In March, Vox Media unveiled the latest splashy addition to its growing network of podcast creators: Esther Perel, whose show, Where Should We Begin?, has only further burnished her reputation as one of the best-known couples’ therapists around the world.
In attracting Perel, Vox Media beat out competitors like Spotify, which previously had an exclusive deal with the psychotherapist beginning in 2019 via Gimlet Media. The deal has also shown that Vox Media’s podcast ambitions extend beyond the digital media company’s brand of publications, which include New York magazine and The Verge, and into a realm that appeals to more than just “tech and [media] industry nerds,” as one executive put it.
This Friday, Vox Media is making its debut on Podtrac, the industry measurement tool that releases monthly rankings of the top 20 publishers and podcasts in the U.S. With a total of 59 active shows — compared to the 809 of leading publisher iHeartMedia — Vox Media has landed as the No. 10 publisher in the U.S. with more than 5.9 million unique monthly audience members and 33.3 million unique monthly downloads and streams during the month of April.
For the full year of 2023, Vox Media is forecasting that its podcast network will reach more than 500 million — or half a billion — total global downloads, according to Ray Chao, Vox Media’s svp and gm of audio and digital video. (To note: In February, Penske Media, the owner of The Hollywood Reporter, made a minority stake investment in Vox Media.)
The audience figures, which Vox Media is releasing for the first time, represent a measured approach to growth for the media brand’s podcasting business, which began in 2011 with the launch of Vox’s first podcast but didn’t become formalized until 2017 with the debut of the standalone Vox Media Podcast Network. Since then, the network has gone on to acquire companies like Preet Bharara’s Cafe Studios and Phoebe Judge and Lauren Spohrer’s Criminal Productions, as well as attract talent like Perel, former NPR host Sam Sanders and tech journalist and podcaster Kara Swisher — the latter of whom left The New York Times last year to host a new podcast, On With Kara Swisher, for Vox Media.
“Growing things correctly, it can come off sometimes as cautious or really smart, right? And so I think we were aggressive in investing in [podcasts] and, at the same time, not nuts — everyone doesn’t get a podcast, that kind of thing,” Swisher told THR.
That isn’t to say Vox Media as a whole has isolated itself from the turbulence of digital media’s advertising reliance, as the company laid off 7 percent of its staff at the start of the year in response to “the challenging economic environment,” as Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff described it at the time. But the media company’s more sober approach to podcasting comes as a stark contrast to the so-called “dumb money” era of podcasting, when companies like Spotify plopped down hundreds of millions for talent deals and acquisitions that compelled other buyers to up the ante to compete. Though Vox Media made its share of deals, including for Cafe Studios and Criminal Productions, the company’s top podcast executives say the audio business has remained profitable during a cooler market due to Vox Media’s focus on building infrastructure like an in-house advertising and marketing team and on diversifying revenue outside of advertising alone, such as with podcast subscriptions and live events with podcast talent.
“We’re in podcasting and audio for the long term, so we’re not thinking about this in terms of this boom-and-bust cycle,” Chao said. “I don’t think we’ve felt that volatility in the same way that other companies have felt. Of course, we’re not immune to a lot of those challenges, but this is a moment that will pass and we will get through it, and we’re really proud of the foundation we built.”
With that structure in place, the company can now pitch its franchise-building capabilities to top talent seeking opportunities across formats. “We’re not just an audio company,” Chao said. “What we want to do is build a big media franchise, and so we’re not limited by the medium to say, ‘Hey, we’re only gonna support you in the audio world.”
In the case of Perel, the franchise pitch absolutely worked. “We always wanted a partner that would come to the table with creative ideas that maybe we hadn’t thought of ourselves, and so we were looking for an organization that would surprise us and also have the infrastructure to scale what we had been doing,” Courtney Hamilton, who oversees special projects (including podcasts) for Perel’s team, said. Now at home with Vox Media, Perel will switch her seasonal podcast into a weekly, “always-on” show with bonus content via an Apple Podcasts subscription beginning this summer. Perel will maintain ownership of the Where Should We Begin? IP and continue working with the production company Magnificent Noise, while Vox Media handles ad sales and distribution. Though Hamilton demurred when asked if an Esther Perel conference or event is on the horizon, she pointed to Vox Media’s bona fides in live events and said that “everything’s on the table to discuss.”
Nishat Kurwa, Vox Media’s svp and executive producer of audio, said the company’s strengths also lie in supporting talent as their interests change, rather than keeping them confined to their proven lane of success. “A show may start in a niche topic or category, but then the host’s aspirations may change and they want to move into something much broader,” Kurwa said. “We’re there to support that. Naturally, that’s going to mean a slightly different audience, and so we think we can work with them as their aspirations change and grow.”
But even as Vox Media may take on a broader scope of topics, moving away from its roots in the media and tech sphere, creators who spoke with THR said the company is doing so while maintaining its reputation for quality. “We weren’t going to align ourselves with or be associated with or be taken over by some entity — not to disparage anyone — but some entity that didn’t share our commitment to excellence,” Bharara, whose Cafe Studios has now been under the Vox Media umbrella for two years, said. “I wanted to be at a place where the leadership was strong, the commitment to value and values was strong. And of all the people we spoke to, … Vox Media was number one.”
