The Interactive Promoting Bureau will convey collectively manufacturers, businesses, and media patrons on Tuesday for the 2025 IAB Podcast Upfront.
Going down in New York Metropolis, the occasion previews groundbreaking podcast programming, the newest promoting improvements, and the way audio storytelling is redefining advertising, with the largest audio and podcast leaders in tow.
“Take a look at podcasting as a medium wherein you may have these extremely engaged, extremely attentive people who find themselves consuming an enormously diverse quantity of content material,” Matt Shapo, director, digital audio and video, IAB, instructed ADWEEK.
Based on Shapo, podcasting is in a “interval of monumental flux,” creating a number of new alternatives for entrepreneurs attempting to succeed in engaged audiences and seize the cultural zeitgeist. And the IAB Podcast Upfront is all about making manufacturers part of the dialog.
To preview the 2025 IAB Podcast Upfront, ADWEEK spoke with Shapo about what to anticipate, how audio and video podcasting are shaping advertising messages, and the following steps in podcasts delivering outcomes.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability.
ADWEEK: For these new to the podcasting business, what’s the 2025 IAB Podcast Upfront?
Shapo: The Upfront is about two issues. It’s about new content material and even present reveals which have some new content material that presenters need folks to find out about. It’s additionally about how one can higher show the effectiveness of your promoting on this medium.
On the content material aspect, we now have a number of presenters who’re going to come back with the brand new reveals that they’ve for the yr. They’re going to come back with completely different creators who can discuss a number of the nice new reveals that they’ve. In lots of instances, they’re additionally speaking about established reveals and the unbelievable connections that these reveals have constructed up with their audiences.
However then on the opposite aspect of the coin, you’re going to be listening to from those that not solely communicate in regards to the energy of the creators and the great content material popping out of those reveals, but in addition about your means to measure your effectiveness within the medium, tips on how to discover the audiences you’re in search of, tips on how to construct the incremental attain that you will discover in podcasting, and actually how one can plan for 2026 in a method that takes benefit of the extraordinary consideration.
You had beforehand talked about that “nearly 80% of podcast customers swap backwards and forwards between audio and video.” Does the audio expertise of podcasting proceed to lose out as video podcasting turns into the popular possibility?
No, one of many causes that I feel that stat that we put out is so attention-grabbing is as a result of it demonstrates that, whether or not it’s audio or video, what issues is the connection that the customers of a given podcast have with that podcast host and the connection that these customers connect to that podcast content material that’s being created.
It actually is dependent upon no matter your use case is at that second within the day. If it is sensible and you want the concept of seeing the faces of the folks speaking as they’re doing so, you may fireplace it up in video type. When you may’t actually be wanting on the display screen, you then’ll simply swap again to audio.
With listeners switching between audio and video, how ought to manufacturers adapt their storytelling methods?
One of many issues that’s being talked about a lot within the business, and I feel this can be a huge a part of what you’re going to listen to on the Upfront itself, is how do manufacturers work out one of the best ways to inform the tales they wish to inform now that podcasting is a way more 360-degree expertise?
You’re seeing loads of cutdowns occur on social media. You’re seeing loads of essential clips being shared on Instagram and TikTok. The query turns into: How will manufacturers successfully activate throughout audio and video? [That] goes to be the largest subject in some methods in 2026.
How are advertisers rethinking efficiency metrics as podcasts develop throughout codecs?
Proper now, there are nonetheless some questions on the a part of advertisers about precisely how they assign a relative worth to what they could regard as a conventional audio-based RSS dynamically inserted advert on the audio aspect and a baked-in advert on the video aspect, which is how loads of that promoting is occurring on the video aspect now.
More and more, you’re going to begin to see sponsorships for the video aspect of the coin, however we’re going to be working quite a bit subsequent yr on determining tips on how to harmonize the measurement, the effectiveness, and the outcomes that you simply’re getting on each the audio and the video aspect of the podcast occasions.
What artistic or technical improvements showcased on the Upfront ought to advertisers be paying most consideration to?
One of many improvements I feel you may search for is a granular, detailed measurement that goes all the way down to the episode and present stage, making it simpler for advertisers to grasp their outcomes.
That is perhaps one of many largest improvements. One other innovation that you simply’ll hear about, once more, is how podcast creators are discovering methods to work together with, interact with, and electrify their audiences within the a number of codecs that podcasting is now unfold throughout. So my guess is you’ll hear some folks speaking about modern model partnerships which might be 360-degree in nature.
What are the podcast developments that advertisers needs to be watching out for?
I feel you’re going to see an elevated acceleration in direction of the blended method. You might be not going to see podcasting as only a host-read medium. It’s one which has super attain. It’s one the place the audiences have grown and matured to the purpose the place you will discover the incremental attain that you really want and the place you will discover actually deep connections to explicit audiences.
A giant development you’ll proceed to see is folks wanting from an advertiser standpoint to purchase these audiences and never essentially simply to purchase these reveals. Within the time that I’ve been at IAB, one of many huge subjects of dialog—how can we persuade advertisers to take a look at our full slate of content material as one thing they wish to put money into writ massive as an alternative of solely cherry-picking what they assume are the best reveals as a result of they occur to be the massive ones that they’ve all heard of?
Don’t simply purchase the reveals you recognize or that you simply assume are going to offer you an important efficiency since you’ve heard of them. Take a look at podcasting as a medium wherein you may have these extremely engaged, extremely attentive people who find themselves consuming an enormously diverse quantity of content material. Don’t simply purchase the reveals, purchase the audiences.
