That is set to grow by more than 110% by 2020, according to the IAB and PwC. But now, as personalisation tops many brand priorities, there are signs that brands are beginning to realise there is so much more to be leveraged from the environment that podcasts offer.
Last year, in a claimed world-first, digital audio and voice technology company Acast began running personalised podcast ads across its global network of 125 million monthly users and 3,000 podcasts. What this looks (or sounds) like is combining advertiser messaging with data such as the weather, time of day, location, show name, show category or device type to create thousands of unique combinations that can be used to target listeners.
Meanwhile, Global, which bought Primesight and Outdoor Plus to add to its radio brands last September, also moved into podcasts at the end of 2018. It has already experimented with linking up outdoor and radio advertising to drive campaign outcomes for brands by targeting specific locations and local offers. Using geo-fencing, it can get data on whether someone has walked past a specific store or outdoor ad and then serve them a relevant audio ad while they are listening to a podcast or the radio.
So, in the US and UK in particular there are many media supplier adapting to the new medium that is Podcasts, that leveraged with their targeting abilities provide advertisers with an opportunity to be very specific in terms of who they target and most importantly when? As targeting the consumer at the right decision-making process of their journey can yield stronger campaign ROI’s.
The big benefit for advertisers is, podcasts create opportunities for brands to deliver their message in contextual environments across a range of verticals. However as with everything, as this channel develops so will the opportunities to personalise content in the future, we may see opportunities for users to interact more with the content they are listening e.g. choosing the ending’ of shows in return for listening to ad content. If Netflix’s Bandersnatch is anything to go by it shows a high engagement with this content format.
To summarise, our findings show that Podcasts ads are on the rise and that brands and advertisers will be able to be very specific in relation to the content they share. The engagement levels are much higher for this medium and offers a great alternative to Social Advertising where the market is already quite saturated. The based place to start is by testing the environment to see what results you can achieve and building from their.
