We are chatting with David Maguire. He is the director at Stable and Adelicious. These are 2 separate podcasting companies. 1 is for podcast production, 1 is for advertising. And the reason why we're chatting with him today is because of a platform called Podcross, which he just indicated he started a while ago, but he just started to bring it back more recently. And we'll we'll dive into it, what it does, and why it's something
that you should be paying attention to. David, thank you for joining me here today. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. So before we get to Podcross specifically, what was your, like, entryway into the podcasting space originally? Yeah. So, I I used to work in radio, the BBC, lots of radio stations over here. I was a producer and an editor. And then, round about 2014, I decided to go freelance and part of the freelance landscape in London at the time was, podcasting and it
was still quite nascent. Now, a lot of people didn't really understand what it was, but, I started as an adviser because I dabbled in my own podcast at the time. And then, really, I did less and less radio and more and more podcasting. So, I then took a podcasting production role and advisory role at News UK, which is lots of brands over here like The Times Newspaper, The Wireless Group, and TFS. And then I went over to The Telegraph Group and I did the same
over there. I wrote the strategy for their podcasting at the time because they built a studio but they didn't really know how to get into podcasting. And then from there, I set up, one of my companies, Stable, because around about 2016, 2017, the market was just about mature enough to start making money. Can you believe it? In Podcasting. Unheard of at the time. So sponsorship was becoming a thing.
And, you know, we'd just come out of a a period where the only way you could really make money in the UK anyway were these vanity links. And, I remember the first time I did something like that. I think it was with Audible. You know, you'd get £10 every time somebody went to audible.co.uk Tech whatever forward slash the name of the Podcasting, and there was no CPMs. There was none of that. So, yeah, Stable was was was born out of a, a desire to do, quality production in
podcasting and hopefully make a business out of that. And then from there, myself and my cofounder for Adelicious, we shared an office, and we needed a company that took podcasting advertising more seriously. And, that's blossomed from there. So, yeah, that's it. That's the history of my podcasting career in a nutshell. And at the moment, I I'm still there. It is amazing how similar our paths are because I worked in radio. I started freelance
podcasting. I got well, we got laid off at the end of 2014. So then I started to do freelance podcasting work in 2015. And, yeah, it was around 2016 that I was, like, 2016, 2017 when I said, you know what? I'm done with all the part time work. I'm gonna do this production stuff full time. And, even a year or so later, I started doing some work at podcast advertising. So a lot of parallels there, between the 2 of us. Yeah. Yes. You know?
What's the word? Solidarity. You know? Kind of taking a leap just before, the big guys, you know, swooped in to to to acquire everything. So, yeah, it's nice to hear that I wasn't the only one. We're like professional doppelgangers here with our, with our career Passy. And we're even wearing a similar, color top. So there you go. Oh my god. That's so true. Watch it on YouTube if you're not doing that as you can see. So when you started to do the ad thing and you said you were taking more
seriously, what does that mean? Right? Like, what was it about ads that you needed to form the Tech company? What were you diving into? What were you prioritizing? So that's a good question. So in the UK, we're slightly behind the curve, right, when it comes to, the trends and the maturity of the market. So we looked over in the US and there were lots of big independent podcast companies that were
doing big deals for premium shows. In the UK, you had a little bit of that but there was the market and still is to a certain extent dominated by, Acast, audio boom, a company called DAX, which is owned by Global Media, but they they really dealt with everything. And so they they they only really sold premium sponsorships for their premium top 5% of shows. And if you weren't in that top 5%, you you kind of got left behind and you weren't
really catered to. So, we needed a bespoke Podcasting only advertising agency that didn't really deal with technology, didn't really kind of accept everyone and everyone. And, at the time, Megaphone hadn't even set foot into Europe. So we were one of the first networks to use Megaphone as an open platform for our shows, which meant that we could also program in the back end of sponsorship deals because Podcasting, at the time anyway, you you didn't have access. There was no transparency
to to the deal. So even if you did a deal yourself as an independent producer, you had to give a percentage away to Acast because they programmed the deal. Whereas, Adelicious, you know, philosophy is Podcasting first, which means that if a podcaster does a deal, they get a 100% revenue because they can program in the advertising. They can do everything. We give them full transparency in all the
rates. We try because we don't accept everyone, we try and only grow as we grow so we can take care of every everyone on our network and we we can give them time, communication, and everything you want as a Podcasting producer. So, yeah, we felt that as podcasting was becoming more of a mainstream media, there was a bigger need for a more bespoke, more premium curated Podcasting
advertising network in the UK. Because, basically, we looked we just looked at the States and saw what was happening there, and we just thought, well, it's it's gonna follow. And it's still case, still the case for today, really. How many downloads per show were you working with at the time? Because I know here you would hear from companies say, you know, mid roll, for example, which was a big one that that was early into the game as a advertising agency. Right?
They won't talk to you for less than 50,000 downloads, let's say, per episode. But we had plenty of folks and plenty of clients, and I knew lots of podcasters who could generate great revenue with as little as a 1000 downloads per episode. So I'm just curious what your kind of model looked like. Yeah. We we were lucky because even though we started off with a handful of of shows, you know, we were, collectively,
as a network, you know, around about a1000000. So we started off with with quite a with quite a nice size network, but that was collective. You know, we still had shows that were underneath, 50,000 per month, for example. And we still we still do with we still deal with that size occasionally because it's all market dependent. Right? We we can only we can only make, it work if the the demand out
is out there, from from the brands. So, it was but it was tough because myself and Pascal, the cofounder of Adelicious, we we've got no background when it comes to advertising. And, essentially, we lived and died by our numbers and our reputation in the market. And, we got to a point where, you know, we we had to kind of re keep on reinvesting reinvesting programmatic money into our
direct sales team. And from there, we just kind of bettered on the higher CPMs, the more direct money coming in, and then over time that that's worked out to the advantage as, you know, the programmatic landscape's changed. Megaphone obviously got bought by Spotify. That's become a completely different different, landscape, the different view of of of how money's made in the industry. So,
yeah, a lot's changed, but a lot remains the same. You said it was about 4 years ago when you first started this Podcross platform. Bid on ad spots in podcast to put your own promotional message. Ideally, it would be for other podcasters to promote their show on somebody else's feed. So what was the onus for starting that, and what, what happened to it? Why, you know, why was it kinda shelved
for few years there? Yeah. So, I mean, the great thing about working in podcasting, which I'm sure, yourself, Matt, is you can you can, too, attest to, is that it's one of those industries that seems to always be innovative changing. If you think of something, you can kind of really make a difference in in the landscape and how people perceive podcasting and and how how people operate within it. But at the time, I just needed, this so this is
Priya Delicious. I just needed a platform to promote my new Podcasting on. And, really, cross promotion was the thing. And so, it just involved me emailing people, getting emails from RSS feeds and saying, hey, I'm making this show. You've got an audience that I want and, can I put a trailer on your show, please? And it was it was a bit of trial and error.
It was quite old school. And so when it when it first started, it was just about creating a list, much like Tink Media have done today, where you can go in, you can search for similar shows with the audience you want, and, you can approach them because it might give you an email address. It's a very basic Google Sheet, basically. But I sat on the URL. I kept it going. I was like, you know, you know, my other projects took
off, the ones that actually paid the mortgage, etcetera. But I sat on it because I still I still think well, I still thought there was an there was the need in podcasting for this kind of open system where people can have access to. And when everyone talks when anyone talks about marketing within podcasting, there's still a big question mark. There's like, what's the best way of discovery? People
disagree sometimes. They're like, well, there's there's Apple Podcasting, there's Spotify, there's certain ways of doing things, there's different ways of marketing things. But from what I've read, pod news, etcetera, still the best way to promote your podcast is on other podcasts. And so, recently, I just returned to the idea on paper and I thought, well, how could this be continue as an ecosystem, but how can I make it more relevant to today with with with podcasting being a biz
bigger business, than it was 4 years ago? And I I Tech came up with this idea of having, like, an eBay auction for for shows that wanna sell inventories, wanna sell spots, particularly for promoting other shows because it happens anyway. You know? People pay large CPMs, for shows. The Sony Musics, the Wandries, they do it all the time across different networks. And, and I I wanted to do it in in a way where you could bid for it because I didn't necessarily I wanted to have some fluidity there.
I wanted to have some, I wanted the the the the price that people paid for these spots to be dictated by the demand for their audience. And from the idea, I'm not a developer. I just, you know, scrape together some templates. And and what you see now at podcross.c0 is this, beginning of of of that really. A marketplace where podcasts of a certain audience can sell spots and people who wanna grow their audience for certain shows can can buy and bid on certain, shows to grow their
audience. Let's say I am the podcaster on your platform. Right? People are bidding. They wanna put their promo on my show. Right? The auction ends. What happens as me, the podcaster, you know, producing the show? What like, how long do I have to get it out there? What's the tracking like? You know, what's the accountability, I guess? Yeah. So it's, I'm the I'm still the gatekeeper of all of that. So, money won't exchange unless everything's been agreed on. And, I can't emphasize enough. This is
not a finished product. This is a an MVP type of situation where I'm still it's still gonna be hand cranked. I'm still gonna make sure that everyone's happy before any money is exchanged. But, from what I from what I've learned from advertising is that you yes. You can automate some aspects of this kind of stuff, but a lot of it still has to be human. It still has to have, elements of, nuance. Right?
I mean, hopefully, over time, I can automate a lot of it, you know, in terms of, kind of the flight of of these campaigns, the success rate in terms of conversion rates, that kind of thing. But, you know, in terms of, you know, who wins the auctions, I want there to be a first denial because it might be a show that, you know if you have a podcast and you put it on Podcross and you do a show I don't know. Let's say it's a political show because that's easier to talk about in terms of division.
If you do a political show about the Republicans, I'm not suggesting you're a republican or a democrat. Doesn't matter which side. People don't wanna host a lot of political content. Yeah. That's that's just an example. But if a Democrat based show then wins the bid on your show, you might not want it to be on there, right, because of obvious reasons. So I need to ensure that there is still that human gatekeeper for what's allowed and what's accepted. So really, you'll just get an email saying,
congratulations, you've won the bid. This is the price. And I'll talk to you. The person will pay, will pay me, and I'll then pay you once the details are scrapped. I kind of thought through. As you can tell, it's not a slick operation at this point, but I just need to ensure that, it has traction before I invest more money in developing it. But I think there is
something there. I definitely think there is a need in the industry to have an open platform for you know, doesn't matter who you're hosting on that you can then go into a database and book something without worrying about being hosted on Megaphone or Captivate or whatever. And you're still using Megaphone for this project, or have you shifted to a different platform? No. No. It's completely independent of just, the developer there's nothing there's no mmh
partnership. But I mean the podcasting themselves that these ads are gonna go into. Are those dynamically inserted via megaphone or using a different platform? Are you guys just baking them in, into the audio itself? It depends on who whoever puts the show on the platform, it depends on their platform, how that's then incorporated into the show. So
I can't emphasize how hand cranked this is. So if you're if you're on Podcasting platform that doesn't allow dynamic insertion, I can't think of any that don't, it would have to be baked in for a certain amount. But if it's on Megaphone, if it's on whoever, Art 19, Captivate, they have technology where you can flight the campaign and you can just program it in yourself. So it kinda really depends at this point. Alright. For folks who like I said, this this platform's a little bit newer. So,
right, it's not there for everybody. You can't just run up there, put your podcast on there, and and start getting bids from folks. But for folks who are thinking about this kind of cross promotion strategy for growing their show, what advice could you give them either as the podcaster wants to accept promos or the one who is kinda pitching promos to other shows? What, like, what are some best practices or things to definitely avoid? Yeah. That's a
good question. I mean, in terms of pitching your show to be sold, I would say, really think about whether it's the best thing for your show or for your audience. Because like any kind of advertising, whether it be another show or a brand, there has to be a good payoff, right? There has to, it has to be worth the work to kind of put that out there. And you have to ensure that your audience isn't
going to be alienated by it either. You know, I've talked to so many people with a show with, I don't know, maybe 10,000 listens and that's great. Okay. 10,000 listens is a huge show per episode. But, if you want to put a mid roll in that show and it's 10 minutes long, it's probably not gonna be worth the money that you're gonna get because the CPM is so low and you wanna concentrate on making sure that the
whole show is worth listening to because you wanna grow that. So, you know, really think about whether your audience would accept, something on your show before you actually commit to something. You know, don't get too ahead of yourself. Allow yourself time to develop an idea, to develop a show, to develop a format, because, you know, try and run your own race. And it's quite a generalized saying, but, you know there's so many different types of you know, what is
even a podcast, Right? You know, it's just a mechanism of delivery rather than a thing. And I think a lot of people get caught up in, you know, wanting to be something when actually a show that reaches, 10 people could be just as successful as a show that reaches 10,000,000 people. But you're you're defined by your parameters in terms of success. So those ten people could be the most important people for the message that you're
trying to convey. So that's that's one thing to say about that side. And then, in terms of people wanting to get their promo on other shows, I think my personal opinion is that just do your research in terms of the audience. Because even if it's just a cross-promotion email into the either and you don't know them, you're still taking time outs, You're still doing the work. You're still putting your name out there and you wanna get it absolutely
right. And you know, don't underestimate the cost, both the real cost, but also the cost and other things like time it takes to kind of make a trailer, ensure that, you know, that it hits home because, you know, it's time consuming. Podcasting is time consuming and you wanna make sure that you're really focused. So when you're thinking about your audience, you know, the type of promo that you produce is important. The research, but kind of don't just limit yourself to to, the podcast
world. Open it up. Look into other areas, message boards, that kind of thing. If you're doing a show about a certain topic, I'm sure, you know, there are websites and there are, other kinds of platforms that you can promote your show on because, ultimately, you wanna make it as broad as possible and you never know that, people I mean, there are so many stats about who listens to podcasts and the room for it to grow. Right? So you kind of you wanna make sure that your
time is precious. Make it worth it. Good advice. You know, I I wanna go back to something that you said a few moments ago about, you know, whether or not your audience will accept advertising, will accept promotional content. And what I often would've would tell clients in the past was if you even think that you're gonna do advertising on your show, if that is gonna be part of your monetization strategy, get your audience used to that break as quickly as
you can. Even if you are just creating promotional messages for yourself, maybe you're just talking about an event you have coming up, your email list, right, like, start to create the idea of a break in your show now so that when it happens later and it's not for you, it's a lot less jarring than someone who's used to having a show completely ad free. And now all of a sudden, it's, you know, you have ads
now, which it's fine. Shows should be allowed to have ads. I know there are lots of listeners who get annoyed by that, but, it it does, you know, soften the blow a little bit if you've kinda built that expectation in. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And it's so funny you say that because there's so much, especially I don't know if it's a British thing. It could be, a global thing.
I don't know. But in terms of talking and you know, it's a British expression, taking the piss out of podcasting in general. There's so many, kind of memes and stuff about, you know, you might listen to I I don't know. It was the other one I talked to the other day. Somebody said something about Marc Maron. Right? Great Podcasting, but maybe, like, you know, the podcast only really starts until, you know, 20 minutes in because he there's so many ads and
there's there's so many kind of like corporate reads. And, you know, people find you can skip it and stuff, but I don't know. It's, anyone who who has experience in podcasting or social media or anything that's free, your general punter doesn't care. It's like, well, it still annoys me. I don't care if I don't pay for it. And I still understand that adverts get you money to do the thing that I'm listening to, but it still annoys me. Right? It's generally not a logical thing. It's more of an
emotional thing. So putting a marker in where there could be an ad, I absolutely agree because it's just kind of priming somebody for going, okay. Maybe in you know, even if it's subconsciously, there's gonna be a break here. There's gonna be some kind of
messaging. And, you know, there's obviously then a discussion about the type of advert, whether it's a programmatic radio style ad with a voice you don't know or where it's the a kind of a host read or sponsorship, that's that's a different kind of conversation and as long as that's, you know, segregated correctly, I guess. But, yeah. People people still want their want their stuff, as kind of ad free and as,
you know, free as possible. Even though it's a contradictory Tech, phrase, you know, and sometimes it's, it's not always possible. Yeah. They just want it their way. Well, if you're curious to check out how the platform works, maybe you wanna advertise, promote your show on one of the shows that are being listed here, check out podcross.c0. We've been chatting with David Maguire, the director of STABLE at Adelicious and the man, the brains behind
podcross.co. Before we let you go, a couple of questions. In general, is there a place where you would like to see improvement in the podcasting world in general? It doesn't have to be advertising, but just something that really rubs you the wrong way that you'd love to see corrected. That's a really good question. And I have a I have a silly one, which I'm not being uber serious, but it kind of annoys me a little bit in a fun way. And that's when people call Podcasting pods.
It happens quite a bit in the UK, which, you know, is such a silly thing. And I don't I'm kind of it's one of those things where I catch myself and, like, don't be such a don't be such an idiot. But because I've been working in podcasting and you get people who wanna make it kind of a bit, there's a bit of a laddie culture sometimes where especially, I'm going down a rabbit hole now. But if they they wanna be familiar, so they call it pods. Hey. Do you wanna come on with a pod? Pod. Get a pod.
And it's like, yes. You know, you know, it's I don't mind it too much, but just if you work in podcasting, you're like, no. It's a podcast. Anyway and that's a whole another thing. But what would I what would I change? That's a really good question. I'll think of the right answer in about 5 hours probably when I'm lying in bed. But the one thing I really loved about podcasting at the start, was how, genuinely lovely it was to work in podcasting. Without exception, it's it's an industry that
is open to most things. Most people wanna lift each other up. Most people, enjoy other people's success. There's lots of collaboration, and, there was lots of freedom because it wasn't the open RSS feed was such a magical thing. It was like blogging in the early days. And it was generally I mean, I'm sure hopefully, you agree, it was, especially, you know, in the mid naughties sorry. Mid naughties. Mid teens, 2015.
We sound like a history teacher. It was it was genuinely an exciting place to be, right, because, only a handful of people really knew what it was and let alone, you know, how to do everything across the spectrum of it. And I what I want is for podcasting to retain that because what I'm seeing, and this might be my cynical old man way of of of looking at things 10 years later is that is I see that generally year
on year eroding slightly bit by bit. And, you know, it's the classic example of money follows money, and you've got the big guys coming into the space too. And you've got suddenly debates about open RSS versus a walled garden of content and all that kind of stuff and, you know, where people get content and even people using the word content instead of showing.
But my wish is for that kind of collaboration, that niceness, and genuine Podcasting to help each other to remain in podcasting, because I think if it loses that, it loses its, its essence of of what excited me in the first place. I do agree. It was always the most pleasant experience was being around other Podcasting. And, yeah, as anything grows, the the niceties are always going to be eroded just a little bit. So in a similar vein but slightly different, is there any technology
on your wish list? Is there a piece of equipment, a kind of software, some that either you you know is out there that you wanna buy or something out there that you'd love someone to create for podcasting? So in terms of technology, it really fascinates me because it's not my area of expertise. Quite honestly, I'm I'm I'm I can barely open a laptop without it without it collapsing. But, you know, this, this whole AI thing and there's a there's a company. Oh, what's it called?
There's Cast Magic. There's Wizards.. Oh, yeah. It kind of...somebody sent me a show. It was a Swedish soccer show, and I listened to it, and it was it was about an hour and a half long. And, I thought, yeah, it's okay. But it was it was 2 English presenters, but they said, no, it's completely AI. It's completely, produced, and translated by AI and it even though it wasn't my thing, it blew me away. It'd be really interesting to see how AI develops podcasting in that
sense. I already know that a lot of news websites have daily Podcasting now automatically produced from text, or even just from, you know, news outlets that just kind of, collaborate together. Yeah. I've seen some technology where they will read you articles via AI. Also, I mean, it's prolific on YouTube to have videos that are just reading comments in a computer generated voice, random, like, just totally automated content, but it's a strategy that works for a lot of people. Yeah.
Yeah. And it's, it's time saving. Right? And that's, that's always gonna win if if you can solve a solution, sorry, solve a problem with a solution that doesn't, you know, take any manpower, then you're you're probably onto a winner. But in terms of technology that I look at and I like, quite it's this it's
so great. But this microphone that I'm using right now, I I wanted one for ages in terms of just a decent microphone, and a, you know, Focusrite and a Cloudlifter and that I was over the moon with that. But, Yeah. I again, this will this is really annoying because I'm gonna I'm gonna think of something in about 3 hours' time. Yeah. I'm gonna go, oh, yeah. I should have said that. But but, again, you know, with with podcasting, it's a it's a
fascinating world. Like, if you if you read the news in podcasting, there's always an innovation. There's always something new going on. You know? Some somebody's trying to solve a problem, and, technology is definitely a big part of that. There's, you know, there's things coming out every day, which is which is why I love it. And the last one, which I think is also you're gonna be mad at me that I didn't prep you with this one. What is your favorite podcast that you're listening to
right now? So what does that show that no matter what you're doing, when this one pops up in your feed, it is going to be listened to, like, that day or as soon as possible. Yeah. This is more more in my wheelhouse, more content side. But, there's there's there's can I have a couple? Sure. There's there's a history comedy show called Oh, What A Time, which is, 3 British comedians, who, take a subject like escapes or, I don't know, innovation or, fashion, and each of them
bring a different period to the table. And, basically, they try and decide whether it's the past was worth living or whether it was just a horrible place. They have a proper historian researching, all the different topics, and, it's relatively new. I think it's probably about 6 months old, but I love it because I love the as with most podcasts, it's about if you like the the hosts, you kind of like probably like the show. And I love history too and I love comedy so
it's like it's perfect for me, I always listen to that. And so just on as an aside, the one thing that they do quite well I think is that they release they release the each episode into to 2 different episodes, if that makes sense. They split it from one day and then the next day will be the next half. And they do that because, they have a subscription where you can have another day, but you can only do it if you subscribe. So I think they're quite clever
with that. And another one, which is, an American one I listen to, with Guy Raz, which is, How I Built This. And, yeah, I I mean, I just I just really like him. I think he's I think he's a really good journalist. And, as someone running my own businesses, I just I just like hearing the stories and, it's, it's really easy to listen to no matter what the industry they're talking about. I'm always fascinated about people going through the, quote unquote journey. And, I think the
production's really great. But that's you know, they're they're 2 very different shows. You know, 1 is just a, I suppose, a Passy panel show, and the other is a nicely, sound designed storytelling show from, is it NPR? I might be wondering now, but, NPR stock. How about yourself? I mean, I'm keen to know. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been I listen to Start Here every day from ABC News. So they're, you know, they do, like, a nice mix of
news stories to start the day off. Right? Having worked in the news business, I can't stop. And I find this to be better than The Daily just because I want more than one topic. Like, I don't wanna just be an expert on one thing. I wanna know a little bit about everything going on. And then I've been on this crazy binging of Conan O'Brien needs a friend. I'm very, very late to that party, but I went back and I started from the beginning. And I'm I've been listening to it for months now,
and I'm I'm close to being caught up. So those are the 2 I'm prioritizing right now, but I gotta I gotta road trip coming up, so I'm gonna need some new ones. So that's why I love this question because I get good, good suggestions from other people to check out. I could bore you today. I used to, Stable, my production company, used to be a podcast recommendation newsletter in
2015 no, probably earlier than that, 2014. And so it's, like, it's one of those things that I love talking about because there's so much great stuff out there, and you're never gonna be able to listen to anything. But, you know, a long car journey is a great great excuse. Well, if you have more suggestions, or more answers to the questions that you think of later you wanna shoot over, we'll include those in the show notes along with we'll include a link to podcross.co Tech
to, David's other company, STABLE. It's we are stable.com. We've had the pleasure of chatting with David Maguire, the director of Stable and Adelicious and the brains behind Podcross. David, good luck with that platform. Keep up the great work, and thanks for joining me. Absolute pleasure. Thank you, Matthew. Just one thing, if I may. If anyone listening has any feedback, I'm completely open to that because this is for podcasters.
And if I'm missing a trick or they, I'm not, it's it doesn't do something that they want, please please get in contact because it's for them ultimately. So, I believe there's a contact form on the website, but if you're okay if we pop your email on the show notes as well? Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Alright. So we will also make sure to include it. It's going to be david at we are stable, s t a b l, dot com. But, again, we'll make sure to include that link in the
show notes. David McGuire, great to meet you. Thanks for joining me. Absolute pleasure.