Podcast Advertising: My commute to work is 2.5 hours each way. So I listen to many podcasts, including science, technology, news, fiction, sci-fi, horror, and business. These podcasts have featured various types of advertising. Based on what I’ve seen, I want to clarify a few points for podcasting advertisers.
Know Your Audience
This is almost a given. This is something I mention because I have seen advertisements that seem to overlook this important point. An advertisement pitch that emphasizes “all American” benefits of the product, especially if your podcast appeals to a large international audience, is not the right approach.
Get A General Picture Of Your Listeners To Your Podcast.
While podcast advertising are popular because of the freedom they offer users to listen to them whenever and how they like, it is possible to get a better idea of the overall consumption environment by conducting a survey.
This can give you valuable insights into the products you can advertise. For example, one fiction podcast realized that its listeners listen to the podcast at night and decided to market fuzzy headphones that can be worn while you sleep.
Make sure the advertisement is relevant to your podcast, and, if possible to the episode.
This seems simple enough, but I have seen business podcasts fail to do this. A car advertisement about style and comfort is not something you want to promote in a podcast about green-tech.
Know just-tolerable-length
Remember, most of your audience is listening to your podcast on an audio player that can easily skip ahead. You can make an advertisement smaller than necessary. This will increase the irritation of having to skip ahead. Your advertisement might not be effective if it is too small.
It is important to know how small your pitch should be. What I refer to as “just tolerable length” is the length of an advertisement. It will depend on many factors, including the ones I have already mentioned. People will listen to advertisements that are relevant, funny, or informative if they find them interesting.
Remember that the listener is free to choose how they want to hear your message. Therefore, traditional advertising principles may not apply to this medium. You will need to be creative in order to convey your message.
Final Words
Podcast advertising is complicated by the fact that metrics that apply to radio and TV may not be applicable here. This is because it can be difficult to measure and may not allow for meaningful interpretation.
However, the internet’s advertising metrics aren’t relevant for this media. This medium seems more suited to niche marketing that measures results directly, rather than building awareness or top-of-the-mind recall.
