The Interactive Promoting Bureau will deliver 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 most recent promoting improvements, and the way audio storytelling is redefining advertising, with the most important audio and podcast leaders in tow.
“Have a look at podcasting as a medium by which you will have these extremely engaged, extremely attentive people who find themselves consuming an enormously diversified 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 making an attempt 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 trade, what’s the 2025 IAB Podcast Upfront?
Shapo: The Upfront is about two issues. It’s about new content material and even current exhibits which have some new content material that presenters need folks to learn about. It’s additionally about how one can higher show the effectiveness of your promoting on this medium.
On the content material facet, now we have a number of presenters who’re going to return with the brand new exhibits that they’ve for the 12 months. They’re going to return with completely different creators who can discuss among the nice new exhibits that they’ve. In lots of instances, they’re additionally speaking about established exhibits and the unbelievable connections that these exhibits have constructed up with their audiences.
However then on the opposite facet of the coin, you’re going to be listening to from those who not solely converse concerning the energy of the creators and the fantastic content material popping out of those exhibits, but additionally about your means to measure your effectiveness within the medium, the best way to discover the audiences you’re on the lookout for, the best way to construct the incremental attain that yow 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 shoppers 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 choice?
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 shoppers of a given podcast have with that podcast host and the connection that these shoppers connect to that podcast content material that’s being created.
It actually depends 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 would possibly fireplace it up in video kind. When you’ll be able to’t actually be trying on the display, then you definately’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 trade, and I feel it is a huge a part of what you’re going to listen to on the Upfront itself, is how do manufacturers determine one of the simplest ways to inform the tales they wish to inform now that podcasting is a way more 360-degree expertise?
You’re seeing lots of cutdowns occur on social media. You’re seeing lots 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 most important subject in some methods in 2026.
How are advertisers rethinking efficiency metrics as podcasts broaden 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 may regard as a conventional audio-based RSS dynamically inserted advert on the audio facet and a baked-in advert on the video facet, which is how lots of that promoting is occurring on the video facet now.
More and more, you’re going to begin to see sponsorships for the video facet of the coin, however we’re going to be working quite a bit subsequent 12 months on determining the best way to harmonize the measurement, the effectiveness, and the outcomes that you simply’re getting on each the audio and the video facet 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’ll be able to search for is a granular, detailed measurement that goes right down to the episode and present stage, making it simpler for advertisers to grasp their outcomes.
That is likely to be one of many greatest improvements. One other innovation that you simply’ll hear about, once more, is how podcast creators are discovering methods to work together with, have interaction 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 revolutionary model partnerships which can be 360-degree in nature.
What are the podcast traits that advertisers ought to be watching out for?
I feel you’re going to see an elevated acceleration in the direction of the blended strategy. You might be now not going to see podcasting as only a host-read medium. It’s one which has great attain. It’s one the place the audiences have grown and matured to the purpose the place yow will discover the incremental attain that you really want and the place yow will discover actually deep connections to explicit audiences.
A giant development you’ll proceed to see is folks trying from an advertiser standpoint to purchase these audiences and never essentially simply to purchase these exhibits. Within the time that I’ve been at IAB, one of many huge matters of dialog—how can we persuade advertisers to have a look at our full slate of content material as one thing they wish to put money into writ massive as a substitute of solely cherry-picking what they assume are the simplest exhibits as a result of they occur to be the massive ones that they’ve all heard of?
Don’t simply purchase the exhibits you realize or that you simply assume are going to present you an excellent efficiency since you’ve heard of them. Have a look at podcasting as a medium by which you will have these extremely engaged, extremely attentive people who find themselves consuming an enormously diversified quantity of content material. Don’t simply purchase the exhibits, purchase the audiences.
