Brief:

• Warner Bros. is promoting this month's release of "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" by sponsoring an episode of the hit podcast "Stuff You Missed in History Class." IHeartRadio's infotainment producer, How Stuff Works, created a special edition of the podcast to focus on the history of Godzilla movies, per an announcement.
• Michael Dougherty, director of the latest Godzilla movie, is a guest on the podcast, which is hosted by Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Frey. Dougherty discusses how Ishirō Honda, director of the 1954 Japanese film "Gojira" that started the world's longest-running film franchise, sought to warn people about the dangers of underwater nuclear testing and to respect nature.
• How Stuff Works generates more than 35 million downloads a month on iTunes for its podcasts, per its website. Those shows include "Stuff You Should Know," "Stuff to Blow Your Mind" and "Stuff Your Mom Never Told You."

Insight:

As podcasts seek to monetize their content, collaborating with sponsors like Warner Bros. on native advertising can be an important source of revenue. The film studio gets to promote the release of "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," while audiences get to learn more about the history of the science-fiction franchise that includes 35 films, including three produced in the United States. The latest installment hits theaters on May 31 with expectations that it could be a summer blockbuster. Warner Bros. plans to release "Godzilla vs. King Kong" in 2020, per an announcement.

Warner Bros. is among the big advertisers that are putting more promotional dollars into podcasts as the space matures and consolidates, bringing a new level of scale that wasn't available previously. Pet food brand Pedigree yesterday unveiled its first podcast called "The Dog That Changed Me" hosted by best-selling author Katherine Schwarzenegger, per an announcement. The nine-episode series focuses on dog adoption, and includes interviews with guests such as Mandy Moore, Bryce Dallas Howard and Haylie Duff, who share their stories about dogs that improved their lives.

Monthly podcast listenership has jumped 32% this year, the biggest gain ever recorded, to 32 million people with strong gains among college-aged students and young professionals who are major target for the podcast industry, per a survey of U.S. consumers by Edison Research and Triton Digital. The growing audience for podcasts is attracting major sponsorship dollars. Spending on podcast ads is forecast to more than double to $659 million by 2020, according to an Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC report. Podcast advertising increases key metrics like awareness, ad recall, affinity, recommendation and purchase intent, researcher Nielsen said in a blog post based on data from about 50 custom studies conducted in the past 18 months. All sizes of brands, ranging in top-of-mind awareness from 17% to 69%, are tracking the performance of their podcast ads.