A Breakdown Of Four Types of Podcast Ads

This transcript is not edited.

[00:00:29]Heather Osgood: [00:00:29] Hello and welcome to The Podcast Advertising Playbook. I'm your host, Heather Osgood. I have had some great calls with potential advertisers today, and I wanted to share answers to some of the questions that I received from those potential advertisers. I was talking with a company and they were very curious about the different types of ads and what would be best for their company. So I wanted to go over first and [00:01:00] foremost, the different types of podcast ads that are available out there. Let's go ahead and start with the most traditional ad in this space. And that is the embedded host read ad. 

[00:01:12] An embedded host read ad is an ad that is created by the host. So talking points are given to the host. You want to make sure that you give them your unique selling proposition that you give them maybe four to five points that are important for them to mention about your company. A call to action is super important. A strong call to action, maybe a strong offering, right?

[00:01:37] In those talking points, the host can interject their own personality, their own thoughts. They can interject a story or something that makes it interesting to their audience. So that is the basis of a host read ad. And oftentimes host read ads are embedded or baked into an episode. [00:02:00] What that means is that when you have one podcast episode, let's say you have an episode 50 that is going to be coming out today.

[00:02:10] And your ad is an episode 50. It is actually part of the audio file for episode 50. So if someone listens to episode 50 today, they will hear your ad read. If they listen to it in two weeks, they'll hear your ad read if they listen to it in two months or even potentially two years, depending on if and when the podcast host decides to take that ad readout.

[00:02:33] And oftentimes it'll stay there indefinitely. So that is a host read embedded baked in ad. Now we can also do host reads that are dynamically inserted and how dynamically inserted ads work is that they are crossed the entire catalog, both current and back catalog episodes and the ad is still host read, but it is dynamically or essentially put in to the system by a computer.

[00:03:00] [00:03:00] Now, if you're listening to a podcast and you hear a host read dynamically inserted ad, if it is done well, you should not be able to tell that it is any different than an embedded ad read. Now, the benefits of embedded ad reads are that they have a strong, long tail. That ad message is going to be out there and maybe you purchase 10,000 downloads because you expect that episode to receive 10,000 downloads in a 30 day period. But because that episode is going to continue to accrue downloads over months and years, you're actually going to end up getting more downloads than you paid for. 

[00:03:36] The benefit at dynamic insertion is you reach the entire catalog of listeners, right? You reach the entire audience for a specific timeframe, not just the listeners to one episode. The other benefit of dynamic ad insertion is much like in the radio world, you can create high frequency because we know that people listen to more episodes than just one episode per [00:04:00] month. You're hitting the same person with multiple messages over the course of a month. So that's really powerful. So those are two different types of ads. 

[00:04:10] Now the third type of ad is a programmatic ad. That is a prerecorded, you know, much like a radio ad that is going to be dynamically inserted into a podcast. Now, when you look at programmatic ad reads, the benefit of that is that you can do a lot of customization and you can do a lot of targeting. You can target specific geo areas, right? So we could say, "Hey, we just want the city of New York. We just want a LA we just want San Francisco." You have this ability to do geo-targeting, which is very powerful.

[00:04:49] You also have the ability to manipulate slight leave the demographics that you're reaching. Now, it depends on the platform that you're using for your programmatic ad buying. But [00:05:00] if you're using a program that will allow for demographical targeting, you can use that capability. So the benefits of programmatic dynamically inserted ads is that you're reaching a very specific targeted audience.

[00:05:17] The downside of that is you're not capitalizing on the power of the host read, right? That is what is unique and special about the podcast ad space. 

[00:05:28] Now you certainly can do the geo-targeting and even the demographic targeting with host read ads as well. The trick with that though, is that you have to identify large shows. At True Native Media, some of our shows are getting over a million downloads a month, which is amazing. And we have the capability with those shows to do some geo-targeting with their ad messages, because the audience is large enough. 

[00:05:53] At True Native Media, we also represent podcasts that have. 10,000 downloads. And I can tell you that if you're [00:06:00] looking to reach people in very specific places, when you take those 10,000 downloads and you carve it up into a million different pieces, you're left with not a lot. You're not reaching enough people. 

[00:06:11]If you're looking to do geo-targeting with a dynamic feature and a host read ad, you definitely can do that. You just have to be conscientious of the size of the shows that you're going on, where with programmatic, it doesn't, you know, you're not choosing the specific shows. You're just going out across lots and lots of different podcasts. 

[00:06:32] And the fourth one I wanted to talk about was streaming. So as we know, there are moves toward many of the streaming platforms to run ads within Spotify to run ads within Pandora. And those streaming services are going to, I believe the increasing. Now all of those are also going to be prerecorded.

[00:06:52] So there are definitely different ways that you can go about buying podcasts ads. And there are [00:07:00] certainly benefits to all of them. One of the things to consider is that not everyone is going to sell everything. So if you are looking to do a programmatic ad buy, you're going to have to go to a company such as Adswizz or such as Triton digital, or Megaphone, or Art 19, that has the capability of doing some of that. 

[00:07:24] So there are several different layers when we think about podcast advertising and you have to go to the right people to do the right types of ads. So that part can get a little bit complicated. If you're looking to do host right endorsement ads, just about anybody can do that for you. If you're looking to do host read dynamically inserted ads, again, many many people can do that for you. So it depends a lot on what it is that you're looking for. 

[00:07:50] I wanted to dive into this just a little bit deeper, because I think it's important for you to consider the results that you're looking for and to consider the type of [00:08:00] podcast advertising you want to do to decide which one is actually going to be a good fit for you.

[00:08:05] If you're looking to reach a very specific audience of people, it's not going to benefit you as much to try and do a programmatic approach or to try and do a geo-targeted approach because you're looking to reach such a small audience. And in that case, my recommendation to you would be to look at the embedded ad reads to look at the host, read dynamic insertion options, because that is going to give you the audience that you need.

[00:08:35] All you have to do essentially is identify the podcasts that are going to deliver that audience. But if you've got a highly targeted audience, really, if it's very niche, you're going to succeed better with a tactic where you're going direct. If you're looking, if you're a Geico, if you were a Progressive or a tire company, of course, you know, [00:09:00] going the programmatic route, of course, going to, Hey, we really just want to reach people. in this one area that can work really well for you as you know, as an option. But really I think that it is a best option for people who are trying to do mass reach. So if you're trying to do mass reach and you have a product or service that just about anybody can use, then it makes sense.

[00:09:26] And you can then take advantage of some of the capabilities with really looking at targeting and looking at, um, some of those specialist specialized features. The other thing that you're going to find is that with some of that programmatic style buying, you do get more statistics oftentimes than you would with an embedded ad read or with the dynamically inserted ad reads.

[00:09:50] So I wanted to create this episode to share with you the different types of options that are available out there. And if you are thinking about trying to go [00:10:00] in one direction or another, consider what your goals are, consider who it is that you're trying to reach and then decide what type of podcast advertising is going to be best for you.

[00:10:10] I hope that this has been helpful. If you're interested in learning more about podcast advertising, you can go to our website, truenativemedia.com and find out more about us. You can also enter in your information. We'd be happy to reach out and talk to you. I am very active on LinkedIn. I do a LinkedIn live every Wednesday at 10:00 AM pacific standard time. I would love to see you on there. Ask me any questions you have. I'm happy to answer them. And I just really appreciate you being here with us today. And I look forward to talking to you again next week. Take care.

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