The podcast they are monetized, that is, they serve as a form of income for their creators or for the production houses, through the same models throughout the world: subscription, sponsorship and programmatic advertising. And although the subscription model is very dynamic in countries like the United States or some European countries, in Latin America, monetization is achieved through sponsors and advertising.
“Regardless of whether it is a network (podcast network) that has millions of downloads per month or is an independent creator, that has thousands of downloads, can use the different models, but the programmatic one, that is, when the advertising is independent of the podcast and is programmed from outside, and the sponsors, when advertising is part of the content, they are gaining more strength”, says Alejo Vargas, director of Business Development in Latin America at Voxnest/Spreaker.
Voxnest Audience Network is a technology built for podcasting developers. One of its brands, Spreaker, provides all the technology so podcast creators can store their audio content, distribute it and, above all, monetize it professionally.
The Texas Corporate iHeart Media bought both companies in 2020. Following one of its rivals, Spotifywhich in 2017 had bought Soundtrap, an application for creating music and recordings for podcasts, and had previously bought Anchor, a platform for creating and distributing podcasts automatically.
From Bogotá, Alejo oversees the company’s operation in Latin America, but the entire company has been working remotely since before the Covid-19 pandemic. The manager thinks that podcast audiences in Mexico and in Latin America, in general, have grown exponentially to become markets that already have solid audiences in each country, “so now the strong point is not so much the creation of contents but the commercialization of what is already there”.
Voxnest Spreaker works with large media outlets in Mexico, such as Audio Centro, the podcast segment of Radio Center Groupand Image Group. It is precisely this type of content that Alejo refers to: radio content that leverages the podcast format in order to generate new income and new audiences.
“It is very important for us that creators have an income and learn to manage their content with all our tools. On the demand side, there is programmatic advertising, so within marketing strategies, companies turn to audio and podcasts in their strategy,” he says.
In the case of Voxnest/Spreaker, 60% of programmatic advertising revenue goes to the creator of the podcast and 40% to the platform, which connects with those marketplaces (digital markets) where programmatic advertising is offered and distributes that advertising. advertising about the podcasts that are part of your network.
Of course, these three monetization models leave out other possibilities that are more linked to live presentations, the organization of events or the sale of promotional merchandise, but they establish a fairly clear difference between those podcasts that arise from cutting and trimming. a radio program and who seek programmatic advertising, similar to that used in traditional radio, as opposed to those podcasts aimed at a niche audience, in which the choice of sponsor and advertising is relevant to the audience, which sometimes is not wants to hear advertising at all.