Brian is President of DAX US — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Brian Conlon: I run the day-to-day operations here for our US business, overseeing the next phase of DAX.
James Cridland: So you’re part of Global, which owns radio stations and podcast companies, out of home advertising and DAX. What’s the elevator pitch for what DAX is and what DAX does?
BC: DAX is an audio SSP that connects supply with brands, and makes curation of inventory easy for advertisers to activate campaigns and measure outcomes. Here in the US, we are a reseller of inventory: we partner with 20 different pureplay partners and about 400 radio stations in the US market that are 100% exclusive to DAX. So we have access to over 40 million monthly uniques that are exclusive to the DAX US team, and that makes up about a fifth of the streaming audio marketplace. So by not buying DAX, you’re missing out on a fifth of the potential consumers for your brand.
JC: My notes tell me that DAX reaches more listeners than Spotify or Pandora or iHeart. So where are those listeners?
BC: What we try and lean into is that DAX is an advertiser-first organization, not a subscriber-first organization. the actual ad-supported audience is much smaller than brands may perceive those platforms to be in the overall landscape. If you look at Spotify, Pandora, and iHeart, they only account for about 55% of the digital audio ad spend currently. So there’s a large proportion of consumers you’re not reaching by only buying those three. Those three absolutely have a seat at the table, but what DAX looks to do is become that reach and efficiency advertiser for audiences at scale: to help them fill that untapped gap of audience.
JC: I’m wondering why I’ve not written an awful lot about DAX. It’s almost like a sleeping giant, isn’t it? Why is that?
BC: I think that’s why we’re talking today, to be honest!
JC: Is it my fault, Brian?
BC: No, I don’t think it’s your fault! I think, post-COVID, we let the business run a steady course, and I don’t think we did a lot of news flashes. But now, I think this is a big opportunity for us to lean in now and start to get some recognition in the marketplace. We’ve built a lot of loyal customers over 11 years in business - you’re not going to succeed for 11 years if you’re doing something wrong, right? We’ve built these relationships, we’ve got a lot of these Fortune 500 brands that have come to us, we’ve gotten verbal approval, and then we go to the client phase and they’re… who is DAX?! We’re a giant that’s a little bit invisible.
JC: When we were planning this interview, you told me that audio is broken today. What do you mean?
BC: We don’t get a proper seat at the table. I think there is a lack of measurement to get audio its proper recognition on a media plan. That’s why I think it’s broken.
Something that I’ve spoken about, I think it last time was with Bryan Barletta at Podcast Movement, was that if you look at these media plans, it’s very easy for audio to be the first one that gets thrown off the plan because it’s just not performing in these MMM models. But we know it provides tremendous value for brands. We know it provides reach, it’s providing an ROI. It’s just not being measured the same way that CTV, display and search are on these media plans. So there’s no way for these agencies to talk about the value prop and get brands to commit to it. I think we’ve solved measurement attribution but it’s still within our ecosystem - companies like Claritas and Podscribe provide great benefits to advertisers, but that’s still in a siloed fashion. We’re not talking about how we take budget from social and convert it to audio. There’s no way to really do that easily now. And that’s why I feel like our industry is broken.
One of the things that frustrates me personally is the statement that we’ve heard for five or six years now, where audio is 30% of a consumer’s day, but it’s still 5-6% of the ad budget. We’ve talked about that for many years in a row, and we’re still not figuring out how to properly change that. I think that’s something that we need to come together, competitors, frenemies in the space, and put our heads together about how we drive impact and change to allow audio to get proper recognition, and drive more dollars for everyone in the space.
JC: There was a report recently from Oxford Road saying that podcasting is missing a billion dollars in ad revenue because it doesn’t have good enough measurement. Do you agree with Dan there?
BC: Yeah, I do. They are definitely onto something there. I think one of the things we have to worry about as an industry is that YouTube is a great big partner for a lot of people from a podcast reach standpoint. But what does that do for the audio strategy long term? We’re leaning into video so much you’re seeing Spotify and iHeart do Netflix integrations - and there’s a place for that from a reach extension standpoint - but if they’re not providing the back-end measurement to tell the story of the episode, is it really helping your audio budget grow? It’s really helping the video component of it grow, not the audio side.
I think podcasts are such an interesting medium because you’re getting that one-to-one connection in your headphones with the host that you trust every single day. The video component is because that’s how consumption’s shifting in the landscape, but again, audio is the the core of what a podcast really is.
JC: Are we talking about a lack of measurement in terms of actual audience, or are we talking about the ROI part of that as well?
BC: The ROI part of it for sure. Years ago I was talking to some bigger brands that said we weren’t providing ROAS on the audio channel based on DCM reporting, but that measurement is holistically tied to display banners, right? It’s not tracking it off of audio. I know there’s been enhancements to that over the years, but they don’t truly understand the challenges or limitations with those metrics for audio. I think that’s maybe something that we can be doing better as an industry: socializing what those challenges and limitations are, so that way, people are more educated. I don’t know if we’re gonna change agencies or advertisers’ minds, given the scale of the budgets on the other channels, but at least if they do understand the limitations going into it, it can help us to get a different look at the true ROI for audio as a channel.
JC: Are there other mechanisms in place to help you work together with others?
BC: I think the IAB is doing a good job of trying to facilitate this. We need to do it more frequently and make sure you have the right people in the room to help facilitate change. But I know that this has been a topic of conversation at some of the last few audio days. I personally am going to try and get more involved in some of those those events, but I think that’s probably the the best way to do it right now.
And I think trying to lean into what Bryan Barletta is doing now with Podcast Movement and these new events, to get people in the room for dinner around these events, when you have the right decision makers there, and keep this conversation moving in the right direction. One day a year is not going to move this thing forward. It has to be consistent and and a combined effort.
JC: So, what’s the one thing that you wish the industry could do now that would help grow the industry further?
BC: Collectively figuring out the measurement piece. That will grow us to a whole different level. Dan said it’s a billion dollars sitting out there that we really can’t measure, but you know that the audience is converting - so it’s just really just happening behind the scenes without any recognition for the work that these creators are doing. I think that’s really the solution I think would help grow everyone right now.
JC: And more events like Podcast Movement and others to to actually help get industry leaders like you together would certainly help as well, I guess?
BC: I think it’s also about how we get more brands into the room. This is something we’ve talked to Bryan about. It’s a lot of the same supply partners and podcast creators that are showing up to these events, and it’s great to do it two times a year, but how do we get the decision makers with the dollars that are controlling audio budgets to be in that room - whether it’s tickets or having sponsors bring certain brands into the room? We need to hear from them what the pain points are, not just what we think the pain points are, right? They’re on the front lines every day talking to clients, putting together these media plans, so they know where the challenges are and what the opportunities are to scale budgets. Having them in the room and up on stage to present those findings and learnings is really impactful in my opinion.
JC: Brian, it’s been great to talk. Thank you so much for your time.
BC: Yeah, nice to nice to speak with you as well, James.