Snap's Programmatic Migration; Podcast Revenues Double

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

Taking Inventory

A couple of years ago, Snapchat charged between $300,000 and $500,000 to sponsor a Lens, and video ad campaigns were $750,000 a pop. Today, Snapchat ads have a lower CPM than Facebook or Instagram and soon every type of ad product Snapchat offers will be available programmatically, reports Garett Sloane of Ad Age. So what changed? “Snapchat decided to lower the barriers to purchase by shifting from a direct-sales ad team with a highly personal touch to a fully automated programmatic ad platform.” More.

The Little Pod That Could

Podcast ad revenues will grow more than 110% to hit $659 million by 2020, the IAB and PwC forecast in their second annual study on podcast media. In 2017 the US podcast market hit $313.9 million, up 86% from roughly $169 million the year prior. Of podcast media companies surveyed, self-reported revenues grew 117% to $257 million. While direct-response ads still make up the majority of podcast revenues, their share of the overall pie shrank from 73% to 64% as brand advertisers started to spend. Buyers are still loving host-read ads, which made up more than two-thirds of ad types bought in 2017, while the number of ads dynamically inserted into podcasts shrank somewhat. Read it.

Listening In

The La Liga app, created by the Spanish soccer league, has been using smartphone microphones to listen for potential bootleg broadcasts in venues like restaurants and bars. The league said pirated broadcasts cost more than $175 million per year and that it uses the audio data “to develop statistical patterns on soccer consumption and to detect fraudulent operations of the retransmissions of La Liga football matches,” Gizmodo reports. The practice has been going on for some time, and users are only finding out now because the GDPR requires companies to divulge how data is collected and used. More.

But Wait, There’s More!