Just like radio stations of yore, podcasts have long supported themselves with commercial breaks and host-read advertisements. But last year, Amazon realized there could be another way.
In August, the company took a sledgehammer to its podcasting arm, Wondery. What emerged from the rubble was a new and somewhat mysterious department called Creator Services, devoted to video podcasts.
Over the last six months, its central proposition has become clear: What if, instead of selling advertisements on podcasts, Amazon helped build mini-worlds around the shows and sold those?
The idea wasn’t new to podcasting. Companies like SiriusXM and Dear Media had begun marketing more facets of their hosts’ lives and businesses: selling ads on their personal social media accounts, bankrolling and hawking tickets for live events, teaming up with sponsors on new products. Many top podcasters are already multihyphenate entrepreneurs. Alex Cooper of “Call Her Daddy” sells energy drinks and directs commercials for Google; the self-help author and podcaster Mel Robbins sells protein shots.
But only Amazon dismembered a company. The demise of Wondery — the onetime home of “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death,” and acquired for $300 million only a few years earlier — eliminated about 100 jobs, including the chief executive. Audio-only podcasts were shipped to Audible, the audiobook company, while Creator Services was forged from other departments to test and refine this new model for on-camera talent, like Dax Shepard, Kiki Palmer and LeBron James. (Their shows still operate under the name Wondery.)
Creator Services’ first guinea pigs were Jason and Travis Kelce, the brother football stars and hosts of “New Heights,” who signed a podcasting deal in 2024 with Wondery reportedly worth $100 million over three years. Last summer, “New Heights” broke YouTube records when Travis Kelce’s fiancée, Taylor Swift, joined the laid-back, fratty show.
In January, Creator Services introduced Kelce Clubhouse, a landing page on Amazon’s website. It not only sells “New Heights” merchandise, such as hoodies and stickers, and the brothers’ forthcoming book, “No Dumb Questions” — but also features the Kelces promoting the “Harry Potter” series on Audible.
Here, fans can watch the Amazon Prime documentary “Kelce” or buy supplies for a “football party,” such as Garage Beer, a brand the brothers own. When Amazon showed The New York Times a demonstration of Kelce Clubhouse in January, these party supplies were more earnest recommendations from the brothers than product placements.
“But you can imagine how brands could activate doing something like that,” said Matt Sandler, general manager of Creator Services. “What we’re trying to do here is infuse both the content and the commerce together.”
In February, Amazon threw a Super Bowl party for “New Heights” (sponsored by Xfinity and the Raising Cane’s restaurant chain). This week, Amazon announced a “New Heights” live show around the World Cup, planned for June in Los Angeles (sponsored by Enterprise and Xfinity). Because the World Cup isn’t the kind of football that made the Kelces famous, Amazon promoted the event as an example of building “an expanding universe for fans that extends beyond their core show.”
Before the Kansas City Chiefs’ first home game last season (in which Travis Kelce would play), Amazon flew out executives and advertisers for a tailgate party, sticking the hosts’ faces on food trucks and the podcast’s logo on water bottles.
The Kelces didn’t attend — they also declined to be interviewed for this article — but their producers did, including Brandon Borders, whom fans know as “Intern Brandon.” In the sticky September heat, Mr. Borders was interrupted by a few women in sequined jerseys and Swift-red lipstick, asking for a selfie.
“Signing things is still very weird,” Mr. Borders said after inking his initials on a woman’s sweat towel. ”It’s a very recent development that we’re trying to figure out how to compartmentalize mentally.”
Yet this was the very idea Amazon hoped to get across to advertisers: Fans will show up for — and spend money on — anything and anyone connected to their favorite shows. This logic is aligned more with product placement, sponsored content or celebrity endorsements (or a hybrid of all three) than with traditional podcast advertising. Under every rock is a monetization opportunity.
“We really saw this opportunity where it wasn’t just about a podcast,” said Steve Boom, an Amazon vice president who oversees audio, games and the streaming service Twitch. “It was about how these creators could work in multiple parts of Amazon.”
A new series with Jason Kelce is also planned, although its launch date was pushed back. It will be a YouTube show, not a podcast. Increasingly, it seems there is no difference between the two.
On the morning of the Chiefs game, at the Kansas City hotel where Travis Kelce co-owns a restaurant, an Amazon advertising executive, Angie More, mulled the recent blurring of lines and titles in this world. “Creator,” she argued, could really encompass anyone: an actor, an artist or, say, an A.S.M.R. influencer.
“Are musicians livestreamers?” Ms. More asked.
Creator Services, as such, wasn’t designed to monetize only podcasters. The same methods could be applied to popular Twitch gamers, for example.
“We’re not restricted to the format,” said Ms. More, whose former title was head of ad revenue at Wondery — once among the largest and most influential podcast networks in the United States, now shredded and recycled into something new. “It goes back to that creator.”
Jessica Testa covers nontraditional and emerging media for The Times.
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