YouTube is reportedly testing a dedicated podcast homepage. The Google-owned video streaming platform had been giving several hints on this since the company published a report about hiring podcast executive, Kai Chuk. According to the reports, the executive will lead its effort in this field. It has also started offering cash to popular podcasters for filming its shows.
As per the reports by TechCrunch, a leaked document has revealed more details on YouTube’s plan for podcasts. The report adds that YouTube plans to add a future podcast homepage on YouTube.com and some other monetization features also.
YouTube testing dedicated podcast homepage
Podnews has published details that tell that YouTube has recently presented an 84-pages presentation that describes the company’s podcasts roadmap. The report further adds that YouTube plans to improve podcast ingestion by testing the ability to pull in podcast RSS feeds.
The company added that it will Centreline podcast on the new homepage at YouTube.com/podcasts. Though the URL doesn’t work yet, it also does not automatically redirect you to the YouTube homepage as it does when you put some other random words after the slash.
TechCrunch mentions that Google sees podcasts as a way to develop its advertising business on YouTube. The document suggests that YouTube will feature audio ads sold by Google and also other partners. It further mentions the support of “new metrics” designed for audio-first and the capability to integrate YouTube data into industry-standard podcast measurement platforms.
The report also said that one of the pages shows brands like Nielsen, Chartable, and Padtrac listed as partners. In accordance with the document, this additional new “Podcast” vertical to YouTube will be the next logical step taken by the company.
YouTube Podcast homepage
For many years, the best part of the YouTube service is that it highlights the large content categories by providing them with their own homepages. Like back in 2015 it did with ‘YouTube gaming’ and in 2019 with ‘YouTube fashion’ which you have currently known as ‘Fashing and Beauty’. Moreover, YouTube contents also help to power Google’s Music streaming service with ‘YouTube Music’. Whereas this Competes with other services like Spotify, podcasts are surely a competitive advantage to the company.
One of the largest music streaming service providers, Spotify has been expecting to dominate the podcast advertising market. This Swedish audio streaming and media services provider has also made some acquisitions to bring related ad-tech in-house. As a result of this, the app has been able to sell its own ads, present streaming ad insertion technology, introduce its own audio ad marketplace, and also try out new ad formats, since then.
Whereas, being a video Centric platform, YouTube is missing out on maximum of this ad market growth. However, pod news did not publish the full document. So it is not clear when was the document first produced or distributed. As given in the references about its launches, it is listed as coming “in 2022”. But there is no news about the release date. The news has also mentioned a company acquired by Spotify last month ‘Chartable’.
Notably according to TechCrunch, YouTube had yet not given any comment to pod news. You will get updates as soon as there is any information on YouTube’s dedicated podcast homepage feature. Till then stay tuned with us
