iHeartMedia Launches Private Podcast Marketplace for Brands

RADIO ONLINE | Wednesday, May 5, 2021

iHeartMedia

iHeartMedia has announced the launch of a new, first-of-its-kind Private Marketplace. The new marketplace will provide advertisers with programmatic buying access to distribute their marketing to audiences across a library of shows in the world from the iHeartPodcast Network. This new technology allows brand advertisers to create their own unique, tailored marketplaces -- composed of their specific audience targets and pricing, to dial up and down across each year as their marketing needs require -- across iHeart's podcast network.

The new technology developed through iHeartMedia's recently acquired Voxnest, advertisers will gain private access to target iHeartMedia's podcast library by content, geography and consumer psychographics. The iHeartPodcast Network includes hundreds of iHeartRadio original podcasts spanning every category from business, sports, spirituality and technology to entertainment, family, comedy and true crime including "Stuff You Should Know," "The Ron Burgundy Podcast" and the "Atlanta Monster" series as well as over a hundred shows from its air talent like the popular "Bobbycast" and "The Breakfast Club" on-demand podcasts.

"We acquired Voxnest last Fall with the plan to be able to provide podcast advertisers with additional targetable inventory at scale by allowing the effective and efficient monetization across an entire range of podcast inventory. Voxnest connects all of the fragmented platforms that exist in podcasting - the launch of this Private Marketplace is a huge milestone in the podcast industry and advances these capabilities to buyers," said iHeartMedia Chief Data Officer and President of Revenue Strategies Brian Kaminsky. "Our podcasts attract some of the most engaged and passionate podcast listeners in the world and now advertisers will have massive scale and highly specific targeting at their fingertips, to reach these hundreds of millions of listeners who are now consuming podcasts."

iHeartMedia's Private Marketplace will offer advertisers multiple deal types including Programmatic Guaranteed (PG), Preferred Deal (PD), Private Auction (PA) and Open Marketplace (OMP). Buyers interested can email ProgrammaticAdOps@iHeartMedia.com.