These podcasting companies could be next to be acquired

Hi and welcome to Insider Advertising, weekly edition, where I get into the big stories in media and advertising.

First, some news about us: We've made some big hires on the media and advertising team in Claire Atkinson, Lara O'Reilly and Steven Perlberg. I'm excited to see them bring more firepower and making our industry coverage even more of a must-read.

Remember, if you're not a subscriber, sign up here to get this in your inbox daily.

On to the news: Podcasting's next deals — streaming's profit problems — luxury fashion discovers TikTok.

Podcasting deals: What's next

Media companies have been on a podcasting binge lately:

Spotify just bought Megaphone, following deals for Gimlet and Joe Rogan's podcast.
IHeart has been active too, snapping up programmatic audio firm Voxnest.

But Lauren Johnson found there are still a few podcasting content and ad companies left to buy.

They include Wondery, the podcast giant behind shows like "Dirty John" that Apple and Sony are said to have circled; and companies like Headgum, which helps on the monetization side.
As for potential buyers, there's Google and Amazon along with Apple that are betting on making audio content more mainstream.

Streaming's profit problem

Disney, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, and WarnerMedia are undergoing massive restructurings to pivot to streaming video, which has investors cheering.

But as former Turner exec and media-telecom analyst Doug Shapiro points out, they're going to have to accept a big sacrifice in profitability in doing so.

Ashley Rodriguez spoke with Shapiro, who broke down the caveats in the model and how these legacy TV companies are adjusting.

Shapiro named Disney as the best positioned of all the traditional media companies to make this transition. They leaned the most into acquiring IP and have made the most aggressive push into streaming.

Read the rest here: How shrinking TV profits in the streaming era fit into the recent media shakeups and what to expect in the next 3 years, according to a former Turner exec and media banker

Brittany Xavier
Courtesy of Brittany Xavier

Luxury comes to TikTok

TikTok has become the big new platform for luxury brands like Revolve and Hugo Boss.

Sydney Bradley writes that TikTok is catering to them, hosting things like fashion month. And brands like Gucci and JW Anderson have seen organic success there, with trends like the "Gucci model challenge"

Luxury brands have traditionally slow to jump on social media, but they're realizing if they want to establish themselves with future, if not current consumers, the short-form video app sensation is a place they should be.

But as Sydney writes, given TikTok's young audience and nascent commerce features, it's not a place that's readily likely to translate to immediate sales.