Brand suitability for Amazon Ads DVA+

• First look: Barometer announced a brand suitability solution for Amazon Ads DVA+. Advertisers can activate Barometer’s pre-bid brand suitability, to check that every podcast episode meets advertiser brand guidelines.

  • Amazon Ads DVA+ is a new way to produce display, video and audio campaigns, all in one place. Advertisers typically require brand suitability data to avoid putting their ads next to content they don’t want to be associated with.

• WME launched its own “Creator Labs”, described as an in-house digital operations team that helps creators build and scale their businesses on YouTube and elsewhere. There are eleven people on the team.

• Tomorrow, Oxford Road will run “The Deal Room” - a podcast upfront that isn’t afraid to actually sell, according to CEO Dan Granger.

• Quill has made The Globe and Mail’s list of Canada’s Top Growing Companies for the fourth year in a row.

• Next week in London, “an exclusive event for creators serious about turning a podcast into a business.” The invite-only event is from FiveTwoNine, a global creator community and platform.

• Signings: Wave has signed weekly comedy podcast Bad Friends to its network … Podcast Nation has signed Gen Z creator Trinity Blair, and her podcast Trin Told Me.

• Opinion: our editor isn’t very impressed at the state of print advertising these days, writing a potty-mouthed personal blog about it. But, is the lack of copywriting in print advertising also harming advertising in the media outlets that require it - like radio or podcasting? Enquiring minds wish to know. (Our Editor’s, mostly).

Latino soldiers fighting in Ukraine

Paid content

Why would someone risk their life for a country that is not their own? What might they be searching for? Call Sign Condor / Alias Cóndor is a podcast about the thousands of Latin Americans who are fighting in Ukraine, for Ukraine.

Through the stories of our protagonist, Condor, and his fellow soldiers, this four-part series takes us inside the lives of Latin American men and women who’ve been fighting — some of them for years — in the war in Ukraine.

Through their experiences of fear, loss, belonging and even falling in love, host Carolina Chimoy explores what brought these soldiers to the front, how they’ve experienced the war, and what they’ve found there.

From DW, LA Times Studios, and Futuro Studios, Call Sign Condor / Alias Cóndor is available now: in English and in Spanish.

People News

• Bob Kane has joined Acast as Senior Account Executive. He has worked in and around podcasting in Canada since 2011.
• John Goforth is now President of Gamut Podcast Network. The unit’s revenue has grown 47% over the past two years.

Tips and tricks - with Audiencelift

• Can ChatGPT transcribe audio?, asks a Medium piece. We’ll save you the click - no. No, it can’t. But - most podcast hosts now produce transcripts for you, or you can easily install software on your computer to do transcripts for free.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: Think Fast Talk Smart is all about effective communication. Best-selling author Matt Abrahams interviews experts to provide actionable insights that help you communicate with clarity, confidence, and impact. Just published: the 4 C’s for better communication.

Birding podcast Birds of a Feather Talk Together recorded a live episode at the Chicago Urban Birding Festival. The hosts talked birds, shared stories and answered questions from festival attendees.

Spooky Season - the Dark Side of the Past: On After Dark, we’re getting into the spooky season with stories of werewolf trials, a woman murdered for being branded a “fairy changeling”, the origins of Dracula, the dark side of the Brothers Grimm, England’s most haunted house and much more!

In the limited series Dispatches from the Divide, Monica Guzman follows individuals into moments of extreme conflict—relationships, careers, and communities on the line. But just when you think you know how the story ends, one person does something to turn the whole plot on its head. From the team behind Top of Mind with Julie Rose, Dispatches from the Divide is a co-production of BYUradio, Braver Angels, and Disagree Better.

Getting your child the support they need at school shouldn’t feel like a fight. But for millions of families, it does. In Zero Reject, an investigative podcast from Understood.org, award-winning journalist Anya Kamenetz looks at how changing federal policies are reshaping special education — and what’s at stake for families trying to access the support their children are legally entitled to.

Why did women in Arctic Norway confess to turning into whales and to meeting wolves at witches’ gatherings? The Vardø Witch Trials is a new 6-part documentary series about Norway’s deadliest witch hunt, which claimed 91 lives, most of them women. Lisa Williams travels to the remote places where the accused lived and works through the surviving 17th-century court records with Professor Liv Helene Willumsen, the leading expert on the trials, to find out why it went on for more than 70 years. Sound design is by Craig Edmondson (The Pitcairn Trials).

In ROAR with Danielle Davies, you’ll meet women who saw a problem affecting women and did something to fix it. Season 5 brings 13 new conversations, including a menopause doctor on the symptom still dismissed as “irritability,” the creator of Show Her the Money on why women-led companies get just 1–2% of venture capital, and a self-defense coach on why freezing isn’t failure.

In a new Cities 1.5 miniseries, 'Oh, Canada’, tune in for discussions about the future of climate action in Canada…couched in a clear-eyed history of how Canada has gone from being a global leader in combating climate change, to doubling down on pipelines, overshooting on emissions targets, and continuing to stake our future on a path that we know is not viable for the health of the planet - or us.

In Curiosity Meets The Past this week, host and archaeologist, Dr. Smiti Nathan, meets with biocultural anthropologist, Alex McDougle. She guides us through her work on free and enslaved Black communities in Maryland during the 1700s and 1800s and the present-day implications of her work. This episode is part of 50x50: Science Across America, a national series uncovering exceptional science in all 50 states.

The Audio Flux Podcast is back with Season 2! From now through the end of the year, you’ll hear three-minute narrative shorts (called “fluxworks”) from Circuit 02, as well as behind the scenes interviews with each producer. Circuit 02 fluxworks are all inspired by composer Annea Lockwood’s beautiful idea of “Listening With” the world (as opposed to listening to it). Season 2 kicks off with “Breath,” by Bianca Giaever, who shares why she was driven crazy by the sound of her boyfriend breathing.