Meet The Leaders is a special 8-week series created in partnership with Point to Point Marketing. Today’s feature is on the CEO of Oxford Road, Dan Granger. Follow along with the series and revisit former conversations by checking out the entire category.
Dan Granger is the founder and CEO of Oxford Road, a performance marketing agency he established in 2013 to help innovative brands turn advertising into measurable business growth. After spending nearly a decade in commercial radio, Granger recognized the emerging potential of podcasting as an advertising platform. He saw an opportunity to connect rapidly growing technology companies with influential media personalities and engaged audiences.
Based in Hollywood, Oxford Road was built on his vision of combining the creativity and reach of traditional media with the data-driven strategies of digital marketing. Under Granger’s leadership, Oxford Road has expanded its capabilities across podcasts, radio, television, streaming audio and creator-driven video, pairing media buying with analytics, attribution, and creative optimization to help advertisers maximize their return on investment. The agency has worked with prominent media personalities and helped growth-stage companies scale their customer acquisition efforts through strategic advertising campaigns. Granger is also an advocate for advancing measurement and accountability in the podcasting industry, championing approaches that connect audience engagement with tangible business outcomes.
In this edition of “Meet The Leaders,” we dive into his impressions of Barrett Media’s Top 20 in advertising series, why he convened the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting, challenges with Netflix and podcasting, how radio is still challenged in attribution, and what creators should never give away when considering platforms for their content.
Granger spoke to Barrett Media from his offices in Los Angeles.
Editor’s Note: Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
John Mamola: Congrats on being named the top advertising agency and account executive in the inaugural Barrett Media Top 20 in Advertising series. When you see that level of recognition from peers within the industry, what does it mean to you and your team?
Dan Granger: It’s encouraging. In my whole career, so much of what you do just ends up on the cutting room floor. Especially since the merger [Veritone One], I think we’ve tried to look at ourselves differently and see the scale that we’re at as almost with a sense of duty.
We don’t want to just participate and take advantage of the marketplace that we’re in. We want to help shape it and improve it. Certainly, we’re always working to evolve our own business, but we look at it like we want to evolve the business and our business will follow suit. We’ve been working hard on behalf of the whole cause that I think we’re all engaged in.
I’m grateful to see that the scoreboard is starting to recognize some of that work. So, from that standpoint, it’s been encouraging and validating. We’ve felt a lot of support across the industry based on some of the impact we’ve been trying to make.
John Mamola: Looking inward based on where Oxford Road landed in the Barrett Media rankings. What do you feel your peers in the industry look to with Oxford Road and try to gleam off the success that the company has had?
Dan Granger: The thesis behind what Oxford Road is today is that if you could combine the specialization required to be successful in this medium with the scale or market share you would expect of a holding company, that you could make a real impact on this business. That’s the thesis and why private equity got involved. That’s why we did the merger with Veritone One. This is a special marketplace. It’s a beautiful canvas, whether you want to call it audio or podcast.
The idea that you can have a medium that lends itself to long-form discussion and the free and open exchange of ideas without gatekeepers and rules. We’re stewarding something that is special. When we raised capital, it was to say we think that we can have an outsized impact. And actually, we work in an industry that is very undervalued and gets in its own way a lot.
To be able to specialize is really important to be successful. I think the list shows the value of those specialists. When you see not just us but other groups, whether it’s Adopter Media or ROI360, there’s a lot of groups on that page that are dedicated to these channels. Seeing us and groups like us come out ahead of some of even the biggest agencies in the world validates the importance of going deep rather than wide in terms of capabilities and specialization. That stood out.
The scale at which we’re doing it, quantity has a quality all of its own. The fact that we are leading in market share has amplified the impact of the work that we’re able to do. It gives us more range to support larger brands that might not ordinarily be able to participate, because they have needs that require a really big company. When we had a smaller shop, it was a hard sell for a holding company or a global brand to choose a specialist partner. But because we have the scale that we have now, we have those capabilities. I think the market is catching up.
Before scale came expertise. If anything but a ruthless commitment to being the best at something, and to not trying to be the best at everything, but to really try to be the best at something. When I was a salesperson at Clear Channel, I had on my email signature, and I kept this for years, “we just want the ads to work.” That was my mantra. There’s a lot of fun things that we can say about what we do, but at the end of the day, all anybody cares about is their ads working.
If they’re not, they’re going to cut them. If they are, they’re going to increase them. That’s the game we play. I’ve always accepted that premise. If somebody’s going to hand money over for us to place on their behalf, we need to feel confident that our product is going to work for them.
It is increasingly difficult to make a campaign work in this fragmented environment. It’s increasingly difficult to do that without specialization and expertise. We’ve been carrying that kind of mantra all the way through, and our mission and our values are all in the same spirit of it.
That’s what motivates the company, and I’m happy to see that it’s starting to pay off. We have three values at the company: humility, insight and ownership. Our mission is to unite brands and creators for outcomes only we can deliver.
But the first value is humility. One of the things we say a lot around here is that feedback is the breakfast of champions. If you’re going to be part of this organization, you need to have a humble spirit in how you receive and give feedback. Not having an assumption that course correction is a bad thing, but welcome it as an opportunity for growth.
We used to have a saying in the prior iteration of the company, when we had like 10 values. One of them was growth everywhere, always. Even when it hurts. We’re on this growth train, and we try to put the mission of the company before our own wants, desires, and preferences.
I think it’s starting to kind of manifest in the way the work shows up.
John Mamola: We’re right around the two-year anniversary of merging with Veritone One. Now two years after the decision, how has that partnership prepared you and the company for how the podcast space has evolved?
Dan Granger: I look at the merger as probably the most difficult undertaking I’ve ever done, but also the most rewarding. It’s such a growth challenge as a leader to try to bring cultures together and organizations together mechanically, functionally, spiritually, physically, and all these things. It’s not for the faint of heart.
Also, it’s never really over. To build a culture where everyone is aligned. But also manifest that through ways of working and having a standard product expectation that your clients can have. So that they know there’s going to be a certain level of service and expertise applied at their account across the agency. It’s a multi-year process.
That being said, we have some fabulous people that we’ve gotten to join forces with. The stuff we’re able to do now is really unbelievable. Things that I had longed for my whole career are now possible because of the people that we combined with. It’s not really about the corporate entity, it’s about these individuals.
The things that we’ve been able to create like Orbit, or AMP, or the events that we’ve been doing. I just don’t think we’d be able to convene the industry in the same way. In addition, have the types of conversations in the industry the same way. Or do work on behalf of our clients, because we’re able to kind of have sub-specialties within our specialty.
I really am excited about the position that we’re in. It’s been hard to get here, and we still have a lot of work to do. But, two years in, zero regrets. A lot of gratitude and some pride in what this group has been able to accomplish, because people have had to go through a lot for the last couple of years.
John Mamola: If you asked ten people who consume a podcast, you’d likely get ten different answers. Because of this, when you’re working with clients, what are you doing as a company to provide clear propositions for those clients on exactly what it is they’re buying?
Dan Granger: I see part of our job as convening the industry. Some of it’s to move business forward, but some of it’s to move the industry forward. A year ago in July, that’s when we convened AMP, the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting. Let’s just say we got the three distribution players you would want in the room. We had three of the largest advertisers in the space including UTA, SiriusXM, Podscribe, and Flight Story representing the creator vision.
Then, we tried to get a cross-section of everybody that had competing interests to answer these questions. We have a charter that states what that group defined as a podcast is and why it provides the research. It shares the implementation guidance to the marketplace.
What we did in our charter, we had methods to propose motions, vote for things, create the guidance for the market on how to implement them. We did all of that with the AMP Accords. I chaired it and convened it and saw it through. We voted through all three resolutions with the guidance, and we published it in July 2025.
We released it 12 months after we started this, at our CAO summit at Terranea. Then we handed it publicly over to the IAB for them to then take into their Tech Lab and try to codify into actual industry policy.
When you ask me what’s a podcast, it’s a little hard for me to even know where to start. Even before we did AMP, I did a series called “What’s a Podcast” where I interviewed 28 experts that were kind of here since the beginning. Ira Glass, Adam Carolla, and some of the OGs. We told the story of the history of the medium. Then we partnered with Edison and did a 4,000-plus adult panel to see how consumers define a podcast. We asked advertisers how they define a podcast.
So, we pulled this all together to create a definition that ended up feeding into what became our AMP definition which is now available. To make it the simple answer, is if it works with your eyes closed, it’s a podcast. But we have a much more technical definition that we’ve created and established that YouTube has publicly said they support. Spotify has publicly gotten behind our definition of a play. We’re working with the IAB to try to make this stuff real.
John Mamola: In regards to Netflix, because they’re the new player in town. There’s been some backlash about putting free content behind a paywall. From your experience, for podcast creators and advertisers, are paywalls healthy for the business of the podcast industry?
Dan Granger: It’s nice work if you can get it. If you have critical mass and enough engagement that people are willing to pay a subscription for your content specifically. Additionally, pay an aggregator who includes your content, and that gives you a better ROI. I don’t have a problem with that.
I don’t know if I would stick it at the top of my funnel for my content strategy. The people that are doing the best are the ones who have the free layer, and then they have the premium layer, where you get extra bells and whistles. To me, that’s probably the best home for paywall-driven content, or content behind a paywall.
I don’t know that I would try to lead with that, because then you’re really limiting how many people can discover you. That’s what YouTube has brought to this whole thing. Now people have to do the math on what’s the Netflix check worth? What’s it going to be in the second year? Are they going to rip me off and find somebody else to do it cheaper at some point? I don’t know.
I’m in no position to tell anybody they shouldn’t take the check.
If the question is how do I monetize my audience, I think a premium model with tiers and levels of depth before you’re asking people to pay a subscription is good. Because you get the ad-supported part with the reach and discovery, then you get the subscription once they come in. Versus going straight to subscription, it’s hard to replenish your audience.
John Mamola: You were in radio for 10 years. The radio industry has seemingly always played from behind when it comes to how to monetize digital content and podcasts. Has the industry caught up to where it should be, or is it still playing from behind?
Dan Granger: I love radio. We actually are doing probably more business in radio terrestrial year over year than we were before.
We’re still in the radio business but it’s not our primary focus anymore. I think that radio has real existential challenges. The train is coming so slowly that it doesn’t even feel like it’s coming sometimes. When you lose a point in audience every year and two points in revenue, this thing’s going in one direction. It’s interesting, we get power outages, and I think maybe terrestrial has got a place here.
It’s going to be a tough putt. I just don’t know how you get out of the debt. It was very unfortunate for all the stakeholders who believe in this medium. They spent so much money on broadcast licenses, tall towers and big fields, and then got hampered by the debt they had to incur rolling all that up. Then having to play with your hands tied behind your back because you’ve got these debt obligations.
Also, you’ve got the FCC telling you how to do something. You’ve got a business model that has clearly been disrupted, and you’ve got to self-disrupt in spite of all those challenges. I feel for radio. I think that there are more challenges ahead. And I wish everybody involved the best, because there’s a lot of good people who I know and care about that are still in the game. But it’s a puzzle.
John Mamola: Even on the advertising front, it comes down to attribution. Unfortunately radio is still having a lot of trouble with that.
Dan Granger: We still live in that world. Attribution, every time we think we’re going to get our arms around it, something happens. We had a period of respite a few years ago where we were all kind of using this pixel attribution, and it was going pretty good. Then YouTube taking the medium seriously kind of made it harder, because you couldn’t have a standard way to measure.
Things like surveys are really good, and you can measure things like radio fairly with them. But you’ve got to have the type of business that can facilitate that. But if you’re selling cans of soda, you aren’t sending a survey to go, “How’d you hear about us?”
There are a lot of businesses that should be advertising on radio today. I think it’s a buyer’s market. But you have to limit that to 20, 30, 40 percent of potential advertising dollars in the marketplace that are able to measure with the instruments required to measure that and not be dependent on the other. That is perfectly fine for some and impossible for other brands, who are frankly just precluded from doing it successfully. All the baseline lift tests and all that are a little suspect and hard to get right. It’s challenging.
I think measurement remains the persistent bottleneck on the industry. It’s the reason that we created an Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting [AMP]. Because we’ve got the world’s best media product and the world’s worst conversion funnel. We make it so hard for our customers to do business, because our measurement is so inconsistent and poor. I mean that on the ad performance and on the impressions. We’re all buying off CPMs that frankly don’t mean anything.
John Mamola: Regarding Youtube. What elements should creators aim to keep control of instead of just handing it over to the platform from an advertising standpoint?
Dan Granger: If I had to pick one, I’d always say save the live reads. Embedded, baked in, personal, passionate. Read by trusted personalities. That’s the golden goose, the lightning in the bottle, is that we’ve got a medium where I trust John. John and I have a parasocial relationship, and I spend five hours a week listening to what John thinks. Then you get to tell me what you think about a product or service that you’ve had a great experience with.
Compare that to an impression on any other medium. Add the fact that it’s long form, you can explain it and testify. You can make different types of arguments, and customize. It’s just such a precious thing. The gravitational pull in advertising is pulling in two competing directions: artificial and authentic.
How do we go from artificial intelligence and the automation of everything, and trying to turn this all into a video game? How do you have a marketplace that’s evolving that way, and big tech platforms are trying to evolve the video game?
Fewer touch points, fewer conversations, less friction. Sometimes I want to go to a restaurant for something other than efficiency. Sometimes I want an experience that’s going to have a bigger impact. The host read is a gourmet meal made specifically for you, and it’s going to hit different than what you’re going to get from McDonald’s.
That’s the piece I would encourage any creator or group to cling on to and keep sacred.
John Mamola: Do you coach talent? Are you the one making sure the talents you buy for advertisers are hitting the bullet points with authenticity?
Dan Granger: Performance is primary. While we’re talking here, I’ve been running a report that shows where we stack up against in-house groups, and holdco groups on things like average ad length, read score, first in break, solo in break.
These are things that we look at. Same with CPMs. You look at it, and it’s directional. It’s levers to be pulled. That being said, it doesn’t always ladder up to the thing that matters most. So, we have to manage it appropriately, and not over- or under-index on the importance of any one of these drivers.
John Mamola: Everyone says authentic. It’s a buzzword. But what’s the right approach for any host-read ad?
Dan Granger: It’s personal belief and conviction. I know the difference when somebody reads the ad like a disclaimer, and when a host says, “Yeah, that’s an interesting product. Send it to me, and I’ll try it out. I’ll tell you if I think it’s a fit, and I can tell a good story around this.”
There’s different strokes for different folks. Now, unfortunately, it doesn’t always correlate to performance the way you want it to. But I do think your brand is hiring an ambassador. I don’t care if you’re a good salesperson, if you’re not really being honest when you tell me why you believe in my product and why other people should use it, I really want you as my ambassador.
The whole game is that the creator is trusted by the audience, and you get to buy into that trust. But if that becomes purely transactional, and there’s really no personal connection to it, it comes out. It diminishes the creator who’s presenting it, the brand, and it diminishes the audience when it feels false.
There’s a lot of things that are important. Good offers are important. Telling a personal story is important. Focusing on the width and depth of problems that this solves that will resonate most deeply with the audience. All important. But I still think that you’ve got to hold on to that trust for dear life, because that’s what we’re actually trading in right now.
John Mamola: Let’s shift to AI. It’s becoming more normalized in every day life. Certain companies have different stances on how they use it, where they use it, so on and so forth. For Oxford Road, what’s the stance of how you use AI, and where you won’t use it?
Dan Granger: We use AI a lot in our back office. If I am preparing for something, researching something, trying to get my thoughts on paper and organized and get feedback while crunching through a lot of data and automate tasks. Then, AI is great. It’s critical. I’m not going to try to compete in the marketplace that’s using AI.
But it’s as important that we know where not to use it as much as we know where to use it. Sometimes we have to be very intentional.
We’ve been in the process of clarifying what are our policies. Certainly, if you’re using a host voice, we don’t think that’s the right use of AI. Now, if you need a voiceover who’s not self-identifying as anything, and you’re going to disclose that AI was used, that might make sense for somebody in a certain case. You remember going to a radio station where you’ve got an engineer reading a hundred different lines of promo. It’s not always efficient, and so I think there’s a place for that.
Here’s when we kill the golden goose. We kill the golden goose when we make someone believe that something is authentic and it’s really artificial. As long as you don’t betray those expectations, I think it’s a very useful tool to conduct more transactional parts of the business. Provided you’re not substituting what we still need humans for, and that’s really trust.
John Mamola: If I’m following, there’s no way that you would consider buying advertising in AI podcasts currently? Despite the growing number of them, and the technology becoming more normalized every day.
Dan Granger: You’ve got to show me a good one first. Show me one that’s got audience and a mechanism whereby the audience is well informed of what they’re listening to and there’s no world where they’re going to feel tricked. If we clear all those hurdles, I don’t want to be a “never” person. I want to stay open as the world evolves.
But the North Star is to honor the relationship between audience and creator. If we’re going to tap into that commercially, we need to respect that foundation and not cheapen it just to try to push stuff out in a more efficient way, or to substitute. We need to hold firm to that.
John Mamola: Shifting back to Netflix for just a second, they’ve gone through some recent restructuring last month. The company has been very sketchy on overall consumption of podcasts. Netflix has stated they add lift during the day, but no one truly knows how effective they’ve been for the platform. In your opinion, do you feel Netflix will continue to be in the podcast game for the long term?
Dan Granger: If I’m playing Nostradamus here, I would say they stay in but their method changes. They threw a lot at the wall for their first year, and I think they’re collecting data. What is their strategy two years from now? It depends on what they believe because of that data.
Should they be manufacturing certain types of podcast content and not having to pay these big licensing deals that they’re paying? Are they going to be like Walmart or groups that bring on the supplier and then start to squeeze a little bit? I don’t know exactly how that’s going to work, but I’d be really surprised if that’s the type of content they didn’t want to keep participating with. It’s a lot cheaper to manufacture than a lot of stuff that they make. So, I have a feeling they’re here to stay.
Does that help YouTube? Probably not. I don’t think any creator that takes their content off of YouTube is welcome news for YouTube. That’s going to continue to be a factor. And I think it’s early days. I just really do.
John Mamola: Last thing for you, Dan. Looking ahead to 2027, what do you see as the biggest growth potential in the industry? How are you positioning Oxford Road to capitalize on it?
Dan Granger: We’ve covered the measurement piece, and I think that we need standards. We’re trying to lead the charge on developing standards that are going to work for everybody. It’s been hard to understand where the line is between a podcast, YouTube or creator media. So, I think the definitions help with that.
I also think we’re in a world now where the conventional methods of transacting business still exist but are now evolving. People calling people to place buys is going away. That’s starting to become programmatic and automated. We have a very robust programmatic team.
This business is developing internationally very quickly. We have boots on the ground I’ve been told in six continents. But we’re doing a lot internationally. Most agencies cannot do that.
The ways that creators are doing business, not just through one medium, but in a 360 way through custom integrations, IP licensing, and stuff like that, we have a division that is focusing squarely on that.
We have some ideas about where the puck is moving. We’re trying to just make sure we’re staying a couple steps ahead so that our clients are never wanting.
To learn more about Point-To-Point Marketing’s Podcast and Broadcast Audience Development Marketing strategies, contact Tim Bronsil at tim@ptpmarketing.com or 513-702-5072.
