Tips from the Agency that Owns 40% of the Industry’s Revenue
By Jeremy Helton, VP Marketing & Communications at audioBoom
In print, native ads have proven to be an effective way to engage readers and minimize disruption of the reader experience. Along the same lines, host-read podcast ads are often hidden in the context of a show — making them more organic and minimizing any disruption to the listener experience.
Hosts who deliver ads as part of their show lend brands an added level of authenticity from the rapport they have built with their dedicated audience. In many cases, podcast hosts have become significant influencers, on par with many of the larger bloggers and celebrities on social media. As a result, endorsements from hosts have proven ROI.
One of the challenges with this style of content is that podcasting metrics have been notoriously difficult to pin down. With that in mind, it brings up a larger question of what constitutes a meaningful impression for advertisers?
Russell Lindley, owner and co-founder of Ad Results Media, with offices in Houston and San Diego, has made it his life’s work to find out. Ad Results Media specializes in live radio, podcast and YouTube endorsement advertising in which products or services are recommended by credible personalities. Nineteen years ago, Lindley started out in radio advertising and built his business around that model but has since seen the industry shift to podcast advertising and naturally incorporated podcast advertising into his business as a result.
“By combining comprehensive strategy development, detailed campaign execution and our deep analytical skillsets, we’ve revolutionized a once upper funnel channel and created a medium where marketers can significantly scale advertising in a cost-efficient manner,” said Lindley of his business.
Ad Results Media has worked with more than 3,000 podcasts across a variety of platforms, including audioBoom, the leading podcasting and on-demand audio platform for hosting, distributing and monetizing content, for 19 years. Lindley and his team contract with more than 40 top brands across a variety of industries to help them find the most effective podcasts on which to advertise. Their recommendations are based on a variety of factors, including a podcast’s track record of success in delivering ROI.
Podcast Advertising: Best Practices for Brands
Most of Lindley’s clients judge the performance of podcast ads by measuring sales based on unique URLs and/or promotional codes. In fact, Ad Results Media places nearly 40 percent of the $220 million ad spend in podcasting. As a result, Lindley and his team have been able to pinpoint some best practices for brands looking to improve their bottom line through this medium.
- Respect the relationship between podcast hosts and their listeners.
Having a specific brand or service recommended to you by a trusted voice makes a huge difference. Lindley and his team have found that host-read podcast ads work best when the host in question believes in the product being advertised.
Ad Results Media works closely with brands to make their relationship with podcast hosts as seamless as possible. Lindley and his team typically approach hosts and request that they try and use their client’s product prior to an ad buy so that the host can become familiar with it and talk about it in a more organic way. As a result, the promotion doesn’t feel staged and the host is able to connect more deeply to their listeners with a personal recommendation.
2. Don’t get hung up on the genre of the show in which your ad is placed.
Believe it or not, podcast advertising seems to be equally successful across genres — from true crime to liberal politics shows (which traditionally don’t do well on terrestrial radio), the true value of podcast advertising lies in an advertiser’s ability to leverage the relationship between a show host and their listeners.
After the success of Serial, one might have assumed that true crime podcasts like Up and Vanished and Undisclosed would be successful for brands looking to advertise a somewhat niche product. But as it turns out, these shows and other true crime podcasts have large, engaged audiences who are receptive to a variety of brands.
However, even in the case of shows where the topic is more specific and the audiences are smaller, they are still appealing to the masses.
3. While podcast metrics can tell you a bit about your audience, they cannot measure the success of your ad.
With talk of big analytics coming to Apple’s podcast app, many brands are energized by the idea that they will be able to learn more about listener behavior and perhaps better target their podcast advertising.
However, Lindley believes that analytics will not have a size-able impact on the results of podcast advertising. While metrics may answer some questions about why certain podcasts are so successful (completion rate, ad skipping, etc.), there’s a lot of art involved in making the right decisions about where to place ads.
This is similar to the football draft. In the draft, many look to a player’s stats to determine their worth; however, when you really get down to it, the greatest analysis in the world can’t predict a player’s success — raw talent is innate.
In the same way, Ad Results Media has years’ worth of internal data to help them determine which podcasts will be most effective vehicles for a brand’s ad. While podcast metrics might help shed light on podcast listenership and how podcasts are consumed, determining which ads will be successful, and where, is more of an art than a science.
Results!
The proof is in the pudding. Over the last six quarters, Ad Results Media tracked the results of host-read ads placed in four categories — podcasts, national radio, satellite, local radio — and learned that podcasts are now the most highly performing category of audio advertising.
Furthermore, 2017 will be the first year that Ad Results Media’s clients spend more in podcasting than radio — all because the revenue derived from podcasts is growing so quickly across Ad Results Media customer. To put this into context: as podcasts audiences continue to grow, Ad Results Media has seen rates for podcast ads go up as much as 4,000 percent proportionally. And according to audioBoom, 93 percent of companies/brands have increased their advertising spend from 2016 to 2017.
In working with audioBoom, Ad Results Media provides its clients access to a lineup of podcasts that capture the attention of more than 60 million listeners per month, and that number continues to grow.
Learn more about podcast advertising by going to audioboom.com.
