroom, and he was walking me through, like, the hires that they had to make before they could get a reporter. And, you know, the big one was, like, you know, the marketing director. But he was essentially saying that you had to hire six people before you could get your first couple reporters in the room to actually do the reporting if you wanted this to be successful at scale. And you know, it's just, it gets very expensive at that point. And it's almost like, Well, why do we have to build all these things just to tell stories

Matt Cundill  8:58  
in those early days of a network and trying to sell ads on the network, whether it was just as a group, did you have some moments where you had a smaller podcast that would garner more money in the bigger podcast? You just couldn't move the needle on and it really wasn't about downloads, and it was more about the subject matter, and clients just wanted that thing and didn't want those things all

Jeff Umbro  9:19  
the time. I still have that today, we have a show that is doing, I don't know, I don't want to get too into the weeds with it, but we have a show that's doing, like, under 20,000 downloads a month, and it's been sold out for four years. And it is a, you know, small entrepreneurship vehicle that people love, that gets renewals constantly. And then meanwhile, we have shows that are doing millions of downloads a month, and if we sell like 10 to 20% of the inventory on those shows, we're really happy. So it truly is just about the subject matter fit and like, bigger does not always mean better, which is

Matt Cundill  9:55  
kind of weird, because I just came from Podcast Movement where I. It's still going on, and it makes me crazy. And I've I started, actually, with a full head of hair, and I just pulled all my hair out. Over the years, I

Jeff Umbro  10:07  
had some but when I started the company too,

Matt Cundill  10:11  
you need 25,000 downloads in order to qualify for this monetization, for this set. And the other thing, and I, I want to tell people, no, your advertisers are asking for that we don't need to have that necessarily.

Jeff Umbro  10:23  
Well, to push back on that a little bit, I will say that yes to everything that you just said, but there is also a point in which it makes sense operationally. So you know that show that has under 20,000 downloads like I love that show I've been working with with those guys for years, and it's great. But if that was the only kind of show that we were selling, like, we wouldn't be able to function like financially, the margins just go way down. So there is the idea of, like, the economies of scale when you're selling a larger show on the publisher side in addition to the advertising side. Like that show is really unique in a lot of ways, because it's just had a lot of the same partners forever, and it's part of these packages when we're already having the conversations. But like on its own, it does not make financial sense to sell that show for us anyway. But then it

Matt Cundill  11:16  
gets tricky, because now we're into the audience building side of things, and we need to build audience, but we need to build the right audience, and that's where I'm going to ask you, how do we go and find the right audience for the podcast?

Jeff Umbro  11:29  
Thank you. The easy questions, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of ways to do it, like the way that we do it at poglomerate is using what we call our five tier approach. So PR marketing, cross promotion, pitching the apps and paid acquisition I'll give you like 30 seconds on each of them. But in essence, we do all of these things holistically in order to try and, like, find different touch points for the audiences that may care about the show. So the publicity side is is very simple. Most people are aware of what that means, but the goal of that is to get earned media. So interviews, features reviews, lists of shows surrounding certain topics. In order to do that, you have to create a press kit and or just like materials that talk about the show the host, like the vision, the mission, and you have to create a list of folks that you want to reach. We call that a media pipeline. It's a really simple spreadsheet document. We have a bunch of PR databases that we use. So like we come up with the ideas, our entire team is intimately familiar with the entire media landscape. They're reading like magazines, blogs, newspapers, listening to podcasts like every day. That's part of their job. I would say it's, it's the best job ever. So they know like, what these writers are interested in, they know what these writers are potentially going to cover in the future, and they're able to craft their messaging and the pitches based around that. And it's a lot of relationship building. Like, we have a goal for all of our our marketing staff, to like, have X number of meetings with different folks in the industry every week is it really, is truly about making those relationships today, so that when you want to implement those in the future, you have them already, and you're not just going in cold saying, like, Hey, can you guys do this for me? And also, like, you know, you got to remember that most of these people are looking for their next interview or their next article or whatever. So like, if you can be helpful to them in finding that, then that's great. That said most media is not going to really move the needle when it comes to podcast downloads. There are definitely exceptions. There are hundreds of exceptions, but it really depends on like the show, the content, where your show is being featured their audience, and how dedicated that audience is, and then how close of a fit the content that you're pitching is to that audience. The second vehicle, and I promise these will go quicker, is what we call marketing, and there's two buckets to that. There's owned and earned. The owned would be just like your own vehicles. So social media, website, newsletter, if you have an app, if you do events, if you have other podcasts, how can you leverage those audiences and move them towards audiences on other shows? And there's a million different ways to do that. And like, we build out like a big document and an audit to like, show you the best ways to do that. And then there's attribution tracking on this. So there's a lot of different ways in which you can gage the effectiveness of these campaigns so that you know what's working and what's not, and you can put your efforts into one or the other, or, like, change what's not working, and then the earned marketing stuff would be like partnerships with third parties working with Quora or Reddit or pocket or hark. And if it's helpful, I can walk through examples of each of those. But the idea is really just like, find these different outlets that are looking for their versions of content, work with them to provide that based on the content of your show, and build that out in, like, a really robust fashion. So that is a win win for everybody. And then it also feeds into the own stuff, because then you can, like, share it on your socials or in your newsletter, and it becomes. This, like funnel, so a little bit of a flywheel effect. And we could talk about that with video, if you want later. But I think the big idea with any kind of like marketing is, where is it in your funnel? Like, how does it align with your goals? How are you utilizing that? The third bucket would be cross promotions. So pitching for interviews, feed drops, audio promos. Poglomer has run more than 150 million cross promo impressions in the last few years. We have the data on all of that, so we do know a lot of what's working and what's not. And there's no silver bullet. Unfortunately, it really is just about like all the variables that go into the the read the script, the content, fit and alignment. And we can see like there are certain genres that will probably outperform in certain size shows that will perform better than others, but it is still a very much a case by case basis. There's also attribution tracking for all of the audio to audio swaps, or audio to web swaps, which some people don't realize. I'm sure your listeners know that very well, but many others might not. Then there's pitching the podcasting apps, which is the fourth bucket. So there is the idea of pitching your show for editorial curation on these different platforms, like Apple, Spotify, iHeart, Sirius, XM, etc. There's also, like, certain ways that you can not game the algorithm, but like you know, work within the algorithm for how people may be searching for a show on a certain platform or something, and then the fifth bucket would be paid opportunities. We've spent more than $5 million promoting podcasts, and we have the data for all of that and how effective it's been or otherwise. So we we've broken that into five buckets. So there's audio, paid promotions, there's in app paid promotions, there's social, there's display, and then there's what I would call miscellaneous, which is kind of like, everything that doesn't fit nicely into one of those buckets. So now that I've given you just a little bit to think about, like, well

Matt Cundill  16:56  
actually, and it's great you mentioned that, because I'll just touch on the cross promos, because I think that's the hot one I know. Like, you know, there's Steve Goldstein, a Podcast Movement, standing up and talking about the opportunity with this. And, I mean, it's one of the it's actually the only reason that I started a network was just to have the ability to do cross promotions between the podcasts, even if they didn't necessarily mesh completely, but also having the ability to include others to do it. And so everybody gets their first. And Jeff, I'm here to tell you that you were my first. I love it, yeah, 2019 you know, I've got a podcast. And they say, Well, this guy wants a third party tracking pixel. Can we do that? And I said, Yeah, actually, we're all set up and ready to do that. And so you don't remember this, but I don't remember this. What was the show? The show is called Writing class radio.

Jeff Umbro  17:48  
I do remember this, and I know exactly what you're talking about now. Apologies, was this for story bound? Yes, yeah. So how did, how'd that swap work out? I wouldn't

Matt Cundill  18:01  
know I didn't have a third party tracking pixel, but I put one in for you.

Jeff Umbro  18:07  
Yeah, it's so funny. It's like, I literally have a database that I can go back and check that, and maybe I'll do it after this, after the interview. But yeah, it's that's exactly the kind of thing that, like, we find to be most effective, I'll be honest, there's a million studies that will show you, like, what works and what doesn't. And I actually would put Steve Goldstein's like, cross promo study in the same bucket as I would like the pod scribe, like attribution report that just came out. Because in a lot of ways, a cross promo is just an ad. It's kind of taken on, like, this weird identity of its own. Like, at the end of the day, it's an ad, it's promoting another podcast. It's just a tune in campaign, as opposed to, like, you know, a direct response, or, like, an E commerce situation. There are things that work really well. I really hesitate to say that it is something that is applicable across, like, every campaign that you run. What works really well is finding content alignment, like writing class radio and story bound. They're both shows that explore writing in different manners. And writing class radio, if I remember correctly, is a chat show with a literary agent. And am I wrong? It's close, yeah. So it's a chat show about books and publishing,

Matt Cundill  19:20  
They'll edit your podcast, and she is a literary agent as well, and they they offer writing classes, and then turned it into a podcast.

Jeff Umbro  19:27  
See, it's perfect. And story bound was a show that we produced for a few years that was authors coming on, reading like essays or short stories or poems, and then we would put this beautiful sound design around it. You can see the alignment as I'm talking about this. Now, the second thing that is super important in a swap like that would be the scripting and what goes into the copy as to like what you're selling on the show, because it is an ad, and if you just say, like, hey, we think you might like this show. It's about X, Y and Z. You can check it out here. You're probably not going to, like, drive tons of traffic there, but if you can create this alignment that really shows people that, like, you are actually, like, engaged and invested and have listened to the show and, like, give them a little bit of an example of, like, something that you experienced emotionally, like maybe writing class radio had had a similar guest that story bound had had, and they wanted to talk about that particular episode and said something like listening to so and so read this episode was like hearing it for the first time in this entirely new environment and blah blah blah, that's going to be a more engaging read. And we've seen that, like, we've done tons of tests where we'll run across promo that's like, calling out certain episodes or series or, like, specific instances that relate to something on the calendar, and we see those conversion rates go up. So it's about content alignment, it's about the messaging. And then, like, some of this stuff is just table stakes at this point, like, You should measure what's working. You should make sure you know what you're measuring and how that software works. You should make sure that your sound levels are good and this thing sounds okay. And like, don't make it two minutes long, although there's some people that would disagree with me there, I love to see it weirdly. One thing that has, like, surprised me over the years is that bigger shows, and I mean, like big, big shows, you know, like millions of downloads a month consistently have the best conversion rates that I've ever seen on both sides. And I suspect that that has to do with just their relationships to their audiences. Like they got big for a reason, because it's a great show, but I'll say it was surprising, because it's like multiples better on the conversion rate side. Like we're not talking just like, you know, between point two and point 4% we're talking about like point two and 2% on some of these conversions.

Matt Cundill  22:00  
So when you do a swap, it's obviously would be better to have the host of that show promote the show that you want promoted, right? Give it a host red ad feel to

Jeff Umbro  22:09  
it. Yeah, some of the data says that like, host reads perform like one to 1.5 times better than a non host read. I'll say that like, it kind of depends on the situation, but yeah, host reads are preferable almost every time. They're not always possible.

Matt Cundill  22:27  
I prep this show quite a lot, and then I prep it, and I never really pay attention to it, and then I go off script. So I actually found the story bound thing that we ran, so I'll play it for you.

Andrea Askowitz  22:37  
Hey, it's Andrea askowitz. I want to tell you about a great podcast called Story bound now in its fourth season, it's a show that features a wide range of today's top writers, reading essays, poems and stories. Every episode, authors share their critically acclaimed writing, which is accompanied by an immersive soundscape of original music and sound effects. The new season features Chuck Klosterman, Morgan Jerkins, Matt Haig, Nicole Perkins, Omar El acod, Ruth, wearer and Tamara Winfrey Harris. Story bound comes to you from the podglomerate and lit hub radio. Season Four is the best yet. So subscribe today on Apple podcast or wherever you're listening to this show.

Jeff Umbro  23:29  
So that makes me really happy to hear. And it's funny because I'm actually like, as I'm listening, I'm like, Oh, we could have written that script in so many different ways, because that was like, 2019 Yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you, by the way, for pulling that up. It's a nice, like, trip down memory lane. And, like, as she was mentioning each of the authors, like, Oh, I remember making that episode. That was awesome. I just thought it was

Matt Cundill  23:50  
just wonderful, because I just remembered that we'd actually done that. It was one of my first sort of promo swaps we got involved

Jeff Umbro  23:55  
in. And look what I've gotten you into now. You've done hundreds of these, I bet not as well as that. I love it. No, it's it really is a effective tool, and it's something that every podcaster can do, regardless of if you're brand new or if you've been doing this for years. I just went to try and find the the data, by the way, and you're right. There was no tracking on that one. So unfortunately, we don't have it, but I can tell you some tracking with other story. Bound promos, my opinion on cross promos is this. They're incredibly effective and very good at finding new audience, and everybody should do them. I think that it is folly to think that that is the only thing that you should be doing in order to grow your show. I

Matt Cundill  24:39  
want to ask this one. And you can pull up the data, if you pull up the data there with story bound. But I listen to sport shows like Colin Cowherd, and that's an iHeart thing, and they're filling with some promos. And here comes something that has nothing to do with sports. Yet I'm hooked, and I want to go listen to it. So what about this idea that it has to be sort of from the. Genre. It's got to be books and books that's going to be a good match. That's always a good thing. But what if it isn't? I mean, sometimes I'm listening to something and, yeah, maybe I would like to try something completely different.

Jeff Umbro  25:08  
Well, it's all about just like, contextual targeting, or intent based targeting, like it does not have to be from the same genre. We are working on two shows right now. One is about, like, how to have difficult conversations going into the election season, but like, about everything, like, how do you talk to so and so, about AI, or what happens if you're in a relationship with somebody from like, a different political affiliation, or what's the effect of satire in the news. And then we're working on a show that's like, this big investigative, sweeping story about corruption in America over the last 50 years. And I would argue that those two would actually convert really well going back and forth to one another, even though they really don't have anything to do with each other. And for that, it's about thinking through like, the kinds of people who are listening to these shows, like, like Matt, you're probably not going to tune into like, a bachelor rewatch podcast because you heard it on Colin coward. Maybe you would, I don't know, but like, if they give you a new true crime, you're probably going to be like, Oh, that sounds cool, yeah.

Matt Cundill  26:06  
So I would watch The Bachelor rewatch, because I do watch the shows.

Jeff Umbro  26:12  
Okay, I stand corrected,

Matt Cundill  26:14  
but I understand what you're saying, and that would be rare. I always thought the bachelor, by the way, makes for great podcasts for after the show. You just do the podcast after the show, and you're gonna get, you know, you can just build right off the fan base. I think it's just a great way to do it.

Jeff Umbro  26:27  
And by the way, I do have the story about data here, and I won't give the other show info, just in case people don't want me to. But we're seeing conversion rates anywhere from point 04, 7% which I would say is like pretty bad, all the way up to, let's see 6.144% now that's a small show like that only had like 1000 impressions. Oh, you know, I do have writing class radio on here. Do you mind if I share the conversion rate right ahead that ad converted at point 657, percent, which is excellent. That's really good. That ran for 30,000 impressions and converted 194 new devices to the show. Which is is very good. I would be really happy to see that on any campaign. That's a really great example of like this in action. So for example, if you were to do that once a month, then you can assume, and you get, we'll just pretend, you get the same conversion rates, which you wouldn't but like, let's just pretend. Then you can assume you're gonna get 2400 new devices testing out your show every year. You can account for churn and like, everything that goes into that, but you're not gonna have 2400 new listeners at the end of the year, probably, and you may have more, because you're bringing them in from other avenues. But anyway, this is something that you can do with just remnant inventory in the background, and it's not very difficult. In fact, there's a million platforms that are popping up all over the place that make it even easier. There's a new one that we're testing right now called swap FM that I'm pretty bullish on so there's a lot of avenues to grow your show.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  28:04  
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Matt Cundill  28:37  
now we are sort of pivoting and moving into something that's a little bit more complicated, and that's video, and it's only complicated because it's new for many podcasters, but remains a bit of a mystery about how to do it. So how do you view video? You know, as somebody who's really been quite supplanted in audio for a long time, and then in comes video and YouTube? Yeah,

Jeff Umbro  28:59  
so I'll go back to the first thing that I said about, you know, these folks that I was working with editing shows at puglomer when it first started. You got to work with good video editors. But I think the whole idea of video and podcasting is is kind of fascinating on two levels. On the one hand, this is an audio medium first for most podcasters, and there is no reason for somebody to do video if they don't want to, or if they don't have the resources to do it full stop. I think that is something that everyone should remember when they're making their show. The second piece of this is that video is this exceptional tool for discovery. You have all of these amazing video platforms that have existed for a really long time. Some of them, you know, are newer, but many of them have existed forever, that have massive audiences in the billions, that can drive people back to your show. And it's the same idea as like the flywheel effect that I was mentioning when you talk about your own marketing. If you. Can put out assets that people are interested in on any platform, whether that be YouTube or Tiktok or Instagram reels. If it is something that will resonate with people, then it is a really easy way to drive people back to your podcast. And in a lot of ways, it's kind of free marketing. There is the expense that goes into actually producing these things, which is not nothing. There is the equipment that goes in on the front end at the production phase. There is the post production work that goes into this, like, even outside of the time it takes to actually produce these things. It's also just like, the time it takes to export these things, which is not nothing, and will basically, like, kill your computer while it's happening. Then there is the idea of, like, actually uploading these to the proper platforms, distributing them properly, writing captions that are engaging and blah, blah, blah. But the cost, in many instances, does not involve any like, paid marketing, unless you want it to, and it can drive, like, enormous amounts of traffic back to your show. I don't think it works very well when you when you're talking about something that's super niche, like Matt, as somebody who also has a podcast about podcasts like I don't think that this show, or my show, would do a ton like out in that ecosystem to drive traffic back, at least not at scale. It might work really well with the right people, but if you're publishing a sports podcast or a relationship show or, like, an after, you know, a ring or after listen show, then it could be really effective to just put the most popular clips out there and bring people back. And then there's also the idea of just video is is kind of changing the ways in which the podcast platforms that we're so used to are acting. So if anyone's familiar, Spotify has launched something called sai streaming ad insertion, and that's their very fancy way of saying that you can publish video on the Spotify app natively. In my opinion, they're framing this as a way to, like, eventually upsell more expensive ads at a higher CPM, and it's working with some of their properties, but it opens up the door to all kinds of other interesting things, like being able to have this video searchable on Spotify, like version of Tiktok if you've seen that, or having the same thing apply to like Your LinkedIn feed. For example, video is clearly more engaging for a lot of these social platforms, and they're investing more in it, and that's also applying to YouTube to Spotify, and a company just actually unrolled last week the ability to actually upload video to Apple podcasts, ironically, using technology that's existed on the platform for 20 years. But anyway, I don't think that this is the end of what you're seeing. But like my big note here, and the thing I tell every one of our clients and colleagues is, if you don't want to do it, or if you don't have the resources to do it, don't do it. So somebody

Matt Cundill  32:53  
who's got a network and a production company sort of behind podcasts, and then you you're bringing in video editors all of a sudden. What's that due to cost? Because video is more expensive, isn't

Jeff Umbro  33:03  
it lot more expensive? In a lot of ways, it's actually great because you can just charge more, but yeah, it does create a little bit of, like, an operational inefficiency that you have to solve for. So I can't speak for anybody else, but at puglobin, like, we have people in house that are capable of doing this and that are great at it. And then we have some support that our 1099, contractors that we bring in to assist. We account for the time and the energy that goes into this when we're like, writing out contracts for our clients, and we let them know, like, what's realistic and what's not. And then we just operate from there. I will say that we now produce video for 75% of our productions, not always like something that's super high quality. It could be a talking head show, for example, or we could just be recording the video for social use, but we have some aspect of video in about three quarters of what we're producing.

Matt Cundill  34:03  
We're doing a talking head show right now.

Jeff Umbro  34:04  
We are and I do it all the time. Matt, I don't know if you know this, but I launched podcast perspectives for three reasons. One, I love interviewing people and learning more about this industry. Two, I wanted to have like, a playground where I could just test out, like every new thing out there and see what works and what doesn't. As opposed to doing that for a client and three, I wanted to publish videos so that I could understand firsthand every little thing that went into that before I'm talking to clients about, like, why they should pay us to do it. And I've worked with video a lot in my history, but never, like, in front of the camera. And let me tell you, it's, I mean, you know, better than anyone, but like, sometimes it sucks. Like, before this interview, I was like, ironing my shirt making sure that I had shaved. You know, I'm a little long in the hair right now, and I'm like, oh, I should have gotten a haircut yesterday. And it adds a lot of complications that you don't think about. And that's me, like a guy who. Doesn't really care about these things. So just imagine somebody who's, like, really protective of their brand and their visual appearance and that kind of thing. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  35:08  
I went into this same reason, actually, that I started to do this a little over a year ago, is I can't really speak to it unless I do it. But I did promise myself I'm not going to try too hard to look good. And as you see, I've succeeded. You look

Jeff Umbro  35:20  
great. It's funny. I said the same thing and like, and stand by it, but a guy on my team who I'm close with, and this was not rude of him, but he's like, Hey, dude, you should really think about getting haircuts before these interviews. And like, I can't get that out of my head. Now, I

Matt Cundill  35:37  
went to Podcast Movement this year, and I thought, for me, what do I think is going to be the big thing? And it's really the relationships I you know, between the people who can put ads into the podcasts that you work with, or your podcast, or anyone's podcast, and you know, what's that path going to be? And now, with so much opportunity, I mean, I'll throw a bunch out there, you've got, I mean, you can do direct sales, you can have, you know, sponsorships and subscriptions. But also there's programmatic, and there's multiple ways to get involved with programmatic, with fast technology now, and so here I did see there were an awful lot of people who were willing to work with networks, to work with podcasters. What was your takeaway from Podcast Movement? What did you sort of find was between brands and podcasters? What's that relationship look like right now,

Jeff Umbro  36:30  
I have a lot of opinions, and I'll say a lot of things, and some of this might get me in trouble, but I do really mean this, so I'm happy to say it, I think that there is this really interesting world happening right now in podcasting, where you have this tension that exists between publishers and between advertisers. So I think that just to lay it out, like the landscape, you did a great job just now, but like to, like really oversimplify it, most people are selling ads in three ways right now. There is the sponsorship model, which is like more of a bespoke partnership situation. You might call that underwriting or something, if it's an NPR show, or you may have just this relationship with a brand where they're buying on their your podcast, your website, your newsletter, your socials, etc. There is direct sales, which are often through the agency. So you are selling on a CPM model for, you know, either dynamically inserted ads or a baked in ad for X number of impressions or X amount of time. And then you charge them like, you know, impressions times CPM every month you do the billing. And then the third relationship would be programmatic. There's a lot of different marketplaces out there that are attached to hosting platforms like the Spotify ad network, which is with megaphone, ad Swizz, which is with Simplecast. Trent digital has their own network with iHeart and all those guys. And traditionally, you're gonna get, like, high quality to low quality, high CPM to low CPM within that waterfall. And there's a million things beyond what I just said that go into this, but like, very big picture, that's what this looks like. That's how 99% of people are selling their ads. So you can gather from that that like Quality comes first, but scale is a very close second. So in theory, the more impressions that you have to sell, the more money that you will make. And hopefully you're making more of that those sales at like the higher impression threshold than at the lower impression threshold. And then along the way, like everybody gets a piece. So the ad agencies that are selling it take a commission. The publishers that are representing these shows typically will take a commission. The hosting platforms that are enabling this technology will take a commission. The rest goes to the publisher. And I'm very much oversimplifying it. I know that there's a million other things that go into that, but in theory, for every dollar that you sell on advertising on the show, the host of that show or the creator, again, very variable here, but the host is going to see like between 60 and 70 cents out of that dollar. So there is a lot to think about with that. You know, how should you be thinking about enabling your podcasters to make money? That, in my opinion, is like one of the big mandates of running a network, but also, like, how are you protecting yourself and making sure that, like, you still have a company that can service those clients in the future? So there's a lot that goes into it now. In the last couple years, the ways in which people have been buying podcasting ads have changed. Historically, people will do a baked in AD within a podcast, because that was the only way they could do it. Like dynamic ad insertion didn't exist. Dynamic ad insertion came around, and all of a sudden you were able to unlock all of this historical inventory, and you can sell ads on your remnant inventory. And people did that in a lot of interesting ways. Some people were still selling baked in. In on the front list, and then they'd remove it after 90 days, and then they'd sell programmatic on the back list. Some people would just sell everything dynamically. And I feel like we went through this shift where all of these big publishers and platforms like enabled this ability and this choice to occur, and I think it was a really good thing for the publishers, because they were able to unlock a lot of inventory, 2021 two, roll around, and you all of a sudden have all of these advertisers who are seeing declining conversion rates, like a correction in like how some of these downloads are calculated, and downloads are how ads are sold. So they're realizing that they're out there, buying ads on stuff and paying this amount of money, that is not necessarily accurate. So a correction occurs a couple years ago where advertisers and ad agencies are actualizing those spends in a lot of different ways. And today we are at a point that is really interesting to me, because we have all of this technology enabled in order to sell ads in a lot of ways, however we want, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but like I feel that there is a lot of pressure from certain parties to sell ads in a certain way. They are looking to sell ads in like a baked in manner to reduce frequency, to maximize the number of IP addresses that they're reaching with these downloads for their brands, which is fine. I'm very okay with all of that. The thing that is giving me pause is that most of the time when this is happening, those CPMs are not changing. They're staying at the same rate that people are selling with dynamic buys across the catalog. I had a very, very interesting conversation at Podcast Movement with somebody who's very involved in like trying to change this, and is really interested in doing right by their clients and selling ads in a manner that maximizes the exposure to new listeners and maximizes conversions to like their product. And that's awesome. I genuinely love that, because it means that we have a healthier industry, and more people will buy in the future. I think that there is a little bit of a difference in understanding of what goes into that. And I don't know if I'm like going too deep here, but like running an ad unit in that way literally means doing more work. There's more administrative overhead, there is more like things that need to happen. And I think also a lot of the definitions of like what people are actually looking for are being confused. Oftentimes, when an advertiser is looking for a baked in spot, what they really mean is that they want a spot that is like red for each individual episode to live within the context of that episode, but what people hear is, I'm going to run the same ad unit baked into the episode every week, and that's kind of a lose lose for everybody, because the advertiser is not getting what they're interested in, and the publisher is wasting a lot of inventory. So I think that there's a lot of different ways to solve for this. You know, running a dynamically inserted ad, putting on frequency capping and charging for that, by the way, refreshing your reads more frequently than you would otherwise. I could go a lot longer on this, but I'll stop because I know that this is probably very boring for a lot of people, but I do think that the ad market in podcasting, in a lot of ways, is healthier than it's ever been. I also think that there are a lot of different players right now involved in trying to, like, make this a better experience for the parties that they represent, which is exactly how it should be. But my fear is that the solution to this at some point becomes inequitable to the publisher, which is who I would like to represent more than anyone. We do an annual slide deck for the poglomerate every year, and it basically is like the state of the network, and we show it to the staff. And one of my favorite slides in that is like, how much money we've paid to publishers that year. This is my very, very long winded way of saying that I want that number to go up and not down.

Matt Cundill  44:03  
I mean, a lot of it does start with the CPM, right? The CPM has always been designed to squash the rate, whether it was at Radio, any broadcaster, and now podcast, but with so much technology in the background and so many different ways to deliver the ad, radio never charged more, which is why radio, it was just very powerful. By the way, radio is very powerful medium, but they just never charged more, and they just got stuck, and the numbers kept going down. And I think podcasting does run that risk. And I'll admit, there was a couple of times at podcast me when I was a little bit irritated to hear from some people about, well, you know, the download this, well, you know, well, you know, this and well, you know, why can't it be more like radio and TV? Well, I don't think we want to look at that model radios. People are filling out diaries and radio and in TV, we don't even know if people are in the room watching the thing. So, I mean, I don't know what we're wishing for here. Sometimes, when I hear this stuff, sometimes I don't feel like we're getting closer. I sometimes think we're getting further apart. Yeah.

Jeff Umbro  45:01  
Well, it's funny, because I have so many thoughts on that particular statement that you just made with the download. Like, on the one hand, I know you had Dan Meisner recently on the show, as well as Sharon Taylor, who both said similar but different things. And I'm friendly with both of them and really admire everything that they do. The bumper dashboard is one of the coolest innovations that I've seen in a long time. I love using it. I have a show that is on there. It is hugely helpful in all of the ways that Dan talked about on the show. Yeah, I always come back to the thing that Sharon said when you spoke with her a couple weeks ago about how the download is, just all we have, really, when it comes to, like, most of the use cases of what we're doing in podcasting, and it's kind of like a double edged sword, because the whole reason we all love podcasting, the way that we do is because it's this fragmented ecosystem, and yet, like, our biggest complaints have to do with the fact that it is a fragmented ecosystem. So I don't know. I don't have an answer. I wish I did. I'd be a lot more prominent if I did. But I think both things can be true. Like I would love to use the bumper dashboard and still sell ads on downloads and still work with agencies to come up with a fair CPM and a fair way of serving our ads that lead to conversions for their clients. And at the end of the end of the day, I think all of us just want to tell cool stories. What

Matt Cundill  46:23  
is one of the things that you are working on that's sitting on the corner of your desk that you're very excited to be tackling over the next three months is going to solve the problems for the poglomerate?

Jeff Umbro  46:33  
I wish I knew the answer to that, but I have, and I will say, by the way, that any company will always have problems, but I'm very lucky to be saying that like, you know, we're in a very good place right now. That said, there are a couple initiatives that I'm tackling right now that are of note. One is, like, I would love to make my own version of what bumper is doing with their dashboard. We have a dashboard that we've been building for years for our clients that tracks very similar things to what bumper is doing, but then also a bunch of other things. And I'm sure the bumper guys are also tracking this. It's just not in this particular dashboard, but things like download growth or decline over time. We have these fancy graphs that will show that consumption data, which is what bumper is so good at doing, and then also, just like what we call share of Veer, so how people are listening to your show based on which platform they're on, and the growth and decline, you know, over time of that. So we've been pulling this data forever, very manually. We are working on building our own like automatic dashboard version of this, which then will allow us to get a lot more creative with how we're actually looking at that data and looking at things, like unique listeners and like how people are listening, and that kind of thing. So I'm very excited about that, and we are in production on that, I guess you'd call it, I don't know, in development on that. We have a couple shows that we're working on right now that I'm very like excited about. One just launched this week, called master plan. That's the show I mentioned earlier. That's talking about, you know, corruption in America over the last 50 years. It's hosted by David Sirota from lever news, who was Bernie Sanders speechwriter, and that shows as of this conversation right now is like a top 10 news podcast, and it's in the top 100 on Apple podcasts. We did not produce it, but we are helping with the marketing on it, and I'm very proud of that show and everything that the team has done for that. And we're also producing a show called the fine mess that everybody should tune into. That is the other show that I mentioned, where it's all about having difficult conversations. We just published a great episode with Sam B all about the good and the bad of satire and political comedy. And then otherwise, I am like everybody else, like kind of playing with AI in a few different ways. Nothing noteworthy, but there's some interesting things that I'm seeing with, like database management. That is maybe the nerdiest thing that I'll say today, but that I am really, really bullish on. I don't think that we're gonna have these robot overlords that are gonna take over our lives, and I also don't think that we're gonna live in some utopia where nobody has to work. But I will say that there are some applications of this stuff that will make your life a lot easier and save you, like, hours when it comes to, like, sifting through data and that kind of

Matt Cundill  49:22  
thing. Jeff continued success with the podglomerate. It's been exciting to watch this company grow over the years. I'm so glad I finally got you on the show.

Jeff Umbro  49:29  
Thank you so much. This was a pleasure, and that truly honored you've had quite the slate of podcast professionals lately, and it's great to be included among them.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  49:39  
The Sound Off Podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan Surminski, edited by Taylor McLean, social media by Aidan Glassey, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at Sound Off Podcast.com you.