Podcasts are one of the best ways to advertise your product today. The listener base is huge, yes, but that’s not the only reason that brands are jumping on this particular bandwagon. A lot of research shows that podcast advertisements can actually be more effective at getting people to pay attention and buy. If you’re looking to get into advertising on podcasts, you might be wondering where to start. There’s so much content out there that developing a strategy can be a pretty intimidating task. Well, have no fear, we’ve got some great tips for developing an effective podcast advertising strategy. Read on to learn more.
The Benefits of Podcast Advertising
You might be wondering about the efficacy of podcast advertising and why so many people are using it in the first place. Frankly, the numbers speak for themselves. According to Statista, the number of adults who have listened to a podcast in the last month has tripled over the past decade, and that number continues to grow. Not only that, but other studies indicate that audio ads tend to stick with people much longer than visual ads. Think about all the ads you scroll past on your social media feeds and websites. There is such an overwhelming number that it has become second nature to most people simply to ignore them. When you’re already engaged with a podcast, you’re unlikely to just quickly tune out when an advertisement pops up.
And finding the right podcast to advertise on is possible for just about any niche. There are over 1,750,000 active podcasts, with more being created and published all the time. You’re bound to find something that meshes well with your product or service offering.
Finally, the numbers speak for themselves. By 2024, podcast ad spend from companies is projected to top $1.6 billion. Clearly, companies have continued faith in the efficacy of these types of ads, and they’re only becoming more effective as the strategies and best practices are fleshed out.
Know Your Jargon
As with any new venture, you’ll have to learn some inside terms. Getting familiar with these podcast advertising terms will help you learn more about the podcast space and help you better define your strategy.
CPM: If you’re familiar with running Google Ad and social media campaigns, you’re probably familiar with cost-per-click, and podcasts have a fairly similar metric for advertising. CPM refers to cost-per-mille, or cost per thousand listeners. It’s more analogous to impressions, but in CPM you’ll be charged for every thousand listeners who hear your ad. This is great if you’re looking to raise brand awareness.
CPA: CPA is pretty straightforward, as it refers to cost per acquisition, or how much it costs you to get a new customer from an ad. These are usually measured by conversions. This is great for selling your products or services, though it can sometimes be more costly. Of these two options, CPM is much more common for podcast advertising.
Now let’s look at the different places you can put your ad:
Pre-roll: Pre-roll ads are placed at the beginning of the podcast.
Mid-roll: Mid-roll ads play in a section during the podcast, typically somewhere in the middle.
Outro: Outro ads happen right before the podcast ends.
These are pretty self-explanatory, but it’s still important to know where you want to place your ads.
Decide on Your Type of Ad
Now that you have an idea of how the cost of your ads is determined and where you can place them, you’ll need to decide on the type of podcast ad you want to use. In this case, you have a couple of options.
Dynamically Inserted Ads: Dynamically inserted ads are served after the podcast has already been recorded and published. These ads are prerecorded and won’t be a part of the podcast forever.
Baked-in Ads: Baked-in ads, on the other hand, are part of the initial recording of the podcast. Typically, the podcast host will read these advertisements aloud, and then they’ll live on the podcast forever.
So which type do you use in your advertising strategy? It depends on what you’re going for. If you’re trying to raise brand awareness or create evergreen ads, then baked-in ads are a great option. They also feel a little bit more organic because they’re integrated into the podcast more naturally.
Dynamic ads certainly have their pluses too. You can use them to promote a sale or one-time promotion and easily make adjustments to your ads. A dynamically inserted ad lets you target your demographic more specifically, and these ads let you measure the effectiveness of your ads more easily.
Benefits of Topical Advertising
Typically, when you come up with a traditional social media or search engine advertising campaign, you’re going to be looking at things like demographics, best time of day to spend, and other detailed metrics. But with podcast advertising, things are actually much simpler. With podcasts, you’ll be able to engage in topical advertising. Since there are thousands of podcasts out there for just about every hobby, interest, and niche you can think of, it’s much easier for an advertiser to directly connect with the right audience.
For instance, when you’re selling running shoes, you simply need to find podcasts that are focused on fitness and running specifically. Obviously if someone is interested enough in these hobbies to be listening to hours of content about them, they’re going to be interested in running gear as well. Topical advertising makes for the perfect symbiosis between advertiser, content creator, and audience. No other form of advertising is quite this easy. And best of all, just because it’s easier it doesn’t mean it’s less effective. Quite the opposite, many advertisers see great ROI from their podcast advertising efforts.
Optimize Your Ads and Adjust Your Strategy as Necessary
As you get the hang of podcast advertising, you’ll become more adept at figuring out what kinds of ads work best for your business. You’ll make better choices for your ad spends, and you’ll be able to optimize your ads to really appeal to your target demographic. A platform like Backtracks gives you the data and analytics you need to make the right choices, optimize your ad performance and maximize your ROI.
Let Backtracks Help With Your Podcast Advertising Strategy
If you’re looking to start harnessing the power of podcast advertising, then the Backtracks platform can help. We make it extremely simple for advertisers to find the right podcast for their product, buy the ad space and get the analytics to continually optimize performance. Try the Backtracks platform and see how much of a difference podcast ads can make for your business.
