Podcast Advertising: Strategies to Boost Your Reach and Impact



Introduction to Podcast Advertising

As marketers search for new ways to engage attentive niche audiences, escaping the visual clutter of traditional digital ads, podcast advertising has quickly emerged as a prime medium. The ambitious and still-growing podcasting industry now boasts an ad revenue stream projected to exceed $3.5 billion by 2024. This format, however, requires a distinctly different approach—one that hinges on not only what is said but also how it’s said. This article will explore both the best practices and the common pitfalls of podcast advertising. From there, we’ll look into what makes a good advertisement in this format—and, just as importantly, what makes a bad one.

The Intimacy of Podcasts

Podcasts have opened up a whole new level of intimacy between an audience and the spoken word. When people listen to a podcast, they are not doing it in a way that seeks to obscure the content. They are not listening to a podcast in a multitasking way that might assure you it wasn’t a podcast that lost out to an audiobook in the contest for scraping by in a visible-minority interpretation of a college graduation. Instead, we listen to podcasts as we might stroll through a museum—or take the scenic route to our next destination. When people listen, they complete the act of listening in a way that assures the podcast can be either the best or the worst kind of special—an occasion for hitting the pause button on one’s personal TikTok feed. That’s when podcasts can really pack a wallop in terms of delivering messages loud and clear.

Ad-skipping technology may be well established in most forms of traditional media, but in the world of podcasting, advertisers enjoy a much more favorable scenario. For the podcast is one of the few places left in modern media where hosts can deliver messages without the interference of an ad-blocker. Indeed, the very format of the podcast itself is an invitation to an unfettered, one-on-one conversation with the listener. And when it comes to targeting that individual on the other side of the headphone jack, what modern marketer could ask for a better situation? Yet the host-read ad, regarded by many as the highest form of the conversation that can take place between the podcaster and the listener, also has its roots in trust. Most podcasters have created a loyal audience, a group of listeners who feel a parasocial relationship with the person speaking to them from the other side.

Mediums of Consumption

Podcasts are consumed on many mediums. We’re most often taken to them via .mp3 files our smartphones. But our laptops, desktop computers, and smart speakers also allow for easy access to this unique storytelling format. The platforms you do see and hear on offer a pretty basic rundown. Podcasting was born a decade and a half ago, pretty much, give or take. The untethered, half-hour-to-two-hours freeform conversations virtually always involve a host and at least one guest. You might be hard-pressed to find a more genial medium. Who could possibly have a problem with giving half an hour of your time or more to two people having a conversation?

Types of Podcast Ads

Pre-recorded and Branded Content

These ads communicate exact messages procured from advertisers yet preserve the host’s voice to ensure a natural delivery within the show’s tone and flow. The podcast universe is a pretty mammoth pitch, with over 2 million different episodes vying for your ears. So how do advertisers manage to get a word in? One way is with pre-recorded ads, which feature a voice-over person or your average Joe in 10 different demographic slices—not quite the real thing when it comes to podcast host intimacy. Still, those ads have a long reach and considerable rolling power. If you actually do get an ad to deliver in podcast form, it might be for a service way more useful than you think it was back when you first tuned in.

Branded Content

Branded content allows companies to do more than just traditional advertising by co-creating episodes, series, or segments of a podcast around the topics and themes that resonate with their brands. Resource-intensive but oh-so-rewarding, branded content offers an opportunity for unparalleled authenticity and engagement. Understanding the lay of the land when it comes to ad placement is key to maximizing listener attention. Smart advertisers know that you can’t just dunk ads in your podcast willy-nilly and hope for the best. Some opportunities for ad placement in podcasts break down thusly: Pre-roll ads are your best shot at a strong attention grab, but they require messages that really pop because, you know, nothing makes a podcast listener less committed than the first minute of a podcast being an ad. Still, be aware that ad engagement is a not-always-smooth ride in the pre-roll slot.

Engagement and Metrics

Generally, podcast ads might be thought to last about 30-60 seconds. They’re usually placed in the middle of an episode at a point when the host’s audience is most attentive to the show. Besides, if a listener’s focus is dialed up to 11 at a moment when they’re about to hear a big reveal in the plot of the true-crime podcast they’re addicted to, they’re also pretty much guaranteed to hear whatever message you plan to pay the show to deliver. And that’s just one type of moment that works well for placing a podcast ad.

Surveys can often assess ad effect by querying new clients about how they discovered your brand. Numerous companies include “Podcasts” as a choice on their post-purchase questionnaires, and the intelligence they glean from that data is invaluable. Podcast ad networks have made it easy for advertisers to understand what’s working and what’s not through “listen-through” metrics and other consumer behavior proxies. The pricing model used for podcast ads usually hinges on how formidable a network’s audience is and how well the ads are placed within that audience’s listening experience. When asking the question “How much does it cost?” one must then ask another: “How ‘big’ is the podcast?” or “How ‘good’ is the podcast?”

Cost Per Acquisition

Cost per acquisition (CPA) derives from particular results like signups or sales, with advertisers dishing out the dough only when that magic moment happens—making it a model that works really well for campaigns where we want to see some direct, performance-based action. These kinds of ads can work their way into a podcast’s content or exist as an overt announcement, with the host reading the advertisement. This probably seems like a pretty basic rundown of podcast advertising, but these two strategies represent vastly different ways of structuring a “narrative.” Indeed, the very structure of the advertisement can either favor or disfavor a host’s storytelling skills, and this, in turn, can affect how a host’s ad-reading might be taken up by listeners.

Managing Marketing Strategies

Although podcast ads are a potent platform, it is also very important to manage your marketing strategies as a whole. That’s why tools like WoopSocial can be indispensable to a brand that wants to ensure all of its campaigns are running more or less in sync. WoopSocial is at its core an automation tool, which means it can help save time. When you save time, you not only gain precious moments to use in other areas of your life, but you can also reallocate those moments to what we all hope to have more of: socially engaging moments. Engaging and meaningful moments that can allow us to weave ad messages for our podcasts into the larger tapestry of our marketing strategies.