Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther. Just a note that 2023's Publisher Podcast Awards close this coming Friday, so if you've got a podcast you'd like to enter (for free), you've got a few days left!

Podcast measurement attracts investment, but content risks becoming stale — voices.media

If 2021 was the year in which podcasting was taken seriously by publishers, this year has seen audio platforms double down on demonstrating advertising effectiveness to brands. But those changes come with risks. Chris Sutcliffe rounds up the year in audio as part of our Media Moments 2022 report.

No channel grew faster than digital audio; advertising spend in the sector grew nearly 58%, reaching $4.9bn, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s most recent data. Per a 2022 Edison Research survey, 73% of the US population aged 12 and older – an estimated 209 million people – listen to digital audio monthly, up from 68% in 2021; 67% listen to digital audio weekly, up 62% year-on-year.

From acquisitions of almost every podcast measurement company going to the surprising rise of YouTube as a listening destination, this is a neat summary of a busy year for audio.

Semafor will generate 30% of its first-year revenue from events — www.adweek.com

The publisher, whose inaugural Africa Week begins Monday, will host 40-plus events in 2023. Part of the reason for this early revenue boost is that it hosted nearly 12 events prior to the official launch of its newsroom in October. The experiential side of the business is called 'SemaforX' apparently.

Pugpig's 2022 State of the Digital Publishing Market Report: Puzzles, personalisation and audio as engagement and revenue drivers — www.pugpig.com

This is on my reading list for next week when everything quietens down a bit, but if it's anything as interesting as their first report, it'll be worth a download. Apps have reinvented themselves over the past decade from being an expensive way to replicate print to being a brilliant product to engage and retain high-value readers. As market leaders, Pugpig have a LOT of data to draw on for this.

Five things we learnt from The Twitter Files — onemanandhisblog.com

After nearly a week of “revelatory” Twitter threads, what have we actually learnt? If you're struggling to keep up with what's going on, Adam Tinworth has put together this helpful post. Also interesting is that one of the Twitter Files journalists Bari Weiss has hired ten full-time employees to help build her new media company.

Throwback podcast:

Quartz CEO Zach Seward on charting a new course for the business lifestyle brand — voices.media

Given the changes Quartz has been through this year, this from CEO Zach Seward is quite the listen. We spoke to him in early 2021 as they'd just bought the business lifestyle brand back from Uzabase. He talked to us about how it all started, about memberships and advertising, and the Quartz mission to make business better.

Buy the Media Voices team a coffee — ko-fi.com

The last few months have been absolutely hectic, from putting on our first Summit to getting our annual report out the door. We'll be taking a break from the newsletter next week until early January to have a bit of a rest and recharge*. If you have anything going spare to buy us a virtual coffee, or even contribute on a monthly basis, we'd hugely appreciate it.

*Haha who are we kidding, we've got Podcast Awards entries to sort through