To help local public radio stations build revenue from digital underwriting, StreamGuys and American Public Media have launched a partnership called the Inform Media Network.
The organizations call IMN “a private underwriting and sponsorship marketplace purpose-built for public media” that provides local stations with a national sales team and network at no cost.
Approximately 30 organizations are participating. Among organizations taking part so far are familiar brands like KQED, WETA, Baltimore Public Media, WHYY, WBUR, Houston Public, WGBH, KEXP and others.
The companies said this network offers 55 million monthly impressions reaching over 6 million unique listeners through their podcasting and live streams.
The Inform Media Network is intended to help stations fill unsold digital inventory with “compliant, public radio-quality underwriting through APM’s centralized national sales reach.”
It said stations benefit from audience insights that support the local sales process and that it gives them a mechanism to sell local underwriting to local listeners of APM’s national podcasts, including podcasts from “Marketplace,” “This Old House Radio Hour” and “The Slowdown.”
StreamGuys will manage the technical infrastructure and deliver onboarding services and payment processing for publishers. Magellan AI is used for measurement “from listening to conversion.”
In the announcement, APM acknowledged the challenges of maximizing underwriting revenue for local and national organizations.
“Inform Media Network offers a solution to these challenges — to the benefit of the larger public radio ecosystem. The network is designed to simplify participation for stations while presenting advertisers with a single trusted point of entry into public media digital audio,” it said.
It quoted Justin Hach, director digital sales operations and products at APM and Minnesota public Radio, saying that impressions from listeners outside of a broadcast market may not be important to local sponsors but are a “fantastic” potential audience for national advertisers when connected across the public radio system.
StreamGuys said the network is “not an automated, algorithm-driven programmatic ad network” and that its underwriting will be FCC-compliant “and sound just like local underwriting sold by public radio stations.”
Local stations also will have the opportunity to sell APM’s national podcasts in their local region. Among organizations taking part so far are familiar brands like KQED, WETA, Baltimore Public Media, WHYY, WBUR, Houston Public, WGBH, KEXP and others.
