Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altiger Show. Today on The James Altiger Show. So this next guest has a very interesting business, which I think is possible, and we've discussed this quite a bit, is possible to get into for anyone, and it's gonna be a multimillion dollar business. So basically, he started off finding small venture capital funded companies who wanted to get the best bang for their buck on advertising, and then he found podcasts he could cheaply advertise on and measure the results. And now of course that industry has evolved, so he deals with big companies and big podcasts, but there's a million or 2,000,000 podcasts out there. Anyone can start up a similar business and you know, finding small companies that wanna advertise and measure the results and not spend a huge amount like, you know, they maybe wanna spend 1,000 and not millions on an ad budget. And it's possible to find hundreds of podcasts to advertise on and we discussed how to find the right podcast, how to find the right advertisers. But then also what was great about this podcast and the guest, Dan Granger, and his company is Oxford Road, and we discussed everything I just mentioned. But also we did a fascinating overview of the whole media industry and the podcast industry, polarization in media and how that's distorting the country and how we can maybe solve it. And this is a discussion everyone should should pay attention to. Dan, we were debating whether Daisy Ridley was rich or not. Oh, s**t. I should know the I I I should know who you're talking about. So how how ignorant am I? Wait. You're you're the the the ad agency for influencers. Daisy Ridley was the star of the most popular movie of all time, Star Wars. She was? The re the recent trilogy. You know, there's a lot of podcasts in the world and a lot of movies. I do you know, we do audio primarily, with podcast kinda being our signature dish. But I if I the amount that I don't know is embarrassing, And, but you're gonna find that out when you start recording, so don't worry about that. I I respect someone who doesn't know who Daisy Ridley is. That means you probably have a very interesting life because it's the most pop Jay, look this up. We need fact checkers right now. Is it was Star Wars the most pop the trilogy was the most recent trilogy. Was this the most popular movies of all time? Rey. Yeah. She was. She is Rey. Alright. Yeah. But, like okay. I if you said Rey, I'd be like, okay. I I know Rey, but but you wanted to get technical with me behind the camera. I don't I don't know. I don't know who she is when she's not Rey. Yeah. I guess I haven't texted her with her myself lately either. We used to text all the time, and she just blew me off after Star Wars. Come on. But I I read that she only got, 3,000,000 for the 3 movies, and now nobody will cast her because she's too what's it called? Typecast for this one role. Come on. Yeah. That's so sad. It is it is sad. I always wonder about this. Like, do you know of any and we'll get to the podcast in a second. Yeah. Sure. Do you know any movie stars that were, like, huge stars and then ended up doing not like, they had to just get a regular job afterwards? I feel like I've probably, gone through the clickbaity stuff that will give me the the rank ordered list of those enough times that I should be able to report. Now. Yeah. Here's the reality. You wanna know what this is revealing for the podcast is that I'm I'm pretty good with facts. I'm pretty bad with names, but I do know the information. But, no, I you know, there's, your your your strengths become liabilities. Right? Like, the more defined you are, the harder it is to to do something else if that's not what people are looking for. Right? But That's a good point. You would think at her level, somebody wants her in there anything. Right? Like, if you were gonna make a movie and you had a $1,000,000 to give to the star, she would be a reasonable choice. Maybe she just is asking for too much now because she was in the most popular movies ever. Okay. But let's look at it this way. What happened to Mark Hamill? Yeah. Jay, what happened to Mark Hamill? He was all he was the voice in all the cartoons. Right? Yep. So, like, he done the love of voices. So Mark Hamill's, other than his, his love Skywalker, he's most famous, his iconic role was Joker and, you know, Chuck from the movie. So he's more into the voices. Yeah. He was Chuck and the and no. He was Chuck at the, you know, the the the horror movie? So he went from being a Jedi to being, like, a puppet monster? But, like, I I from the original Star Wars, only Harrison Ford well, well, I guess Carrie Fisher also, but Harrison Ford actually, I don't know if Carrie Fisher was that big afterwards. Only Harrison Ford was really big afterwards. She's in Harry Met Sally, but that's, like, that's all I'm really thinking of. I mean, she did okay, but here here's a lesson for me in all this. 9 episodes. Don't star. Don't be the 1. Yeah. You know? Just be like have, like, your line, and then other people want you because you were that guy with the line. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. You don't you don't want it to be all about you, or or it sounds like you're you're gonna stay there. Yeah. Maybe they just felt like, alright. I made 10 to 20 on Star Wars and the toys, and now just go to conventions and whatever. Whatever. I think Daisy really wants to do more stuff. But, anyway, let this this does segue into what you do. So, Dan, you started an agency, which I think I wanna hear about the start of this agency because I feel like other people, maybe in a smaller way, but maybe even in a different way, can start something similar, which is that you connect brands, and now you connect multibillion dollar brands to influencers. And this is a good marketing strategy, but, also, I feel like it's a good start up business strategy. Like, I've talked to people in the past who tried to pitch me their services. Like, oh, I'll hook you up with this Instagram influencer or YouTuber or TikTok or whatever. Maybe you could describe a little bit more what your agency does and how you got into it. Yeah. Absolutely. So Oxford Road was born really riding 2 waves. 1 was the podcast evolution. I started kicking the tires on podcast in, like, 2006. And, you know, I was working in local radio at that time and really saw a need to have content that could be successful that people wanted, but you could never actually get it out there because your best hope was you'd get a weekend slot for 2 hours that wouldn't get any ratings on an AM radio station in one market. That was never gonna be a big thing. And what podcast did was it it made it accessible for anybody to get any type of spoken word content that they want from anywhere on demand. Let me ask you a question. Like, is there ever a need for anybody to ever do a radio show now? Yes. I think that there is. Because the difference is, you know, PodcastOne of the things I think we we forget is that it is still primarily an on demand channel. And so the idea of something that is live still does have a lot of value, and podcasts really haven't bridged that gap yet. Now I think it's going there, but I think the the opportunity in somebody that can do something in real time, still still is important. That's so interesting. I wonder if you can, just call up, like, a bunch of podcasters. Like, let's say, the top 100 podcasters and say, hey. Let us know whenever you're recording live, and we'll put you on our podcast radio channel, and then you do a deal with that with Sirius, to go into the cars and everything like that. I think they're playing with it. I think, normally, it's more like, hey. Will you we need you to fill in this time. Can you can you show up and do your podcast at that time? Right? And, and can we make sure that, you have, you know, good Wi Fi and, yeah, that it's a reliable, output? But I listen. I I think, our by the way, have we already started, or are we doing it? Okay. We're we're we're going here. Alright. Great. We've been going since Star Wars. Have we really? Yeah. Okay. Good. Well, big fan. I hope Ray is very successful, and wish her all the best. So so listen. I think that, you know, I came out with an article a couple years ago that basically said radio is eating the podcast world because I saw those two things coming together. It took a long time for radio to figure it out, but then they realized it, and they've changed gears very, very quickly, and they are trying to merge as effectively as they can. Yeah. Look at, like, how how Midroll, which we we both do some, you know, work with. They're the big ad network for podcasts. They've been owned in the past few years by both Scripts and now SiriusXM. Yeah. Yeah. Well and it and it changes quickly. So, the I think what what you're gonna see over the next few years is I think you're gonna see podcast looking more like radio and radio looking more like podcast. That's my prediction. So what do you mean by that? Like, how will podcast look more like radio? Well, I'll give you an example. When we got into this, you might have 1, 2, maybe 3 ads an hour. K. Turn on your radio station. You could have 15, 20 minutes of ads in an hour. Okay. Dynamic insertion is a big deal. Very, very important. You seamlessly pivoting to your live read is changing. You know, you you might have gone couple years ago, you might have gone 2 and a half minutes doing a commercial and but it'd be you talking the whole time. It's not like, okay. Hang around till after the break. We'll be right back to talk about whatever. Okay. We're going that way. Let's look at what's actually happening here. A lot of these, podcast production companies have been bought for a lot of money. Now somebody's gotta show that that was actually a sound financial decision. And how do you do that? How do you double your monetization? Do you double the price on everybody? Well, till they stop buying it. Do you do you double your ratings? Well, you're trying, but can you double your ad load? Absolutely. So it's low hanging fruit for them. So that's one example of how it's gonna go that way. I think some of the things we were talking about earlier where podcast becomes less of, like, an evergreen on demand thing. I mean, you're you're seeing a big shift with the daily in a in a whole genre of programs that are every single day you can tune into it as though it's a radio program. But at the end of the day, it's not, designed, for for the ecosystem to function as a live channel. It's something that people go to as they want it, and that's what's gonna shift. So it's like VOD without television. Right. Right. And although a lot of podcasts now are moving towards, you know, their most popular aspect is video. I can't seem to like, I'm I'm totally audio. Like, we don't really do a a video component, but I I see a lot of podcasts. Like, Joe Rogan, for instance, probably gets more video views than audio views, whereas I don't get any video views for instance. Yeah. Look. I, so with my podcast, I started doing it. I'm like, I'm channel agnostic. Let's get it everywhere that we can get it. And if we can pick up some more, you know, listeners or viewers via YouTube, let's do it. Because I think it's really about the consumer's preference. You know, some people prefer like, I think if they actually started breaking down how many people are listening to podcasts on YouTube, it's extraordinary, but you wouldn't think that as podcaster. So it's not like you and I are doing anything interesting visually right now, but some people might just wanna get it that way. And if all you have is, like, a logo up, I think that's a little bit less compelling to consume. But I I'm a big, believer in just putting it wherever people are going. So so let's talk about your business. So you hook up. You kind of unlocked the value of advertising with influencers and podcasts, and and you've created from scratch $1,000,000,000 brands through innovative advertising techniques. So, a, I'm curious. Can anyone do what you did? Like, I can call up a bunch of influencers and podcasts and say, hey. I'm gonna advertise with you or pay for you to shout out such and such brand. And, b, is this still a successful method of marketing? Like, I do think podcast I I do think it is actually, but I'm curious what what you think and and how you started your business. So let me let me parse that out a little bit. So first and foremost more questions at once. Yeah. I'm a try and hit them in reverse order. You tell me if I miss. So last question was, is it still viable for advertisers? Yes. Even though I do think the industry is pretty overhyped, there's a reason for that, and and I think the opportunity I think it's under monetized still. Okay? Number 2, you asked the question of, can anybody do what I do? Technically, yes. In the same way that technically anybody can do what you do, but can anybody really be you? No. Can anybody do it the way I do it? No. But also there's an experience component in there. Right? I mean, one of the things we're fortunate at Oxford Road is that we got in super early. So, like, I was sitting at a table at Science with Michael Dubin when he had, like, 2 employees and it just put out this viral video. And I was working in local radio, but starting to experiment in podcasts and put ads in them. And I brought him a plan where he could do, like, $10 on radio or $10 on podcast. I thought he should do both. And he's like, look. I only have a budget for one of these. What should I do? And I'm like, put it all on Adam Corolla. Next thing you know, that was very successful. That program became very robust and and, you know, then they became a much more traditional marketer. You know, we were we got we had the good fortune to launch Blue Apron, you know, MeUndies, the Quip toothbrush, Bolland Branch Sheets. I mean, we we've kinda and we've been doing this for a long time. Let let let me ask, like like, Blue Apron, they ever they were a big advertiser on podcasts, and that became, like, whatever I don't know how much they're worth or what they where they are now, but that was, like, a multi $100,000,000 brand from podcast advertising. And I see the same thing happening now with, like, you know, HIMS and Bluechu, which are, like, the Viagra, generics, and, Casper mattresses. That was totally all podcast advertising, became a $1,000,000,000 brand. Well, okay. So I I I'm not in a position to say, you know, we did that for those companies and, you know, company we a lot of times, you know, you change, partners along the way, so you end up with 1 brand and then you're with their competitor a few years later. Right? But but look. Here's the reality. We accelerated something that what was probably gonna happen anyway, but we got to get in at such a time as they couldn't afford to go do a TV campaign. They couldn't really figure out how to crack or have the patience for what it takes to break into radio. Right? So what we figured out is we've got these, you know, I'm gonna get a little nuanced here, so forgive me. But, you know, when I was on the radio side working at what was then Clear Channel, what is now Iheart. Okay? We were talking about 13 weeks schedules. If you wanted a host to read your ad, you had to pay a talent fee on top of double the ad unit price. Okay. And you had to lay that in for 13, 26, 52 weeks at a time. You might be talking about yeah. You're laughing. That was the standard and in in many cases still is the standard. Okay. What did podcast do? All of a sudden Alec Baldwin will read your spot and you only paid $10. And it's like, should call CAA 10 years ago and tell him you want him to read your radio commercial. What's that gonna cost you? Right? So all the barriers to entry came crashing down. And so we got to kinda go in there and see that that total, market opportunity that most people really weren't seeing yet. And it because it it was really you know, podcast started geeks and gamers were really the ones that were listening to it, and then you started seeing a lot of comedians come in. And it was a big deal when Corolla came into the business. Well, what we started doing was we went to these early stage tech companies, VC backed. They've got a growth goal they gotta hit, but they don't wanna set spend a lot of money or or, you know, take on a lot of risk, and they go, look. What's the least I can spend? And if it works, I'll spend more. Now advertisers, brands have said that forever. That's always what I've heard my whole career. The difference was the VC backed companies meant it because they had to get to those goals. We found a way to kinda let them get to the next step without absorbing, you know, 6, 7 figures of risk and see success out of the gate because you don't have to have frequency. In radio, you have to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. You want the average listener to hear you 3 times a week, which means you might need to run 20 units a week on a station. Podcast, it's almost the reverse. If you go every single podcast, you may very well saturate. You may piss off your audience and your ROI will be worse as a brand. You might wanna be on every 3 weeks or or some cadence in that area. So there's almost a reverse of the requirement for frequency. Therefore, I can run 2, 3 ads. I can get a good sense of what the James Altucher show is gonna do for my brand. I can see how many people are gonna respond to it, and I can make a decision about planning for the long term. That's the thing that really became transformative for a lot of these d two c brands who really built the podcast industry. And as a byproduct of that, some of the early ones, you know, a lot of stars were born in that period when somebody you know, imagine the idea that 7 years ago it was novel that you could actually ship somebody razor blades in the mail. That was like a big what? I don't have to go to retail anymore? Right? And so so you had all these companies that got in on that, and they were able to become kind of the kings of their category, and podcast was able to help them do it. And we were very fortunate in that we were, you know, very well entrenched in both the consumer tech world, and also in the audio space and had a little bit of an advantage on a lot of the people that were trying to come in. So so you would basically call these kind of, small companies, but they had money because they were just backed by VCs. They had some money, but they had strict goals. And then you figured podcasts would be a good way to, a, you could kind of scale up their their budget. You don't have to go all out at first. You could go to either smaller podcasts or smaller reads or whatever. And and the benefit of podcast is, like, it's not it you know, podcasts are on demand. Right? So it's not like, you I don't have a captive audience for instance. Radio has a captive audience more or less. Like, I'm driving around. I turn on the local radio station, and it's whoever is talking. When a podcast host recommends a product, he's recommending it to an audience that has tuned in to listen to this podcaster. So, as you know, like, for instance, I reject products I don't like, for instance. Yeah. Well and and we hope that all hosts do that because there are over a 1000000 podcasts in the iTunes library. Not everybody does, but we we want that type of relationship. But, yeah, there's a whole bunch of advantages where every ad, generally speaking, is an endorsement. Now that's one of the things that's changing in the way that it's becoming more like radio. You're gonna see in the next year, you're already starting to see it, but you're gonna see much bigger brands starting to buy more like spots and dots where they wanna control the message. And so they produce it. They feed it in there. And then and then now it's you know, now we're radio. Right? But the magic is in the fact that you're willing to put your name on something and go, I believe in this. I use this, and you should too. Okay. That's powerful. And the fact that you're not beholden to a clock that, you know, you only get so many seconds to do it. It's your show. You can do whatever you want. You set the clock. That's very, very powerful. And, you know, I I don't think of us as an influencer agency because influencers are are you know, it's all pretty commoditized. The beauty of podcast is that you get a lot more thought leadership. You get a lot more that's opinion based. And if you if you go to a program and you're there to listen because you believe you're gonna get some sort of expertise, the trust that is transferred from your trust in the host and the content on that program over when they pivot to say, now you should do this, you know, try this great product that I'm telling you about. There's a real meaningful connection with the audience so that all of a sudden you're sending them referrals. You're not sending them traffic. You're sending them highly qualified referred customers who believe in something and somebody like, you walked into a party. You're hosting a party. Somebody comes in, you say, I wanna introduce you to my friends. They're gonna feel very differently than if that person, you know, they met him at a bus stop. Right. So so okay. So there's there's 2 things I'm thinking about here. 1 is, if I'm starting some sort of direct to consumer brand, and I want to, you know, advertise on podcast, how can I what's the quickest way for me to build a $1,000,000,000 brand at it? And the second question still is, can I set up my own I know you say you're not an influencer agency, but it seems like with such it used to be to be an ad agency, you needed these huge brands and then access to these huge budgets and then advertise on television or billboards? These place that were places that were inaccessible to a small agency. And because the the small agency would have not have the big enough budgets. But now the agency world, media the media placement world is a little easier to break into. So first, let's say I wanna sell a line of pajamas, my own pajamas. Yeah. I wanna use influencers or podcast to go from scratch to being a $1,000,000,000 brand using your methods that you've used. Yeah. So so first things first is, you I think you need to have your digital house in order because, you know, typically, the evolution of a d two c brand is that you start out, you know, seed capital, and you've got a concept, and then you wanna see if if the market actually is interested in it. And and you can place very small bets through search advertising and through Facebook. Right? That's what everybody does. Now usually, by the time they get to us, they've said, okay. Our Facebook is starting to cap out. We kinda found the limits of that. We need to diversify. They change an algorithm. And, and now all of a sudden we got a business problem. Right? And so you need to diversify a little bit. That's when you come to us, and and we help you kinda get into the game and figure out a path to scale to become you know, to kinda make it to the Mount Rushmore of of advertisers like we were talking about earlier. Now the way that you're gonna wanna do that because there are a 1,000,000 choices, And they they will all everything works for a price, but knowing which ones to start at what price is not something that anybody knows. I mean, I've got 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars of performance data from other brands. And that for a performance marketer, brand advertising is a separate thing and and performance marketers kinda grow into becoming, you know, brand performance marketers. So it becomes more of a hybrid. But when you're at the early stage and you're like, look, I I don't have a brand if I don't have a customer. If I pay x, I need to get y. Right? If you're a savage performance marketer and that's what you need to do, then what you wanna do is follow the beaten path. And the beaten path is if I know that your particular program is gonna give me a return on ad spend that is 10 to 1 and I only need 2 to 1 for it to be successful if that's my KPI. Okay. It's very helpful to have a partner that can go into a dashboard and look across a 100 different advertisers, figure out which ones are like your business reaching a similar customer and go, well here's the rank ordered list of how they perform top to bottom. Let's start at the top with the low hanging fruit. We really get a chance to skip the steps so that you're not just going through the iTunes playlist and going, well, I I really like, Joe Rogan's show, so maybe I should go on there. Like, how are you gonna know? Yeah. So how do you so I'll give you an example of, like, a a campaign that you've done where you pick the right podcast and it was a great result and, and everything makes sense. I mean, fortunately, it was all of them. I mean, we can go back to the early days when we were working with Dollar Shave, and, you know, he he got to he gave me one shot to put it on, you know, one show, and we went with Corolla, and the rest is history. Right? And How how much did, like, that first $10,000 like, how much of of business did they do? Like, how do they measure success? If I I can probably remember their allowable CPA, and I probably wouldn't say it even if I'm right in what I remember. But let's just say arbitrarily. Okay. Some business you sell, whether it's razor blades or, you know, what whatever it is. Let's say you've got, an average customer value. Customer's gonna pay you $50 a year, and you can spend $30 to acquire a new customer. That's how your business model works. Right? So, you know, we've seen like, we think about things in terms of what percent of their KPI, their success metric they're going to achieve. And so what I would what I would do today and and even back then with a smaller dataset is I would just go and look at okay. I know that this show performs 1200 percent, to goal. This thing works 12 times better than it needs to. So if you have a $30 allowable, acquisition cost, this thing will get you a customer for $2.50. There are programs that will do that. And so you wanna you wanna take somebody that's new and put them in in the most favorable position that you can so that so that they can afford to keep funding the program. Now as they scale, you you can't you can't scale low hanging fruit. You can't scale those exceptional programs, and you start making your way down to the to the shows that are gonna get you a customer for $30. Okay? And you have to look at the and then you start getting a little fancier. You look at, like, what's the lifetime value of that customer? I know that we we say we can afford to do $30 a customer, but, you know, not all customers are created equal. I noticed it over here. Customers were $10. Over here, they're worth a100. And you start looking at those types of return on ad spend metrics. So, you know, when we have a dashboard, we have a dashboard for our clients. A lot of times, what we'll be able to present is here here is a show. Here's what you paid for the show. Here's how many sessions it drove, cost per session, cost per conversion, which is like, you know, cost per acquisition, CPA. And then we'll start to look at ROAS. Return on ad spend is very important because if you don't have a fixed value of a customer, then you wanna know what channels drive the higher amount so that your allowables can change. Yeah. So let me let me break that down for a second. So, a customer let's say, let's say I sell pajamas or razor blades or generic Viagra or whatever. Pajamas. It's less saturated. Alright. Let's go with pajamas. I'm wearing pajamas right now, so I'm thinking of making my own fashion line of pajamas. Perfect. So, let's say I know over time the average customer orders from me 3 times and spends a $100. And so I know that over 2 years, the average customer you know, some spend $5, some spend $1,000 with the on average, a customer spends a $100. So what you're saying is I could spend essentially up to a $100 to acquire a customer. So if I, do $1,000 on an ad, I better get at least 10 customers from that ad, and I better be able to measure also that I got 10 customers from that ad or more than 10 customers. And then they the the podcast or influencer or whatever where I get more a lot more than 10 customers, I wanna keep track of those because I wanna scale those even more. Yeah. That's right. And let let me give you the 3 legs of the stool behind a a successful campaign of this type. Okay? The 3 m's, media measurement messaging. So media is picking the show at the right price. You buy it properly as media buying. Okay? Messaging is what do you say to these people? What is what what are the words that we send to you so that you can see it? Now what we've created is something called Audiolytics, which is which is our proprietary process for for figuring out, okay, are we we we have identified 9 key components that every successful performance oriented ad should have and 71 subcomponents within those 9. Wow. Well yeah. And so what we do is we actually have people that go in and score, against each of those metrics to see and we've tried to keep it as objective as possible so it's more like present, not present, present, not present so that we can have some reliability and consistency to make sure that your message, every word has to work hard. Now there's also something to delivery, and so we have to have a feedback loop to you as a host to make sure that you're getting notes about what's going well, what's going not well, what you did in this ad was particularly effective. So we have somebody that listens to the ads, audits them, and and we have a feedback loop that goes back to the networks and the talent. But the message is very, very, very important, and it's important not to skip that. Okay? That's the second m. The third m is measurement, which is what you're talking about because, you know, for heaven's sakes, are you sick of reading promo codes yet, you know, and vanity URLs? Can you believe that people use them? Yeah. Because you get 2 months free. Yeah. Can you just use code word James? And here's the here's where it gets really hard is when I Google the name of the brand and I see on their home page that I can get the same offer. That's where you get trouble. Right? So you're asking the customer to remember something. You're asking them not to go on and use, you know, Honey or RetailMeNot and compare and all that. You're really relying your ability to get a renewal from an advertiser is really based on how interested your your audience is at jumping through those hoops under the assumption that there's value or because they like you and they wanna support you. And there must be value because, I mean, there's there's huge podcasting ad campaigns versus I mean, again, like Casper Mattresses, their entire $1,000,000,000 value was based on just podcast ads. Yeah. Well and and I don't know how well that's working today, in that particular instance. You know? They they stopped advertising on podcasts Right. Right before their IPO. Well, that's be that's become a challenging category. Right? But, look, bottom line is you have to do some you have to do attribution. Okay? So so in other words, if if you what you're doing is counting how many promo codes you got and saying, well, that's the total value of this show, then you're not counting all your customers. Because most people will not follow the instructions even if you give them an extra incentive to do it. That's human nature. That's the reality of it. So what we have to do is we have to find these interesting ways of triangulating to try to figure out, okay, and the reason that we still use vanity URLs, well, we can see how many people actually landed there so we can evaluate traffic. Because if I only give you a promo code and I Google you, I don't know what my conversion rate is. I don't I don't know, how many people are actually going to the specific page. So anyway, bottom line is we have to survey people and we have to execute that survey properly, and there's a lot of ways to screw it up so that we can find out how many people heard you from a podcast. And if there's a 100 of those, and then you add up all the codes and it's 10, then you know that one person that used a code means 10 that didn't. Now that's not a typical multiplier, but that's how that generally works. And the good news is the industry is advancing rapidly. The podcast industry is actually catching up. You know, audio is a laggard field behind most media channels technologically speaking, But they're they're they're they're catching up. And so you're starting to see pixel based attribution where you can start to track these things in a way that is more akin to what you see on digital, campaigns. And that's gonna start to allow for a lot of these promo codes and banner URLs to go away as there's more trust in that methodology. So pixel based attribution, can you describe what that means? So I go to the so let's say I I hear, an ad for BlueChoo Viagra or whatever Correct. And I go to their and I hear it on the podcast, you know, Adam Carolla reads some ad, and now I go to BlueChoose website. BlueChoose website will pixel me, will put a pixel on you know, put a cookie in my browser and then track what podcast I listen to, or what what happens? I I think I don't think I could say it, in any, I don't think I could say that better. It's just talking conceptually. You know, I think, I think that's a good good way to describe it. It's basically there's a pixel on the advertiser's website that connects back to the the user who, who who heard the show, and now we can tell what their behavior was. And hopefully, you're able to, subtract out of that, the the customers that saw you somewhere else or would have come to you, otherwise. But that's listen. You know, digital marketers that you know, because so many of these these brands we're talking about are digitally native. They're very sophisticated, and then they get into this space, and they're like, I have to trust a promo? What? And as you know so so the fact that we can even, use a pixel now is a big step forward. Yeah. And it's gonna end it's and listen. That's gonna attract a lot of the bigger brand dollars that are starting to come into the space, and that's what's gonna help the industry get over $1,000,000,000 and really start to get its due. Well and in terms of the 3 m's, I'm also really curious. What are some best practices for determining a good how to write the right message for a podcast host to read or an influencer to read? Alright. Well, let let's start at the start, which is before the message that we use broadly is delivered to your show. And, when we are able, we try to interface with the host. And if not the host, then the production team and do an onboarding call. And through that experience, this is independent of what the company wants the message broadly. It's really trying to find out not just why is the product good, but why is it good for James? Will you use it? Did you use it? What did you like about it? How do you feel about it? And really trying to find, like, the sword and the stone to give your unique perspective about why you're passionate about this product. And so we try to do some of that groundwork upfront. Now when you get into the copywriting piece, you know, I'm not gonna we publish the the 9 key components, but we don't, give away the 71. That's kinda how we do it. But, you know, I'll give you some examples is, you know, the positioning of it, which means you've got somehow you've got a need that either you are aware of or not aware of, and you have a way of dealing with that need today. Now that might mean that, you have a Sleep Number bed and you you should have a Casper, you know, but whatever that competitive set is that you think the customers are looking at, you have to think about the positioning. How are you unlike the others that people may know of today? How do you beat that status quo? And trying to unearth that and and and come up with a reason that is compelling that you're specifically differentiated from them is very, very important. Demonstration. Okay? You you'll hear a lot of ads and see a lot of copy that say, here's how it works. It's actually very important for customers, for people to know what they what they can expect. Wait. So this thing's gonna show up at my house and then what? Well, it you know, because we use this formula or this algorithm or whatever the point of differentiation is, this is how you're gonna experience it when you become an end user. And then, of course, there's substantiation. Right? Now think about substantiation. How do you substantiate a claim? This is the best mattress I've ever slept on. Okay. Well Customer testimonial or Yeah. No. Now what's nice about a podcast is that a lot of times, a lot of that work is done if they trust the host, and you can speak in the first person authentically about how you did it. But, look, it doesn't hurt if you've got a 100,005 star reviews, you know, to back you up or you've got, some sort of certification or better business bureau rating. There it's a proof point. Right? And there are we have a very long list of potential proof points. And what we're trying to do is work with our clients to understand what is gonna be the most compelling, and do you do more than one of them. Okay? You've got things like offer, and we were talking about this earlier. If you're gonna give me, you know, $5 off your pajamas, but Honey tells me I can get 10, you're gonna have a problem in tracking this thing, and people are gonna be a little less trusting of your show if you're telling them about the second best deal that they could be getting if they didn't follow your instructions. So you wanna make sure that you're not overrepresenting or underrepresenting. You wanna make sure that you have the best offer that they will allow your show to use and that, that it is compelling enough that they should take that extra step to follow the instructions that you're about to give them. No. So okay. So now I've seen the success of these types of campaigns. I know that this works. And, again, it's easier now to start up a business where I could take a small brand or a smaller brand than typical and say, hey. I'm gonna hook you up with 50 like, let's say, you know, it's a male oriented medical thing. Sure. I'm gonna hook you up with the 50 top male oriented, you know, wellness podcasts. And I'm also gonna go on to TikTok and find some, you know, fitness gurus on the men's health side, and they're gonna shout you out. And, you know, I'll just charge 10 percent. I'll do a 10% markup on everything I place. And it seems like I could start my own ad agency overnight with, like, no cost on my part doing this. Yeah. You could trying to compete with you. Yeah. No. You're the best. Well, no. That's fine. I mean, I think the the issue is that not all podcasts are creative created equal. And so, you know, even the way that you you express your downloads, like, you're you can't tell somebody as a as a media seller. Okay? So you or your representation firm, you can't tell us how it's gonna work because you don't know. And and most of the time, nobody probably gives you that data. And so if I'm an agency just opening my door today, I think that would be, it's interesting. Like, I think there's the most opportunity for that in the long tail of podcast. Like, if you're trading in the, you know, in the Joe Rogan's and the Tim Ferris and, you know, Pod Save America. If you're if you're in the upper echelon buying ads that might be 50 or a $100,000 a drop, okay, That's a big risk to be taking. You're gonna need somebody that can, tell you, yeah, that show looks really good. Because I can show you 2 shows that looked identical on paper audience profile, number of downloads, engagement awards. They can be identical, and one can perform 10 times better than another. Now how are you gonna know that as a purchaser versus if you go after the long tail, the ones that aren't in the top 1 or 200, I do think there's a big opportunity for somebody that'll dig in with shows, you know, 1,000 to 1,000,000 and find the ones that are the right overlap because that really requires some craftsmanship and some critical thinking, and you can take smaller bets. Right? You can find a show Right. That's got, 5,000 listeners, and you can buy an ad for a $100 or whatever. And is you know? And and go, well, it's topically connected, and so it's not just like a broad reach play. And so I do think there's an opportunity for that. If if what we are after is trying to figure out, like, okay. If you've got a listener who's looking at new business opportunities, should they jump into the podcast agency business or influencer agency business? I would say maybe, but I think that if you're if you're starting at the beginning right now, it is getting harder and harder to get in. Like, you you know, we talked about some of the early brands that we worked with. You know, we're in a position where we've kinda we we've through trial and error, we've had enough error that we kinda know what the path looks like. Okay? But figuring that out is very expensive. And and you're No. I I like your idea of going to the tail, like, going to, you know, podcast 1,000 through 1,000,000 versus 0 through 200. Because you're right. Like, Joe Rogan, that's, like, advertising on the Super Bowl now. He doesn't need the help. Right? But, like, you you can actually build a relationship with somebody that's got a few 1,000 listeners. They've got a tribe. That tribe will listen to them, but most agencies that are really doing volume aren't gonna do the craftsmanship aspect of it to really roll up their sleeves and make something work when you're gonna run a $75 spot once a month. Right. So so, so I I like this the smaller podcast. Do you also do stuff with other categories like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok? So our business is very, we are anchored in audio. Okay. So we do, to to build a good audio team, I've hired a lot out of the TV business. And so we do have a boutique TV, capability that, you know, when somebody wants one point of contact, they want somebody to do their their TV and their audio. We do that, but primarily, we're in the audio space. And audio means it's not just podcast. It's also streaming. It is also terrestrial radio. It is also remnant terrestrial radio. It is also satellite radio, and it is also smart speakers, which I think are, the next big thing. So, like, Alexa? Yeah. Yeah. Well and specifically, the flash briefings. I'm a big fan of flash briefings tonight, and I think that's one to watch. I think, you know, we were early on podcast. I think we're early on this. The market's not great, so it's not like, you know, it's not like it's, where podcast is today, but I think it's going in that direction. And we're working really hard to stay at the the tip of the spear on that. So so a flash briefing, is that like an Alexa skill? In a way, it's more like okay. I don't think Alexa's here right now, so I can say this without setting everything off. If you say, hey hey, Alexa. Play the news. You have to be careful because you set off 16 of these things and, it's a mess. Right? But if you go, hey, Alexa. Play the news. She's got defaults that are gonna play you CNN, Reuters, NPR, and you're gonna get these briefings They're like 5 minute segments distilled down from what might what might otherwise take an hour, and you can loop these things. You can set it up. So, like, every day when I'm getting ready, I say play the news, and I've got all the ones that I preloaded that are refreshed every day. Right? And so I can get this day in history. I can get, TechCrunch briefing. You know? So so I think that the idea of short form audio is, is a big opportunity, that is that is in the making. It is there, but it is not robust yet, from an adoption standpoint. And I think Amazon and and Google have a lot of work to do to make it easier for customers, or users to, subscribe and actually know how to utilize. You have to push too many buttons right now and think about too many things to to actually make it, super easy to use. But those that have done it, those are like the early podcast listeners. You know, podcasts were hard to listen to, if you'll recall. You know? Right? And now it's like, okay. It's not hard to listen to a podcast anymore. There's still a lot I think they need to do from an interface standpoint, but, but in the early days, you had to be technically sophisticated to even know how to access the content. Well, it's kinda like that with flash briefings right now. And so you can get a small audience who is very, engaged and also, tech savvy early adopters, but it it it hasn't really reached critical mass quite yet. And what about, I and the reason I keep asking about this because I feel like there's an opportunity that's cheaper than podcasts, which is, like, getting TikTok shout outs or Instagram shout outs. I don't do that. Mhmm. Because it seems like, you know, someone might have, like, 10,000,000 followers. Yeah. So so look. There's a business for that, and and people will pursue it. I'll tell you why that's not my business. Couple reasons. 1, you know, I like I think the businesses that I work with want something that's repeatable and scalable. Right? So anytime you're dependent on success coming from one event that may not be something that I can make routine, then it becomes inefficient. Because even if you win, you gotta figure out, well, when's the next time we can actually do something like that? The other thing is, you know, when you go to the more you're talking TikTok. You're not really talking about customers that are likely to, have a a high lifetime value and in many cases, even have their own credit cards. And and that's just a a tough space. We started dealing with that. You know, we got into the, the YouTube space, early, not from, like, buying ads on YouTube that were produced as much as what we do with podcasts. We started doing that on YouTube. But the problem in the early days when you saw these MCNs, these multichannel networks that, you know, Disney buys one for, you know, half a $1,000,000,000 or whatever, and their valuations went through the roof. Well, the you you had children sitting on a bed charging $80,000 to talk about a product once. And if they didn't do a good job or didn't read the copy that they needed to read, they didn't care. Right? And and it was wild, and they stopped even talking about it it in a CPM. They started talking about cost per impression so they could charge $100 CPMs, which if you buy media, that's kinda ridiculous. It got overheated real fast. Now now I think it's it's found some humility and there's no more diversity of programming. But when you're chasing, like, the hottest new app or the hottest new vehicle that the kids are using to consume stuff and where stuff goes viral, Like, that's not my business. I want you to get customers that have an income that are wanna have a serious conversation. You know, there's a very big difference between whoever you're about to endorse in your next break and how your listeners feel about your opinion about that, and somebody that's doing a dance or doing a sketch and goes, by the way, let me try to awkwardly shoehorn in, you know, this, brand new pajama company that I am enthusiastic about. Right? Like, you lose a lot of that ability. Right? So, like, I I'm not against Instagram influencers. I'm not again you know, there's there there's business to be done there and on and Snapchat and everything that is new is has a place, but that's not my business. That's not what I do. And so okay. So you you still like the podcast space for advertisers, and now you're big enough brands come to you. I'm sure you don't go out to the latest VC funded companies. Right. If someone was thinking of kind of breaking into the podcast agency business, kind of the long tail of it, again, not your space, but the longer tail of it, smaller business, what would you what would you recommend that they do? Well, first, I I think that, you you brought up something earlier in the conversation that I think is very important, which is, like, you said you only work with companies that you believe in. And I actually I'm very open, and this could lead into a very different conversation. You know, right now, I think we've got a bit of a failure to communicate in this country because everything's so polarized, and because we're dealing with so much political content that puts brands in very awkward positions, we're involved with this all the time. But, you know, at the end of the day, I'm very loose about what types of programs we will do business with, but very restrictive about what types of brands we will work with. So the thing that I'm always a pain in the a*s about internally when we have an opportunity is somebody might wanna buy. But the question we always have to ask ourselves is before we work with this company, like, would we go and and tell somebody we love and know that they should use this thing? Would we use this ourselves? Would we pay money for this thing? Before we go and try and convince a 1000000 strangers to do it, would we use it ourselves? And I think no matter what business you're doing, if you're trying to get into the influencer business, I think why don't you start with relationships where you believe in the programming and you believe in the product so that you can make matches that are gonna yield, long term benefits financially, but also in a sustainable way for for the values that you have as just as a human being. And I think that's very, very important. And let your passions follow it. Like, listen. The other thing is, my business is like every business, you know, kinda influenced by my personal bent. I like to have a conversation like this. I'm not good at the Twitter game because I just I'm not, like, always, you know, texting whatever pops into my head kind of person. I'm I'm having a hard time adapting to that. Right? So, like, I think that this fits within the way I like to do business and the way I like to interact, and there's a whole market for that. Right? And I think it's very much about knowing yourself and how you like to behave as a consumer of information and entertainment and content and trying to don't don't just chase business opportunity. Figure out what do you feel strongly about. What would you like to because you're gonna spend a lot of time with these people and in this industry. Make sure it's what you like where you're at. You know, and it's it's interesting. Like, I feel also and this is comparing podcast to other media right now. I feel podcast and I'm curious what you think of this. Is it it is in phase 3 of its evolution. Phase 1 being kind of the early people and before there was critical ma*s. Phase 2 being when there was this huge ramp up in growth, not only in audience, but in the number of podcasts. And now phase 3 is there's a million or so podcasts out there, and it's hard to launch a new one, and it's hard to grow a podcast Right. Just because I don't wanna say that the listeners are the audience is saturated, but They got so many choices. They got so many choices. Yeah. There's so many choices. A, it's natural for them to cycle through different podcasts and interest, but, also, b, it's real I wouldn't wanna launch a podcast right now, I don't think. I don't know how I would launch a podcast. I'll tell you how I did it because I just started this year. Like, I the last one I did was in, like, 2009 with Jason Calacanis' network, and then I stopped at Oh, yeah. Did I did I ever go on your podcast? You over there? No. I it was this week in marketing. Oh, okay. I was on this week in start ups a lot. Oh, that's funny. So no. Yeah. So he had this week in VC, this week in start ups, and this week in photography. I was this week in marketing with, Scott McDonald, who's the head of marketing at LegalZoom at that time. Anyway, so we did that back then, but I I was waiting to do my own, and, I I I wanted to get back into the content creation, business. But the the truth is I just you know, I've been 2 heads down just building this business. And, but when COVID hit, I what I saw happening was I saw how much fear there was in the in the advertising community. And, you know, there's the the Sam Walton saying of I I saw I I saw that there was a recession and I chose not to participate. Right? And and it's like the the notion that, okay, there are obstacles. There are new obstacles, and 2020 is teaching us all about pivoting, right, and adaptability. But, like, how can we be strategic as with our businesses and navigate this? And so started having that discussion. And then, you know, as we've started moving toward the election, I've adapted what we're focused on. It's called the divided states of media because marketers are now in this really peculiar space where they have tremendous pressure. You know, people trust businesses more than they trust the government right now. And businesses, you know, with with the shift to stakeholder capitalism, there's a new level of expectation on how you should conduct your business. And you're now being told that if you identify with something that's gonna be healthy for your business growth, which is getting somebody with a point of view to endorse you on their podcast or on their radio show or on their, you know, cable news program, that you believe what they believe and therefore because you're not on the side that I own on, you're bad for America. You're an evil person and we should not do business with you anymore. And we have businesses or organizations like you have Media Matters who monitors content simply to pull things out, post a phrase, and say, go get them everybody. This is what the advertiser believes if they're supporting this. Right? So so brands are in a very sticky situation where if they advertise on Facebook, which may be their number one channel for acquisition that keeps the lights on and pays their employees, they're sponsoring hate. And if you advertise on, you know, the Ben Shapiro podcast, well, you know, the the the the things that people will allege about your business are incredible. There is so much pressure right now on brands. And a brand, their job is to build relationships. And they're generally not saying in their mission statements, well, we are a progressive brand that, you know, issues the values of the Republican Party or, you know, we're a conservative brand, and, we don't want anything to change in this country. Like, that's not what they're doing. They and so they have tremendous pressure on it. And and trying to navigate that is something that people need a lot of help on right now to find their own way so that they can maintain their integrity and their values as a business and yet still communicate out to the masses when the masses are now starting to kill each other. So so you started a podcast around the idea of helping brands navigate this this very difficult terrain? Polarization. That's exactly right. How do you grow a business? How do you market a business and do your job well in a divided nation? And then and then so in terms of launching it, like, how did you get you know, I'm just trying to say Yeah. No. I'm just I think I know where you're going. Yeah. So so you're going like we're talking about the complexities of launching a podcast right now. Well, I don't expect my podcast to be in the top 10, and I'm not in it for that. I I see my podcast as having an addressable market of people that are struggling this with this problem, which, you know, I I don't know what percentage of your audience that would be, but let's imagine that it's, you know, 5 to 10% of the people in your audience are business decision makers who are struggling because, you know, on their Zoom calls, somebody, you know, is brings up a a political hot button issue because everything is political right now, including a pandemic. You know, how do you operate your business, and how do you reach people outside of your business effectively when everybody is pointing fingers at half the country? So so so so you're basically saying go for the long tail audience. Meaning, if you're gonna launch a podcast right now, it's highly unlikely. It's possible, but it's highly unlikely you'll be you'll even have a chance to be another Joe Rogan and have 90,000,000 listeners a month. But if you think in terms of, Kevin Kelly's 1,000 true fans or or, you know, Andreessen Horowitz even changed that to a 100 true fans, you might be able to find your true fans, and that's enough. That's Carve out your niche. Right now for making a a living. Carve out your niche. Absolutely. Absolutely. Figure out what it is that, you can you know, it's it's the same old thing. It's a recent Trautman, you know, immutable laws of marketing. Right? Like, if you can't own a market, then carve out a market that you can own. Right? And and and in media, that is very much true today is that if you don't have tremendous infrastructure behind you or lightning in a bottle, no, you're you're probably not gonna be Joe Rogan right now. But that doesn't mean you can't have a career doing it. I would say start with the passion and figure out, you know, what what need can you solve that would be compelling for people. And the beauty of it is it doesn't have to be a top 40 you know, it doesn't have to be a top 20 radio station in your local market anymore. That could be a very specific subject that people from around the world are interested in, and all of a sudden your addressable market is a lot larger than it would have been 20 years ago. Right. So for instance, if, if I was marketing a fashion line, maybe instead of advertising on Joe Rogan's podcast, I could find a podcast with just a a 1000 listeners, but they're all real but they're all buyers of nightwear at, at department stores. 100%. 100%. That's right. And and and if you're an agency, you would also focus on finding out where these kind of highly focused niche audiences are as opposed to the more general audiences. Yes. I wonder if anybody's, curated I mean, you guys probably internally have curated, but I wonder if there's a business in curating for agencies like you. Hey. Here are the 50 cheaper men's health podcasts that are more niche and will deliver the same results as the top 5 podcasts, but with much cheaper ads. Yeah. I think that that's, there are those types of solutions out there. One of the challenges you start to run into is that when you've got that 2,000, if you're working with a brand so I have clients that sponsor 100 of different podcasts, right, for example, and and different personalities across, you know, the audio spectrum. And at some point, if it's not something that the the marketer would have time to discuss on a on a call, then it's very difficult to, for to rationalize or take responsibility for a program that, you know, you you have to be willing to listen to it and and take the time to do that. And so I that's where I think, like, yes. It is interesting, and at our scale, there's probably a cliff somewhere after the first 1,000 or 2 top shows to where the audience is probably too small for a larger company to take the time to worry about and you can't unless you're doing produced ads, you can't quality control for what they're gonna say in your commercial. If you're a very small business or you're a very small upstart trying to, you know, create a business, you can do that level of relationship work. And what's what's the economic model for you? Do you just you like, they wanna spend a $1,000 and you charge 10% more? Or Something like that. Yeah. Something like that. So I guess it's Yeah. Like, an ad agency Yeah. It's an agency model. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. We're we're not trying to reinvent that business model right now. And you started the business in 2013. What do you wanna do? You wanna sell it? You know, listen. I I want to I I in every email I send, it says at the bottom, I just want the ads to work. And I and I put that before we started the business. I took it down. 1 of the founders of LegalZoom was like, that's the best thing I've ever seen in an email because that's all we care about. Right? That's what I really want. I just want the ads to work. And and I love the exploration of making that happen. I think long term, I do wanna make a bigger impact on the business because I do fear sometimes that we are participating in the increase in polarization, and I don't like that Americans can't talk to each other about things. Why do you feel that? Do you feel that because you're are you advertising for the political parties or on the political party podcast? It's not. It's that, you know, you could be selling we'll keep using the mattress example. You're pushing a mattress, and if you're gonna push it on Ben Shapiro or or you're gonna push it on Pod Save America, and you know you're gonna sell a lot of mattresses, you know, all of a sudden, there's a great backlash that the advertiser's gonna get from the half of the country that knows about that, that doesn't like that person's ideology. Right? And and in the meantime, you know, you've probably seen our social dilemma, and and I think that said out loud what I think we've known, which is a lot of from social media to cable news, like, we're selling tickets to our own beheading. There is an incentive structure around us fighting each other, and we don't realize that we're the ones that are kinda in the pit doing it. But, like, we are we are destroying ourselves and our ability to communicate and have constructive relationships, have positive relationships because it's so much us versus them. And I don't think that one side is right and one side is wrong. I think both sides are wrong right now. And I don't I don't want my business to be contributing to accelerating that because that's also, by the way, the more polarizing that can be better for, the advertiser to to to achieve on a a return on ad spend, but but it doesn't have to be that way. And so I'm I'm into de escalation. I'm into hey. We don't have to judge people because we disagree with them, and I would like brands to be more conscious, and we're trying to do this with the relationships that we have, to say to brands like, hey. Don't disengage because there's disagreement. Engage but require civility in how that happens. Because otherwise, we're just chasing, chasing, chasing, incentiVizzyng people to continue to to tear apart the other and not trying to understand the other, and I think that's very, very bad for society. Yeah. I agree with you. I mean, you know, one comment, which I heard a long time ago, but I also heard it in in the the show, the social dilemma, which you just referred to, is that if you can't figure out who the product is, then you're the product. So for listeners of podcasts, there there's they seem to be getting these podcasts and and a lot of you know, depending on the podcast you listen to, of course, a lot of excellent information or entertainment for free. But the reality is the podcasts and the advertisers are basically chopping up the audiences and selling them. That's the product is the is the the the audience. Well and like you said earlier, this is really interesting. You know, you were talking about if you're starting a podcast today, how would you do it? And if you're doing general interest and you're not carving out well, if you wanna get attention I mean, I think you can see this from Newt Gingrich to AOC. Right? If this is not about what side you're on, but if you can if you can make enough noise, you can get power. You can get attention, and attention, becomes power and money. And so there is a financial incentive to be a flamethrower. And and I'll tell you. I'm sorry to to interrupt, but so many times, like, I see it, like, every now and then, nobody I have I'm really apolitical, and I try to be apolitical for a reason, which is that I feel the message I wanna impart has nothing to do with politics, and I can help a much larger audience or entertain a much larger audience by not being political. But every now and then, I'll see something I'll say will be confused for one side or the other, and I'll see, oh, if I just pick a side and go all in, I could have 10 x to follow. If I suddenly said, a a a I I won't even say anything specific. Yeah. Right. No. You can say it's hard to talk these days. Right? Right. But if I if I go all in on, like, one side or the other, I'll get 10 x the followers, but I just refuse to to do it. It's just not my it's not my business, but it's always I'm sure it's tempting for for everyone out there to to do that, and it's it's a really bad idea because it's not that's not as I don't feel that's a sustainable business or a positive one. But, like, the kid on the playground who would do things that would get them picked on, but at least they were getting attention. Right? Yeah. And that's kind of the media business right now if we had to sum it up. And that's from social media all the way through radio, podcast, television. You know, it's that's what it is. And I agree with you. It's not constructive. It's not sustainable. And, you know, I I worry about this country. And and so I'm I wanna make sure that from where I sit in the little slice of the ecosystem that I can have a little bit of teeny bit of influence on. I want to, incentivize brands to take this seriously and to actually engage in the content that they're sponsoring. And when people are, are making their points in such a way that it dehumanizes the other, that they'll actually speak up. And rather than just going, we don't touch political or we don't touch opinion driven shows, how about build a relationship with the people you're sponsoring because the content will respond to the requirements of the market. But right now, the market is we have to move the carrot. Right? The carrot is to say get as much attention as you can any way you can, but then now you can't be near a lot of that. And so if we can put the carrot in front of, like, hey. Let's have an interesting conversation. Let's disagree, and let's engage in those disagreements. And not be afraid of the disagreements, but be afraid of disagreeing in such a way that you destroy or diminish somebody else. That's what I wanna be a part of. So so when you ask about what I want for the future, I think of look. There's a lot of things we're involved with in advancing what we're doing with Audiolytics, advancing what we're doing in the evolving media landscape. But above all things, I wanna make a positive impact on the way that we steward the media that we sponsor and the way that we influence it because I think we have a a lot of work to do, and it's gonna take a lot of people working hard to do it. Wait. So so this was all, the answer to the question, do you wanna sell your business? Yeah. I guess. So if if Omnicom or a big Eddie Yeah. I mean, look. I here's my approach on that stuff. Like, I take calls and I listen, but I I and would I ever I I I'd be I'm I'm always open to considering something I wasn't expecting, but I am not taking any steps to seek that. And and I think that if there is a right time to do it, it'll be because I was attending to the business as it is today. So in other words, like and and you might tell me I'm a fool for not having, like, a more cohesive exit strategy. But at the end of the day, like, if I don't like this company, then why would somebody wanna buy it? Right? Like and if I do like this company, that should be a really hard decision, but I don't wanna chase that. It's hard work. It can be very thankless. You know, you, you you you you get on a call and you're you're either gonna get a a big hug or a punch in the face. You don't know what's gonna happen. There's a lot you can't control. But at the end of the day, it's a it's it's a messy business, but it's my messy business. And, and I enjoy that. And I think we're doing good work for companies that we believe in. I get to talk to interesting people like you. And, and we get to, you know, be a part of a conversation about something that's more important. So, like, you know, we're partnered right now with the National Institute For Civil Discourse on this journey to figure out how can we make a positive contribution in media. And, you know, would I be able to do that in the same way if I didn't have this business? I don't know. So I mean can you make a positive contribution? Like, can you, advertise on a polarized show without the brand being, you know, tinged or tainted with the show? I'll give you an example. Side. I'll give you an example. So the episode we just released, I'm talking to the founder of Ad Fontes Media, Vanessa, and she created the media bias chart. Have you seen that? No. Okay. So The media bias chart. Just just look Google media bias chart, and what you'll see is Oh, I'm not right now. It's got a lot of top media brands. Everybody that's listening should do this. They're starting put it in schools. It's it's really taking off. And if you look at it, in the in the x axis, it's like, okay, they take a media network and they take a sample of their content and they have people that are right, left, and center evaluating their content. And then they they take the composite score and they rank them from right to left with part of it. I actually don't think right to left is the problem. I think it's the the y axis. The north south is basically fact to fiction, top to bottom. So it's like, can you is this a reliable This is fascinating. It's really cool. Right? And and I think they're early. They're just getting started. But, like, think about if a brand marketer or any kind of marketer, before they bought something, they could see how much it is contributing to the destructive nature of discourse. That's this is fascinating. These brands, like, everything from AP to, you know Yeah. Of course, CNN and Slate and MSNBC, New York Post, Infowars, Inquirer, Wonkett Yeah. Daily Wire, Daily Mail. I I I it looks pretty accurate. This looks pretty good. Yeah. Well, then, that is a a good sign because I as I've been showing this to people, I feel like it's a bit of a Rorschach because if you look at it and you're like, that's ridiculous. Why did they put them so far over there? Then it's like, maybe, maybe you're not as as, you know, objective as you think. Right? And and look. I but I think we all have bias and we all bring that to the table, and that's part of the process here. But I think it is important that we start engaging in this process. So, like, if you if you think about you know, a lot of people say you vote with your, you know, with your dollar with what you buy is the same thing for media. And and I think that we can require more of the media that we sponsor as businesses. I really do think that. And I think that if it were if there were more of a premium on content that was uplifting and connecting and constructive dialogue rather than just harmful for the sake of getting attention, I think that you would start to see programming start to reflect that market desire. But I don't think you have that yet. So so I'm trying to I'm trying to do my little part to move the carrot. I'm trying to bring awareness to it, and I think it's important for for me as a citizen. I think it's important for you as a citizen, but I think it's important for for clients that are finding themselves really stuck in the middle and not feeling like they can like, anything that they can say is right because if somebody's just gonna tell them how what a horrible human being. They're either Stalin or Hitler no matter what they say, and it's like, come on. We gotta we gotta learn to talk to each other, people. No. I I a 100% agree. And so so given this polarization and given that that's the direction, where where do you think overall like, this is just a general question now, but where do you think the podcast industry is heading in in a variety of ways? So I I think that it's it's funny that we still are calling a podcast, and it looks like that name's gonna stick. Right? But it's I think it's gonna be so different than that. Like, I I really think that what we think of streaming, what we think is podcast, what we talk about flash briefings, it's all just like audio content in different permutations. Right? And I think that you're gonna start to see these things start to bleed into each other. Okay. That's in the short term. We're we're in infrastructure phase. Right? Like, okay. We figured out it's gonna make it. Like, it's gonna be a success. Right? And it's it's like podcast won its first Oscar. Right? And now it's got a big career ahead of it, but it's really about, well, you need a finance team. You need a you need PR. You know, you you need good people around it. So, like, the infrastructure is getting built. It's getting settled right now. Even though they it's been established, the town's been incorporated, and now it's time to, like, build out that infrastructure. So we're in the infrastructure phase. Some of the things that I think are gonna start to evolve as that, happens, you're gonna see some of the cool parts that you loved about podcasts that made you wanna get into it. You're gonna see some of that diminish. You know, when well, let's take Rogan just as an example because he's the easiest everybody talks about it. Right? He goes to Spotify, and all of a sudden, he has to issue an apology about something. Do you think he'd issued an apology before Spotify did that licensing deal with his show? I mean, like, you have to you have to become more, gentrified. You gotta be respectable citizens if you wanna make it. Right? And I think that the idea that it was like a true meritocracy earlier on where you you could do a good show and people that were looking for shows could find you. Well, there's a lot of good shows right now. So what's your promotional vehicle? What network is gonna promote you on 17 other podcasts so that somebody will even know that you have a podcast? Right? What's your angle? Like, it's less of a meritocracy. So I think some of that is shifting, and I think that that's kinda sad. But what's cool is, like, it's gonna be easier to find what you like to listen to. I like that it's easier for me to set the speeds, you know, if I can set a speed through voice command and I can say, well, here's where it gets really interesting is dynamic audio. Now that the speakers are listening to us and I can go, I really like what, James was just talking about. Give me the last 6 episodes where he was talking about that same subject. And all of a sudden, I'm talking to it and I'm going deeper and kind of choosing my own adventure, and it's getting woven. It's getting like the idea of Stitcher is an interesting idea. We're not That's fascinating. Solving it. Yeah. But think about it. But you could do it even manually. Like, someone could just tag every second of a podcast. Oh, they're talking about this. They're talking about this. And so I wanna see when did Joe Rogan mention my name? Yeah. It'll go immediately to those those parts or the last 100 podcast. Yeah. And then how about somebody that is interested in this conversation, but they're only interested in the polarization piece or they're only interested in the technical piece about how to measure ad performance. Right? Like, how do you make sure that they know how to get to that? Because not everybody has an hour and a half to to listen to it. So the idea of curation, I think short form audio is gonna be a big piece of this, but I don't think it's like either you have a short podcast or a long podcast. It's like, well, how do you want it? Well, you can do the long one. We can do the short one. How do you wanna let's go. And, and you're gonna be getting served ads as they do the transitions. But I think you're gonna start to see an ecosystem that you can control with your voice that can give you more of what you want in ways that aren't possible today. And I think that that's really, exciting just as a as a consumer, as a as a user of the platform, and everything else will evolve with it. That's fascinating. Well well, look. You know, Dan, where do where should people, obviously, it's the, Oxford Road Agency. Yeah. Oxfordroad.com, of course. But, you know, most importantly, I think you need to listen to the conversations we're having on the show, and you'll be able to get everything else that we do, our weekly newsletter, the influencer. We curate industry news, and and thought leadership and everything that you need to know. You can sign up at auctionroad.com for the influencer, but most importantly, the divided states of media. Give that a shot because we're getting very interesting people who are dealing with the the larger problems in this industry, talking about ways that we can solve it. The divided states of media. Excellent. I'm gonna start listening to it as well. This is a a fascinating topic. I need your notes. You gotta make me you gotta help me get good at this. Come on. Alright. Well, you're you're the expert, man. You gotta help me. So, Dan Granger, thank you so much. I hope you come on again. This has been, a total education on so many different topics. We talked about agencies. We talked about the podcast industry. We talked about direct to consumer brands. We talked about, the the polarization of media and how to maybe reverse that. We talked about how to launch a podcast, all these things. If some if I were to take notes, we'd be going back and forth in, in this podcast all over the place. But, thanks so much, Dan. It was great to have you on. Thanks for having me. You were a great host, and I appreciate what you're doing. Thanks.
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