Media Buyers Don’t Know The Potential Of Podcasts

Podcasts are just going to surge, reckons the Mamamia Women’s Network (MWN), with its sales director Danika Johntson believing media buyers don’t know the potential of podcasts.

“Not to the full capacity,” she told B&T. Every presentation the network is doing for media agencies and clients however has an element of podcasts within it, she said, as it’s going beyond just a passion, “because this is a real trend”.

“To answer your question [about whether media buyers know the potential of podcasts], no, I don’t. I actually don’t.”

Danika Johnston

At the network’s Upfronts this morning in Sydney at Ivy, Monique Bailey, head of podcasts at the network, took the audience of media types and advertisers through the podcasts the network launched this past year.

The MWN’s Upfronts last year had a large focus on podcasts, founded from a Wall Street Journal article that said all brands must have a podcast strategy coming into 2015.

However, while podcasting is not a new phenomenon, Johntson said it was up to the network to educate agencies and clients in this space.

“We want to the industry to know that this space has arrived, and it’s a really, really meaningful and purposeful space for brands to connect with audience.”

The stats don’t lie, continued Johntson, adding that even with zero marketing for its podcasts this year has already seen more than a million downloads.

“We see that tripling, quadrupling for next year.”

Besides podcasts, the network will continue its native advertising offering, and considering it makes up around 80 per cent of the site’s content, according to Johntson, it remains a core component of the brand’s strategy.

The women’s network will also launch a video app, a brand consultancy called Broad Media and a new site called Flo & Frank.

The video app will be a mobile first mobile innovation. “MM Video is a video and podcast based app that enables our influencers and our audience to create their own video content which automatically films, edits and streams video to the site and also to our app,” explained Johntson.

“The app also allows advertisers to interact with their customers through competitions, product sampling and new formats.”

Broad Media will allow a consultancy area for clients and marketers to ask questions, understand the audience and develop.

“Broad Media will be a unique communications consultancy working with clients and marketers,” Johntson told the audience. When talking with B&T she stressed it wasn’t going to replace media agencies, creative agencies, anyone. It was an extra offering.

“Broad Media will be a media agnostic consultancy with an impressive resume of staff,” she said, “including strategists, mobile specialists, video and content specialists, an events team and a creative unit.”

The network’s managing director Kylie Rogers was also nearly beside herself with excitement at announcing Flo & Frank, a mobile and video first platform with frank conversation for women. It will launch in February, and comes straight from the US.

In further news, after conducting a number of studies this year to further figure out their audience, the network has a few other studies on the horizon for next year.

Rogers was adamant in stressing the importance of mobile, with a number of the studies conducted by the network this year showing women using mobile more and more.

Lead image: Mia Freedman, founder of the Mamamia Women’s Network

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