by Gavin Gaddis
REMINDER: Right Side Up and Sounds Profitable will be hosting a free webinar on October 28 at 1 p.m. ET. Right Side Up Director Grant Durando and Sounds Profitable Partner Tom Webster will present "The Chatbot Sent Them: What AI Use & Discovery Mean for Your Podcast Ad Dollars." The session draws on The Podcast Landscape 2026 data to present the first baseline for how podcast consumers use LLMs.
Spotify has unveiled Memberships, a way for creators to offer exclusive content and community perks to fans for a fee. Fans subscribe, check out, and access that content on Spotify. Creators keep 90% of earnings and choose how to package and price a membership, with multiple billing options and access tiers. Shows need more than 100 consumption hours, 100 listeners or viewers and three published episodes to get started, and setup runs through Spotify for Creators or Megaphone. Spotify is also building in ways to grow the paying audience, including analytics on fan-to-member conversion, targeted email promotions and free trials for potential paying fans, and show page traffic that doubles as a promotion channel. Members get badges when they comment on episodes, creators can share welcome clips with new members, and Spotify says more community perks are coming. Creators can also export member data, including email addresses, from members who choose to share it, so they can reach fans on or off Spotify.
Bumper has released "Share Your Engaged Views," a free tool for passing YouTube engaged view counts to advertisers. The need traces back to a change in how YouTube counts a view in late August, when a public view began counting from the very first frame. Bumper's analysis of hundreds of thousands of YouTube podcast episodes finds views for the average show have nearly doubled while the audience did not grow, which leaves buyers wondering whether prices should double too. At the Sounds Profitable Business Summit in September, several podcast ad agencies agreed to buy on engaged views instead. YouTube counts an engaged view when someone clicks to watch or watches past the first few seconds, but only channel owners can see that number in YouTube Studio. Podcasters using Bumper’s tool can choose who can see their engaged views, shared through a website or an API.
The Streaming Wars uses Disney's new company-wide partnership with Dude Perfect to look at how buyers are valuing creator businesses. The creators have roughly 130 million followers and more than 22 billion lifetime views, and the deal spans entertainment, sports, consumer products, parks and experiences. Dude Perfect will make programming inspired by Disney franchises for its own channels. Disney gets selected existing videos for Disney+, ESPN and its social accounts, plus new content tied to Avengers: Doomsday, Star Wars and Super Bowl LXI. Dude Perfect keeps its channels, formats, sponsorships and consumer businesses, and financial terms were not disclosed. The piece concludes that buyers are increasingly paying for contracted, controllable revenue, and that speculative value belongs in an earn-out rather than in the price at closing.
Variety reports that Good Hang with Amy Poehler took gold and the listener's choice prize for Best Host at this year's Signal Awards, now in their fifth year. Other gold winners include All There Is with Anderson Cooper, Served with Andy Roddick and The Mel Robbins Podcast, and Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky. Judges or listener voting pick gold, silver and bronze in each category, and more than 94,000 unique voters cast 260,000 votes for the listener's choice prizes. iHeartPodcasts is company of the year and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios is agency of the year. Criminal host Phoebe Judge receives the Audio Icon Award, and Pablo Torre of Pablo Torre Finds Out receives the Special Achievement Award. Honors will be presented at the Signal Awards Winners Party on November 9 in Brooklyn.
Apple has explained why Safari has been blocking certain ad tech companies since its September software update, about a month after the block began. In a WebKit blog post on identity resolution published October 19, Apple says third parties collect email addresses when people log in or sign up for newsletters and turn them into IDs that follow people across sites and devices, and that logging out or unsubscribing does not delete them. Digiday notes LiveRamp, ID5 and The Trade Desk's UID 2.0 all work this way, and Permutive and Audigent were also among the first cut off. Safari blocks the entire domain, and the block covers Macs and Vision Pro as well as iPhones and iPads. Apple says a business personalizing for its own customers is not the target, but outside firms that publishers pay to match data are. The post does not name companies or explain how one gets on or off the list.
…as for the rest of the news:
AdTonos has hired Carla Harrison as VP Partnerships EMEA. She previously held sales leadership roles at Spotify, Snap, Twitter and Yahoo, and she helped launch Spotify for Brands in several Sub-Saharan African markets.
Podnews reports that Spotify is prompting Premium listeners to skip host mentions of free newsletters.
Afford Anything with Paula Pant has joined True Native Media for advertising representation.
Steve Raizes writes in Media, Built about why Las Culturistas is headed to Disney+ and Hulu on November 18 without a one-day window.
Inside Audio Marketing looks at how adding podcasts to a radio buy lifts reach among adults 18 to 34 from 88% to 94%, per Nielsen's Everyone. Everywhere report.
