Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

iHeart Launches “Private Marketplace” for Podcasts

Programmatic platform provides scale, “psychographic” targeting

Podcast concept image Getty Images Carol Yepes
Getty Images/Carol Yepes

Wearing its “world’s largest podcast publisher” hat, iHeartMedia has launched something it describes as unique. It’s a “Private Marketplace” to offer advertisers a programmatic buying way to reach listeners to podcasts in the iHeartPodcast Network.

The system was developed through Voxnest, which iHeart acquired last fall.

Brian Kaminsky, chief data officer and president of revenue strategies, said the goal of that purchase was to let iHeart give podcast advertisers “additional targetable inventory at scale.” The company said in its announcement that the iHeartPodcast Network offers “30 million US monthly uniques and 257 million global downloads and streams.”

The technology will let advertisers create their own “marketplaces” consisting of specific audience targets and pricing, “to dial up and down across each year as their marketing needs require.”

Those advertisers will have on three targeting options: Category, Geolocation and Psychographic.

“Categories” include business and finance, TV and film, music, true crime and so on, while “Geolocation” promises to deliver relevant messaging to a specific region.

“Psychographic” lets an advertiser buy into shows that “speak to specific consumer behaviors like the conqueror, explorer, legend, cultivator, decider, thriver, rising star, advocate, backer and intrepid.”

Buyers will be able to choose multiple deal types including Programmatic Guaranteed (PG), Preferred Deal (PD), Private Auction (PA) and Open Marketplace (OMP).

In 2016 iHeart launched a “programmatic private marketplace for digital radio” in an announcement with AdsWizz.

Close