Navigating the Podcasting Landscape: Insights from Mark Asquith

Mark: 00:00:38

I think the time for exciting developments and I don't want to say innovations because that should never stop, but we've got to stabilize and get good at the basics.

Get good at describing and teaching and showing and demonstrating what podcasting unique proposition both to advertisers, to creators and to media companies is. And understand and teach people that your hobby podcast is not the same as Dr. Death, you know, or as inside Star Wars. And that's all right.

Danny: 00:01:18

n involved in the space since: 2013

This led to podcast websites and productivity with a focus on helping podcasters growing.

ran McCaffrey and launched in: 2019

Mark: 00:01:49

Hello, sir, how are you? You alright?

Danny: 00:01:52

Good, good, thank you. And first things first, you became a dad at the beginning of the year. So how are you and lovely Sam doing with Dottie?

Mark: 00:02:00

Good, thank you, mate. Yeah, yeah, all doing well. She's like three months old now, so. That's bizarre, isn't it? All flyers past, but yeah, everyone's doing well.

Thanks, mate. It's. It's a fun ride, as you know.

Danny: 00:02:10

in the podcasting space since: 2013

Was the goal to always be involved and create SaaS products or was it all just about podcasting then?

Mark: 00:02:23

I don't think, I think, I don't think it was either.

I think it was like, first it was just get involved in podcasting and creating content, but that sort of happened at a time that I was ready for a new challenge anyway.

I was running an agency that was doing well, we'd grown it, we were working with some amazing clients, but it was just boring to me and, and podcasting just interested me.

So whilst it wasn't the goal to create SaaS as such, I think it was more to create solutions, you know, whether that had been content, you know, the amount of content that I've put out over the years is pretty, pretty heavy. And so I don't think it was necessarily sass.

aunched Captivate, I think in: 2019

That was into, into beta in August. And you know, podcast websites was, was much, much earlier than that. So we'd been walking the floor for a while.

So yeah, it was more solutions, I think, than SaaS.

Danny: 00:03:32

And you'd mentioned, obviously Captivate is probably the business you're, you're most known for now. You had podcast with podcast websites. But Captivate is probably the business most known for.

And from the start it was always marketed as the world's only growth oriented podcast, which is a strong statement, but one I think any Captivate user would agree with. I mean, did you envisage it being as successful as it is and adhering to that goal that you set out for it?

Mark: 00:03:58

I think there's a couple of ways to look at that. One, I think there's sort of financially successful and then successful as a, as a, as a product that helps people, you know, the latter. Yeah.

built it for us. You know, in: 2019

You know, we were doing late night sessions on it, most nights and you know, building it page by page. And, and we didn't approach it like a standard SaaS platform.

You know, we didn't, I wasn't really interested in what users thought, I wasn't really interested in what podcasters thought because when you talked to them at that point, it was very much about, you know, well, here's what we've got and we'll compare it to that.

And, and, and, and I knew that that wasn't what was needed in the space, otherwise you'd end up with another hosting platform like all the rest of them. So I, I was pretty confident that it would do well in helping people, the financial side of things, the business side of things.

You know, it's, that's just a byproduct of doing good work and I think and being a fair, open, I mean, you know, better than anyone out.

I approach things, you know, as head of support and experience, we Captivate, you know, it's, there's sort of a set of rules that we play by and the customers have to play by and we've always been pretty confident in that.

Which has led to the business doing well because it's attracted the people that like the way we do business and it's naturally filled out the people that don't like how we do business. And that's, that's just a really valuable thing to do.

So, yeah, I always knew it was going to do well for podcasters, Whether we had 10 users, 50 users, 100 users, you know, we didn't really know about that until we got users, you know, and it grew very quickly. So, yeah, the goal has always been users first and, you know, help them. That's it. You know, that's why we do so much content as well.

Danny: 00:05:58

And obviously there's no three plan on Captivate. It's always been a goal that it's for the serious indie podcaster.

Do you think that would ever change or you clearly captivated just purely for growth and people that want to grow the podcast properly?

Mark: 00:06:12

Well, I think the demarcation there is that we, we never introduced a freemium plan because we never needed to fill the funnel. You know, we position ourselves as a premium podcast hosting platform for people that identify as serious podcasters.

Doesn't matter how far along you are in your journey, if you identify as a serious podcast, to captivate can help you. That is it. You know, sure, we've got resources for starting one and for growing one.

And, you know, we'll ask you the question, are you starting or growing? But that's mainly so we can tailor the experience and that we can tailor the content that we give you.

So, you know, we never needed a freemium model because it was, it was, it's shaky ground because you always have to fill that funnel. You know, look at the other hosts, you know, look at a buzz sprout of the world.

I like Tom, I like Kev, I like Albin, I like John, I like everyone over there. They're actually good friends and we talk a heck of a lot and I've got much respect for them.

But that business model was never for us when we first started out because it was, you have to attract just, you know, people that sort of are trading on price.

And the challenge with that, when you're bootstrapped and you don't have the revenue behind you, we didn't want investment, we didn't want any of that, was that it could easily detract from the mission, which was to help people with high quality, serious growth focused podcasting tools.

And in the easiest way to just decide is Captivate for me is am I willing to pay for my hobby or for my profession or for my, you know, whatever podcasting is to you, am I willing to invest 20 bucks a month in it? Just like everything, you know, am I willing to invest a little bit? And that's been really important. Now, I never say never to anything.

You know, I'm not saying we will never, we will never be a host that wants the masses. You know, it's just not what we do. We want to help a really specific set of people. So that's, that's been our approach. You know, that's, that's.

We didn't even, we didn't even offer an annual plan until we hit a certain MRR threshold because then we could sell finance even better than we were when we were bootstrapped. So it was. Everything's been very sensibly done with Captivate. You know, everything's been built on really strong foundations for that.

And that's been by design. You know, none of that's been by accident.

Danny: 00:09:17

And obviously you mentioned that it's had a very specific approach from day one as to what you saw for say, the five year plan or the journey for Captivate, which saw Global, massive media company in the uk, one of the biggest, acquire Captivate at the tail end of last year. So what's been some of the changes since Global's, you know, come on board and what can say Captivate podcasters expect with Global involvement?

Mark: 00:09:41

Well, there's, there's no real change. I mean, there's, you know, there's been some logistical changes.

Of course there have been changes around, you know, internal things like how do I get this invoice paid for a merch supplier, you know, little tiny things like that. But nothing, nothing major. The goals haven't changed, the personnel hasn't changed, the we've not slowed down, the focus hasn't changed.

It's really about what can we do as part of a bigger organization. So, you know, integrating with things like Dax, being able to access talent.

I was with Ash on Tuesday, the, the chap that owns Global and just talking about, you know, the, the very unique opportunities that Global brings when you consider talent.

You know, I can't think of probably anyone else, certainly in the UK that can put people on TV and radio and, you know, really kind of, you know, bring them to the summertime and the winter balls and, and, and, and you know, expose talent and help podcasting and creators in the UK quite like Global can. And Global's, you know, got. Got lofty ambitions for audio. Always has, always probably will have.

And podcasting is a Part of that and Captivate, you know, part of the, the, the part of the benefit of having Captivate is that you get Kieran and I is 10 years of experience in the space and you know, we see the landscape, we're not backwards at coming forward. You know, I just, I'll tell exactly what I think to anyone. You know, we treat everyone the same. It doesn't matter who you are.

And, and that straight talking approach is, is the way that Global seems to work as well. So that's been really good and it's only good for the user as well. You know, there's, look, you know, we sold the company that was paying our wages.

You know, we were, we were waking up every single night, inevitably for years and years and years thinking, right, okay, we've got to build this thing, otherwise you know, we might not pay the mortgage next month. And luckily, Captivate has always done that. It's always done really well for that.

But you know, as a founder, sometimes you've got to think, well, how do I de risk this so I can get the foot down on things that, that are not going to worry me as much? You know, so it's, it's, it's a, it's been a really good move. It's been really, really interesting and it's, I mean that's only just begun.

We're only three months into it, four months into it, so there's so much more to come. You know, we've barely even got started with that now.

Danny: 00:12:07

I know when you were on my other show a couple years back, actually one of the very first guests on the podcast of Story show, we spoke about Spotify at the time and some of the acquisitions that we're going through and whether that was good or bad for the industry. And obviously two years later, Spotify still making some big acquisitions with the CharterBomb Pod Sites acquisition.

So it seems like Spotify is all in, which is great to see.

We've just seen Facebook announced that they're pulling back from podcasts on Facebook and YouTube's announced that they're going to be looking to integrate podcasts more, you know, effectively than currently they set up currently. And I'm curious, what do you think? Do you think YouTube's going to be in it with Spotify or do you think they might take the Facebook group?

What's your thoughts on the YouTube news?

Mark: 00:12:49

I think YouTube will take the YouTube route. We probably need to step back a bit. Like podcasting has become an industry now. It's not a cottage media.

It's not just media that, you know, independence create or hobbyists create. It's a media format, you know, and, and Spotify doesn't care about podcasts. But I'm not saying that like some other grumpy people would say.

I'm saying that actually quite pragmatically and positively, they care about users staying in their ecosystem and serving them audio. Doesn't matter what the audio is. Whatever audio they want, that's what Spotify wants to give them.

And this is what I think a lot of people don't understand. You get a lot of people that are in the audio and especially the podcasting space. I got lambasted.

I've said this a thousand times to you and in public a million times. Totally lambasted years ago for writing that Spotify probably would bin RSS feeds off eventually.

You know, got some fairly notable people calling me an idiot for that. I'm all right with that. I can take that. I'll just, you know, I'll just say wait and see. Guess what? We waited and see. And there we go.

You know, they don't need RSS feeds anymore. They can, you know, anchor is submitting probably by, by API and, and that gives a lot better, a lot more flexibility.

's not. Is it? You know, does: 2005

The point is that, you know, Spotify wants to serve its audience with audio and it simply does not matter where that audio comes from or whether it's called a podcast or not, because it's something that was called a podcast 10 years ago. It's not the same thing anymore. Podcast is just a catch all term to describe on demand audio. That is it.

I'm really desperately sorry for those that are upset by that, but that is the truth. So to bring that into the, into the now with YouTube. Well, what does YouTube want? YouTube wants people in its ecosys.

It's not, it's not getting into you podcasting for us, for the creators.

It's getting into podcasting for itself because it's seen that people are searching for podcasts on its platform and they're getting either really decent quality, they're getting really three levels of thing, really good quality, well produced video that is alongside an audio version of a podcast. You know, multi camera, I call it productions. It's getting this, you and me, which is sort of the next tier down.

We're not multi camera, but we're on camera and Then it's getting like the repurposed stuff, the sticking image on and put the waveform over.

And frankly, you know, it's not really, I imagine it's the, the vast majority of podcasts that are on YouTube and not doing very well for the creators, nor are they doing very well for YouTube because unless they're that top tier, it's not a YouTube product, it's not something that the algorithms are going to like, nor is it anything that me, the YouTuber that watches X amount of things on YouTube and expects a certain style, I'm not going to like that either. So YouTube will do it its own way, you know, and it will develop search algorithms that understand that you want an audio podcast.

That means that the vast majority of audio that's put on there is audio only with a static image or one of those kind of daft EQ things.

You know, that the, the search will serve those better because it probably knows that I want it in the background while my boss is hovering around me and I don't want them to see me see them on my phone.

You know, it's, they will do it their way and they will index differently and they will show discoverability progressions differently to what Spotify is doing. You know, Spotify is, is, is, is primarily a passive thing, whereas YouTube is a very active thing, except for of course, the audio portion of it.

So they will do it their own way. They will do it very differently.

It will start out the same, but eventually in three years time, you know, that 1%, 1 degree difference in direction will be vast. The gap will be vast off the back of it. So that's what I recommend.

Danny: 00:16:57

It'll be interesting to watch. I know there's a lot of people looking to see, you know, what their approach will be.

So I will REVISIT this in three years time to see where that 1% took them.

Now, you'd mentioned earlier, obviously podcasting now is a huge industry with so many options and so many tools to help creators, whether that's podcast hosts, whether it's like, you know, YouTube, other things.

And I guess one of the biggest ones over the last 12 to 18 months, maybe it's been dynamic content and how that's really helped podcasters monetize a show. It's one of the big things that all podcasters want to do. Captivate has our own Amy in house platform.

And now you'd mentioned with the global connection in Dax, there's a lot of stuff coming down that's really exciting. So I'm Curious.

How important do you think dynamic insertion is for the average podcaster and what are some of the ways that they could be doing it just outside of normal ads?

Mark: 00:19:33

Yeah, I mean dynamic content is mega useful when, when it's useful, if that makes sense. It's not one of those things that you need to clamber to get to, you know, you don't need to worry about.

I'm a big fan of, you know, doing what you're capable of doing with the time that you've got it. And I, I would never say, oh, you've got to be doing X, Y and Z for your podcast.

Otherwise, you know, there's no point doing it because I think that's really unfair. There's a lot of people that do podcasting differently and that, that, that are hobbyists and only ever want to be a hobbyist.

So I don't think anyone needs to do anything.

The way that dynamic content and dynamic, dynamic insertion comes in is that it can make your life easier, it can make your listeners life more entertaining. And you know, it's, for me, it's very, very much about. And this is why we design naming like we did.

Take the toolkit that you have and understand that that's there to serve you. You know that if you want to, if you've got a sponsor message, of course it's great for that. But actually, can you get creative with your content?

Like we spoke about it a few times. I know you've tweeted about it a few times like, can you give listeners extra content? Can you do something more fun?

Can you do something more interesting by varying your mid rolls or your post rolls or your pre rolls, post credits, you know, a teaser for the next episode and so on. And so like there are so many different things, but the key way to succeed with this, as with everything, is to design it.

It's not to just go at it half baked or to shoot from the hip, is to design this thing out.

How am I going to use dynamic content insertion, you know, and actually get content that can be rotated in and out of my episode in such a way that it's useful to me and it's not jarring. In fact, I'd go even further that it's not, not just jarring, but it's actually useful and, or entertaining for the listeners.

Now if you can hit those marks and if you can sit down and design it, it can make, it can make things quicker, it can make things easier, it can make things better, it can give your listener a better experience. But if you do it, if you do it sort of from the hip, it's not going to benefit you. You know, you're going to. It will stagnate, it will.

Suddenly the content isn't dynamic. It's the content that is dynamically inserted a year ago that you've never touched because you, you've just never thought to change it.

So I think just get savvy with the tools at your fingertips. You know, we designed Amy to be really, really easy.

One of Captivates missions is to bring the elite tools, quote, unquote, elite tools to the masses.

You know, we did that with everything from quote, unquote, advanced analytics that you've got to pay more for on other hosting platforms to dynamic content. You know, so it's. Understand how the tools work first and then design, design something and then implement it slowly.

You know, so that, that'd be my advice rather than, I think a lot of people like, shoot from the hip. A lot of people just like, oh, I've seen this, I should probably spend an hour on it. No, no, no, spend half a day on it.

And if that half a day takes you a month to get through, that's all right, take the month. You know, there's no one clamoring for you to have dynamic content today, but it is there and you probably should get to grips with it.

Danny: 00:22:37

And you mentioned about planning out and using different forms of dynamic. And I know yourself and Gary are head of design at Captivate.

You both have the Star wars show and you've been experimenting with putting that little teaser at the front saying, don't forget to stick around to the end. We've got a special announcement. How's that worked out? Because that's pretty new this year. I think you started that.

Mark: 00:22:54

Yeah, I don't really like it.

Danny: 00:22:57

Okay. Don't listen to guys in this episode, Gary.

Mark: 00:23:00

Yeah, yeah, sorry, mate. I think it's too long and I think that's a lesson to learn. But you've got to test these things.

You know, I'm, I'm as, as honest as anyone, you know, you should test and if it's, if you don't like it, you don't like, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Has it worked? Yeah, we've got some new patrons. I don't like it though. I think it's too long. I want to get to the content.

So I think it's, it's interesting because you, you learn what, what you, I suppose what suits your voice, you know, and that's one of the interesting things with pre roll in particular is that if you aren't careful, it's, it's, it's the stickiness of your podcast that can be detracted from. And I think it's very, very important to understand where, where that line is.

Like, I think that, I think we should have a pre roll in there and I think we should be using it for that. But it should be like, hi, this is Mark and Gaz from Spike Rebellion. If you want a sticker, Chuck is a quid.

Spike rebellion.com Patreon onto the show. What's that six seconds? You know, so it's, I think that is, is where it's at, is that it's, for me, it's a prompt. It's, it's, oh, do you know what?

I do like this shot. I meant to do that last week, right? I'm gonna do it now. Last week I was driving, today I'm not. All right, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to get onto it. So for me, it's very much about that marketability.

It's the touch point, it's the how many times do I need to tell someone to do something before they consider doing it? And we, you know, we see that a lot in podcast advertising.

You know, recall of a brand is much greater in podcasting than it is in many other media formats. So, yeah, just guess what, Design it, you know.

Danny: 00:24:45

Now, speaking of dynamic and designing it, one of my early guests, Brian Barletta, was talking about the combination of dynamic and programmatic and how these can really work together, you know, a pretty cost effective level as well, to really sort of nail down what advertising you want, what sort of call to action you want at the right time. And I'm wondering, obviously you see a lot of stuff you might be able to talk about at the moment.

Might not 100% appreciate that, but you see a lot of stuff.

What Dax is doing, what's coming with global, what Programmatic is doing from agency point of view, how do you see all this working together within maybe the next 12 months for podcasters of all levels?

Mark: 00:27:10

I think the sad fact is that it's not for podcasters of all levels.

Right now, Programmatic is where you set your parameters and say what kind of advertisers you want and they do the same and you match and you'll sell a slot and the ad will be dynamically inserted into that. But it doesn't work. Does, doesn't work unless you've got mass Numbers.

And I think that's the challenge, is that a lot of people sign up with someone like Anchor because it's got checkbox monetization turned on, and they realize that it's crap. You know, you make, what, a quid a month, 2 quid a month, 10 quid a month, 20 quid a month, 50 quid?

Basically, you don't make the amount of money that you think you're gonna make when you press the monetization button. And it's the same on YouTube and whatever. Now, Anchor's a great platform. I've got nothing against it. I'm not one of the anchor bashers.

I don't care if you use anchor or not. But what I do care about is that you understand what monetization means. And monetization means in the programmatic and the dynamic ad sense.

It means that you have an audience that is big enough for someone to say, I want impressions of my ad to reach that audience. And that is only going to work if the audience is big enough.

And that is where the opportunity lies within Podcasting is that actually, you know, if you put the things together, brand recall is huge on podcasting.

Niche audiences are really, really powerful, and the intimacy that's created between a creator and the listener is a much more powerful bond than many other mediums. But yet we've not yet figured out how to programmatically leverage small niche audiences and to. To track that through.

And, you know, Brian used to shout about privacy. Not so much anymore. I don't know why he stopped doing that. But let's assume that it's because it's really hard to solve the problem.

And it's, you know, you stick your head on the chopping block and don't have a solution. People notice. And I get that because, you know, I feel the same about privacy. Have we all solved it yet? No, we haven't, because it's really tough.

And this is what I mean. You know, programmatic really only works when. And generally advertising. So not just podcasting. Advertising works when it can be measured.

And it becomes more difficult to measure it the more money comes into it, because measurement becomes more specific and specific.

Specificity becomes really important because suddenly podcasting develops from being a nascent medium that people having a punt on to a media that's included in a media mix in a marketing budget, and that has to fight its own fight against display and against outdoor and against TV and against broadcast. And if it can't stand up against that with measurement, then it ain't gonna survive. So that, you know, there's a huge challenge.

We're not finished with it yet. It's still a very nascent medium and, and that's the point, is that it doesn't benefit creators of all levels yet, you know, direct sales are better.

You know, I go out and sell Star wars, my Spark Rebellion podcast for 10 times more than I could sell it for programmatically with a fraction of the download numbers.

Because I just, I go to Thought Bubble convention in Leeds and said, you want a six month slot at the beginning, a 10 second pre roll saying get a ticket. It's, that's far more valuable to them, it's more valuable to us. So programmatics, it's, it's, it's.

We're doing things like every other medium at the minute. We're doing things like radio and TV and, and, and display and it's, you know, that's fine because that's all we know.

But the developing tools will be the interesting part and, and how that continues to develop will be fascinating. So it's, yeah, I don't want to, I don't want people to buy into that. You know, Programmatic will help everyone to monetize because it won't.

Programmatic is just a, it's just a technology to match things, you know, match me to an advertiser and vice versa and, and just do so using a set of parameters. You know, it's just stop manual work, isn't it? That's all that is. So it's, we got to be careful how it's sold, I think, and I.

Danny: 00:31:06

Know like you mentioned, niche is so key to help even the smallest, for want of a better phrase, even the smallest podcaster to monetize a show because they can reach out to a niche partner and use attribution links on a host like Captivate, for example, to really start tracking how effective that call to action is. So yeah, that's great advice. Mark.

You've obviously been in industry a while, you're very well respected in space, you have your finger on a lot of pulses as to what's happening. So I'm curious, you see a lot of stuff coming, coming down the line.

Is there anything that's got you really excited, whether it's through Captivate, Stroke Global or the industry at large within the next year or so?

Mark: 00:31:42

Honestly, no. Honestly no.

And I know that's a controversial answer, but I think the time, the time for exciting things, it needs to take a break and we need to get really good at the basics. How do we Measure things. How do we make sure that all creators are represented fairly? How do we.

How do we begin to educate that podcasting is different depending on your scale? It's all right people shouting and crying online and saying it's not a podcast if it's not got an RSS feed.

Go and tell my mum that the on demand audio that she's listening to that the advertisers paid to advertise on isn't a podcast. Just because it's not delivered via rss. It doesn't matter, right? We've crested the wave of consciousness, all right? It's.

It's a nascent industry, It's a nascent media format, but it's now becoming more mainstream. And some people say it is mainstream, but those that say it's mainstream are generally in the industry, believe me, it's not yet mainstream.

And I think the time for exciting developments, and I don't want to say innovations, because that should never stop.

But we've got to stabilize and get good at the basics, get good at describing and teaching and showing and demonstrating what podcasting unique proposition both to advertisers, to creators and to media companies is, and understand and teach people that your hobby. Podcast is not the same as Dr. Death, you know, or as inside Star Wars. And that's all right, but it's different to what it used to be.

You know, I always use the analogy of film. Like my iPhone movie that I shot is not the same as YouTube. You know, that's just on my phone versus YouTube.

And it's out there in the world, which in turn is not the same as Netflix, which in turn is not the same as, you know, going down a blockbuster, which in turn is not the same as, guess what, going to a movie theater or streaming. But it's all video, it's all movies, you know, So I think podcasting is at that juncture now. You know, what does big media need from it?

What does independent need from it? The hobbyists, you know, different needs, different requirements, different focuses. And. And I think it's easy to jump from.

This is the thing I advocate for that will transform the space. Then it doesn't. And it be, yeah, you know, it gets figured out that it's a bit hard.

Oh, now this is the thing that I advocate for in the space, and we should be excited about that. Where to set. That's hard as well. Here's the thing that's going to do it. So I think what we should be focusing on is stability.

Understand that podcasting has become an industry. It's become a media.

It's become an industry that has a range of tiers and that each tier needs serving differently and helping differently and focusing on differently. And we can't just say podcast monetization is the same everywhere. We can't just say that programmatic will do its job.

We can't just say that direct sales will do the job. We've got to say that, look, this is a subset of people that will benefit from X, Y and Z.

And this is another subset of people that will benefit from A, B and C. And where do we want to play? Who do we want to help? You know, it's no longer good enough to say I just help podcasters.

It's I help serious independent podcasters to grow their audience in meaningful ways. You know, as an example of Captivate, maybe not the answer you're expecting, but that's what I believe, you know, no wise words.

Danny: 00:35:49

And I think words that anybody, any podcaster of any level can take away from. So for any podcaster that does want to learn more, Mark, where's the best place to connect with you online? Grab your newsletter.

Because I know you put out a really insightful newsletter, you've got a great podcast version of it, or to learn more about captivate, etc. Where's the best place for people to connect and learn more from you?

Mark: 00:36:11

Oh, just go to. Just go to Twitter. Just go to Mark Live Twitter. That'll take you straight to my Twitter profile, which will.

You'll get everything there, all the info on Captivates there. The Accelerate podcast. Accelerate stuff is there. So that's just Mark Live Twitter, and that'll take you straight there.

Danny: 00:36:30

Perfect. And I'll drop that. It's an easy one to remember. It's a nice little link there, but I'll drop that in the show notes.

So if you listen on your favorite podcast app as normal, make sure to check the show notes out for the link there. But again, Mark, thanks for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom, and it's always a pleasure.

Mark: 00:36:45

Thanks, man. Appreciate it.