Podcasting's Shift to Video according to Triton Digital's Sharon Taylor

[00:00:00] Jeff Umbro: This week on Podcast Perspectives Audio, video, or both, which do you think podcasting ultimately becomes?

[00:00:07] Sharon Taylor: I wish it would be only audio, but it's going to be both.

[00:00:10] Jeff Umbro: What is one podcast industry prediction that you got wrong?

[00:00:14] Sharon Taylor: That video was a flash in the pan.

[00:00:16] Jeff Umbro: Which trend is the industry currently overreacting to?

[00:00:19] Sharon Taylor: That video is going to be the next thing for podcasting.

[00:00:23] Jeff Umbro: There's a trend here. Today on the show, we have Sharon Taylor, the CRO of Triton Digital. Throughout her career, she's helped guide podcasting through a lot of industry-shifting dynamics, including the rapid change of programmatic advertising, YouTube's emergence as a podcast platform, and the industry's current shift toward video.

Today, we speak about how video is changing the podcasting industry and how to adapt to platforms like Spotify, Apple, and YouTube, who are constantly shifting their distribution models. Sharon sits at the center of these conversations and has a wealth of knowledge to share. Let's get to it. So we spoke almost exactly three years ago.

And I asked you during that interview, uh, what does a hosting platform do? Would you give a different answer today?

[00:01:09] Sharon Taylor: I would because what a hosting platform for podcasting had to do three years ago is different. Like, when I came and spoke to you last, it was all audio. We had to have the best tool set, and now as podcasting changes into this multimodal, like it's social media, it's video, it's all of these things that are, you know, more and more every single day, the hosting platform has to keep up with that.

So it's, you know, Omny is now a video CMS as well as audio, and if I go back to 2016, it's the one thing I swore we'd never do, and yet here we are.

[00:01:41] Jeff Umbro: I feel like 90% of the industry is in that boat, which it is funny 'cause that was driven by Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, and I guess you could also say, like, Netflix and Tubi and everybody else.

But iHeart, Triton's parent company, is one of these orgs that I don't think ever really did push for this, at least publicly.

[00:01:59] Sharon Taylor: I think that iHeart view podcasting as an audio first, like the magic of the medium is in that relationship and the relationship in your ears and, you know, that it is audio first.

And so I don't think that they were pushing the video agenda as much, but again, the people that were pushing the video agenda are people with video platforms like YouTube or people that want to be YouTube, like Spotify. And so, like, I feel like they're very focused on what they do very well, which is the podcasting and the audio world, but now their app is doing video as well.

And so I think that like all of us, we are adapting to consumer trends and where the industry is moving.

[00:02:42] Jeff Umbro: So because you're serving so many publishers, you have a unique view of the industry. What do you think you're seeing today that most creators are not?

[00:02:52] Sharon Taylor: I have a vantage point in that I look after a lot of creators, you know?

And so-

[00:02:57] Jeff Umbro: Yeah, how many are on the platform these days?

[00:02:59] Sharon Taylor: In total, I would say we're pushing, like, 200,000, I would say.

[00:03:02] Jeff Umbro: Okay.

[00:03:02] Sharon Taylor: Between

[00:03:03] Jeff Umbro: the two- Your, your answer last time was 65,000, so that's huge growth.

[00:03:06] Sharon Taylor: Yeah, '

cause I

think I only

mentioned Omny. Yeah. So, like, Omny is geared for very large podcast networks and commercial broadcasters that have larger and longer sales cycles, and then the Spreaker side is more of the independent or podcast networks that are Kind of the ones that we pass around more between all the different CMS in the industry.

And so that's the lion's share of that bigger number that I gave. They are, like, in full growth mode. Um, they are very successful monetizing independent podcasters, and they just, like, the, the numbers are kinda swelling. There's probably, like, some nuance that I should give to the RSS feed number in terms of how many are active on a daily basis and, and everything like that, but I just don't have that data at hand.

But it's, it's a s- a substantial amount of the industry.

[00:03:49] Jeff Umbro: So when it comes to, like, the trends that you're seeing with, like, the, you know, I don't know if it would be with the revenue or with, like, just the way in which people are engaging with the ecosystem. I'm curious if there's, like, something you've seen that would be surprising to most people.

[00:04:03] Sharon Taylor: I think that what's interesting is that the independent and the smaller shows seem to have a better handle on video than probably some very large publishers because there's less humans to coordinate, and there's less to think about in terms of, like, costs and workflows and those types of things, and it's a lot easier to make faster decisions.

And so I think that there's probably a... I'm seeing at a more macro level a very thoughtful stepping into video, which I can't be upset about because I think we should be quite thoughtful about how we, you know, move into a new audience. But I see things, like, that a lot of publishers are, are dabbling with that maybe, again, one single show, one single podcaster already has a social media strategy.

And then at the very high end of town, they're thinking about how to have an entire division of people to clip and, like, automatically push more content out into different ways and how they can think about different revenue channels between socials and things like that. And so I think it's all the same.

You know, we all grapple with the same stuff in the industry. We just do it at very different scales, I think.

[00:05:08] Jeff Umbro: And so w- let's talk about video for a few minutes. Um, from your perspective or Trine's perspective, like, how has video changed the business?

[00:05:16] Sharon Taylor: From my personal perspective, video, like I made a joke the other day to someone, every year I wrote a different article on LinkedIn about video.

I feel like I try to be a good barometer of where the industry is, and I do feel like that was, you know, I write based on what it is that I'm hearing or my viewpoint's based on conversations. And it does feel now that there is two camps of podcasting. There are those who are thinking this is the best thing since sliced bread, I think is the saying.

I'm very bad with those. Um, and then they're going full in. Like, I was at an event with The Diary of a CEO, and they were talking about their 100 different A/B testing, and they've got this over here. Like, there is a, that is a business, and they are leaning in because they have a model that allows them to monetize on YouTube and think about audio in a different way.

And then there's another camp of people who are A mix of excited and apprehensive. It's, it's redundant to say that it's not going to happen. You know, like, it, it's wrong to say this is where the medium is going. There is an audience, largely younger, very different to your typical affluent, educated podcast audience who are, you know, used to scrolling and consume content in a more modular and very distinct way to a podcast consumer traditionally.

But that is a tasty audience. And so there is a resigned acceptance bordering on tepid excitement from many publishers of how they access that, but in a way that obviously doesn't break their entire business model, which is the problem with YouTube and Spotify and, you know, other platforms that move out of RSS.

[00:07:03] Jeff Umbro: So I, I view this as, like, everything that happened over the last 20 years in podcasting in terms of, like, us selling ads on a CPM for, you know, direct response advertisers and the industry growth and the programmatic. Like, it may take time, and that will eventually change, but for the moment, that is staying as kind of the status quo, and then everything with video is just extra on top of that.

Do you agree with that assessment? Like, and, and if you do or if you don't, like, why do you think that there are publishers that are against video? Is it just that they don't wanna change the status quo?

[00:07:39] Sharon Taylor: Mm, I think that within the hesitation camp, there are two, like, sub-camps. I think there are those who are podcast purists who are, have this audio and they, that's what they want.

And so I think there's that element to it. You know, but that's the same for every medium. Like, just 'cause you write a book doesn't mean that you wanna record an audiobook or have the opportunity to. Like, you can, you know, dabble in what you want as an artist or as a creator. And then I think on the hesitant side, everyone, myself included, you have to be doing video.

Like, if you are not thinking about a video strategy, then I don't know that you can be a competitive podcast producer longer term for where the industry is now. But I do think that there are elements that make it easier for something like The Diary of a CEO to do than someone or a network that has built an entire business model around the CPM and making sure that the same ads deliver, and that if you're selling a sponsorship it's, you know, gonna frequency cap in the right way, and that the numbers that you get back that you already have to kind of look at in different ways for different advertisers makes sense when you're maybe adding video in and maybe not.

And being able to handle all of that I think is a huge workflow increase and a huge, like, consideration. It's really interesting as an industry that it's like we've sliced YouTube off in our brains and just gone, "You know what? Totally different business model. I'll just have all of my audio. But the same show I'm gonna put on YouTube Maybe you're adjusting it so that, you know, you're catching people's attention in the first 30 seconds as opposed to a longer, more rambling, especially if you're me, podcast interview introduction.

But like we've just kind of gone, that's fine. That's cleaved off and we're just gonna accept the money that YouTube makes and maybe I'll do some brand placement and think about it as a different revenue line. And then when you try and do that for the rest of your video, like through Apple, through Spotify, et cetera, there's a more rigidity and like a, like a A well-placed desire to make sure that the same audio ads that you're trafficking and the same measurement that you get back, which people are already throwing holes into, is gonna work for, for all of that.

And so I feel like, I feel like that is a huge part of the hesitation as well, just an unsuredness of how to navigate that next step well with all the money that these podcast networks are trafficking in audio, and how to grow that, and, you know, salvage it in many ways.

[00:10:01] Jeff Umbro: Yeah, and, and the video ad industry is, you know, 30 times the size of the audio ad industry, so it makes sense that Spotify and Apple and everybody else want to play in that sandbox.

But yeah, I, I agree with you. I think the biggest hesitation is just, like, we've built a system that works for audio that does not work for video.

[00:10:20] Sharon Taylor: It's g- I mean, I was at the IAB Video Leadership Summit, the, the numbers that they spout, I mean, we are Oliver Twist, like, hoping to catch just, like, a small morsel of their, I think it was 64 billion or something ridiculous, for a medium that is proven to be more engaging, have better, like, sell-through, have b- like, it's, it's really always been, I think, audio in general, and podcasting very specifically recently, that has had to really work hard for advertising dollars in a medium that is so lean in, so engaging, has all of the brand lift going for it, and then video, it comes with all these extra metrics and things.

And so yeah, it's a really interesting, it's a really interesting time. I've said that every year for the last five years, and I feel like that's gonna be, fast-forward three years to me being on this show again, hopefully, and I'll say the same thing. It's a very interesting time in podcasting.

[00:11:11] Jeff Umbro: Well, it, it is funny though because, you know, you have the purists who are just like, "You know, This American Life is the epitome of a podcast."

And then you ask your uncle at a barbecue, and he'll say, "Oh, did you watch that podcast with so-and-so?"

[00:11:27] Sharon Taylor: That was a radio show. Like, you and I both remember eight years ago or more, everyone, you know, clutching their pearls in the industry because a radio show couldn't possibly be a podcast.

Like, how very dare a radio show try and, like, have a podcast. And everyone was like, "Do you remember The Moth?" Like, "Do you remember, like, that they were radio..." Like, it's audio. Like, it's just a different way to consume it.

[00:11:49] Jeff Umbro: So Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts now are kind of the big players when it comes to a video podcast.

How do each of them differ as, like, a distribution platform?

[00:12:01] Sharon Taylor: YouTube is basically upload it to YouTube, don't expect any of your standard ads to run, don't expect any of your standard metrics back. Let them monetize it and take the 50% or, you know, the revenue that they're gonna give you back, and think about it differently.

Apple for me is at the complete other end of that spectrum. They've built very closely to RSS, and so you can own your own audience, you can migrate shows, you can insert the same ads, you can get measurement back. From a podcast hosting company like ours, you get real-time data back. And so that's probably the furthest other end of the spectrum.

And then Spotify's in the middle kind of trying to do a bit of both, which is they've got this API that will hook into CMS like Omny, and you can publish out, they'll give you data back, but it's still very much you can put your own ads in, and then they also have like the YouTube model on top where they also want to fill.

And so it's interesting, like the three of them doing different, different things.

[00:12:58] Jeff Umbro: What kind of problems does that pose for somebody who's trying to produce for all of these platforms?

[00:13:03] Sharon Taylor: Can tell you what problems it creates for someone like me who's trying to build a platform for all those problems. No, um- Please.

I did a talk in London for Podcast Show, and it, the, a part of it was, and it was all on video, and a part of it was Talking about workflow and the considerations and this kind of exact thing, and I had a number of people come up afterwards and, and kinda say, like, "Preach." You know? Like, "This is ... You know, there's so much pressure at my organization or from my audience to do these things," but there is such a huge amount of, you know, extra-

[00:13:32] Jeff Umbro: The, the admin is, like- It's-

it's not 2X,

it's like 5X.

[00:13:35] Sharon Taylor: It's that, five, yeah, easily. And so at the moment we're building piping and have built the piping to make sure that you can kinda, like, p- upload once, publish everywhere. The next iteration of that is going to need to be different versions of the show per platform, because the audience that you find on Apple to Spotify to YouTube to insert name of next app that's gonna do video, to, to, you know, Tubi and Hulu and Netflix and all these people getting involved as well, they expect to consume that content in a very specific way.

And you can push the boundaries of a medium and you can surprise people, but especially if you're getting into video to attract, like, the Gen Z, that you have, like, 10 seconds, if that, to get their attention. And so being able to cut that up and do different versions of it, and maybe there's world there where AI helps all that process.

But it's, like, a workflow of 5X now, but I think to be really successful in the next year at least, we're gonna have to be talking about a 10X workflow, trying to get it down to 5X again in order to create these different versions to resonate with different audiences.

[00:14:39] Jeff Umbro: It, I kind of have a front row seat to people who are learning that in real time.

Somebody comes to us and says, "I have this business. I would like to make a podcast as, like, a marketing vehicle. I wanna put it on YouTube. I wanna clip it for social media, and I want to have, like, an audio property." And then I hand them a line item budget of what it would cost to do each of these things, and more often than not, their response is like, "Well, what do you mean it'll cost X dollars to make, like, an Instagram video?"

I'm like, "Well, please let me explain."

[00:15:11] Sharon Taylor: You should include tissues in your, like, proposal pack so that, like, you know, they can dab their tears as ... Like, the amount of investment that is gonna need to go into it is, is crazy. And so I, I also think that part of my advice for at least our publishers is not everything needs to be video.

If you have a stable of shows, you can pick which ones you want to have video. You could pick when you wanna do a video episode of a show. You could A/B test paywalling different things. Like, you have to try and find the R on the ROI.

[00:15:39] Jeff Umbro: Yeah, and the first thing people should always do is just, like, think of, like, what is this meant to do for me and/or, or my company or whatever, and, like, how am I measuring how to do that?

Moving on to advertising, what would you say the current state of podcast advertising is? Like- Is the, are the good numbers going up?

[00:15:56] Sharon Taylor: Yeah. The, the, the good numbers are going up. Our Q2 was, like, great for all of our publishers. Like, there is a lot of advertising dollars flowing f- like, through the industry right now.

Programmatic especially is, you know, it's ... Everyone was very worried, again, eight years ago that it was all re- lots of dots and things like that. But there are proper big advertisers getting the space that transact in programmatic DSPs. And so it's, it's very good. I think there's still a, a concern that more, like, new very large advertisers, like you and I have been here a long time, and, you know, who is the new Blue Apron, or who is the new, you know, BetterHelp and those types of things?

And I don't know. Like, we're seeing a lot of that in programmatic. We're seeing advertisers in different regions, especially government spending go through, big, like, fast food, like those types of things, which is good. Like, there's a big census spend that's going down in Australia at the moment.

[00:16:52] Jeff Umbro: There, there was, there was a lot of issues that we had with Megaphone 'cause, um, ICE was buying ads and categorizing it as, like, like a job opportunity as opposed to, like, a political thing.

[00:17:03] Sharon Taylor: Illegal in LATAM as well. And so, like, it just, the more advertisers that get in, you're like, "Oh God, how am I gonna deal with this?"

[00:17:10] Jeff Umbro: Well, so I'm, I'm curious. I, I mean, I, Magellan publishes a report each week of, like, the, you know, biggest movers and shakers in the podcast ad industry, and I am seeing the turnover on those lists way more frequently than a few years ago.

I think that's a good thing, more people, you know, experiencing the industry and then, uh, like, moving to a new job and, like, recommending to their boss that they should, you know, buy podcast ads or whatever. Do you think that YouTube is creating new advertising opportunities, or for people in the podcast space, or do you think it's cannibalizing, like, the existing audio revenue?

[00:17:47] Sharon Taylor: Hmm, I think it's probably somewhere in between those two things. I think that any time a very large platform, let alone one that drives such huge advertising dollars and has those brand conversations so often, you know, is talking about it or is synonymous with podcasting, that's great, and that rising tide will lift.

Whether or not the money If you're gonna buy YouTube, are you gonna buy YouTube? Or how do you get on the media plan elsewhere outside of YouTube? You know, and is the mentality of advertisers that that is only what a podcast is, and then they try and move across into the audio world, and we have to, you know, take them by the hand and say, "You don't actually get watch through on this.

You get a download impression. Want it? Great. Let's do it." You know? And so, but I do, I think it's good. I think that the more conversations that large players like YouTube, Spotify, like iHe- they all, like, are having big advertising conversations, that's good for us, as long as it's just slowing.

[00:18:45] Jeff Umbro: So is that where you think, like, the biggest opportunities are over the next few years, is just, like, continuing to invest in the platforms that are able to have those bigger conversations?

[00:18:55] Sharon Taylor: I think so. I think it's also, I mean, again, that new up-and-coming audience, like the younger people, and I don't know that they're ever gonna transfer across into an audio-first podcast world. But maybe as they get older and their thumbs get arthritis from the, like, constant scrolling, they don't ... Like, they can't use their hands anymore, and then they have to come back to audio-only podcasting.

But yeah, I mean, I, I think it is. It's just about more and more advertisers coming into the space, and it's trying to move. Even if we moved 1% of budget away from CTV or digital, like online, et cetera, that's significant money in the industry. And, you know, IAB comes out every year. I think the numbers this year were higher than every year before.

Like, the spend is definitely going in the right direction. Like, I don't think that's the debate anymore. It's just a how do ... Hmm.

[00:19:41] Jeff Umbro: It, it's an uneven distribution of the spend.

[00:19:43] Sharon Taylor: Correct. Thank you. Perfect.

[00:19:45] Jeff Umbro: I know attribution is usually, like, the biggest challenge, both for audio and video. And so we don't have to talk about that today, because I know that that's probably its own conversation.

But are there other problems in terms of, like, measurement that you're seeing with kind of the shift from audio to video?

[00:20:03] Sharon Taylor: It's just a different measurement, like, in general. So the, what you can get back through the YouTube API to put into a measurement platform, versus what Spotify's gonna give you, versus what Apple's gonna give you, versus what, you know, you probably don't get anything from Netflix, et cetera.

And I think that comes back to the, I think it comes back to the workflow. You almost need a different team of people just to be grabbing all this data and synthesizing it, and telling a coherent advertising strategy.

[00:20:29] Jeff Umbro: You're, you're teeing me up for my next question, which is, with companies like Bumper and their dashboard, or Podstock, do you think that there's, like, a

I- I've always been very torn on, on those platforms, 'cause I think they're incredible at measuring, like, editorial and marketing effectiveness. And of course, Bumper has, like, their Bumper score, and, and is working with AMP and everything, and I think that's very useful for, like, ad agencies and that kind of thing.

But in your opinion, like, do you think that'll ever make, like, a meaningful shift in terms of how people buy? Or is it going to be more of, like, if it's not broken, don't fix it?

[00:21:05] Sharon Taylor: Hmm, I don't think it's either of those. For me, like, I'll go back to, maybe this is part of my chief revenue officer, like, interview, but, like, simplicity is what sells.

I don't think that this stage of podcasting, again, in order to get to the next level of taking some of that spend away from other medium, what we have is what we have. Like, we, and, and it's, we have a s- we have a standard as much as, like, a guideline. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and say the IAB is, is a standard.

But it is a general consensus that people have bought into, and that is how it's traded. And I worry a lot about proprietary methods built on APIs or definitions that are owned and operated by other people. That can disappear and be changed at the drop of a hat. And, you know, and I do question in my mind palace whether or not having these debates out front and center is going to help us bring more money into the advertising space.

[00:22:02] Jeff Umbro: I always question the idea of i- one of these platforms will measure, like, total watch time based on, like, how many TikTok videos have been served, or, like, how frequently people are watching on YouTube or listening on Apple. And my thought has always been, like, that kinda doesn't matter. Like, it's a great metric, but it, it's also, like, your TikTok video versus your YouTube video versus, like, a s- a Spotify listener, like, they're all consuming this completely different ways for different reasons.

[00:22:29] Sharon Taylor: I, I think more information the better, right? Like, to your point, there is a rich, a wealth of information that those platforms can provide, and a workflow saving in terms of, like, moving things through, making it all in the same dashboard, et cetera. And I think that there are content creation and publishing insights and, like, choices you can be making.

Whether that is the basis for a new standard is a challenge, I think.

[00:22:55] Jeff Umbro: Do you think that any of those platforms perhaps are gonna be acquisition targets for any of these bigger companies?

[00:23:03] Sharon Taylor: I don't know that you can be an acquisition target, like, and then hope to be a measurement provider. Like, uh, you can't be an independent arbiter of truth, and by truth, like, the measurement of advertising and podcasting, and then be owned by a single

I mean, I, I can be wrong. I'm wrong a lot. Just read some of my last LinkedIn articles. But- I struggle to think of any company that has been bought by a, a Nielsen, a Claritas, a insert name of very large measurement provider, and then... You know, you can't grade your own homework essentially. And so I think it's challenging to think that they would be bought by a Spotify, et cetera.

But Spotify bought Podscribe back in the day, and so who knows? Not Podscribe, sorry. Sorry, Pete. Um- Uh,

[00:23:42] Jeff Umbro: Podsites.

[00:23:42] Sharon Taylor: Podsites, thank you.

[00:23:43] Jeff Umbro: Yeah. So do you think that there will be other acquisitions on, like, the non-measurement side?

[00:23:49] Sharon Taylor: Yes. I mean, you just look at what Red Sea Ventures is doing at the moment, you know, and they're, they're definitely, they're very active.

And any M&A activity spurs more M&A activity from others who are either worried about missing out or, you know, are also looking at decks. And there's a lot of people, I would imagine, that are gonna be looking for exits because they've been there for so long, or firing up new businesses just to get an exit.

And then I think there'll be another Red Sea Ventures at some point. But what they're doing over there is very interesting to watch.

[00:24:17] Jeff Umbro: This is me just being gossipy, but, like, are you paying attention to any companies that you think will be bought in the next year or two?

[00:24:23] Sharon Taylor: I'm not personally, no. Like, I mean, I, I...

Some of the ones that have already been acquired, I'm like, "Ooh, I didn't see that kind of coming." And so no, that's definitely in the I'm wrong more often than I'm right bucket.

[00:24:34] Jeff Umbro: Five years from now, what does podcasting look like?

[00:24:37] Sharon Taylor: Oh, wow. Still gonna be you and I on this show, like, talking about- Probably.

Yeah, correct. Yeah. Um- Good. I say that derisively, but no, like, like, that w- that's gonna be a positive element of it. All of it. I do, again, just putting on the predictions and knowing that I'm gonna write them anyway on LinkedIn and then people can look at it, like, in posterity. I do think there'll be some sort of course correction for video.

Like, I think that there we'll see a big spike in who's producing video, and then we'll see, like, a flattening of that as people realize which of their audiences want it, et cetera. I think there'll be a different business model, honestly. I think that we're gonna, as large podcast networks, you're gonna make a lot of money out of your CPM and the download, et cetera, still.

But then you're going to have to have very big silos of, "This is my social media money, and this is my video money," and have different revenue and sales strategies for each, which again, I think is what people are kind of grappling with in the, these formation moments. I hope that we still have lots and lots of great content.

Like, I think it's a little bit scary to see the number of, you know, what's happening in news globally and, like, newsrooms and that content is kind of like the first to go. And so I hope that we still have, like, a great breadth of new and exciting content that's being made on a, on a daily basis. And then I think we're gonna see a lot of, a lot of AI.

And I don't mean in terms of AI-created shows. I mean in terms of getting that 10X workflow down to 5X and the, the automation of a lot of that to try and keep up with it.

[00:26:06] Jeff Umbro: So we had Laura Maher on the show right before you, and she made a comment which was in her podcast, Shameless Acquisition Target, but essentially, like, if you build it, they may not come.

Do you ... I, I just, I think about this a lot because I'm, I'm constantly shocked by how frequently people will come to us or, or want to make a show but have not yet thought out, like, why they want to make it. So what advice do you have for whoever is gonna build that next podcast? Like, what should they pay attention to?

[00:26:39] Sharon Taylor: I think it's much of the same advice that everyone always had, which is look at the competitive set around you. Like, look what the person that you aspire to be is doing. Look at the competition. Look at how you'll fit in there, how you'll be unique. I think now the thing is you have to look even more broadly.

Like, as this concept of podcasting is changing, and there's a debate raging at the moment about what it should and shouldn't be, you have to be looking at what Netflix is doing and YouTube and others. You know, like, YouTube's getting into late night again. You know, like, we're not the only industry that's kind of facing, like, what is a late night show, and what is a podcast, and what is, you know, insert X, Y, and Z?

And again, I think that the situation that we're in at the moment in podcasting is largely generationally driven and consumer habits that are changing, and you can't really always predict that. You know, I don't know that you can ever. And so in five years or, you know, what is that next thing that's gonna be?

Like, are we moving to a vertical video world? Are we moving into, you know, only bite-size content?

[00:27:36] Jeff Umbro: Is everybody gonna get sick of their computer and live events are gonna be, like, yet again the thing that pop off? However people wanna consume this thing, like, just figure out the business model behind it.

[00:27:46] Sharon Taylor: 100%. So. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and get, have an audience. And, and be, be thoughtful and be purposeful about how you interact with that audience because the joy of podcasting is, like, that intimacy, and all the things that made it amazing as it transforms into what it is going to be next could be equally amazing for you.

But be thoughtful and purposeful about it. But don't be scared to step in just because. Like, have a plan, but definitely get involved is the message that I'm screaming to our creators at the moment.

[00:28:13] Jeff Umbro: Yeah, and, and, you know, and by definition, if you are a creator, then it means that you have something to say and something to put out in the world, so you can figure out the rest after.

Anyway, it was really great to have you on the show, Sharon. Thank you so much for joining me as always. Uh, you are a, a four-timer on the show. I'd, I'd have to triple check, but I do think that you are the first one to have that accolade, so the jacket's in the mail.

[00:28:38] Sharon Taylor: Amazing. Amazing. I look forward to it

[00:28:46] Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Sharon Taylor for joining us on this week's episode of Podcast Perspectives. For more from Sharon, check her out on LinkedIn. For more podcast-related news, info, and takes, you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jeff Umbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of The Podglomerate. If you're looking for help producing, marketing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at podglomerate.com.

Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com, or follow us on all socials at @podglomeratepods. This episode was produced by myself, Jeff Umbro, and our production team, Chris Boniello, Jose Roman, and Nicholas Abuhamad. Thank you to our marketing team, and a special thank you to Dan Christo