In a collaborative effort, podcast industry research and advocacy firm Sounds Profitable and a number of partner organizations released the first draft of the Podcast Industry Glossary on July 19. This effort aims to define crucial terms related to the business side of podcasting, serving as a unified resource for organizations to incorporate into their support documents, educational materials, and sales collateral.
The glossary will be updated annually to keep up with the evolving industry. Stakeholders are encouraged to review the terms and provide feedback until August 2. Once finalized, the glossary will be available for industry-wide adoption, facilitating transparency and streamlining communications.
Sounds Profitable Partner Bryan Barletta stated, “The Podcast Industry Glossary serves as a centralized and collaborative resource to appropriately define and govern the terms critical to operating in the business side of podcasting. We set out to create a repository of terms and definitions companies can confidently incorporate into their support documentation, educational materials, and sales collateral.”
Ad Results Media SVP of Media Operations Lisa Jacobs shared, “I have spoken on panels and with people, who have been in the industry for a long time, that use terms incorrectly: leveraging host read and baked in as synonyms; that listeners, downloads and impressions are all the same and many more. It is time that we define, as an industry, the different terms for who is reading ads, the way ads are inserted and the way we measure so that we can focus on growth instead of decoding verbiage.”
Gumball VP of Creator Partnerships Dane Cardiel pointed out, “Lack of transparency and alignment of terms make us less efficient as an industry, and attempting to transact with definitions that aren’t similar leads to frustration and potentially some parties being taken advantage of — collaborating with each other on standardization efforts like this one is our quickest path to broader adoption of podcasting as a viable and robust marketing channel.”
