Founder’s Note

First of all, I am sorry for being late (currently kind of my excuse on a daily basis), but WOW, what crazy weeks are behind me. And I am back with a bang and a bag full of thoughts, ideas, perspectives, and opinions. After all theses different events, visiting some friends from uni in Venice, watching Venezia FC getting relegated to Serie B, writing my first editorial for DMEXCO, and finalizing everything for my new podcast, I am already back on the train on my way to Berlin for some really cool recording sessions and corporate podcast promo at KI Navigator and Staffbase’s Voices conference.

And this time I am not just by myself, but I got my co-founder and the genius behind our Hypecast software suite Simon right next to me. We are currently doing some reviewing on our product and feature strategy and I am really excited for the awesome stuff that is still in the pipeline for this year. Of course, it will be around these main pillars: video, AI, and UX. Over the past year, I personally have started to appreciate the things happening around improving UX and optimizing our existing product much more than putting out a tone of hot, new features all the time.

Because one thing that I learned in the last years working in the audio and podcast industry AND focussing bringing podcasting into the world of corporates is, that the world around you usually moves much slower than you do. And that makes perfect sense. Thereas, we spend 8 - 12 hours a day thinking about nothing else than podcasting and audio, our customers (if we are lucky) spend 8 - 12 hours a month on that topic. And this is not just true for my job, but for most people and businesses. It especially became clear in a conversation I had with Nina Wüst from Acast a couple of weeks ago about Dynamic Ad Insertions and the future of podcasting. So, let’s take a look at an old/new topic in our industry.

The Big Topic

Imagine you’re a brand manager in Berlin, handed a tidy ad budget and told to get the most bang for your buck in the audio world. Do you pour it into a Spotify host-read campaign, bet on programmatic spots with Acast, or gamble on a live podcast event that draws 5,000 fans in Munich’s Zenith? Odds are, your first instinct isn’t a simple “buy audio” checkbox - instead, you’re juggling a mix of discovery hurdles, targeting mysteries, and an echo-chamber of misinformation that makes podcast advertising feel like chasing a unicorn.