HBO Gets Serious About Podcasting + 4 more stories for Jan 28, 2022 Sounds Profitable

Today on The Download: is the IAB on borrowed time?, podcast ads see big gains again, Google makes misinformation less profitable, podcasts grow globally, SXM enters the identity game, and Spotify stands behind Rogan even as earnings fall. HBO Max is Hiring For Their Podcast Marketing Team Subscription streaming video service HBO Max continues to prove its serious about podcasting. Their first venture into the space dropped last summer with Batman: The Audio Adventures, an exclusive podcast that could only be listened to in HBO Max app itself.
While HBO maintains podcast channels on Spotify and Apple for related content, just like their peers at Netflix, this is the first podcast to be exclusively hosted in a subscription video streaming app.
Now, they're looking to hire a new role, specifically for podcasting under the HBO Max brand. The role is for a Sr. Analyst, Direct-to-Consumer, Podcasting Strategy & Operations, and will “provide strategic and analytic support on various projects covering direct-to-consumer and HBO Max Podcasting initiatives.
  Interactive Voices Lack Diversity If you missed CES 2022 because... well, reasons; you probably saw a plenty of breathless reporting of new prototypes and maybe-coming-in-the-future tech. Steve Keller, Sonic Strategy Director for Studio Resonate, SXM’s audio-first creative consultancy has an in-depth piece on things he noticed at the event of interest to audio people like us. Like a lot of tech around the explosion of interactive voice systems. But he also noticed something else: Quoting from the piece: But something was missing. Innovation aside, the lack of sonic diversity in the voice sector was disturbing. [P]ractically all the AI voices we heard at CES 2022 were female—and white. In fact, the only voice assistant of color heard was during a series of sessions focused on voice technology, curated and moderated by attn.live CEO, Ian Utile. Multiple panelists affirmed that there’s an underlying problem with the overwhelmingly white, male demographics of the AI world who are unconsciously programming biases, sonic color lines, and digital discrimination into voice systems. As a result, the default voice of automotive assistants, connected homes, and a plethora of other devices is white. The issue is compounded by the fact that these assistants, designed to serve us, are also predominantly female. It’s a systemic problem, and developers and brands need to work harder to sonically diversify their voice systems, as well as the designers, engineers, and developers who create them. With DEI so high on the priority list for most companies, it’s surprising this problem exists. No, wait. It’s not surprising at all, is it?   Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts Replaced by Topics While third-party cookies aren’t part of the information we receive from listeners in podcasting, they are a big part of the device graphs we use to augment what we do receive and improve how we run attribution. So while Safari and Firefox kicked them completely to the curb in 2020, Google has pushed out their deadline for when they’re twilight third-party cookies until 2023. And their original pitch, Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC for short, has now been scrapped for what they’re calling Topics. FLoC grouped audiences based on their browsing activity at a very granular level, where Topics focuses on applying a list of topics, starting at around 300 but expected to be in the thousands, directly to the...