NMA Spotlight: How to Finally Monetize Podcasts

How to monetize podcasts? For our latest Spotlight Event, a crowd of podcast experts and interested people came together in one virtual meeting. The event was centered around a really hot topic: professional podcasting and how media houses and news companies can monetize their audio content.

As Steffen Hopf, CEO of Julep, mentioned in his Spotlight presentation:

"There are more than 50.000 podcasters in the D-A-CH region alone. But only a few of them are monetizing their content as professionally as they are producing it."

That’s why three different startups showcased their products to help change that, followed by a lively discussion about the current status and the future of the highly-raising media format.

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3 startups, 1 goal: monetize Podcasts

Julep

The startup from Germany took the last 15 months to build a marketplace to bring professional creators and advertisers together. Julep offers podcasters a showcase for their content and comprehensive support for production, outreach, reporting, and monetization. Successful German podcasts are already part of the extensive Julep portfolio, such as “Mit den Waffeln einer Frau”, “Lästerschwestern” and the upday formats “Top News Podcast” and “Schnell verdient”.

“Let’s bring audio into an organization, where you can select different target groups and distribute your content selectively to the right people”

Maximilian Conrad, HYPE 1000

HYPE 1000

The founders of HYPE 1000 are part of NMA’s latest Batch 12. Maximilian Conrad and Simon Kapell from Münster (GER) are helping companies to find their own voice with the help of, guess what, podcasts. The two friends and co-founders are convinced that it’s crucial for modern companies to build emotional relationships with their customers and employees. Their first-launched app HYPECAST allows crowds to listen to great corporate podcasts and access their own personalized audio world anytime, anywhere.

Lytt

Last but not least: you need a strategy for the new age of sound. Linn Dyveke Wilberg presented the product of Lytt, one of our great alumni startups. The approach of the Norwegian company is to bring audio content to mobile devices and web browsers as easily as possible and to help publishers to stay in charge of their own content. Their solution is pretty interesting for companies who want to share professional audio bits and podcasts with their audience: it’s a white-label solution. So even Lytt is doing most of the work, it looks flawless and suits the company’s brand perfectly. Lately they built the new podcast app for the German publisher “Hamburger Abendblatt”.

“Media companies need a strategy for the age of sound.”

Linn Dyveke Wilberg, Lytt

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Monetization is key to keep audio products alive

As diverse as the crowd of our latest Spotlight Event was, everyone was on the same page: the rise of audio content is not over yet. And there is a lot more to do to make the most out of podcasting and ultimately how to monetize podcasts.

If you like to read more about the spotlights that we are pointing to highly relevant media topics, watch out for our next blog posts – there's more to come in May!