Sharon Taylor: High Performance Podcasting

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:01  
The sound off podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:12  
This week, I'm speaking with Sharon Taylor, who is the Senior Vice President of podcast strategy and product operations at Triton. I first met her when she was CEO at Omny studio, which is an enterprise podcast tool and radio people might know Omny for its online broadcast integration. Sharon always provides great perspective on the media landscape and especially podcasting. She's also been kind enough over the years to offer some guidance to us at the sound off media company and building our podcast network. All right, let's get into it. Sharon Taylor joins me from Montreal, Quebec. Sharon, do you remember the first time we met?

Sharon Taylor  0:50  
Was it at Podcast Movement?

Matt Cundill  0:53  
Yeah,

Sharon Taylor  0:54  
I have a memory of you coming up to me and being like, Australia, but i Is that wrong?

Matt Cundill  1:00  
That was another time.

Sharon Taylor  1:02  
Oh gosh. It's been a long time. Like I started only in 2016 knowing no one in the industry, and now i It's all blurred into one big conference.

Matt Cundill  1:14  
We were seated beside each other at a dinner in 2017

Sharon Taylor  1:17  
How do you remember that?

Matt Cundill  1:19  
I remember everything.

Sharon Taylor  1:21  
Oh my gosh. Is that a blessing and a curse? Well, it

Matt Cundill  1:24  
turned out to be a blessing.

Sharon Taylor  1:26  
Thank you. Yes, me too.

Matt Cundill  1:28  
Yeah. I mean, you had a lot to do with my company. I think that dinner sort of changed the trajectory of what we were doing

Sharon Taylor  1:33  
at that time. Oh, that's so nice to hear. Ah, because back

Matt Cundill  1:37  
then you were with Omny, correct. But I'm curious to know, what did you do before that? Well, I

Sharon Taylor  1:43  
did a lot of things before on me. So I'd always worked in tech. So I'd spent the better part of a decade working at like a managed IT services firm, and looked after kind of like operations. So did like HR and accounts, like it was a small company, and so we multitask much like startups. And so I did, like HR accounts. I ran like a web team. We did app development, we built, like a SAS product. We managed a fleet of technicians. And then way before that, I was in Hospitality Management. And so I at one point thought I was going to be a big hotelier, and then my life took a series of less turns that I couldn't be happier about. And now I'm in podcasting. Why

Matt Cundill  2:22  
is it that the odd turns in life are always left once

Sharon Taylor  2:26  
I know, and I had so much fear about because I moved from one side of Australia to the other on a whim, and I really like it was so it was like a huge amount of personal stuff rolled up in it to me as well, because the people I was leaving behind, and that company I'd worked for had become like family. And I just thought, you've got to see if there's more that you can do professionally. And yeah, and I fell into Omny, doing a eight week contract to come in and put like, some business rigors in place, where I figured out what else I was going to do over there. And it just escalated and turned into the literal best thing that I've done in my professional and maybe personal life as well. The

Matt Cundill  3:01  
roots of this podcast, by the way, are in radio. And a lot of people knew Omny studio because it offered radio tools. Oh, man, as far back as I can remember, I mean, I think I started using it 2010, 1112, in there.

Sharon Taylor  3:16  
Sound Gecko was the first product, and that was 2011 I think, which they did like text to speech that's before my time, but they tell stories of launching at Radio Days way back in the day, and because Omny had built this way to capture live stream and turn it into on demand content, either whole podcasts or bite size, like sound bites for social media, etc, there was a queue of people around their booth at the Things that we all dream of now at conferences, there they were three brilliant, brilliant guys and an incredible dev team. And

Matt Cundill  3:48  
so what did somebody say? I'm guessing who it might have been. But was it long? Yes, yeah. So it was long Zen. Who looked at you and said, Come and be a part of the team. What did he see?

Sharon Taylor  3:58  
Long is, for anyone that knows him, he is, like, hyper logical and rational and like just querying to an extent. So I don't know what he saw. I know that they like, I think many startups technically brilliant, and they have the visionary, but what they often lack is the ability to turn that into maybe not even action, because they had lots of momentum, but, like, business rigor and, you know, ability to operationalize things. And I think he logically saw what they were missing on the team. And that's kind of with a hole that I filled and allowed them to do other things, like before I came in, long was the one who was doing a lot of the board interfacing and, you know, figuring out pricing and those types of things. And that's just not a good use of a person's time who's so brilliant at coding and things.

Matt Cundill  4:45  
So you're head of operations, but then your CEO, yes,

Sharon Taylor  4:50  
it was, it was a wild ride. So we went from head of ops, and I took an eight week contract just to kind of help them like it was such a nascent product, and figuring out how to do pricing. Or, you know what a p and l might look like and those types of things. And then that turned into a full time contract do operations. And then it moved into like the CEO took an opportunity to exit and move on to do his next thing, as all CEOs do. And then all of a sudden, I was interim CEO, and then I was full time CEO. Yeah, it all happened very quickly, to be honest.

Matt Cundill  5:22  
So it's funny that you mentioned pricing and that maybe long shouldn't be the person who sits and worries about stuff like that. But in our conversation that we had that first dinner that we had together, I asked you, I said, Why is it that for dynamic audio insertion, it costs, and it was, I thought it was a ridiculously low price, where I thought it was an affordable price. I said, Why is the price at that level? Because I'd only been exposed to working with podcasters who are charging exorbitant amounts of money. And you turn to me, and you just said, because we just want people to use it. And this is 2017 and not everybody knows how to use this tool.

Sharon Taylor  5:59  
Yes, correct? Yeah. I mean, they had been free for a long time. I think the freemium model works in a very specific set of use cases. We have another CMS in the Triton stack now. It's called Spreaker, and they have a freemium offering. And it's because at scale and the volume that they have, it really makes sense for them. But yeah, we just wanted, like, it was that part of the product lifecycle, like we were ready for people to come on board and just get started. In hindsight, it probably hindered us a little bit because we had huge, huge radio organizations who were signing up online to our plans for like, 100 or $200 and so probably, like, it had its pros and cons, but yeah, it was really, it was. It was interesting as a time when I think back at the work that we did, and what we like pulled out of our hats as pricing, and a lot of it in startup, especially on a SaaS platform, you feel like you're just throwing darts at a darboard and then just measuring it to see, like, what sticks. And yeah, it turns out that it

Matt Cundill  6:55  
worked. And you're one of those operations that has many different clientele. You've got small podcasters, you've got lots of Indies, you've got some tiny startups like myself, who started to grow and went from one podcast to 35 podcasts, and then you've got these big radio companies. And it's, I mean, we know how much podcasters make, we know how much radio people make. That's a huge chasm. So how do we balance both of this to make sure everyone's included in podcasting

Sharon Taylor  7:27  
true? And I think there's, like, a an Omny historically, and then an Omny kind of now as well. Like, back then, we were really trying to, like, serve all edges of the market. Podcasting was so new that, to your point, like someone that was starting out more easily, I think, than now could become a huge show. And it was really the time, like a year or so after that that shows were either forming networks themselves or banding together and joining networks, whereas now, I think that's a little bit different. And so we really needed to, like, do a catch all and see what happened with it. Now in the stack, we've got Omny, who is geared to more like the enterprise, the radio, the, you know, commercial publishers, and then Spreaker, who is geared for like independents, people that don't want to join a network, but are very large individual podcasts and want to control their own destiny. And so I think in the company now, we've evolved to have something as an offering for everyone, and it's just changed that it no longer is Omny in

Matt Cundill  8:24  
2017 when we were at that dinner, did you think podcasting would evolve to where it is today? Have there been any surprises?

Sharon Taylor  8:34  
I'd hoped It's not often in your either career or personal life or professional life, even like, if you're like industry adjacent, that you get to see something like what happened in podcasting from when we went through it back then. It really was the hobbyist, you know, hey, there's something here riding the wave and becoming this professional medium that still has challenges, obviously, and is still so small compared to other marketing spends. But no, I didn't like, I remember Spotify getting involved and then sending us a license or agreement so they could start putting podcasting on their app. I don't know what I thought or hoped it would be. I hoped to really like to just, you know, turn the startup into a large commercial entity, and doing that needed, like, more listens. I think we still are at the kind of like a plateau. We need more people in podcasting. But I can't be unhappy with how it turned out.

Matt Cundill  9:27  
I love how you're not afraid of moves, but I do want to ask you, before we get to talking a little bit about moves, Triton buys Omny and you go along for the ride? Because sometimes when there's a purchase, it's like, is Sharon going to be going along for the ride on this, and it turns out, yes, it's a big yes. And there's another purchase that happens a little bit later, where iHeart buys Triton. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, what you had to go through in terms of changes from a CEO perspective, and how do you handle one, let alone two? Yeah. Well,

Sharon Taylor  10:01  
I mean, so before iHeart, Scripps owned Triton, and Triton, for a long time, had been private equity owned, and so they also went through some changes. And then after Scripps acquired Triton, they had their eyes on us. Luckily, we'd worked with Triton for two years beforehand, we had, like, a reseller lead gen, and so we knew the team, and we knew that they weren't there's an Australian word that I could use, but I think you'd have to bleep it out. Like we knew they were good people, and we worked well with them, and we didn't have to post acquisition build up that knowledge. Like I've had people and friends that have obviously sold their companies, lots of people in the podcast industry, and then all of a sudden you're navigating who is the C suite? I've had, like, a few DD meetings with you, but like, who are you? What do you want me to do? And so we'd already planned that out, and we already knew, and so that was really, really helpful. But obviously there are pros and cons. Like, there is an agility and a autonomy and control in being, you know, a small startup, like we were five people when we sold to Triton and moving into a larger entity comes with a need to adapt, obviously, and you get, like, some huge benefits. Like, do you need to have your own marketing? Like, I was a marketing team, and now I had a marketing team. I was a legal team, and now I had a legal team. I was a HR team, and now I had a HR team. And so I think as long as you lean into it like that, kind of

Matt Cundill  11:22  
helped us. So there's going to be a move involved. You'd already mentioned that you moved probably it was Perth to Melbourne, perhaps because you mentioned it was far and that's in Australia. I think the equivalent in Canada would be a Montreal to Vancouver.

Sharon Taylor  11:37  
I agree. Yeah. I think I'm no geography expert, but I think that Australia is the same dimensions, or square meter inch, I don't know, acre inch. What is geography of like to Canada? So, yeah, it would be the same as like BC to Quebec,

Matt Cundill  11:51  
yeah, and so, but then an even bigger move comes along, where you're going to be going Melbourne to Montreal, and that's a crazy move,

Sharon Taylor  11:59  
it is. I mean, to your point earlier. A lot of people, when they sell their companies, they do what's called rest invest, and so they get their earn out, and then the time comes and they move on. Some people are more entrepreneurial minded, like, I'm not a CEO that starts companies, I'm a CEO. I was a CEO that came in and operationalized. And so there was no like, real impetus to suddenly go, okay, great. I've done two years, and then off I go. So it's been a long, like five years now since I was with Triton, and I was doing my job from Australia, traveling lots and getting up at like stupid o'clock to do meetings. Because anyone that has run a business and has tried to turn it into an international business, from Australia or from a country, and get into other markets. You need to be in that time zone. Shortly after selling like the pandemic hit and travel went away, and the job became even harder. And I think I had two choices. One was call it a day, and thank you know the industry for a great time with Omny and Triton, or make a change. And John Rosso, the CEO of Triton, was really supportive and encouraging of like that change. And so, yeah, so I moved up to Montreal a long time ago. Triton bought a company called Stream The World  that was based here. And so they have a huge Montreal entity. It was easy ish to get the work permit to come up. And, yeah, I just thought, why not? I've got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Matt Cundill  13:25  
I remember Stream the W Stream the world, 

Sharon Taylor  13:28  
yeah. And then there was a company in the US called andomedia that was theirs as well. Like and they, like Triton has a huge history of acquiring companies. So does iHeart, which kind of makes it easier as well to put one small company into a large one, because you are dealing with people that have done it multiple times.

Matt Cundill  13:44  
So the culture shock from somebody from Toronto who moves to Montreal is immense, which tells me everything about Torontonians more than about anything else, because there's a big center of the universe kind of approach to the way they live

Sharon Taylor  13:57  
and how they pronounce their name as well. I would say Toronto, but they say Toronto, yeah. Take note. Canadian visa department, I've learned how to say one of your city's names. Yeah.

Matt Cundill  14:08  
And I'm sure people are gonna at me on that stuff, but it's what I've always sort of found and known I felt when I lived and worked in Montreal. I had to be a cultural Sherpa for anybody who had come from the rest of Canada to go into Montreal. But here you are. You go from Australia right into Montreal. Any culture shock, any sort of, oh, wow, moments where you go, Oh, this is a little bit different than what I'm used to.

Sharon Taylor  14:31  
I mean, the French is definitely like, we don't really like Australia is very multicultural, but we're also very English focused, obviously. And to hear French spoken on a street was quite jarring. It also is part of the romance of this place and why people come here, you know, even from the US and want to spend time here. Luckily, I'd been here before, because, like I said, we've worked with Triton for a few years before the acquisition, so I knew largely my way around. It is always hard to move. Cities or countries like and someone once said to me that if you're an expat that has moved overseas, you move because you no longer feel like your home country is really like where you belong. And then you move somewhere, and you also sort of don't feel like that is completely where you belong. Culture Shock wise, the poutine like, the love of like cheese curds, someone said to me that if cheese curds don't squeak. They're not good. I don't understand that. Yeah, they're no good. And then I think the snow was the biggest. Like, change like, do you know your face can freeze?

Matt Cundill  15:32  
Oh, absolutely. I'm in Winnipeg.

Sharon Taylor  15:34  
I didn't know that. I would just thought it snowed and it was magical, like a Hallmark movie. But no, so we don't have that in Australia, there's more similarities than differences. I think

Matt Cundill  15:45  
I know Winnipeg gets sort of flagged for the minus 30, but it's a dry, cold in Montreal, it can be minus 10, and it's so damp that your face will freeze. I think my ear froze once. I had a little bit of ear exposing and went skiing in minus 15. I'm the

Sharon Taylor  16:02  
clumsiest person you'll ever meet, so you'll never get me on the ski slope. My friends are amazed that I haven't slipped over and died here in Montreal on the icy sidewalks. But Snow management, the efficiency of it like, I'd love to see some data on that, but, yeah, it's a different world.

Matt Cundill  16:16  
Well, what data would you like? I can get that for you.

Sharon Taylor  16:19  
Oh my gosh. Okay, so I'd love to understand, like, snow maintenance over the years. I'd love to understand, like, the if it's increased decreased, like, their approach to snow maintenance and like, what learnings everything they've had that would be amazing.

Matt Cundill  16:33  
You know, when I was young and I grew up there, they used to toss the snow onto the lawn, and then the salt would catch in there. So they stopped doing that, and then, so then they put the trucks beside the blowers, and then they started to just, basically, they line the trucks up, and then the trucks will cart the snow down to the river, and they'll dump in the river. That's pretty good. So, I mean, if you've ever wanted to know why the river is a bit of a mess, that might have a little bit to do with it, but I think the real key is that you want to get rid of the snow. I mean, obviously for the parking spots, but you know, once it all starts to melt, it all starts to run downhill, and then you get what happened just last week, which was you can get some floods, you can get all sorts of unseemly stuff. And

Sharon Taylor  17:13  
snow is great until it turns to slush, and then it's a pant killer as well.

Matt Cundill  17:18  
I've watched the budget go up, by the way for snow removal. I do keep my eye on it at one I think it's in the range of about $70 million for the city. So now you know why your local taxes are so high? I

Sharon Taylor  17:30  
think that the taxes, like taxes and a bit, are so high. I would like, you know, in America how they've got Adopt a Highway. I would like to adopt a pothole like I would like to know that my taxes in Montreal especially are going to filling in. And I'd like to be able to walk to work and see all the roadworks that are disrupting my path and being like, Oh, that's so cute, that pothole I filled that in. So

Matt Cundill  17:55  
we did that one day for as a radio stunt, and we went and put Earth and flowers into every pothole that we could find along St Catherine Street, and we dared people to run them over.

Sharon Taylor  18:05  
Oh my gosh, I did that in year six, we graduated. I don't know why you graduate in year six, but we went running out into the Oval, and the groundskeepers had just planted some trees, and it was dark, and we ran out, and like all the little trees, I don't think anyone know that if the groundskeeper is listening to this, I'm so sorry, but yes, and Catherine is now under renovation again,

Matt Cundill  18:26  
yeah, for the 30th year in a row. Yeah,

Sharon Taylor  18:29  
crazy, yeah. And we're all like, please be finished before winter, but they won't be. And one

Matt Cundill  18:34  
of the nice things about, you know, where you live now, is that, you know, we get to see you more at Canadian events. I had a chance to see you at Radio Days North America. And I love it when you're on stage, because again, the filter, it's already disappeared. So conversations about podcast metrics, and it usually starts with a download, and then you'll interrupt or interject at that point. And so this year, you're on a panel, and I think there was a lot of ad buyers who are there. So how do you feel about the way podcasting is measured and the download specifically?

Sharon Taylor  19:08  
There's a lot of people that want to throw the download out. I think that the download is one of those metrics, which is like, it's the best that we have. There's still no standard in podcasting. There are guidelines that are put together by the IAB, and we all follow them. Most of the hosting companies follow them. Triton has a metrics product that ingests logs from multiple companies, runs the same filtering over it, because even if you say you're IAB 2.1 or 2.2 compliant, there are nuances in how you run things and how you display and you really need to be able to compare apples to apples, as the saying goes. What's different now, I think, is that there are more companies that are making listening available, and I think that's a really important thing that we should move to in terms of understanding more about how content is consumed and what people are enjoying, and getting good data. I'm just hesitant to. Say that we should move to the listen as the ideal standard, because there are, there are challenges to that, like podcasting was built in RSS, the genie got out of the bottle before we were able to really think about this digital slash traditional medium. And we've continued to grapple with that since I've moved into the space. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  20:19  
interestingly, I think back a few years, and I'm not sure if it's still available, because it's been a little while since I've been inside the Omny tool. But there were consumption metrics that were provided inside, but I think they were based only on the actual Omny player, which was the stuff that you would have access to. And so I thought, Okay, well, useful, somewhat useful. I'd love to have my apple, and I'd love to have my Spotify in there. And a couple weeks ago, we did have a Dan Meisner from bumper, who's just beginning to bring that in, and has given us, by the way, a test run on their new tool from bumper. And you can just wind back a couple of episodes, or just go to the episode page and you can see some of the stuff in there. So I don't know if you've had a chance to see it or understand what that what they're up to and what they've unveiled. But to be able to put apple and Spotify and YouTube consumption metrics, how would you integrate that? And how important

Sharon Taylor  21:08  
is it? I think it is important to give an overview view of how your podcast or podcasts are being consumed. I think that iOS 17 like, the reason that we want to get to get to listening as an industry is really important, which is, is it a download that is a user initiated download, and was it listened to? Is it a download that you know is because you've got auto downloads enabled, or anything else that's going on with RSS? And so I love the idea of being able to look at actual consumption versus downloads. I think that, again, moving only to that gives me pause, just because, like, I travel a lot. You travel a lot before you get on a plane. Are you like me? I download 20 episodes of something that I want

Matt Cundill  21:54  
to listen to absolutely, and I listen to three of them and

Sharon Taylor  21:57  
like, Yeah, well, no, I listen. I'd get through them all eventually. And so that is the problem, right? Like the difference between those things, and if you only move to a full listing model, you kind of cut that out. And so we're all just kind of doing the best that we can. I think at the moment, listening on Apple and Spotify is crucial to understand. Like, how your numbers are shaping up when we talk to publishers and they look at their download numbers on those platforms comparative to their listing numbers, there's not usually a lot of difference, like, there is obviously, you know, some that have got a delta, but it's usually, there's only, there's 10 listens and, like, 10,000 downloads. And I think sometimes that's the view that people hold that, like your listening data is going to be, like, 100x more or less than your download numbers. And I think that the more that listening data from people like Dan can go out into the world, maybe at the same time we could, like, try and improve the narrative around the fact that downloads, you know, if we could narrow the gap a little bit, I think that'll be really behoove us all.

Matt Cundill  22:58  
Yeah, I'm glad we're having this conversation, but at the same time, there's somebody in an ad buying position who's listening to this conversation saying, see, wow, the metrics are no good, see. And again, I remember Radio Days, North American. I don't remember which year it was. At some point you had to raise your microphone and say, I'd like to challenge that. And I think I recall you saying to an ad buyer, why are you picking on the podcasting metrics and the way we're doing our counting, you're using television and radio, and radio, they're still writing things down, and television, we don't even know if people are watching. They could have gone to make themselves a sandwich and had a bath and a shower and a sauna and just left the TV on. Do you find yourself being, you know, sort of in a Jehovah's Witness podcast metrics person in most scenarios.

Sharon Taylor  23:43  
No. What concerns me is that we're very eager to get up on stage and openly debate these things, and that conversation is really important. Sometimes I think it's very unique to podcasting like we still seem like Oliver Twist at the advertising table of like, please sir. May I have some more? And every time we get up and we talk about the failure of the download, the download is a baseline, and it should be standardized, and then you should be able to augment things, maybe with listening data, maybe it does move to where TV panels and, you know, radio panels and survey methodology move to which is, okay, here's a sample, and then we can extrapolate that out, like if we could get to even 10% 20% I don't know what that listing number is to say this percentage of data that shows listening is the same type of listener as the people who are downloading on mass, and we could maybe bridge that gap a little bit. But, yeah, it does. It does concern me. I think that all industries have these problems on some level. I like the fact that we're talking about it, because it means that we are, like, putting on our big boy pants and sitting at the table and, you know, it's no longer a backyard medium. It is like a full professional medium. But, yeah, I think the education of buyers, especially the buyers who are yet to enter the space, is. Is

Matt Cundill  25:00  
a tricky one. You know, from the radio side, it's like, well, we have all these radio ratings. And then somebody sort of said to me once, well, what is a radio rating if you have a 4.7 it's really just a number that is used to facilitate a transaction between the buyer and the seller of the advertiser. And I sort of look, downloads can be like that. But again, it has its limitations, correct? Yes.

Sharon Taylor  25:23  
And now to your earlier point, like we're getting a little bit murkier, like we've got YouTube, so podcast metrics at Triton will pull through YouTube views as well of a podcast show, YouTube measures it a completely different way to anyone else, like as do all other digital mediums. I think that we want to be really thoughtful in an industry of what we wish for, because there could be a world where all the buying just moves to like a Spotify or a YouTube, and that doesn't really give buyers what they want in terms of access. And that's a really beneficial narrative to be pushing for some large corporate entities, and maybe doesn't help the people who are still just getting started in podcasting, and want to you know access the same types of dollars.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  26:04  
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Matt Cundill  26:39  
What is brand safety.

Sharon Taylor  26:41  
Brand safety is a way for a buyer to ask for a set of like industry standards to be run against content. It could be podcast content which is just starting and getting started. It is display etc, to make sure that where their ad is appearing is something that is suitable for their brand. I think that brand safety has a lot of negative connotations, like, Oh, we're gonna like, you know, it's hate speech, or it's this, or it's that. It really just means that a brand has ideals about what they want to run against and what is suitable for them is what they want to appear in.

Matt Cundill  27:15  
And at the same time, I'm hearing a lot from listeners who come back to me go, why was I served those ads. Why did I get those? So what's in place, really, to, you know, not only from the advertisers perspective, for brand safety, but to really sort of customize the ad experience for listeners. Is there anything at the other end? I

Sharon Taylor  27:35  
think so. I mean, I think podcast advertising is still, it's getting less messy, but there's still, like a range of baked in ads, faked in ads, dynamically inserted ads that are direct sold, programmatic ads. And what you hear as a listener is largely dependent on the show, and the economics of that show, like the show might be selling a single ad across all territories because they wanted to sell their entire impressions. James quidlin talks about this a lot where he's in Australia, and he gets ads for US businesses that he can't access or buy the services or products of. And so if you're a listener, you might get a different ad based on your geography, based on, you know, an ad sales contract that someone has put together, like a large US publisher might outsource their ad sales to a specific house in Australia or England, or, you know, all those types of things. You might get some DNP advertising. So it's very similar to other audio styles, where your IP address you want to be a car buyer. I don't know if anyone knows this about DMP data, but 90% of people are car intenders. And so you might get a car ad. And there's a range of things like you can do, show targeting and other bits and pieces, brand suitability software and the running doesn't just stop you as a brand from going, I don't want to be around topics like the flag for arms and ammunition or any of those like 13 core topics. It also allows you to say, Okay, what contextually do I want to be around? Maybe I want to be in sports episodes instead of sports podcast shows, and so it allows you to kind of have your ad in a greater amount of inventory. Maybe you want to target any shows that are talking about Paris or sporting or the Olympics, so that you can target your ad more intently for someone that's ready to like actively listen to that content. And so you as a listener can get it in many, many many different ways.

Matt Cundill  29:24  
So in podcasting, there's so much to choose from. Like you mentioned, there's sports. You can get a podcast just about anything. And one of the things that I think has come up in discussion, and I've noticed it too, trying to, you know, sell, is that sometimes buyers are pretty steadfast about I don't want news because of the news, and I don't want true crime. And I'm like, you don't want true crime? That's like our biggest podcast, and the completion rate is huge. Why wouldn't you want this?

Sharon Taylor  29:53  
Right? And the demographics of true crime listeners like they are affluent, intelligent, like, it's a fake. Email audience, largely like, I don't know, I've joked before that I thought that there was, like, a hole in the market for, like a bleach company, or like a bathtub, or like a rope purveyor to, like, advertise on True Crime podcasts. And that's, I hope, funny, but also indicative of the problem, right? Which is, like, we think about this true crime podcast and it's, you know, Gore, or it's talking about things, and, you know, maybe just Disney doesn't want to be around those types of ads. I think that it is challenging. I think that it takes a more handheld approach to talking about, like, what the show is, and to show them, like how you'll be talking about things. Fiction podcasts have the same problem, because it's not, it's very evergreen content and to sell in like certain runs is difficult. News, especially, you know, has always been, I think, tricky, just because lots of advertisers who are buying news in paper form or like print or online already have the brand safety tools where they say, I don't want to be around like, one example that came up the other day is the word gun or any formats of it. And brand safety software, if it's going beyond the keyword, especially in audio, should be able to understand the context of what is being spoken about. So I could say that I'm gunning for your job, or, Man, that guy was a gun on the track, like in terms of a sporting podcast, most news publishers just have a list, and they just don't, if that's how they get to what they do and don't want to be included in

Matt Cundill  31:25  
so I'm going to elevate your joke, and I'll voice the ad, and we can do it in Quebec for Earth, NLD pool, Home Depot, and this is Home Depot, and we're going to give you all the tools to be a part of your own podcast. Come on down to get some rope, ammonia and anything that will get the blood out of the carpets. Like

Sharon Taylor  31:45  
there's no brand in the world that would do that, I think, or, I mean, it would be a very unique brand. Side note, there's a great true crime fiction podcast called sorry about the murder that is based in Quebec, and you would love it like it's, it's by fable and folly. It's really good

Matt Cundill  32:01  
Markdown and in the show notes of this episode and on the episode page at sound offpodcast.com

Sharon Taylor  32:06  
but it is challenged. Like, I don't know, there are horror stories of brand safety going awry in other medium, you know, like, there's all those. Like, whenever you watch a presentation about it, or you look at things, there's a news story about, like, an airplane disaster, and then an ad for flights sales comes up because it's been, like, contextually targeted, but not in the right way. And I think that podcasting, there's this notion of, there's a lot of content out there, and you're not gonna be able to, kind of, like, vet every show. A lot of agencies and advertisers who are working with a network understand those shows, and that's how they sell, because they understand what they're buying. I think that where brand safety and suitability comes into it, for me is that there are a lot of buyers that have not entered podcasting yet, and there is a lot of UN or lowly monetized content because they aren't part of a network that can get in front of these agencies. And as the medium matures, those buyers are going to expect the same types of controls that they can get in other mediums, and it's our job as an industry to help provide those for the buyers so that we can Shepherd their dollars through the door. And so I think that it's really early days. Obviously Garm getting disbanded. It's not ideal for the podcast industry at the moment, but it also could be an opportunity to innovate, like Garm was never really fit perfectly for podcasting. They have nudity and things like that, and that's not something that you have to worry about seeing on a podcast, although now that video is becoming part of podcasting, maybe that is a thing. And so the thing it's just we're again, we're riding that wave, and we are about to have another flux of podcast buying, and that brand suitability is just part of

Matt Cundill  33:39  
that. And tell me a little bit about about sounder, which is a tool that you've, I don't want to say recently unveiled, because I know you've been talking about it for a while, but tell me about sounder and how it does sort of lend itself into, you know, finding the right fits.

Sharon Taylor  33:52  
Yeah, no. I mean, it is recent, like, we acquired them at the end of March of this year, and so obviously, Triton has a few different pieces in our portfolio. We've got Omny and Spreaker, who are CMS platforms. We have Triton audio marketplace, which is the world's largest audio SSP, so it's where all the programmatic transacting happens. And we have, you know, direct sold with measurement. We have all these different pieces. And so sounder, for us just made a lot of sense to acquire. It's an AI machine learning platform that analyzes podcast audio has proprietary models built on both the IB and garam standard, and analyzes the audio in segments and contextually for those topics to say, hey, look, this is how it rates, either from a non related to related or a low to high scale for the IB and gum brand suitability and brand Safety categories, and also pulls out things like mate entities, transcript search terms, IAB categories at an episode and like segment level, it does a whole range of other things, and it just was such a perfect fit for us. So my opinion is that for brand suitability and contextual to really hum in podcasting, you need. To own every piece of the stack. You have to have the CMS, because you want to kind of get the episodes analyzed before it escapes into the wild, and then you lose monetization opportunities. You want it enabled in an ad server, because you don't really want to have to rely on having an ad run, hoping that the targeting was correct and then doing some sort of analysis after the fact to correlate what the episode talked about with where the ad ran. And so because we own all the different pieces, we can control that for a buyer and give them a level of like security and peace of mind. And so just at the moment, we're in the midst of taking it out to publishers on Omny Spreaker and Megaphone intubates with the well and either any other CMS that is interested to kind of allow them to have access to these tools, and then putting it into the programmatic marketplace as well, so that we can ideally get more buying in and increase the liquidities and get more dollars for everyone, then we can all have a money fight and throw like $100 bills at each other's face. Well

Matt Cundill  35:55  
earlier on, you mentioned that as podcasters, we should all be paid in gruel Oliver Twist reference,

Sharon Taylor  36:01  
the worst thing I ever did when I was starting out in podcasting is I went to go and speak at this isn't the worst thing if they're listening. I went to go and speak at the next Radio Conference that James quigland and Matt Deegan used to put on in London. And I was very new to the game, and I was talking about podcast monetization, which for anyone entering the space. Now, if you think it's confusing. Now, it was hectic back then, and I had two images like an expectation reality, and they were animated GIFs. And one was Scrooge McDuck swimming into the money pit, and the other was family guy did an episode where they talked about the physics of that, and like Peter Griffin jumped into the pit and broke all of his bones. And it was and it was really graphic, and I just timed my speech so poorly that, and the gift of Family Guy just jumping into a pit and being graphic for like two minutes, just kept playing, and I could see people kind of starting to do this, and that is where brand suitability would have worked for me in a presentation format.

Matt Cundill  37:00  
I mean, it's okay to learn the hard way, right? Thank you, by the way, for talking about the move from Australia to Montreal, but now I'm going to ask you to do sort of the same thing, but from the business side of podcasting in Canada, I have this feeling from the number of people that I talk that we are at a disadvantage. But before I go and taint your answer with your worldly view that you have, because you know Australia, you know New Zealand, you've got the Triton Rancors, you've got all the data. Can you summarize Canada for me, good news, bad news, either or in terms of podcasting,

Sharon Taylor  37:33  
I think Canada is very similar to Australia in terms of podcasting, like it's a smaller population, which means that we are naturally at a disadvantage from somewhere like the US, where, you know, the market is just so much bigger for everything, not just podcasting. It's largely dominated by radio. And so in Australia, radio joined forces. They all had, like, a podcast network that they built, and that really behooved the industry, because everyone had shared goals, common interests, and it kind of moved the market forward in terms of measurement and advertising it and a few other bits and pieces. They were all in lockstep. Canada has that same opportunity, but I don't feel that radio has really lent in in the same way that Australia did. And then I think that Canadian podcast networks make some amazing content up here, but they are dealing with the same ad buying teams that are used to buying in America. And so then those ad buyers are used to seeing American style numbers, and then instantly, when they see Canadian style numbers, they just go, oh, that's quite small, or they want to bundle both in, like it's North America, as opposed to Canada and the US. And so I think there's some challenges, for sure. Yeah.

Matt Cundill  38:45  
So a lot of the network people that I speak to, and you know, some have even gone so far as to say, Well, we really don't have a podcast industry in Canada. And I think it's easy to feel alone. And I think it's easy to say, Well, if you want to do this full time, and I think, actually, I do think this is true, that you do need to have ads, you need to have direct sales, you need to have programmatic and you need to have maybe some bonus Patreon or something along those lines. And you know, the many different tiers of money along the way. And so do you see in the future it becoming easier for a Canadian creator to bust through?

Sharon Taylor  39:20  
That's a good question. There's a few different paths. I suppose I don't have a crystal ball. I mean, a lot of podcasters and podcast networks have joined other larger networks. I think remaining independent as a podcast network purely in Canada, unless you can swallow up a lot of the shows and join forces and gain a significant amount of downloads or listens will always be challenging, but I think also there's an opportunity to change a mindset. You don't need to be advertising driven, like you could, like there are Apple premium, the Patreon, etc, models that people could look to, but yeah, the economics need to work for sure.

Matt Cundill  39:56  
Last question, favorite, Montreal restaurant. Oh

Sharon Taylor  40:00  
my gosh. Okay, I do have a favorite, but I selfishly want, like, it's my local bar that does incredible food. It's sensational. And it's so busy all the time. And every time I see them advertise on Instagram, I think, no, no, we don't want any others. There is a bar, a restaurant, a pub, a bistro pub called Nyks in Montreal, down near complex digital place desal. And it is phenomenal. Like, if you like brews, if you're Australian, you'll love it. The food is out of this world. It is sensational. The bar staff all lovely, like, I'm there a shameful amount, because I don't know how to cook. Like, the first word I learned in French was micro on which is microwave, because that's how I make most of my food. Cut that out. That's terrible. Don't tell people that. That's my private shame.

Matt Cundill  40:51  
I'm leaving it in. It's okay.

Sharon Taylor  40:54  
I mean, they microwave. Good things. Someone convinced me to buy an air fryer as well. That's kind of changed my life. Oh, you

Matt Cundill  40:59  
have the air fryer. I do. So what are we ordering at Next?

Sharon Taylor  41:03  
They always have different platinum like, different specials of the day. They always have an amazing fish that's on my friend that goes with me always gets mushroom, Papa dele sensational. They have the most amazing olive tapenade. It is incredible. They do a bison burger. For those of you that like to consume burgers and beef, I could go on.

Matt Cundill  41:24  
Sharon, thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I mean, I can't believe it's taken you this long to be on I don't know it's probably my fault, but thanks so much for doing it. After all these years, I've

Sharon Taylor  41:33  
been busy. I've been moving continents. Yeah, so much easier

Matt Cundill  41:37  
when you're one time zone away.

Sharon Taylor  41:39  
Yes, correct. Yeah. Scheduling in the worst time zone in the world is hard, but thank you. It's been so fun. Thanks for asking. 

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  41:45  
The Sound Off Podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Evan Surminsky, edited by Taylor McLean, social media by Aiden Glassey.  Another great creation from the Sound Off Media Company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com...