Understanding Podcast Audience Measurements with Triton Digital

This transcript has been edited.

[00:00:30] Heather Osgood: Hello and welcome to the Podcast Advertising Playbook. I'm your host, Heather Osgood. And today on the show, I am happy to be joined, by Daryl Battaglia. He is the SVP of Market Development And Strategy at Triton Digital. Welcome to the show, Daryl.

[00:00:47] Daryl Battaglia: Thanks. It's great to be here with you, Heather, good to see you. 

[00:00:49] Heather Osgood: Good to see you too. So, last Daryl and I connected was at Podcast Movement in Nashville. We had the pleasure of being on a panel and kind of discussing some things [00:01:00] around analytics in particular, in the podcast industry. And after that panel, I had such a great time, I said, Daryl, we have to have you on the show because I really wanted to go deeper into some of the topics that we had talked about. So, thanks for being willing to come to the show today. 

[00:01:15] Daryl Battaglia: My pleasure, it was a great time at Podcast Movement, right? 

[00:01:18] Heather Osgood: It was, it was so wonderful to actually see people face to face, and yeah, it just made me realize how much I miss all of that personal interaction. What were your takeaways? 

[00:01:29] Daryl Battaglia: Yeah, the same. There were people that I haven't seen in person in a long time, obviously; people who I've never met in person, only on zooms or teams or whatever. And just like, I think people were so excited to get out and interact that the level of energy and enthusiasm was at an all-time high. It was pretty, pretty fun. 

[00:01:50] Heather Osgood: It was, it was a really good time. And it was just terrific that when our team came back, none of us had gotten COVID so that was an extra cherry on [00:02:00] top. I felt like... it was a fun time. So, Daryl, I wanted to start out by just talking about Triton Digital. I know that a lot of people listen to the podcast, and we've got a variety of different listeners. Some of them are very entrenched in the podcast ads space. Some of them are advertisers, and some of them are podcasters. And I feel like Triton Digital is one of those larger companies, that kind of does stuff in the background. And, maybe we hear about them, but unless maybe you're in that corporate environment of the podcast space, you might not know, or maybe have even heard of Triton Digital before so can you just give us an overview of kind of what the company does? 

[00:02:37] Daryl Battaglia: Sure, so we are an audio technology company. We've been working in audio, for over 15 years. We recently got acquired by iHeart media, and sit with a group of companies that serve the broader industry, and in players throughout the ecosystem. And we've got a range of solutions, on the podcasting side. We've got [00:03:00] a hosting platform and, Omni studio to help you manage and distribute your content in different analytics capabilities within that. We have advertising solutions, an ad server, and this is a supply-side platform a programmatic platform, to be able to monetize your inventory through a dynamic ad insertion. And then we've got a measurement of the audience, which is what I'm responsible for, and we do the same thing on the streaming audio side. So, when I mentioned we've been in streaming or digital audio for 15 years, we have a pretty established history of a similar solution set, for the streaming audio side as well.

[00:03:41] Heather Osgood: And I mean, really Triton started in streaming and then added podcasts after podcasts became larger. Is that the case? 

[00:03:48] Daryl Battaglia: Yeah, that's right. So as it's grown, our solutions have been a good fit to use across podcasting as well. And we've continued to grow it from there. 

[00:03:58] Heather Osgood: So really the way I think of [00:04:00] Triton is that you're a technology company and that you have created a lot of different solutions for different industries issues, both in streaming as well as in podcasting. And the way I always viewed Triton is that your tools that kind of maybe operating on the backs of a lot of the tools that maybe the podcaster might interact with like an Omni Studio or something like that. Would you say that's kind of the case?

[00:04:25] Daryl Battaglia: Yes.

[00:04:26] I mean, that's definitely the case, although they are built to operate independently as well. As I mentioned, I work on the measurement side. There are companies that use other hosting platforms besides Omni, and we integrate, the raw data from those platforms and provide consistent measurement, regardless of which hosting platform you're on.

[00:04:47] So, our solutions do operate together, but they can also operate independently. 

[00:04:52] Heather Osgood: And I know we'll get into this later on in the conversation, but I do think that that is one of the great things about your measurement in particular. [00:05:00] I know it would be great. And it is great when hosting companies take a look at the shows that they have and analyze that data, or maybe their shows that they have on their platforms.

[00:05:09] But it's even more interesting to me when we're taking a look at the entire industry and, really getting in and comparing more of the data because that's where the better picture comes from. And so I think that that's definitely one of the things that Triton has done well. I'm excited to dig into that, but before we go there, I would love to just start by talking about analytics within the industry.

[00:05:33] A common conversation and for many years, I feel like now this has been taking place that there maybe aren't enough, measurement tools in podcasting to really see it be effective at that. We're, maybe short of all of the other tools that are supplied within digital advertising.

[00:05:53] I'm curious. What are your thoughts about that? Do you feel like that really is a big issue and part of the reason why [00:06:00] maybe, you know, we can't be upset that we're hitting a billion dollars this year. I know we're all very thrilled, but wouldn't it be great if we're 10 billion right. So, do you feel like that analytic issue is the reason that we're not getting more ad dollars?

[00:06:14] Or where does that fall in terms of a problem from your, opinion or perspective? 

[00:06:20] Daryl Battaglia: I think that we are certainly evolving in the right direction. And part of that is because as an industry, we've expanded our capabilities, we've expanded measurement, and so on. And part of it is just, more experience and more comfortable level with advertising in podcasts. My experience goes not only across digital video and display, but TV and radio and, out of the home.

[00:06:46] All of those media types and everyone has their strengths and weaknesses as an environment to advertise in, but also from a measurement and analytics perspective. What podcasts have [00:07:00] going for it is that it is census level data, meaning that we have information on every individual download that occurs.

[00:07:08] I know it's downloads, in many cases. But we have information on, geography. We have episode-level information. We have information, that you can analyze by day. You can analyze it by what app the person was listening on. You can analyze it by an individual device that the type of device that's being used to listen.

[00:07:31] And so all of that, and you're not limited by some of these media types have panels that limit how granular you can get in the cuts of the data. But because we're, we have information on every individual download, it's bigger numbers to work with. And so you can cut it and slice and dice it, in a variety of different ways. On the sort of pre advertising by analytics, posts too, but [00:08:00] to help make decisions on where to buy, I think where we are advancing as an industry and Triton is as well is better understanding who the audience is. Understanding the profile of the audience. Their demographics. Their purchase behaviors, their media, other media behaviors.

[00:08:17] What else do they consume? Better understanding who that audience is. There's more work to be done there, but definitely progressing in the right direction. And then on the post-campaign basis, how did the campaign do in driving outcomes so we've come a long way on that end as well.

[00:08:36] Heather Osgood: I think you brought up a lot of great points there and, I think that oftentimes we have a tendency of focusing on what we don't have in the industry instead of what we do have in the industry. And when I think back to my days, selling radio and newspaper advertising, and, I think about really how great was that how to at that point, like [00:09:00] it was really actually quite poor.

[00:09:01] And at the time, especially when I was in radio, I didn't realize how bad, back in the day we subscribed to Arbitron, which was the company that did buy diary, measure radio listenership. And we thought that it was so great. And then, as I progressed in my career, I was like, oh man, that data was actually really, you know, it's pretty skewed and it's pretty, haphazard in a lot of ways.

[00:09:24] And with podcasts, we really do have a lot of data. And so looking at as you said like we can see every download, we can see where that person was. Maybe we can't always see like at a city level, but we can see on, a wider geographic level. So, there is a lot that we can see.

[00:09:43] And I'm curious because your role is in measurement and analytics, is part of your job actually, to look at the entire industry or to really analyze that data within Triton? Are you able to look at that and manipulate it, at all?

[00:09:59] Daryl Battaglia: [00:10:00] We are, we produce different industry insights, overall, so we're not reporting out how each individual publisher or network is doing unless they approved to be a part of that. So we do have our public rankers where we're reporting near the top podcasts networks and the top programs in the United States and in some other countries and regions as well. And continuing to expand that; but then, we do have information on podcasts listening for, I think we just exceeded about 50% of the commercial podcast landscape we're now measuring where publishers have participated in our measurement.

[00:10:40] And so you can produce, at that point, a good enough sample. There were probably a couple of areas where it's off if you're looking at the sports category, but there's a key sports entity that is missing, perhaps, sports podcasts are underrepresented. But other than that, you can understand where [00:11:00] things trending is the trend going up, and to what extent is it going up? How are people consuming podcasts, and how is that changing over time as well, and provide different insights related to that. And so we've been expanding our data analyst team to be able to mine that more. It's something we've been doing for some time on the streaming audio side, but now we've, we feel like we've got enough, market penetration to be able to do that for podcasting as well.

[00:11:26] Heather Osgood: That is awesome. This morning I received an email from one of the podcasts kind of company event companies out there that had a statistic in it that Spotify reported like 3.1 million podcasts exist, and I'm not a hundred percent sure where they got that data. I know I was having a conversation yesterday and the number 2 million came up. So I guess just out of curiosity when you say so I'm always like, I really don't know how many podcasts there are. 

[00:11:56] Daryl Battaglia: I'd have to check on that myself. I'm not quite clear. I'll ask the tech [00:12:00] people who can pull in 2 million records at a time and see what they say. 

[00:12:05] Heather Osgood: Right. Right, exactly. And I figure at some point we're just going to lose track, that it's like, oh yeah, yeah there's just, there are millions of podcasts. But when you say that you measure 50% of the commercial podcasts, what is that? What's your definition of commercial podcasts? 

[00:12:20] Daryl Battaglia: So it's an estimate. I need to widen the analysis. Even though the apple podcast charts are, more like a what's the trending type of chart, I just pulled in a large list of the top, apple podcasts chart, so looked at several hundred different top podcasts on apple podcasts. It's tough to align the data perfectly or at least with my skills so manually, counted like how much of this do we have measured? And, we were right at about 50%, rounded off to exactly 50% and we have a couple more clients onboarding now. So, we should be exceeding that part now.

[00:12:58] Heather Osgood: Excellent. Excellent. That's [00:13:00] perfect. So now I know you also talked about who the audience is and when I think about really creating great campaigns that are going to produce results, it's all about a match. So I always, considered that a brand has a very clear customer avatar, right? They know exactly who they're trying to target because they know, "Hey, if I target this person, they're actually going to go and purchase my product. So, when I think about creating successful campaigns, to me, targeting is really the most important. And I know anecdotally, we can certainly go through podcasts and we can say, oh, this is a business podcast, and these are business advertisers. They've got, a business software solution or what have you. It makes sense to match these podcasts together. I was actually on a call yesterday with a group of folks and one of the business podcasters said, well, "I only want business brands to advertise on my show." And I said I think you're missing opportunities by approaching it from that perspective. Because the reality is, is that [00:14:00] your listeners are all just listeners. And regardless of the fact that they are business people, they still eat and sleep and go to the gym and go to the beach, I mean, they're just people at the end of the day. So really looking at your audience in the core of who they are, gives you the opportunity then to match advertisers, match brands with that audience, and then produce ultimately the best results.

[00:14:26] That audience information I think is so critical. And I know from my experience just finding that information has been challenging. I know, Megaphone has enlisted their Nielsen stats, which has been really interesting to see. Truthfully Spotify has been pretty helpful, in their stats, but we also know that it's going to be skewed because you're going to be a certain type of person who's going to listen through Spotify, which then, skews the data. So talk to me a little bit about how Triton is playing within that audience demographic space and how the industry could benefit from that. 

[00:14:59] Daryl Battaglia: [00:15:00] First of all, from a targeting perspective, we link to segment data for tens of thousands of different segments. So you can understand the interests, the behaviors, purchase intent for a very specific use case that you have for a specific brand. So certainly that capability exists from an advertising perspective. One of the things that I keep hearing though from the ad agency side and the brand side is, yes, they want to target sneaker buy enthusiasts or whatever it might be, you know if they're that type of brand. But it is standard to have age and gender, and some other expanded demographics as part of your goals for your media campaign. So we've really taken the approach of let's get separate from the targeting use case from measurement and an analytics standpoint, let's get really high quality [00:16:00] age and gender and other demographics, like minority audiences, diverse audiences and, income, presence of children. Let's get that really good really right. One of the challenges with the podcast data is that it is an IP address-based so really a household, in many cases.

[00:16:20] So getting at gender is a little more complicated. And so we've, made use of survey data of podcast listeners on a wide-scale basis in order to be able to come up with a method to estimate demographics for every podcast that we measure. We're going down the road of let's have a highly representative. High-quality survey as an input, along with the download data, leveraging a combination of a representative survey that is to a person and using that in combination with the big data, which is the podcast download data, the census data [00:17:00] that exists in the industry. 

[00:17:01] Heather Osgood: That's awesome. Well, and I do think that there is a difference between programmatic and host read, right? Because obviously with programmatic, you can get so much more targeted and you can target so many different layers of information, or you can target so many different data points. But with host read, that's when it feels to me like it just gets trickier and harder. So would you say this information is applying to just programmatic or is it applying to those host-read potentially embedded or dynamically inserted ads? 

[00:17:33] Daryl Battaglia: I mean, it is helpful whenever you're looking at what shows should I advertise on. So it doesn't just have to be host read. And I also envision with programmatic or targeted advertising that in some cases it will be a show-level decision.

[00:17:52] So, what are the 500 different shows that I want to advertise on that index highly for the [00:18:00] type of audience I'm looking to reach? So it won't always be one-to-one targeting. And so those insights have a use case for programmatic as well. 

[00:18:08] Heather Osgood: Great. Great. That's perfect. And tell me, what are your thoughts about post-campaign tracking?

[00:18:15] I know you mentioned that and I know that we have, in some ways I feel like we've made progress. I think that attribution tracks tracking, with the pixel has been helpful. I feel like there are definitely different opinions about that. But what are your thoughts about that post-campaign tracking? Really and just looking at the results of the campaign? 

[00:18:38] Daryl Battaglia: Yep. Yeah. We're not directly in that space right now. We do help facilitate it. And so we do work with the companies that perform those types of analyses. I think it's obviously really important to know what effect your campaign had on an outcome?

[00:18:55] Whether it is a website, visitation, sales, foot, traffic, whatever it is [00:19:00] that you can do. I think, brand lift surveys as well cause sometimes the campaign, the goal isn't to drive someone to a website or to a store it's a different type of brand and it might be brand awareness, is more of a goal or brand consideration, is more of a goal.

[00:19:15] So I think the industry needs to have a wide array of, attribution or outcome measurement solutions. I think with our eyes open, they are super valuable and needed. But there are flaws to them, and you need to understand like, what are the caveats that exist with it? And, uh, you need to look at the data the right way and understand it on an individual campaign basis and over time.

[00:19:40] So, I think they're great. I just think that there is expertise required in order to, properly like, interpret the results and properly, like if you're marketing the results or communicating the results, you need to be able to say, this is what it is, and this is what it isn't, or here, here's like, you know, the fine print on it. You need to be familiar with [00:20:00] that. 

[00:20:00] Heather Osgood: And the way I look at it is it's just a piece of data. It's not all of the data. So if we look at it in conjunction with all of the other ways that we approach success, as you said, if we look at it, how much web traffic did you get? Were people going to a unique URL, were they using a promo code? Understanding what the expectations of the campaign are and measuring those with maybe some more traditional tactics and then layering on the attribution, then it becomes a piece of data along with downloads and impressions from the hosting provider, because I do feel like sometimes what happens at least from my perspective is we'll see one set of numbers, on the hosting platform, and then we'll see a different set of numbers on the attribution tracking platform. And we're like, hey, like these are different. So I think we definitely need to make sure that it's just a piece of data and not all of the data. And when we, consider it from that perspective, I think it makes a lot more sense. It sounds like that's what you're saying as well. 

[00:20:59] Daryl Battaglia: Absolutely, totally [00:21:00] agree with you. 

[00:21:00] Heather Osgood: Yeah. So now I have always been really fascinated by the rankers that Triton puts out. And I would love for you to talk a little bit about that because as you mentioned at the beginning, you're ranking, many different podcasts, not just ones that are on your platform. They're pretty black and white. So tell us a little bit about that. 

[00:21:18] Daryl Battaglia: Sure. First of all, they're built to be comparable. So I mentioned whatever hosting platform you're on. We will take in the raw data and count and measure everyone the same way. Obviously, IAB certified, but there are few differences between how one company does it versus the next. Those are guidelines and we want to make sure that there's uh, an equal measuring stick for how to measure all the different participants. It is, I would say first and foremost, built to be a marketing and promotion tool, whether you're promoting yourself as a company to say, here's how we're performing, hey, investors take notice. Or whether it's for ad sales purposes to be able to say, [00:22:00] we ranked number whatever on the network ranker or our shows, rank on the individual show ranker. It's great to be able to promote that in your social media channels, in your, sales materials.

[00:22:14] So that is great. I get a thrill that the part that I'm most excited about is either when some big-name, new podcast launches, and I'm always very curious to see, is it going to get cracked the top 100? Where's it going to rank? There's a couple of new debuts that we're promoting in our press release, every month.

[00:22:35] Or when a new entity joins the ranker. And then it's like, Hmm, where are they're gonna, where are their show's gonna appear on it? So I find that to be really interesting and we're really just focused on getting it as widely seen and read as possible. So we have an email distribution list that you can find on our website to be able to sign up, to receive the report by email. We have a lot of, agencies and brands that [00:23:00] are receiving it that way.

[00:23:01] Continuing to promote it out to the industry trade press. I don't think it is the right tool to be used by agencies for planning and evaluation of where to advertise. It is just like the top 100 and the top shows in the top networks. But this is something we're trying to solve with the rest of our solutions, but absent in the past of having a central source of like here's all the top shows I should be aware of. I have heard that agencies are using the ranker for that purpose to understand what should be on my radar. 

[00:23:35] Heather Osgood: Yeah. And, is the ranker based solely on downloads within a specific time period? 

[00:23:41] Daryl Battaglia: It's the downloads and the IAB Listener Definition. We're calling it users and the ranker, but it's the same thing. So we provide two different metrics. We rank on both. I'm talking about the US ranker right now. So two different metrics, but then we provide some additional columns for context. So for instance, [00:24:00] for the individual programs, we'll show how many new episodes were released this month.

[00:24:04] And obviously they can vary from a weekly show to a show that has multiple episodes a day. And then for the network ranker, we'll say, here's how many active podcasts this network has, and it just helps provide added context. And I think we'll keep adding and growing to it. We wanted to start when we first launched it with something that is digestible to the reader, but there's a lot more that can be done there.

[00:24:31] I can take any ideas on that? 

[00:24:33] Heather Osgood: Okay, cool. Sounds good. And people have to networks have to join the ranker, right? So Triton doesn't just say, oh, hey, we're just gonna rank everybody. Essentially networks come and say, Hey, we want to join the ranker, they go through the process of getting set up to join and that's the data that you guys are analyzing, correct? 

[00:24:51] Daryl Battaglia: Correct. Yeah. So they have to be measurement clients of Triton, and they received, the measurement user interfaces as part of that and all the data that comes [00:25:00] with it. But we do have to onboard clients and there is a lot of work to make sure that the results in the ranker are legitimate.

[00:25:07] So we have machine learning and eyes on the screens in order to make sure that we're analyzing every big spike or drop in the data or anything that might've been omitted. And just making sure that it's all legitimate. So we're reviewing trends in a variety of ways and then researching anything that looks odd so that we're not reporting someone is appearing in the top 10 when they shouldn't have been.

[00:25:32] Heather Osgood: Right. Right. And it's a monthly report, correct? 

[00:25:34] Daryl Battaglia: Correct. 

[00:25:35] Heather Osgood: Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. So I would highly encourage, if you're listening and you haven't signed up, go sign up just because I feel like it's fun to still look at, it's just fun too, like you said, Darryl just compares the information, see where people sit and yeah, it's just a lot of fun. 

[00:25:51] So let's talk a little bit about where analytics is headed. You, what I really appreciate about your insight is as I mentioned, and you [00:26:00] mentioned you have a history in other mediums beyond just podcasting and as much as it's great to talk with people who've been in podcasting since 2004, it's also really great, I think to get, and I really believe, as a side note, that as we continue to grow as an industry, it's super important for us to bring in folks outside of the podcast space, because I just feel like in the last year it has just been like a game of musical chairs where, you know, one person's at one podcast company and they moved to the other and the other and I'm like, okay guys, that's all great. But at the end of the day, I think we really do need folks coming in from outside the podcast space to help us grow and develop because we've got a lot of lessons that we can learn from other mediums and the way that they've done things. So, with your experience, knowing how other industries have grown and developed, what is your kind of prediction about where podcasts are headed, specifically from analytics you know, point of view? Do you think there are certain things on the horizon and how do you feel like those could [00:27:00] affect, the growth of the industry?

[00:27:02] Daryl Battaglia: So I break it up into two categories. There's the using measurement data and analytics to grow your audience, and then they're using it to sell advertising. And so when you talk about the grow your audience, obviously there's a wide variety of publishers and networks who are continuing to launch new content, invest in new content to acquire, represent new content. And, understanding listener preferences, and understanding like, okay, I can build off of this current podcast portfolio I have with something adjacent that will be of interest to those listeners as well. I think analyzing data across shows, in order to understand listener behaviors and preferences, to be able to develop the right content, I think is like a really interesting and still quite open space. 

[00:27:57] Heather Osgood: I love that you brought that up because I don't feel like [00:28:00] that's talked about enough. I am, I'm sure at the very high network level that they are analyzing shows and, I was just thinking about Gimlet because I just identified so much with them when I was starting my business. There are some Gimlet shows that just done super well. And then others that seem like they peek their head out and then they're gone. So I'm sure that a bigger network is probably using some of that analytic data to decide what kind of new content they're using. But I don't hear a ton of talk about analytics being used for content.

[00:28:33] Do you like, what's your perception of that?

[00:28:35] Daryl Battaglia: I mean probably not as much as there should be, but I can understand it because there's such a low barrier to entry to launching a podcast. But I also think between the talent that is getting involved in podcasting and just the production value, continuing to improve in quality, that there is an investment and, there's time and focus [00:29:00] and, promotion and all sorts of aspects that you're investing in when you're launching a new podcast or acquiring the podcast. I do, and I think that companies are developing brands that are starting to resonate with the audience, in, a group of podcasts. So I think you do need to think about your portfolio and what's the right type of content to invest in that is gonna appeal to an audience and help build off of what else you have. So think that there's an opportunity there, but it probably hasn't been the focus historically in podcasting that it will be in the future. And then I think, promoting programs, I still feel that programs are under-promoted. I saw our product team had pointed out to me an example where, when we were doing the ranker, the show went from I don't remember the numbers, but from like 5,000 downloads and all of a sudden one week it was like 200,000 downloads.

[00:29:59] It's like what [00:30:00] happened? And we thought something must be wrong with it. And we looked into it and somehow found out that another popular show had talked about an episode, they did like throughout their whole show and basically covered that episode. And that was what caused it to pop. We looked at the IP addresses that listened to that episode of that big show and the crossover by day and looked at and saw the day that they talked about it, that was the day that it jumped. That's just an example. And that was more like branded marketing almost, even though it was organic. Then things just a quick little, thirty-second promo of the podcast. But I still feel that promoting podcasts is, under-promoted, especially when you think about the two, three, whatever, the number is millions of podcasts that are out there and how hard it is to find all of them. I think there's a big opportunity to use data, to promote in the right way. 

[00:30:57] Heather Osgood: Yeah. Yeah. I think that is [00:31:00] spot on. I totally agree with that. So now what about using analytics to grow ad dollars? What are your predictions about how those analytics are gonna affect ad dollars? 

[00:31:09] Daryl Battaglia: Yeah. You brought up other media types and ad agencies and brands are used to having access to data, both pre-buy and then post campaigns so we've talked a little bit about the post-campaign. From a pre-buy standpoint, just understanding the size of the audience or the profile of the audience for each show. They don't have data and tools. The way that it is working today is that a network or a publisher is sending here's my average download number, for each of my shows and the agency has to kind of aggregate that and collect that from every individual network manually. And they've done things like setting up their own spreadsheet templates, and then the network has to fill out 30 different spreadsheet templates for each agency. But it's [00:32:00] entirely manual. It is time and that's why we built a tool.

[00:32:06] We have some networks there now, have shared access to data through our user interface to some of the big agencies out there. The data updates automatically each day, you don't have to chase it down and say, "Hey, send me your latest updates, the data that I have from you is old.". And you know that it is measured in a consistent way. You understand what time period it is. You can look at it over time, so you can do some analysis on it as an agency, let me see what's, trending in the right direction. You can look at things like individual local markets within the U S. And so if you have a retailer with a strong presence in the Northeast, you can look up. Okay, what are the shows that, have a high concentration of audience in those markets?

[00:32:51] But really we're focused on like the basic nuts and bolts of, just getting access to consistent data that isn't [00:33:00] self-reported that updates and flows automatically. I think there's an opportunity to put that data into a variety of different tools used by these ad agencies, including cross-media tools because many of them are not just advertising on podcasts, they're advertising across all different media types.

[00:33:18] Yeah, there's a lot more that can be done to look at how much reach am I getting? And who am I reaching and lots of analysis on the audience that can be done? But, the first step is just having access to the data in a way that is trusted data that is, more of an automated process.

[00:33:36] Heather Osgood: I totally agree. Those are the types of things I think would really change the whole trajectory of the industry because it just feels so cumbersome for agencies to purchase podcast advertising right now. And, we just have to figure out how to solve that, if we can solve that, then all of a sudden to me, I think we'll be in the running. I [00:34:00] always have to bring up the perspective that we need to consider the different types of advertising. Being programmatic or being host read and seeing the place that each of those, holds because I really, really would hate for host read ads to go away.

[00:34:17] I think that they are what make the industry unique and different and really what makes ads work so well. And that's not to say that programmatic advertising doesn't work. It definitely has its place, but I would love to see us try to, and I know lots and lots of people are trying to solve these problems right now, but I think that type of information would really be a game-changer. Because as you mentioned, as these buyers are sitting down planning their campaigns, they're buying across, mediums, and across channels. They're not just looking at podcasts, and if they've got all of their planning and one tool for all these other different channels, and then all of a sudden podcasts are out here in left field, it makes it really hard to integrate it into their [00:35:00] planning.

[00:35:00] And so I just think that having that type of planning tool and having access to that information would really, really be helpful. So we'll have to see what the future brings. And I know, as I said, lots of people are working on solutions, so hopefully, we'll have some in the not too distant future. 

[00:35:21] Daryl Battaglia: Absolutely.

[00:35:21] Heather Osgood: Yeah. Well, Daryl, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure talking with you. I really appreciate your insights and, I love talking about the analytics side of things cause I don't think we discuss it often enough. If people want to sign up for that ranker you said they just need to go to, is it what's the URL for Triton? 

[00:35:39] Daryl Battaglia: You can go to solutions@tritondigital.com and send an email to that and, yeah, Heather, it was great talking with you, and really enjoy talking about analytics as well. I find data to be fun and fascinating. So it's a fun, fun area for me. 

[00:35:54] Heather Osgood: Great. Great. And if people want to connect with you personally, Darryl, where can they connect with you personally? 

[00:35:59] Daryl Battaglia: [00:36:00] Sure. A long email address, Darryl.Bataglia@trintondigital.com You can look me up, and make sure you get the spelling right. I won't spell it out here, feel free to email me. 

[00:36:10] Heather Osgood: Perfect. Thank you so much, Darryl, we'll talk to you again soon.