Podcast hosting and monetisation company Katz Digital has partnered with AI podcast measurement firm Barometer to improve its ability to run podcast advertising campaigns.
Through this partnership, Katz Digital will gain access to Barometer’s insights into brand suitability and contextual targeting to help the platform ensure that it can run its ads effectively and reach the right audiences.
Barometer uses AI technology to examine podcast episode transcripts and identify their content and tone, determining what kind of ads they’re appropriate for based on keywords, context, and sentiment analysis. It also gives each show a grade based on four levels of risk - no risk, low, medium, and high - and ensures they are compliant with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) Brand Safety and Suitability framework and the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s content taxonomy 3.0 brand appropriateness standards.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with Barometer, a leader in brand suitability and safety technology, to advance podcasting,” said Katz Digital president Scott Porretti in a joint announcement. “This capability, coupled with the hyper-engaging content produced by our partners, will provide confidence to the buying community that will accelerate growth within the marketplace.”
In addition to analysing the podcast transcripts, Barometer also regularly updates its list of trending topics with its automatic real-time news analysis technology, which looks through over 50,000 news sources every day. The system also screens content for specific triggers including hate speech, spam or harmful content.
“With so much emphasis on a small number of podcasts, we are missing out on maximizing both revenue and audience reach within the podcasting industry,” said Barometer CEO Tamara Zubatiy. “Katz Digital has enormous reach and is investing in providing data for the scope and the size of their network, opening up more targeted access to the broader podcast industry.”
A number of other podcast companies besides Katz Digital have also partnered with Barometer in the past including Audiohook, Gemini XIII, Gumball, and Podbean, as well as audio ad agency Oxford Road to build a tool that will offer advertisers host-specific brand safety and a suitability intelligence solution.
Contextual targeting and brand suitability tools have been rolled out by a number of podcast companies including Acast. Podcast and radio organisation iHeartMedia also recently released a brand safety tool at the start of March 2023 which uses AI technology to analyse individual podcast episodes and identify risk factors and flag content that might impact the brand’s image.
AI has also become an increasingly popular tool used by podcasters to create audio content. In recent news, ad-sales platform Adthos created a test version of a self-service platform which allows brands to instantly create audio ads done by AI and audio content agency Distorted released a narrative podcast that was entirely generated by Open AI tools.
