The podcast database built by a woman who got sick of doing it the hard way

Most podcast pitching in Australia still runs on whiteboard brain dumps, cold Google searches, and hours spent listening and relistening to interviews to find the perfect guest. 

It's a grind Jennifer Plahm knows well, and she became so sick and tired of it that she decided to build a database instead.

“I used to pitch clients to podcasts, but it was really when I was doing some pro bono PR work for Zan Times - an exiled media organisation led by Afghan women - that I realised that there had to be a better way of doing this,” Plahm told Mediaweek.

"That experience highlighted how much time it takes to find the right shows and the right contacts. And that just takes hours and hours," she said

And, so, The Podcast Assistant was born.

Founded and operated from the Gold Coast, the female-owned business has indexed more than 4.5 million podcasts, searchable by topic, language and location. 

It gives PR, marketing and communications teams a single platform to find podcast opportunities, identify contacts and manage outreach campaigns.

It targets founders, authors, marketers, agencies, communications teams, nonprofits, and PR professionals chasing interview opportunities. 

Users can build campaigns, export podcast lists, track pitching activity and generate AI-written outreach emails that reference a show's most recent episode.

A tool for the people priced out

Time wasn't the only barrier Plahm ran into. Cost was too.

"Many media databases are expensive, and the cost isn't really accessible to many people, nonprofits, or solo PR people. So I wanted to help people save time and connect more easily with hosts and contacts," she explained.

She's seen that gap first-hand. 

"I've worked in PR for over 15 years, both in the US and Australia. So I'm very familiar with the realities of pitching, media databases, and research. What I want to achieve is to make this outreach much more accessible for small businesses, nonprofits, and agencies," she said.

Early client and brand feedback, Plahm said, has centred on the time saved chasing down contacts. 

"It takes the headache out of podcast outreach, especially when it comes to finding accurate contact details for hosts and producers, which is usually the most time-consuming part," she said, adding it keeps outreach efforts open and makes it easier to connect brands with the right shows. That includes hosts themselves, who use it to hunt guests for their own shows.

Plahm says The Podcast Assistant took about four months from initial idea to launch, built mostly through conversations with PR colleagues.

"This is definitely a product I wish I'd had," she said. 

"Doing the podcast outreach manually often means hours of searching for shows and contacts. Having a tool like this back then would have saved me days of work."

Why trust is the whole pitch

Plahm's answer for why podcasting, specifically, comes down to trust. She said audiences are increasingly worn down by AI-generated content, advertising and curated personal brands, and are looking for something with more substance behind it.

"I think trust matters more than ever, especially with people being exposed to so much AI-generated content, advertising, and people's personal brands on social media. Many are just looking for real substance and a chance to form their own opinions. What I love about podcasting is that it stands out because it's human connection," she said.

That human connection, in Plahm's view, comes down to format. 

Listeners will happily give up half an hour or more to hear someone talk through their thinking and field real questions in their own words, a level of access other formats don't really offer, and one that lets an audience form a more personal read on who's speaking. 

That direct access, she said, makes podcasting valuable for anyone trying to build credibility: people hear the unfiltered version, weigh the perspective for themselves, and decide whether to trust it.

That audience keeps expanding. 

According to Edison Research's Infinite Dial Australia 2026 report, half of Australians aged 10 and over, around 12 million people, now listen to podcasts each month. That has raised the stakes for brands and organisations chasing long-form interviews and conversations.

The plan doesn't stop at Australia. "I really want the podcast assistant to become the go-to tool in Australia and eventually expand overseas," she said.

It's a bet that enough PR people are as tired of doing this manually as she was.