Brian is President of DAX US; Mark is MD of Captivate — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Sam Sethi: Let me start off with you, Mark. Captivate has been very quiet for six months and now we know why. What’s been happening for you?
Mark Asquith: Captivate exists to help anyone that is serious about podcasting to do better in podcasting against their own goals. So, of course we’ve had the Apple Video HLS launch partnership. But the bigger piece has been working with Brian and his fantastic team out in the US and, of course, the wider Global team, on bringing another layer of monetization to Captivate creators - outside of the listener support, the tipping, the memberships, the subscriptions, the exclusives that they can do.
This project has focused on adding programmatic, direct sales, and host reads via Captivate Marketplace. None of this is possible, of course, without Global’s other iron in the US fire, which is DAX US. When we put this thing out, towards the back end of June, you’re going to see some things in there that are typically Captivate and very thoughtfully put together as we always try to do. But you’re also going to see the diversity that we’re trying to bring to the layers of monetization for podcasters, because we know eggs in baskets never really works. Brian’s team are absolutely instrumental in this. They’re the real talent when it comes to monetization. So it’s been a busy six months, but it’s been fun.
SS: Brian, congratulations, president of DAX-US. So what does this all mean for you now?
Brian Conlon: This is a very exciting opportunity for us. We’ve been working a lot behind the scenes with Mark and the team at Captivate, because we see the US market continue to evolve, and podcasting is becoming a bigger revenue stream for a lot of advertisers. These bedroom creators and mid-tier creators go under-monetized today. We feel there’s this magic middle here in the US market for advertisers. That’s where we want to lean into our monetization expertise through the DAX platform and our sales team in the US, where we can aggregate together mid-tier creators. We have a very loyal listener base that can bring together scale for advertisers, which we’re known for at DAXvUS on the streaming side, but we’re now bringing that same approach to the podcasting world.
I think if you look at the landscape today, a lot of hosting platforms do one of two things, they really scale monetization well for podcasters, where people are going on there for monetization help, or they built the platforms to help the creators from a tool standpoint. We see opportunity by marrying Captivate and DAX together to bring this unified approach to the creator economy in the US marketplace, and allow advertisers access to the scale of people on the Captivate platform today - a larger audience that will adopt to Captivate and DAX moving forward.
SS: How does an advertiser approach you - and how do they get to buy it across podcasts rather than individual shows?
BC: That’s where DAX US’s market expertise comes into play. We built a platform that allows that ability to do audience targeting, and content targeting at scale across a full list of shows, instead of picking one individual title. We work with partners like Barometer, Sounder, Number 8 to allow for contextual and brand suitability targeting for advertisers. That’s become a staple for a lot of companies now here in the US. Those tools have opened up discoveries for more mid-tier and long-tail creators - where in the past, they weren’t getting a seat in the monetization table. And we’re providing additional reach for advertisers as well. That’s something that every brand is looking for as new consumers, and by doing this across a wider variety of audiences and shows, it allows us to tap into that reach that we’ve been known for for so many years on the streaming side, and now bring that to the podcasting world for advertisers.
SS: You mentioned very early on about Apple HLS. This is the video - and in some cases, audio - switch away from MP3, and MP4. And this is exciting on one hand, which is, you know, now we can start to do true streaming. So we can look at the number of plays and the amount of consumption as in 60%, 80% of the podcast episode was consumed. How is Captivate addressing this?
MA: The HLS mechanism overall has been really well put together by Kieran and the engineering team. It was extremely well thought out, and very rapidly executed. HLS streaming through Apple is done in a very specific way that allows us to infer measurement at each level.
I think the bigger picture that we’ve got to consider here is - what does the switch to video mean for advertisers? What does it mean for people whose businesses rely on advertising revenue? We know we can read the logs. We know we can deliver baseline analytics. We know that the platforms that are providing the delivery of HLS to consumers will be able to provide analytics in the future as well. This is that inflection point that we see every three to five years in podcasting, where we are all looking at the best way that we can do things for the people that matter to us - the users, the podcasters, the advertisers internally and so on. We like to think through things a little laterally. So watch this space.
SS: You recently took on two new employees, Rob Walch and Elsie Escobar. Elsie is the community-driven face of Captivate. What’s Rob’s role?
BC: Rob came on our radar towards the end of last year. Mark and I were having a conversation about kind of the roadmap we had ahead for the Captivate and DAX platform. And someone like Rob Walch, who’s been an industry staple for many years and has great relationships with podcasters, is someone that we wanted on our team as we continue to build this opportunity here.
In the US, I think Rob and Elsie both provide a tremendous amount of industry knowledge and great relationships and great reputation. I think that’s what we want to be known for. If you look at the Captivate team, Mark, Kieran, and everyone over at Captivate have an exceptional reputation in the podcasting space. We like to think DAX US is the same for advertising here in the US. We want to be working with high-quality individuals that can help podcasters grow their audience, and bring the right podcasters into the Captivate marketplace. That way we’re bringing unique supply that’s premium for advertisers. So I think when we saw both of them, it was a great opportunity to strike and bring them onto the team for what’s ahead here with Captivate and DAX.
SS: Brian, thank you so much. Mark, as ever, good to see you, my friend.
MA: Thank you, sir. Always appreciate you and James. Thanks for everything.