Business News: Marketers Bet Big on Podcasts, Veo 3 Demos Next‑Gen Video, TikTok Shop Changes the Game, Prime Day Sparks Shopping Sprees

0:00This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over 6 years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping next and cashing checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now, our weekly business news recap here on Friday, June 6, 2025. 25, easing our way into June quickly. You look down, the calendar turns, especially me. Got kids at home running companies. Wife, we ventured to New York this week. Had the book released for my good friends, Mike and Cass Lazaro.

0:50They were on on Tuesday. If you haven't checked that episode out, please do. Shoveling shit. It is a love story. It's a love story. It gets me every time. That's the point of the hook. Love story. You start shoveling shit and then love story. It catches them the brain. It's about the entrepreneur's messy path to success. They've done it. They just sold their companies a couple years ago for like 750 mil. They've done it at the highest level. And this is one of my favorite business books of all time. Just the realness, the rawness. And got to celebrate with them on Monday in New York City on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

1:31He's walking around through there. Hey, friends know how to throw parties. This was a party. It was fun. It was a lot of great people talking about business, entrepreneurs, and how great it is to be an American. Hey, don't ever forget that. Don't let anybody tell you any other different. You got all the opportunity in the world. These guys talk about it in the book. Check that episode out on Tuesday. A couple other announcements while we're at it. And again, I'm Ryan Alford, your host. If you're just joining us for the first time, welcome. We appreciate you for being here. We're here in the lovely studios at my space, Social House in Greenville, South Carolina.

2:08It's a co-work lounge podcast studio. If you ever need anywhere to work when you're in the South, stop in Greenville and come see us at Social House. It's a great space. And, hey, you might just see us in here in the studio recording while we're at it. And I do want to mention that next week we do release, get back into the trading card, Had this quick stop because the book was coming out. Wanted to release that. Had a little pause in our trading card industry series. Next week, name you probably heard, Gary Vaynerchuk. Yes, Gary sat down with me a couple weeks ago talking about his release of VFriends.

2:48One of the coolest new releases from Topps Chrome. You know that name, Topps, if you aren't in cards. They are really cool cards. I'd call it a cross between Pokemon and Sesame Street. I think Gary even said that. And really great message that he's sending with these cards, positivity, empathy, and really love the way he's created these characters around these attributes. And it's just a great, I don't know, legacy for him. And it's tapping into this rage that is collecting. and he's been really smart partnering with Topps and the way they bring these cards to life and the different versions of the cards and all that stuff.

3:30Gary talks about the vision for VFriends, the industry as a whole, and really his path and where he sees leaving legacy as he continues to build the empire that is VaynerMedia. Check that out next Tuesday and you'll want to watch that on YouTube as well. I opened some of those V friend packs. You got to see the characters, see some of that stuff on the YouTube. It was fun. I enjoy opening packs too. We're going to do that at the end of today's episode as well. One of the hottest trading cards, some football cards at the end of today's show. So again, the trading card series picks back up on Tuesday.

4:12Check that out and leave us some feedback. Let us know what you think. You going out there, you getting into the collecting? We'll see. Once you do it, hey, it's hard to turn it around. It's habit forming because it's like, hey, you get a scratch off. You win or lose. These trading cards, you may get one card that's worth a lot more or not, but they all have value. So it's fun doing that with my boys, teaching them business, and, of course, having a good time. So we appreciate you for listening in on that section and series that we're doing. Look, today we're getting into that summertime period where it's funny how between vacations and other things, the business headlines aren't as headlining as they were.

4:56We've got a few topics today that I want to delve into. I do want to start. I've got a platform here with the show and appreciate the loyal listeners and new ones for joining in. But I think I try to stay away from things that just seem completely self-serving, especially as regards to sort of new media and podcasting because I don't want it to come off through my voice here, like this self-promotion of the category. But I do think I owe it to the audience, especially a lot of people that may control marketing budgets, may make decisions on where and how to spend media or how to grow your business.

5:35And podcasting is the scalable way to grow a business now. And there's some data out from our good partners. It sounds profitable. Tom Webster is the leading research guy over there. And this study that they put out is largest in the industry around podcasting, effectiveness, reach and all these other things. The latest study is specific to the advertising landscape and specifically asking people questions and drilling down to recall, reach, likability, trust, key measures. like today, consumers have never been more aware that they're being marketed to. They know what the ads are trying to do.

6:21They know what's happening. They're skeptical of it. Social media has kind of conditioned them to this point where you're just getting hammered with messages left and right, and you don't have a lot of recall. I'm not saying they're ineffective. They are effective for reach and frequency, but there's not always a lot of engagement and trust happening. And that's where this study gets really interesting. I'm just going to hit the highlights here because I think it's important for anyone. Because I do think podcasting isn't just a big brand game. There's a lot of local podcasts. There's a lot of regional podcasts.

6:56So brands of any size should really be thinking about how they spend their marketing budgets because you want to get the most amount of people that fall into your niche of what you're selling. You want to hit them with messages that they trust, that they like, and that have the reach and frequency that you need. And this is where podcasting is becoming really one and alone in certain categories. So here, a few stats that I think are worth hearing. Podcast ads command attention. According to this study, it's over 5 ,000 U.S. consumers. Podcast ads command attention. Despite reaching just 31 % of the U.S.

7:34adults monthly, ad-supported podcasts deliver an effective ad reach nearly equal to TikTok, proving that listeners actually hear and remember podcast ads. Best-in-class recall. 86 % of heavy podcast users recall hearing an ad in the past week. The highest ad recall of any ad - supported medium ahead of TV, radio, YouTube, and social platforms. You can't make this stuff up, people. This is incredible data about the power of podcast advertising, the influence, and the recall that people have. It's the most trusted medium of any advertising platform. Podcasts top the charts for audience trust in both content and advertising, with listeners more likely to view them as accurate, credible, and free from misleading claims.

8:32You know, everybody looks around going, okay, they're looking for the holy grail. Where do I spend my ad dollars? I need to promote my business. This is it, folks. Podcasting, audio, video, multimedia, trust, recall, reach. Every stat is where you need to be. Authenticity drives impact. Nearly half of podcast listeners say the advertising they hear feels authentic and natural, a key differentiator from social media and traditional spots. Trust cuts across all demographics. Podcast advertising earns high trust ratings from men and women equally with standout performance among Black, Hispanic, Latino, and 35 to 54-year-old listeners.

9:17All these hard-to-get demographics are hit and impacted by podcast advertising. Women pay attention. Podcasting is one of the few media environments where female ad recall matches male recall, making it an ideal channel for reaching and resonating with women. Podcast hosts are powerful messengers. I hope so. Listeners trust the voices behind the mic, giving podcast hosts a unique edge in delivering persuasive, incredible ad messages. Compared to podcasting, social media platforms suffer from lower trust in content, lower ad authenticity, and weaker belief in advertising claims, creating real headwinds for marketers.

10:03It's really interesting data, folks. We're going to have links to that in our show notes. But if you're a business out there or you're an entrepreneur, if you're someone, you're thinking about where to spend ad dollars, podcasting is no longer in the second tier. It needs to be at the top. All right. In the headlines this week, Google's new video AI blurs truth and fiction. TikTok shop starts charging for reach. Amazon's locking in prime day. Yay. You got to know when to shop, baby. Starbucks rewrites its rewards math and discontinued pennies might be worth a small fortune. Hmm. So this is interesting.

10:44Google's VO3, VEO3 can fake a riot in eight seconds. So look, you've got this platform. We've got all these AI, you know, text to video is what it's called. Text to video AI. So you give it a command, hey, create a video with Ryan playing golf. And so it'll create a video. I don't know if it'll match this likeness or not. You know, it's hard to get this big guy exactly all the dimensions right. But nonetheless, text the videos here has been around for, I mean, probably even a year or two now, but it's getting scary good. And VO3 is churning out photorealistic video with audio from very simple prompts.

11:29And look, it gets this is I've talked about this. I have these discussions with friends and family when you can create video and there's no policing or knowledge. It's what's real and what's fake, what's generated and what's original. It's very hard to know. It's one thing if I'm creating an image and it's a person eating a waffle. OK, no big deal. It's another thing when you can create things like riots or drum up discourse unnaturally with one prompt and then post it with thousands of views. So it's, you know, I believe firmly in this democratization of content and distribution, but there do needs to be some guardrails here.

12:20I firmly believe, and whether or not truth social is it, I can argue that it leans to one that's not too heavy. I think we know that. But where I'm going to go with this is real social. I think you're going to have this backlash. Someone's going to develop a platform where nothing AI is allowed. You know it's coming. And because, and there's going to be ways and technology hopefully to guide that, to know what's real, what's not real, what's real. I mean, because when you can't determine whether something you're watching is fiction or nonfiction, we get to a really scary place of not knowing what's real, what we trust, what we don't.

13:04We already have enough mistrust in this world. And so it gets it gets weird quick. And I think we're going to have to stop and put some guardrails, consider platforms that may, you know, like, I don't know, logos or buttons or things that, you know, say and this is generated content, something that determines it gives it a label. because otherwise, if it's just put out there amongst the other trillion videos released every day, how do we know what's real and what's not? How do we know if what causing our discourse is actually real? And this has been going on. We've talked, you know, everybody throws around the fake news thing, the Russian, this, that, the other.

13:51I don't know what was pushed or not pushed. I think we'd be naive to believe that nothing was happening. But the tools now are getting to a point where it gets real, real interesting. And we've got to stop and pause about the impact of this. So we'll see where this goes. But, hey, all these companies are pressing ahead because there's a lot of dollars. But we got to make it make sense. TikTok shop ends the free ride for sellers. Oh, man, I was just getting ready to sell some sports cards on there. Now they're changing up the policies to reach eyeballs. Brands must now open their wallets. Look, I talk about this all the time.

14:36No one appreciates. Everybody wants advertising for free. I get it. You want it. We want awareness. One of those. It's kind of like why I always laugh at these people that do these influencer deals or people come to me and go, you know, we'll pay a commission, you know, affiliate deal. If you brought this. Well, the purchase cycles are very messy. I could promote something all day and it generate top line awareness for you at scale and only 1 % by. That's not worth the time. The audience has been built. It doesn't pay for reach and it doesn't pay for awareness. Guess what? If you went to a TV station and said, hey, run my commercial.

15:16And you know what? I'll pay you for whatever I sell, but I'm not going to pay you to run the commercial. You get laughed out of the office. You wouldn't expect that, but you expect influencers and people that have reach to run your stuff and only get paid if they sell it? Come on, man. That's the biggest, that's like, well, they say the biggest trick the devil ever pulled was not making people think he didn't exist. Well, the biggest trick that's ever been pulled in marketing is influencers and people with reach not getting paid to generate awareness. This is crap, and I don't fault TikTok, even though I don't love everything they do, but you got to pay to play, baby.

15:58So free organic boosts are gone. Ad spend is mandatory for reach. All the organic stuff goes away at some point. You're going to pay to play. I don't love it every time. We all spend money. I don't like having to spend money on what I want to or something's free. But again, they grew the platform. You got to play along and ride the bus for a little while. Well, now you got to pay the tariff. Pun intended. This comes amid layoffs of the looming U.S. ban threat. I still don't know what's going to happen with that. I feel like there's more fireworks than not. It's a little bit why I've kind of held off on the platform.

16:34I get on there. You can find that blue check next to my name. That's cool and all. But I don't go hard there because I've always kind of got it. I still feel like we're going to see something go down over there. I don't. Too big to fail probably. You know, the administration is probably not going to want the backlash of taking it down completely. But I don't think Trump's playing around. He's going to make them sell it. So we'll see. So, hey, free reach is over. So if you sell on TikTok, plan on an ad budget or you might just fade away. Amazon sets Prime Day for July 16th and 17th. Rights in phone circles dates as speaking.

17:16it. I lost a prime day, man. I can admit this. I'm a pretty good shopper, man. I like shopping. I like kind of looking around. Who knows? I'm like the consumers or a brand's best friend or something. I like I am a total consumer. I don't always buy. Look, I don't always buy expensive shit. It's sometimes just cheap shit. Whatever. I think that's the consumer in me. And I love these prime days. You get on there and they've done a great job, man. Talking about pulling the snow, putting the wool over your eyes. Like, yeah, something that was like for sale like six months ago, they put it back up for like right before prime and then they discounted again.

18:03I don't know. Some of these deals, I think, are fool's gold, but they do have some pretty good deals right now and then. They discount that Amazon tech pretty heavy. heavy. I remember getting the boys like those fire tablets when they first came out for like 30 bucks. You know, when you're used to paying like 250 to$500 for a tablet and that was seven years ago, they're a thousand dollars now for Apple. They had those$39 fire tablets on a prime day or something like 30 bucks. I'm like, hell yeah. And then you get them and you realize how big of a pain and ass is that loaded every time for your kids.

18:37You're like, I think I'll go back to the iPad. But all that aside, I do like the deals. It's fun. And they've definitely branded this to where consumers start to expect it. I don't know, ultimately, when I think of these tactics, if you just sort of, if you pent up demand that you like for sales, you would have gotten anyway, and it just all pushes to two days because everybody kind of pulls back before the sale. Someone had to show me the data if the net net of this really ends up as being higher than it would have been anyway over that period, or if you just pull back demand and then push it to those two days.

19:12Hard to say, but you do get some good deals. And it now has these small business badges and bonus credits so that independent sellers could get called out more because there is a backlash with that sometimes. It's kind of always why I caution some of clients that we've had over the years in e-com. Like, you can sell on Amazon, but number one, they're probably going to make your product, if it's an original product, they're going to make it and sell it as an Amazon original. Some irony there, right? Amazon originals copied from Peter Sellers. He made some really nice belts that are now made in China at scale and twice as half the price.

19:55So yeah, they're real Amazon originals. That's original. But I have bought some Amazon original stuff and I kind of feel bad sometimes. I'm like, whose product am I like buying cheaper than what they could ever make it for? Hey, I guess that's the consumer way. But back to what I was saying, I do like that they're helping highlight these independent sellers and the small business badges. So maybe if the deals allow for it, we can get in there, support small business. You still got to ultimately step it up. I don't even, you know, I'm not just a price only shopper. Like give me a great experience.

20:34Give me great packaging. Give me easy friction removing experience once I buy it. I mean, so it's not just price. And that's, that's kind of what Amazon's gotten. If you really think about the Amazon machine, it is price, but it's friction removal. One click to purchase, one day to ship, same day, two day. You can count on it. Though we'll say that two-day shipping is sometimes leaking into four now, but I digress on that. But the point is they've removed friction in the buying. That's all what this is. And then ultimately, Prime Day is the manifestation of all of it because it all comes together in this two-day period or one day.

21:13It used to be one day. Now it's multiple days. It's kind of like Black Friday, like Black Friday. Now it's Black Friday week, Black Friday weekend, Cyber Monday. This is called the month of sales. Anyway, Prime Day can make or break summer sales for some of these small shops. So get in there, support them, get the deals out. Starbucks, revamping that loyalty rewards math. Hey, all the devil's in the details. Check it out. They're changing up rewards for reusable cup hole users. flat 25 star bonus is out double stars per dollar is in this is how you know i used to joke i own dealership for like five seconds never do that again and i used to tell friends and family i'd give them the double half special yeah all friends and family got the double half special i will double the price and cut it in half just for you that was it this sounds like some kind of funky math too.

22:10The 25 star bonus is out. Double stars per dollar is in. Ultimately, the big spenders win. Small ticket buyers lose perks. So again, you're definitely going to have some whining over this, including my wife probably. But I would classify her if there's not a big spender. I don't know who is. She's got a Starbucks every time I see her just about in the car. So I think we're feeding the stock, keeping the market afloat just with the Alford family. And she uses all these rewards. She's much better than me. I don't know about you guys. How many of you have these 1 ,200 rewards programs and never remember to use them?

22:50Raise your hand wherever you are listening because I've got my hand up. I've got like 50 ,000 McDonald's points from taking my kids. I never remember to use them. And better part, you can only use one at a time. I got four kids. I got 48 ,000 points. I go in there and get a Big Mac for free. Great. Well, I got three other people and myself to feed. So they get to one way or another with the asterisks. But this is a way they're trying to ultimately tell you you need to spend more. And I think it'll be interesting how much pushback comes from the change, but we'll see where it goes. Finally today, rare cents worth thousands as the coin is phased out.

23:40Rare pennies are worth big money. Were the U.S. pennies slated for discontinued? I mean, I'm kind of over the penny, to be honest. I'm okay with that thing being discontinued. Do you have any pennies that get laying around? Like, this just doesn't make sense anymore. like I and I will say this I'm embarrassed to say this back I bet I'm honest we say we take the bs out of things but I'm gonna be real with things my kids like throw pennies in the trash like like I I like to think I've taught them the value of a dollar I don't think I've done a good job teaching them the value of the penny or maybe it's just not worth keeping around anymore I mean my my nine-year-old like swiping in the trash I'm like easy like we ain't got a jar for that You know, like you'll throw it away, but it's like, that's how much value your penny has.

24:26What can you buy with a penny now? You know, absolutely nothing. The U.S. penny, once it's discontinued, but it's just like anything else, supply and demand, availability, collectability. And there's going to be like this push. This article talks about error pennies, key dates. You know, that was it. Actually, I was growing up. I would look at the date on the penny or the quarter or whatever it might be and compare it to different things. I used to have some, I think they were like my birthday, my birthday year, those kind of stuff, like a 50 cent piece, stuff like that. It's the first time you've seen a 50 cent piece.

25:02I haven't seen one of those in a while. But anyway, TikTok coin hunters and eBay search spikes show that the booming interest in these micro collectibles, we've talked about this on the show, there's a collector for everything. And as these get phased out, you'll see the values rise. I want to, you know, you got to keep up with it. Like what's rising? It says auctions keep smashing records. One, 1943 copper cent recently hammered for$372 ,000. What? One cent? Damn, that's changing. That's changing cents for dollars right there. There is no sense in that. I don't know about that. Spare change could fund your next idea.

25:47Our pennies are selling for six figures. Hey, we'll see. I don't know. I don't want to pay more pennies later. I'm on, you know, but knowing my luck, my kids have already swiped the ones in the trash that were actually like the ones that were going to be worth hundreds of thousands. So we'll see what happens. All right, guys, we're in the middle of our trading card series. And hey, I figured I'd show you. And again, another reason to be watching the YouTube so you see what we're going, what we have. because this has been the hardest retail box to get probably in all of the hobby the last year or two.

26:22Optics 2024 football. We may have opened a box of this. It may have been Donruss. But nonetheless, one of the hottest boxes in retail. Shoot me a DM and I will send you maybe a card or two. I'll know that you watched. How about that? So they come with six packs, four cards per pack. If I'm doing that right, let me look. So 24 opportunities. You're looking for the inserts and everybody's hot on these because they're called uptowns and downtowns. You'll know what that means if you get into the hobby at all. If you're into the hobby at all, you know exactly what that means. But that's what everybody's searching for.

27:03Plus, you got like six of the best rookies the last few years, six quarterbacks. So any of those are hot. And so, Optic Football from Don Russ. One of the hottest in the hobby still, even though it's not football season. So, here we go. Usually a couple base and then an insert card. Pat Mahomes, Silver, the best in the game. You'll see that's like a hollow. So, you've got holographic. That's the difference. See the difference in the card? See, this has kind of that mirror all around it. But this shows you the hollow. But Pat Mahomes, Silver, Roma Dunze. You got to say, hey, if you're in the trading business, you're holding on to those rookie cards, hoping they turn into like Hall of Famers.

27:50And then the special insert cards you never know. So Buda Baker, Josh Palmer. And there's another good hit. Michael Penix, Jr., one of the big hot rookie quarterbacks from the Atlanta Falcons. He also, they played together. That Washington team was stacked, by the way. So Michael Penix, this is a throwback card, a 2014 retro series. Those are fun. So two nice hits already. That's why these are in such high demand. Fund to open and lots of hits. Jamari Thrash is your rookie. He's less on the radar, but who knows? You never know when a rookie is going to blow up. So you save those rookie cards and you save those insert cards.