In a spontaneous episode I discussed five different aspects of the business of podcasting – from using AI to “audio or video?”, to leveraging the star power and engagement power of podcasting.
You’ll hear from:


Michael Kaye, Director of Brand & Communications for OkCupid, an online dating app;


Brandon Reed, Host, formerly tired dad, and creator of 12 Hour Sound Machines, a viral podcast that helps people sleep;


Bona Rai, COO and Co-founder of Capsho, the tool that helped E.B. use AI to generate these very show notes (!);


Chris Whitman, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of GlassBox Media, think 'music label-meets-podcast marketing machine'; 


A.J. Feliciano, Head of The Roost Podcast Network from Warner Bros Discovery, that started the groundswell of podcasts leveraging video and has his finger on the pulse of monetizing best practices to meet the consumer where they're consuming content.

 It's five inspiring chats that reveal the brilliant possibilities of audio and video for the future including:


How OkCupid leverages podcasting for success - earned or owned?


The business model behind the 12 Hour Sound Machines podcast


What Capsho is, and how this new tool taps AI to help podcasters save time


How GlassBox Media cracks the code on growing podcast awareness and ups the value of creator IP
A spontaneous interview at the Sounds Profitable event in Austin

When is a podcast a video and a video a podcast? How should brands embrace the consumer's content journey? The Roost tells all.

Chapter Summaries/Time Codes:
[00:00:01]
This is episode 5 of Insider Interviews, with five different guests included. Each of my guests spoke about a different area of the business of podcasting. This was recorded spontaneously right after a panel I conducted during SXSW for Sounds Profitable, featuring one of the panelists and four members of the audio ....
[00:01:42]
Michael Kaye, director of communications at OkCupid is naturally inclined towards earned, but says: "We've seen tremendous impact from both podcast advertising and from earned, pitching our experts to appear on other shows. In 2023, we'll be looking again at podcast advertising."
[00:03:57]
Brandon Reed's podcast is called 12-Hour Sound Machines. It was created when his newborn couldn't sleep through the night, now enjoying about 300,000 downloads a day. Reed started by first directly selling to brands, but now he's on Megaphone, in the Spotify Audience Network so programmatic sales is a really good solution for him. Hear his explanation of why the moments before falling asleep are actually a powerful moment for advertisers....
[00:09:12]
Bona Rai is a co-founder of Capsho, a product that uses AI to tap audio files to create SEO-optimized content for podcasts. At just 10 months old they're already embracing a more robust version of Capsho 2.0 coming this Spring.
[Note: I tried out Capsho 1.0 for most of these show notes, with an added “human touch!”]
[00:14:15]
Chris Whitman describes GlassBox Media like a record label for podcast hosts. Its goal is to grow the value of the IP for the creators across any sort of opportunity from a revenue perspective. "Now we represent around 65 shows, with no end in sight.”
[00:18:58]
A.J. Feliciano explains that The Roost podcast network is a video-first podcast network. “We have about 90 shows, a third of them are owned and operated. What is it about multiplatform distribution on podcasts that makes it so worthwhile for other podcasters?”
[00:21:18]
Our thinking around YouTube is that it's less that it's about video, and more about the platform itself. Who's your target audience and where have they been conditioned to go to just consume content? And that's why we're seeing podcast-like content bringing such big numbers there.
[00:23:54]
The Roost podcast will always have a foundation in audio. It can have video, it can be on YouTube. Heck,