It started with the TV industry.

Upfronts, that is. The annual gathering of media buyers and sellers dates back to the 1960s, when ABC gave the first upfronts presentation, and the TV industry still descends on New York City every May for upfronts.

They’re not the only ones—the podcast industry has, for almost ten years, had its own version of the upfronts, too, even though there’s no pressing need for podcast companies to do deals in May, as new shows, seasons, and episodes are not beholden to the strict confines of TV schedules. As of this year, there will be more than one.

At today’s IAB Podcast Upfront, presentations are likely to stretch beyond previewing content to topics including ad tech and multi-channel campaigns, especially as the popularity of podcasts distributed on YouTube and other video platforms continues to climb.

“Audio content writ large is entering the cultural zeitgeist at an even higher level than it ever has in the past,” Matt Shapo, director of digital audio and video at the IAB, told Marketing Brew. “People in the advertising community are beginning to understand that audio is increasingly important from a total marketing standpoint, and then if you want to build a truly effective campaign, you can’t ignore the contributions that audio is going to make to an overall omnichannel campaign.”

Up(front) and coming: Annual podcast ad revenue has been on the rise, and the outlook for this year remains positive, according to Sarah Bolton, EVP of business intelligence at the media research company Advertiser Perceptions. In an annual survey of 250 digital audio advertisers, the company found that in both 2022 and 2023, about 40% of podcast spend was in the form of an upfront buy, Bolton said.

Continue working here.—AM

The lines between traditional marketing channels have never been more blurred. Social is search. Retail media is TV. Video is pretty much everywhere.

All this channel blending is challenging for marketing teams—especially ones that are siloed into specific channels and driven by experts specializing in specific types of media. It’s getting hard out there for a marketer.

That’s why you need Wpromote’s new trend report. Get to know the three variables you can use to crush new convergent media opportunities:

• consumer behavior
• platform convergence
• integrated approach to media

Plus, it’s filled with tons of other gold nuggets you can use to navigate the channel maze.

Ride the media convergence wave.

R/cha-ching.

Reddit’s advertising business brought in $222.7 million last quarter, up 39% year over year, the company announced yesterday during its first earnings call as a publicly traded company.

Some numbers: Total revenue was $243 million in the quarter, a 48% YoY increase. More than four-fifths of Reddit’s revenue comes from the US.

Still, the platform isn’t profitable. It posted a loss of $575 million, largely because of expenses associated with its IPO.

: User traffic is up. The site reported 82.7 million daily active unique users, up 37% year over year.

That uptick in traffic is largely coming from Google, which in February expanded its partnership with Reddit to use the latter’s data to train Google’s AI tools and improve its search engine. Google has sent more traffic to Reddit since last year, but claims it isn’t preferencing the platform.

“Yes, we’re seeing a tailwind from Google…but the agreement we have with Google around the data training, that has nothing to do with traffic,” Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman said on a call with investors Tuesday. Huffman said Reddit was open to further licensing agreements like the one it made with Google, but that the company would be “selective.”

“We need to be very considerate of where our data goes and what it’s being used for,” he said.

The ad stuff: Reddit is benefiting from a healthier-than-expected ad market. While its offering remains largely contextual, Reddit COO Jen Wong said on the call that the company’s performance advertising tools “drove more than half of our growth in the quarter.”

Keep reading here.—RB

One alcoholic-beverage brand is truly embracing the soccer landscape in the US.

Truly, the hard-seltzer company owned by Sam Adams brewer Boston Beer Company, has been cracking into both men’s and women’s national team events since becoming the first hard-seltzer partner of US Soccer in 2022.

“We really viewed this [partnership] as something that was much more than just another sports deal,” Matt Withington, senior director of marketing at Truly, told Marketing Brew. “It brought Truly onto more of a global stage with a really engaged fanbase that brought a lot of energy, and it is one of the most inclusive sports in the world. For us, that was really the draw.”

The US fanbase for soccer isn’t known to be quite as ravenous as, say, Premier League fans, but the sport’s stateside audience is steadily growing, which Withington said Truly has been able to tap into, especially by teaming up with players.

Player power: Truly’s multi-year partnership with the US Soccer Federation includes working with both the men’s and women’s national teams at least through 2026, and last summer’s FIFA Women’s World Cup was particularly attractive when the deal was being signed in 2022, Withington said. In addition to the significant reach that comes with partnering with a national body that participates in international events, Withington said, “there’s a lot of passion for soccer organically from our fans, so it felt like a very natural fit.”

To capitalize on that passion, Truly’s marketing team has sought to focus on ways it can “elevate the fan experience in-stadium and at home” with its partnership, Withington said.

Continue reading here.—AM

Wanna understand your audience? Same here. That’s why the Morning Brew team enlisted quantitative market research experts Gradient to conduct a psychographic segmentation of our audience. This in-depth look at our readers , their mindsets, and their motivations will help us make smarter, more audience-aligned $$$ moves. Want to know what your audience really looks like? Sign up for a free expert consultation.

Stories we’re jealous of.

• The Washington Post wrote about TikTok’s effect on fashion, as evidenced by this year’s Met Gala.
• The Wall Street Journal covered the rise of add-on fees when purchasing goods and services like concert tickets—and how the practice can diminish relationships with customers.
• The Verge reviewed the new daily games from LinkedIn. Watch out, Wordle?