Creators Leverage CTV, NYT Sunsets Audio App, & More

This is the download from Sounds Profitable, your daily source for the essential news in the business of podcasting. I'm Gavin Gaddis.

Here's what you need to know for today, Monday, September 8th. First up, creators are leveraging CTV channels as added value for sponsorship deals. While CTV platforms, connected TV, have some content creator presence and have had it for years, I recall discovering YouTubers re-uploading content to Prime Video in the mid-2010s.

A focus on creator-led content has increased noticeably in recent years. Tubi, Samsung TV+, Roku, everyone's getting in on the action with dedicated free ad-supported TV fast. and ad-supported video-on-demand AVOD channels, serving anything from video podcasts to MrBeast reruns. With this new avenue of exposure, four creator and talent managers specializing in content creators tell Digiday they're leveraging new CTV licensing deals to increase rates for sponsored content.

With more exposure and a wider audience comes more appeal to premium brands, as well as the value add of baked-in sponsorships appearing on multiple platforms instead of just YouTube or just Spotify. Influencer management and marketing agency Trends CEO Ted Rod tells Digiday adding CTV to the toolkit of modern creators will likely influence the future of brand partnerships and soften the barrier between social content.

and TV. Next up, Washington's digital ads tax goes into effect on October 1st. What could go wrong? A lot, turns out. Washington State has a new ad tax coming live next month that will impact all digital and non-digital services related to, quote, creation, preparation, production, or dissemination of advertisements, end quote.

As Marketing Brew's reporting shows, the law reclassifies digital ads, which are previously sorted as digital automated services, as retail transactions, which makes Washington State Retail Sales Tax apply.

With only a few weeks left until the tax is implemented, the mechanics of how it'll work and... who it will impact remain up in the air, which causes concern from several camps, including Washington's own existing laws regarding data collection, as taxing ads would also require new data collection apparatus. to keep track of who needs to be taxed and for what. Next up, the New York Times is shutting down its audio app.

For two years, the New York Times has run a separate app specifically for audio content alongside the primary New York Times news app. According to Deputy Managing Editor Sam Dolnik, Audio, the app, is being retired in early October. The audio content from Inside Audio will live inside of the Listen tab that was added to the News app.

back in March. Third-party publishers who had featured content inside of the audio app, such as The New Yorker, will not make the jump to that Listen tab, though the full New York Times podcast archive will. Next up, Brazil, the digital giant the podcast industry keeps underestimating. This is an op-ed making the argument for the business side of podcasting to pay closer attention to the growing podcast market in Brazil.

Even setting aside raw numbers like size of the country and population, Brazil proves to be an internet savvy country. In GWI's Global Digital Report back in 2024, Brazil came second place in countries with the highest average amount of time spent daily on internet usage. Brazilian respondents aged 16 to 64 clocked an average of 9 hours and 13 minutes online, over 2 hours higher than the worldwide average of 6 hours and 40 minutes.

Brazil's online presence is hard to ignore. I recall the mass influx of Brazilian accounts coming to Blue Sky the day they were region locked out of X. That was a wild time. And their podcasting scene is no longer the fledgling... possibility of a podcast industry. It exists, and article writer Renato Bontempo argues there's billions in potential revenue waiting.

to be realized. And for the final top story, Ad Impact 2026 midterm expected to be most expensive on record. This year's political projections report for the 2025 and 2026 season anticipates political ad spend for the 2026 midterm election cycle, in the United States at least, is going to reach $10.8 billion. While a slight decrease from 2024's presidential election peak, it represents a 21% increase in spend over the 2022 midterm election races.

Linear TV is expected to retain the lion's share of ad spend with 49% of ad dollars, though Connected TV is noted to be the fastest growing platform and the only one Ad Impact expects to get increased spend. related to 2024. Given 2024 is now firmly codified as the United States' first podcast election, I can think of another medium that's likely going to see a spike in political ad spend next year.

As for the rest of the news, I got a webinar for you Thursday, September 18th at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. You can mark your calendars for a PodScribe and AdAge presentation, which will be a free webinar on podcasting's ROI revolution. Speaking of Podscribe, their monthly industry rankings has been updated for September, including New Heights' big chart bump that came along with that Taylor Swift album announcement.

Broadcast Dialogue has a new piece covering the Podcast Landscape 2025 data, including signs of podcasting industry as a whole's maturation. Pushkin Industries has their 2025 fall programming slate of podcasts, including The Return of Heavyweight. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has signed a deal to bring his podcast over to the SiriusXM Podcast Network with his show broadcasting on the Progress Channel 127 and SiriusXM acquiring global ad sales rights to the audio version.

Podcast One has reached a total of 207 podcasts with the addition of review comedy show Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet, and sales rights to Sam Roberts hosted Not Some Wrestling. And finally, Zeno Media has announced the launch of Zeno Plus, an AI-powered broadcast toolkit for both radio and podcast production, distribution, and monetization.

Be sure to check out the links to every article I talked about today using the handy dandy link in the show notes, which will take you directly to today's episode page on soundsprofitable.com. Or if you want to go there yourself, head over to Sounds Profitable, mouse over to the download section, and you can...

find the pages for every episode. You can even subscribe to the newsletter while you're there. The download is written and produced by myself, Tom Webster, and Brian Barletta. For Sounds Profitable, I'm Gavin Gaddis. I'll see you tomorrow.