CUMULUS MEDIA’S Westwood One, the largest audio network in America, has selected Placements.io, the leader in revenue and billing management for media companies, to create a custom operating management system that will integrate with Megaphone, the largest podcast hosting and monetisation platform, as well as their other hosting platforms. The new system will dramatically improve the ease and scalability of Westwood One Podcast Network’s advertising sales operations.

Building off decades of experience creating audio solutions for advertisers, Westwood One worked with Placements.io to design an innovative system that will streamline the buying/selling process and provide the most flexibility for monetising their podcast advertising inventory. Podcast advertising is a unique, newer channel for marketers, offering the benefits of both traditional radio’s content-based integrations and digital media’s optimisation and targeting capabilities. The operating management system will offer a new technology solution that delivers easy scheduling, activation, real-time inventory management, billing, and reporting for podcast publishers that preserves the best of both worlds.

“Podcasting is on fire, and we desperately need automated advertising technology to support this growth, much like those evolutions that have happened in the digital, video, and display worlds,” said Suzanne Grimes, EVP marketing, CUMULUS MEDIA and president, Westwood One. “With Placements.io, we’re pioneering a uniquely powerful and flexible system that improves our ability to serve our advertisers seamlessly, at scale, across our podcast network.”

"As a product-led company, we’re eager to shape the future of podcast ad sales management because it's our responsibility to support and accelerate the growth of emerging monetisation channels for our partners,” said Evan Bowen, SVP of strategy at placements. “Podcasting represents a green field opportunity for publishers, and we’re dedicated to enabling advanced feature sets with leading technology that is easy to use and highly scalable,” added Michael Finucane, SVP sales at Placements.io.