Amazon Music invests even more in podcasting

Amazon Music made another substantial investment in the podcast industry last week with the announcement of Art 19. Art 19 operates an ad marketplace that targets and inserts ads into podcast programming. This acquisition means Amazon will now have a hand in hosting podcasters’ shows as well as selling ads against them. 

Amazon continues to make more and more investments in the podcast ecosystem

Amazon Music only started offering podcasts in September last year, as did Audible in October. But in the time since, Amazon Music has acquired Wondery, one of the last major independent podcast networks. Amazon has positioned itself as a major player in the podcast industry.

As the advertising spend in podcasting approaches 1 billion this year it's how important it has become as a major media player. Spotify has charted this same trajectory making content-based acquisitions, like that of Gimlet Media and Parcast, but then acquired Megaphone, an Art19 competitor. In that case, Spotify has focused on bringing a proprietary ad-serving technology to the platform, called Streaming Ad Insertion, in order to encourage podcasters to move over to the hosting service and take advantage of its ad marketplace. 

Don’t discount traditional broadcaster’s interest in evolving digitally as company’s like iHeart have followed suit. iHeartMedia acquired Triton Digital, and SXM Media acquired Midroll, an ad-serving marketplace and platform, back in July of 2020. Pattison Media made a partial acquisition of Everything Podcasts to strengthen their pivot from a broadcast company into a media company.

Podcasting has become the new media frontier, attracting content producers and storytellers from all walks of life. Embraced by brands, movie, television and publishers as a way to deliver compelling content to an audience hungry for on demand choices.