Compiled by Tess Connery
Putting your money where the mic is with CommSec Invest
LiSTNR has launched the CommSec Invest podcast, designed to help young investors kickstart their share market journey.
The eight-part series is hosted by author, journalist and presenter Jamila Rizvi, and was, developed as part of an ongoing partnership with LiSTNR and CommSec.
To speak about the launch, Podcast Week’s Tess Connery spoke with CommSec market analyst Steven Daghlian.
“The podcast is aimed at inspiring new investors and simplifying the stock market, because the market can get quite complicated,” said Daghlian. “It can be difficult to understand and quite daunting, especially for those who aren’t familiar with the market and who have never invested.
“So we wanted to simplify things. It’s jargon-free, entertaining, light-hearted, and accessible. We really wanted to light a spark for new investors and get them started on the journey.”
CommSec Invest is the second podcast to come out of the partnership between LiSTNR and CommSec, with the first being CommSec Market Update – which Daghlian also hosts.
“CommSec Market Update is a twice daily podcast – one in the morning that wraps up what happened overnight in overseas markets, and one in the afternoon which summarises what happened during the day for Aussie investors in particular. It’s roughly 10 minutes and keeps people up to date on exactly what’s happening in markets at that moment,” said Daghlian.
“The difference with this new podcast, CommSec Invest, is that it’s more of an educational style podcast. We’ve got eight episodes, we’re taking people step by step through what the share market is, why they should invest, the psychology of investing, and then what’s next to take things to the next level.”
For those looking to dip their toes into investing, there’s another major upside to CommSec Invest – its focus on the Australian market.
“If you go somewhere like YouTube, there’s so much information globally – between American influences and the like, it’s difficult for us Aussies to get information that’s relevant to our share market. We’re a tiny share market in comparison, 2% of the global share market roughly,” said Daghlian.
“It gives investors a local voice, we know how things work here in Australia. You can also trade international markets through CommSec as well, so we touch on that a bit in the episodes as well.”
Ultimately the CommSec Invest team are hopeful that the podcast will be the first step in a long investing journey for listeners.
“We want to get people started on their journey of investing. We want to tell them it’s not daunting and get people curious about investing – hopefully, this will be like a stepping stone to read a few more books, or to take that first step on your investing journey. It’s going to be different for every person, but we basically wanted to simplify things and inspire people.”
[Listen to CommSec Invest here]
YouTube Podcasts gathers industry support
Google announced in the second half of 2023 it would be ending its Google Podcast platform. It recently released information about how users are able to migrate podcast show subscriptions from Google Podcast to YouTube Music which will become a major podcast destination.
The migration tool was first made available in the US, with other markets following.
In Australia, parent company Alphabet recently held a YouTube Podcast Summit attended by the major players who committed their support for the YouTube platform as a podcast destination.
Support included comments from executives at ABC and LiSTNR.
“It’s great to see YouTube advancing their ambitions around podcasting, offering publishers like LiSTNR the ability to reach new global audiences on their platform. We look forward to an ongoing partnership with YouTube here in Australia, working together to advance a mutually beneficial YouTube Podcast ecosystem across 2024,” said Grant Tothill, SCA executive head LiSTNR Podcasts.
“The ABC distributes podcasts across a range of platforms to ensure we reach a broad audience, we see a strong opportunity to reach and engage new podcast audiences on YouTube and have been experimenting with a variety of video and audio podcast titles on YouTube over the past 18 months,” said Scott Gamble, head of social, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Simon Baggs forecasts surge in podcast advertising
Broadcaster and founder of The Audio College, Simon Baggs, has published a preview of what the year ahead might hold for audio professionals.
After a career in radio hosting programs across major metro markets, Baggs has worked in podcasting for SCA, ARN and Acast across the last decade.
The Audio College instructors
Here are just three of Baggs’ highlights.
• As we step into 2024, the podcast industry is poised for a remarkable turnaround following the challenges faced in 2023’s advertising landscape. Starting from March onward, I anticipate a solid resurgence in advertising focus, with a notable shift towards audio spending, specifically in podcasting. Advertisers are gaining a profound understanding of the ongoing audience transition from traditional platforms to the dynamic podcast medium.
• Podcast advertising is anticipated to thrive in the coming year due to increasing demand. Artificial intelligence is expected to play a pivotal role in translating podcasts into multiple languages, broadening their global reach which is great for the podcast creator economy.
• While podcast discovery remains a significant challenge for podcasters in 2024, the integration of video content is expected to expedite this process. The introduction of Can We Be Real? in June 2023, a comedy podcast hosted by Australian comedian Meshel Laurie, exemplifies this trend. With its edgy content and authentic conversations, the podcast has swiftly garnered a solid loyal following, attracting major brands eager to support and fund it. The success of this podcast underscores the appeal of delivering messages in a genuine environment where the audience actively chooses to engage.
[Read the full post on Simon Bagg’s socials here]
[Read more about The Audio College]
How Adam Collins built a career out of The Final Word cricket podcast
Sports broadcaster and The Final Word podcast co-host Adam Collins used to work as a political advisor for former Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan. When he decided to change his career he told Mediaweek it wasn’t one huge leap from politics to sport.
The move into sport has been something of a success with the podcast and hosting duties on SEN keeping Collins busy.
Adam Collins
“My podcasting colleague Geoff Lemon and I are essentially working for ourselves and have been doing so since 2015 when the podcast started. 2018 was a turning point when we bought the Australian radio rights for Australia in Pakistan. That gave us an opportunity to expand what we were doing as a podcast,” he said.
Two key ingredients for their podcast have been quality and quantity. “We make as much as we can so people can rely on us and also to hold ourselves to account. We have now made over 900 episodes of the podcast.
Many of those 900 episodes are daily podcasts published during test match cricket. “The idea for a daily came from the 2018 football World Cup. I was following the competition via a podcast from Russia and I thought something similar could work during the 2019 Cricket World Cup.”
Podcast Ranker reveals downloads surged 26% in 2023, with over 1 billion in total
Australians’ appetite for podcasts has been confirmed with the release of the December 2023 Australian Podcast Ranker.
The Triton Digital ranking, released by CRA, reveals that Australians downloaded 1.03 billion podcasts in 2023, up 26% for the year.
The annual data coincides with the release of the December 2023 Podcast ranker. The top five podcasts for December 2023 were, in order: Casefile True Crime, Mamamia Out Loud, Hamish & Andy, Shameless and The Imperfects.
As well as taking a spot in the top 5 for December, Hamish and Andy re-entered the chart with their annual Hamish & Andy’s Remembering Project at #16 on the Australian chart.
Highest new entry was Everybody Has a Secret (Shameless Media) from host Annabelle Lee which is at #31.
Ollie Ollerton recounts a childhood chimp attack on Nova’s Head Game
On the latest episode of Nova Podcast’s Head Game, host Ant Middleton was joined by fellow SAS Australia directing staff and his good friend, Ollie Ollerton.
Ollerton’s career in the military began at the age of 18 when he joined the Royal Marine Commandos. Today, he’s the CEO of BREAK-POINT.
Speaking about a chimpanzee attack as a child and the effect it had on his life, Ollerton said “at that moment, I found something I never knew I had.”
“It was that moment then, when I tapped into this inner strength that we all have. You know that as well as I do, that we all have this inner potential that I tapped into in that moment, which would then help me get through Special Forces selection. It would then bring me back from those really dark days when I was thinking about suicide.”
UNICEF Australia launches first episode of NextGen podcast
Young people have a lot to say, and UNICEF Australia will be listening. NextGen: A UNICEF Australia Podcast gives young people a platform to speak up on issues they care about.
In every episode, UNICEF Australia Ambassador and host, Rae Johnston, hands the mic to young people and experts to discuss everything from climate change to mental health and inequality.
The first episode sees ABC weatherman Nate Byrne and UNICEF Australia Young Ambassador Denzel chat about changing weather patterns, the difference between La Nina and El Nino, and how climate change is impacting young people.
Nour Haydar to join Full Story podcast
Nour Haydar will join Guardian Australia’s Full Story podcast team as a co-host alongside Jane Lee. She will replace Laura Murphy-Oates, who was selected for an Atlantic Fellowship for Indigenous Social Equity.
Nour Haydar across from ABC, where she was most recently a Federal Political Reporter in Canberra and a Fill-in Presenter on ABC News Breakfast and Afternoon Briefing.
She will begin the new role on Monday 19th February.
