What is Podcast Advertising?
Silently captivating the ears of millions, podcast advertising has emerged in the marketing landscape. Podcast advertising is expected to grow to 98.7 million users by 2027 with users constantly on the go and being connected to digital aspects. The revenue is projected to reach 2.18 billion dollars by the end of 2023. “In fact, 75% of listeners say they give their favorite podcasts their full attention. Which means people are actually listening. They’re not just playing something in the background or zoning out in front of a screen — they’re highly engaged and often hanging on to every word” making podcast advertising even more important.”
Podcast advertising is a marketing strategy allowing brands to promote their products and services during podcast episodes. Most podcasts have ads during the beginning (pre-roll), middle (mid-roll), and end (post-roll). Typically, pre-roll and post-roll ads are shorter around 15 seconds while midroll ads are upwards of 60 seconds. Advertisers can either have the podcast host read their ad or hire voice talent. Ads that are read by the post perform significantly better than third party ads as customers don’t feel like they are being bombarded with irrelevant ads.
Factors in podcast advertising
Getting started with podcast advertising, it is important to take many factors into consideration. These are demographics, industries, and types of promotions. Understanding the demographics of your brand users and of podcasts is critical. You want to place your advertisements on a podcast that is listened to the demographic of your target market. This goes hand in hand with the industry. What industry does your target market fall in that is related to a podcast industry? Does your brand and the podcast topic have a correlation? If the answer to this is yes, then this is the perfect podcast to place your ads. Then it becomes time to consider what type of promotion to run.
A common promotion is a native ad. Native ads are short audio clips read by the host or voice talent. Another type of promotion is a paid interview. This allows for a brand to be interviewed in the podcast in exchange for sponsorship dollars. It helps generate brand awareness in a more interesting form. Product placement promotions are similar where podcasters get paid to mention or use your product casually throughout the podcast.
Benefits and Challenges
With podcast advertising being a new marketing strategy, there are many benefits and challenges. Benefits include having highly engaged and loyal audiences, niche targeting, long lasting impacts, and diverse formats. Podcast listeners are typically dedicated to their specific interests in podcasts. Therefore, targeting a podcast aligned with industry, you are tapping into a highly engaged and loyal audience. Podcasts cover a wide and diverse range of topics that allow advertisers to target specific niches. As a result, these niches allow advertisers to have higher conversion rates from different audiences. Listeners can listen and relisten to an episode or discover an old episode. This allows for an ad to have a long-lasting impact for the advertiser with continued exposure. Diverse formats, as previously explained, allows for ads to be in many different forms like native ads, interviews, sponsored content, and host read ads.
While podcast advertising has many benefits, there are challenges as well. Challenges include difficulty tracking impact, limited control over placement, ad skipping, and return on investment (ROI). Rather than using ads for lead generation, ads can be more brand awareness focused. They should have a clear call to action at the end or a discount code that can be used to track metrics. Advertisers can suggest where they want their ad in a podcast, but the specific placement in pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll and timing can vary and impact the performance. Ad skipping or fast forwarding over ads is an issue. Especially in longer podcasts, many listeners may skip over the ads and not even hear anything about your brand. ROI can be challenging for podcast advertising. Advertisers need to be focused on creating more brand awareness during their ads rather than striving for immediate conversions.
The Future of Podcast Advertising
Podcast advertising is a modern approach to advertising in an innovative and changing world. Podcast advertising is evolving with interactive ads and voice commerce. Interactive ads include elements like voice-activated commands, interactive storytelling, or gamified content, offering a more engaging and immersive experience for listeners. Examples include having listeners participate in quizzes or challenges related to a brand to make the ad more entertaining and interactive. Interactive ads capture listeners attention more and encourage participation with a brand. Voice commerce is becoming a significant trend. Listeners can make purchases to a brand through voice commands within the podcast. Similar to how devices like Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod function, voice commerce in podcasts allows for a listener to say a command and interact with a brand.
The Ultimate Guide to Podcast Advertising and Sponsorship (hubspot.com)
How to Advertise on Podcasts: Tips & Ad Examples | Spotify Advertising
Podcast Advertising: 5 Experts Reveal Their Secrets (hubspot.com)
Podcast Advertising: How to Run Podcast Ads to Promote Your Show (castos.com)
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