GET WITH THE PROGRAM: PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING AND THE DATAFICATION OF PODCAST AUDIENCES

Abstract

The podcasting landscape has been reshaped in the past several years by acquisitions and mergers among players in the industry. Major platform services like Spotify, SiriusXM, iHeartMedia, Google, and Apple have all attempted to more closely bind consumers to their proprietary services, threatening the open architecture of distribution via RSS. While control and monetization of intellectual property is one key driver of platformization in podcasting, another key institutional shift is being accelerated these changes: the datafication of the audience. In short, datafication involves the quantification of human activity to enable surveillance, prediction, and mass customization of advertising. In this paper, I explore one significant impact of widescale platformization within podcasting: the emergence of programmatic advertising markets. By essentially “listening in” to these industry discourses about podcast advertising (in podcasts and in the Podcast Upfront presentations from Spring 2022), this essay outlines the importance of platform-to-platform data transactions and highlights the resulting shifts in the podcasting ecosystem: away from the intimate, relationship-driven ethos of the medium and toward a quantitative, surveillance-driven ecosystem.