What is Dovetail from PRX?
A privacy-first suite of applications for all your podcasting needs
PRX is one of the largest podcast distributors — both in terms of the number of shows and downloads per month of each show — in the world. To ensure the reliable delivery of hundreds of thousands of podcast impressions daily, we count on our podcast publishing platform, Dovetail from PRX.
Dovetail from PRX is a suite of applications for podcast post-production built on the values and trust of public media. In its everyday context, a dovetail is “a joint formed by one or more tapered projections (tenons) on one piece which interlocks with corresponding notches or recesses (mortises) in another.”
It looks like this:
In our context, Dovetail refers to the platform’s power to seamlessly stitch together pieces of produced audio, a central feature of post-production needs.
What does Dovetail from PRX do?
Dovetail gives producers a smooth podcast publishing experience and the framework to grow, monetize, and sustain their podcast business in today’s open podcast ecosystem. From a birds-eye view, Dovetail does three main things: podcast distribution, data collection, and ad inventory management.
Podcast distribution made easy
We’ve designed the content management and podcast feed hosting features to empower producers with the flexibility and support they need to publish, manage, and easily update their podcasts across all podcast platforms.
Dovetail hosts more than 260 podcasts:
- Major public media organizations and stations trust PRX’s platform to publish their podcasts, such as PBS, GBH, KERA, WAMU, WUNC, KCRW, KUOW, and WPLN.
- Many of the radio programs that PRX brings to the airwaves are also some of the biggest podcasts, relying on our podcast distribution technology: “Snap Judgment,” “The Moth Radio Hour,” “Reveal,” “Latino USA,” and more. You may also be familiar with podcasts part of Radiotopia from PRX, like “Ear Hustle,” “Song Exploder,” “The Stoop,” “Radio Diaries,” “The Heart,” and “The Kitchen Sisters Present.”
- Remarkable audio producers beyond public media — including indie creators and mission-oriented creators — also rely on PRX’s distribution technology: TED, the Smithsonian, The Boston Globe, Religion of Sports, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Project Brazen, and many more.
Data that leads to strategic decisions
Through Dovetail’s near real-time data and inventory forecasting features, producers have the information they need to make decisions about their audiences and revenue opportunities.
With the metrics Dovetail provides, producers will understand their podcasts’ performance downloads by applications and devices and their audience size by country, state, or metro. This data is available to keep within our portal or export to your own systems.
Harness the full potential of monetization
Dovetail gives producers the confidence to sell inventory and the assurance of reaching their impressions. The impression forecast feature predicts an episode’s performance based on the show’s historical drop data. With Dovetail, sales teams can easily understand a podcast’s availability and sell-through rate at any given time in the future — ensuring all inventory is accounted for and used.
Producers save time, costs, and resources while also maximizing profits by hosting their podcasts on Dovetail. Our dynamic ad insertion technology easily attaches sponsorship messages into produced audio to create what listeners experience as a final, polished episode. Gone are the days of only selling ad inventory on upcoming episodes; with Dovetail’s dynamic ad insertion, timely sponsorship messages can be added to every episode in a portfolio and tailored to a specific audience.
Scale your podcast without compromising listeners’ privacy
Privacy is one of the platform’s defining characteristics. Trust is a two-way street, and public media’s ability to thrive depends on our listeners’ trust in us. Sharing and misusing personal data, like IP addresses, and tracking people’s internet activity without permission violates that trust.
In another post, we’ll go into all the technical details of how Dovetail is at the forefront of security. Still, we’ll leave you with this: privacy regulations are strengthening, not weakening. Content creators need to be ready for how that can impact their ad sales and revenue.
If you already publish podcasts or are exploring podcasting, we hope you will consider Dovetail for your podcast distribution needs.
