Andrea DeMarsi - Podcast Discoverability, Why Apple & Spotify Search Engines Struggle, Building Spreaker, iHeartMedia Acquisition, and PodSEO
Andrea DeMarsi, founder and CEO of PodSEO and co-founder of Spreaker, sits down with co-hosts Norma Jean Belenky and John Kiernan on PodBiz - Where’s The Money In Podcasting?. In this episode, Andrea breaks down how podcasters can solve the industry's biggest discoverability challenges, why traditional podcast directories struggle with search compared to YouTube, his journey building Spreaker from a live web-radio platform into a podcasting giant acquired by iHeartMedia, and how creators can master the marketer mindset to compound show growth.
Where is the money in podcasting?
“Well, as probably in all entertainment media, money is basically in the audience. So the audience is the thing that you can monetize while you’re podcasting. This is one of the components, and everything else more or less derives from it, because there's money also in the industry itself—in the technology behind monetizing the audience, and also the technology used by the people producing content. But ultimately, it all originates from the audience.”
What is the biggest hurdle content creators face when trying to find and retain an audience?
“The biggest challenge, in my opinion, that podcasting is facing today is that it lacks a little bit of education in terms of marketing your podcast. A podcast is basically a product like any other product, and needs time and effort to render it popular and make it discoverable so that people can discover it, enjoy it, and stay loyal.
Podcasting has a very strong connection with the consumer compared to TV shows. But because creators focus primarily on content creation, they miss the habit and mentality to market their product. If you are a creative person, digital marketing probably feels a little bit boring to your mood and feelings.”
Why do platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify struggle with discoverability compared to YouTube?
“One of the reasons why YouTube is so popular in search is because the other search engines do not work that properly—specifically Apple Podcasts and Spotify. They were designed primarily to consume music, not that much spoken content.
They are great if you’re searching for Michael Jackson, or searching for Bad because you know the album title and song right away. But what are the chances that a podcast host is nearly as popular as Michael Jackson? The fact that those engines behave as if the podcast author is the artist, the podcast title is the album, and the episode is a song makes shows really difficult to find.
When someone gets recommended a podcast at dinner, they rarely remember the exact title the next day. They remember the subject, so you have to make sure your podcast can be discovered when they type terms into those search bars.”
How does PodSEO help podcasters navigate search engines and AI assistants?
“Even if the product is called PodSEO, what we are actually creating is a tool that helps you get into the mentality of a marketer so you do all the necessary steps to market your product. Not just SEO, but complemented with social media presence, web presence, and pitching your show to outlets that can feature it.
Those outlets are where AI is currently drawing data from. If you are successful there as a first mover, you are in the front line of this trend to be featured by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.”
What role does short-form video content play in feeding modern algorithms?
“One of the things we always recommend is covering social media with short clips of your episodes—30 seconds or even less. What social media algorithms are very sensitive to is consistency. You don’t want to post a clip on a random Thursday and then wait 10 or 15 days for the next one.
We recently built an autopilot feature in PodSEO that automatically creates video clips as soon as an episode is released and schedules them across social channels to keep feeding the algorithm.”
Spreaker was co-founded by you in 2009. What was the original vision, and how did you pivot into podcasting?
“Spreaker was not designed initially to be a hosting platform for podcasting. The initial idea was to enable everybody to create their own 'web radio' with a focus on live broadcasting. But as an entrepreneur, you have to adapt to the market.
The game changer for podcasting was in 2014 when Apple decided to pre-install Apple Podcasts on iPhones. That caused a tremendous push across the whole media landscape. When we sensed the market direction, we invested all our effort and money into steering the company toward podcasting. Later, merging Spreaker with US-based BlogTalkRadio allowed us to pair our tech strength with advanced advertising tech and monetization agreements.”
What was it like pioneering programmatic advertising in podcasting when the industry was skeptical?
“When we focused on programmatic advertising around 2018–2019, not many people believed it could work for podcasting. Podcasting has a loyal audience and creators are fiercely protective of their show and content quality.
The biggest challenge was ad quality. For instance, if you have a podcast about green economy, you don’t want a BP ad ending up in your show; or if you have a vegan podcast, you don't want a butcher ad. Companies that handle programmatic professionally build dedicated ad quality teams to filter those out and ensure brand safety for both publishers and advertisers. At Spreaker, we specialized in revenue-as-a-service and optimizing fill rates, especially during Q4.”
What was the experience like growing Spreaker and going through the acquisition by iHeartMedia?
“Companies are not just technology or data centers; companies are made by people. If you attract the right people and nurture company culture, you succeed. By the time Spreaker was acquired, we were around 45 people, but we kept our core startup mentality: react fast, focus on what brings value, and motivate each other.
Going through an acquisition involves endless lawyers and due diligence, but the hardest part is managing human emotions, fear, and uncertainty. Because we were always a fully remote company, we prioritized yearly in-person company retreats—like going to Gran Canaria—to keep our team connected as real human beings.”
If you could go back and start over, what would you do differently?
“If I were to restart 30 years younger, I would be more careful about company financing and share dilution when attracting early investors. When we started Spreaker in Italy, there weren't many entities willing to invest in tech startups. Moving outside of Italy to collect funding across broader European or US capital markets earlier is something I would suggest to my younger self.”
What excites you most about the future of podcasting?
“First of all, the people. But also the unique mentality of podcast creators. Podcasting offers a higher quality of topics and content compared to typical social media trends. Creators don't just follow superficial fashions; you can find real hidden gems in podcasting. Our goal with PodSEO is to help those hidden gems get discovered.”
Please support our sponsors:
Lean and Loaf - Your one stop shop for podcast video and audio post production. www.leanandloaf.com
PodSEO - A specialized competitive intelligence and growth platform designed to optimize podcasts for search engines, listening apps, and AI assistants. www.podSEO.com
A thank you to our media partners:
Podnews - Daily news for the podcast and on-demand audio industry. www.podnews.net
Headliner / Disco - Disco converts your readers into podcast listeners. Quickly create, clip, and caption podcast videos with ease. Turn 1 full-length video into 10 optimized, accessible podcast clips. www.headliner.app
