Advertisers Have Found a Home in Podcasts & it’s Successful

Podcast listeners and advertising are finding mutual understanding: a passion for on-demand audio content. Last year an analysis by Bridge Ratings predicted that as advertisers gained more and more confidence in podcasts, the market spend for the Podcast space will expand at a consistent 25% a year through to 2020.

Likewise, Advertising Age projects that advertisers will strive for their content marketing plans to include the production of audience-oriented content that aligns with their brand’s purpose and values. All this garners into a glaring reality: podcasting advertising is a permanent part of our media landscape.

The Era of Branded Podcasts

A movement that is gaining strength in 2018 is branded podcasts. Many companies have started to create their own branded podcast as an alternative to purchasing ads in other podcasts.

Tech entrepreneur Anthony Frasier remarks that “what makes branded audio content great is they allow brands to create an entire experience.”  4 vastly uniquely branded podcasts show just how creative businesses can get:

1. The very first of these uniquely branded podcasts to reach #1 on iTunes was “The Message”, a joint effort between General Electric and Slate Magazine. Each podcast brings a new episode of fictional Sci-Fi tale that revolves around sound technology.
2. The goal is to associate the brand with a compelling message. That’s how Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Starbucks executive producer Rajiv Chandrasekaran began Upstanders, a podcast that celebrates true American spirit through stories of compassion, optimism inspiring individuals.
3. Another goal is also understanding your audience and expanding the brand’s ideology into day to day life. The office chat platform Slack’s hugely successful Variety Pack is all about great team-building, culture, innovation and everything in-between.
4. Can you believe, even banks are in on this?! Umpqua paints itself as “the West Coast’s largest, and most unconventional, community bank.” So it’s not surprising that its podcast Open Account addresses very bluntly one of American culture’s largest taboos – money.

Read more over at VOXNEST

Photo by Stephen Niemeier on Pexels.com

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“Podcasts’ popularity is growing, which is why businesses are choosing them as their go-to in audio advertising. Read up on the diverse formats and their individual strengths.”

Advertisers and brands constantly need to seek new and innovative ways to reach audiences if they are to hold their own against competitors. In the current market, more and more businesses are looking to audio as a tool to reach their consumers’ subconscious – why? Because it’s economic, creative and subtle in its approach.

With the consistent growth of podcasts’ popularity over recent years, the increase in their appeal as a marketing tool has gone hand in hand. In 2016, Bridge Ratings predicted that as marketers gain more belief in the medium, spend will increase year-on-year by 25% until 2020.

Likewise, Advertising Age, predicts that advertisers will push for their content marketing strategies to produce audience-oriented content which aligns with their brand’s purpose and values. This information points to one conclusion, the integration of audio and podcasts in communications and marketing strategies.

As a marketer, there are a few key options available within the audio market and you can make the decision on what works best for you and your business from a range of factors such as cost or simply which style of advertising you like the most.

Read the entire article over at VOXNEST.

I tracked Apple’s Top 200 Podcasts for an entire year. Here’s what I found.

In early 2017, a colleague and I were discussing an upcoming podcast launch, debating which of Apple’s categories was the best fit: Business? Technology? Society & Culture? Which of Apple’s categories was most appropriate, and would give the show its best chance of being discovered?

Josh Morgan had already done some fascinating analysis of Apple’s podcast categories in 2015, where he identified the most (and least) crowded categories across Apple’s podcast ecosystem.

But we were interested in top-performing podcasts. Specifically, we wanted to know:

• Which categories are most represented in the Apple Podcasts Top 200?
• How does category representation change over time?

So I wrote a short Python script to check the Apple Podcasts US Top 200. Then I ran my script once an hour, every hour, for an entire year. Here’s the result:

Read more at Pacific Content HERE

Interested in starting a podcast to promote your business?  Contact me today for a no obligation consultation to see what Homemade Podcasts can do for you.

The Year Ahead In Podcast Metrics, Content & Marketing.

Here’s a new term for you. As podcasting becomes all the more mainstream as a media platform, opportunities to diversify revenue beyond straight-ahead advertising are being developed. One area of focus, according to Midroll—the podcast content company owned by radio and TV operator The E.W. Scripps Co.—is merchandising, which it deems PodSwag.

The company’s blog offers a two-part 2018 forecast for the industry, in which Lex Friedman, Midroll chief revenue officer, explains, “Last year we created a new platform for selling merchandise across podcasts. We’ve seen success beyond t-shirts and coffee mugs with both our owned-and-operated shows, as well as others in the Midroll network.”

For example, it offers a magnet set for the podcast “Hello from the Magic Tavern,” as well as enamel pins, stickers, laptop decals, “all the stuff people want so they can celebrate their favorite podcasts,” he says. The value-add has become so much a part of the overall marketing plan for podcasts, that the company hired an experienced merchandiser from the fashion industry “who will lead this division to continued growth in the coming year.”

Revenue diversification extends to subscription content with Stitcher Premium. The service delivers to customers ad-free original podcast series, along with archives and bonus episodes of established series like “Comedy Bang! Bang!” and “WTF with Marc Maron,” and other audio programs, like comedy albums and BBC audio dramas.

Continue reading over at InsideRadio, click HERE.

Why Now Is The Time For Your Brand To Adopt Podcasting

You may not have noticed* but podcasting is blowing up. Big time.

* Like if you’ve been living under a rock or something…

What was a few short years ago the sole territory of radio nerds and forward thinking content creators hiding out in their basements recording episodes, has transformed into a medium that’s attracting big money, talent, advertisers, and brands.

There’s no surprise why. Those of us in the podcasting community have long known the stats* that podcast listeners in the US are more affluent, more educated, and more engaged with the brands they follow than the average of the American population as a whole.

* Find the Full report here and see for yourself.

But now for the surprise.

Only 8% of brands and marketers are currently using podcasting as a method of content creation and promotion. Yes, 8%.

What’s more, 60% of marketers have ZERO intention of ever getting into podcasting.

I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me like there’s an opportunity to make an impact here in a less crowded, but highly engaged, intelligent, and wealthy market. Sounds like the people you want to reach with your brand right?*

* If not, I might suggest rethinking your target audience…

Video, and live video in particular, seems to have established itself as the future of marketing, and I get it. Video is flashy and sexy and immersive and flexible and takes a ton of work to produce and is super expensive and… Ok sorry for the jab there video peeps. I love video, I honestly do! But I also know that it’s just beyond my capability to do well myself, and beyond my budget to have someone else do it well for me on a recurring basis.

Oh and one more thing. Comparing video with podcasting is comparing apples and oranges. They excel in different areas, serve different purposes, offer a vastly different consumer experience, and are generally used to achieve different outcomes.

 

Read the full article HERE.