This is the second part in a two part series about podcast advertising. You can read part one here: So You Want to Build A Podcast Ad

You’ve been running podcast ads as part of your brand marketing strategy for some time and you’re starting to wonder if you’re doing the right thing. Are you reaching the right audience? Do you have the right mix of host-read versus pre-produced ads? What is the right blend?

For a brand marketing campaign, you’re looking for reach, repetition, and for your audience to see your brand in an equal or better way than when you started. That’s asking a lot! 

First things first: you need to make sure you have a clear idea of who your target audience is. Who is the person you are talking to? Is it your next door neighbour or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company? I like to take the market segmentation lists breaking down demographics, psychographics, behavioral, and geographic segmentation and use them to create an image of 1 or 2 people. Imagine a picture that you can put up on your wall and think of what that person would do in a given situation and how they are going to react to your brand.

There are two main ways to tap into that target audience in podcasting. You can buy programmatic advertising, which allows you to target specific demographics and reach the ideal audience across a lot of different shows. AND you can do strategic research to find the specific podcasts that your audience is listening to. Both have pros and cons, but the thing that separates them at the end of the day is ease of use.

Let’s start with the cons for contextual buying… 

…because I like to do the “first-then” method (think: “eat your vegetables and then you get your dessert.”) Strategic Research and Targeted Planning is time consuming. A media planner and their team has to listen to podcasts that fit within a target audience’s neighbourhood. They then reach out to the network or independent producer that represents those podcasts, and ask for their specific audience data to confirm initial assumptions. Once that’s done, the media planner can then negotiate rates and make buys across the desired shows. A lot of research and outreach goes into buying ad space in this way.

But now, the pros!

The benefits of these strategic and focussed types of campaigns can be enormous, even on smaller shows. Targeting specific podcasts gives you the opportunity to run engaging and more integrated host-read campaigns. Listeners trust the podcast hosts they love, and having your brand’s message come out in the words of that host can have a huge impact on your brand’s image.

Do this on well-targeted shows, developing long-term relationships with podcasts hosts that make sense to your brand, and the results can be priceless as you grow a relationship with that host’s existing audience.

That’s all great, but you want scale! And reach! And impressions! 

That’s where programmatic advertising comes in. 

Programmatic advertising has been influential in the ongoing transformation of the podcast ad tech industry and because of its relative ease of use, speed, and versatility, it has become a significant component to many brand’s approaches to podcast advertising. 

As reported by the IAB, programmatic advertising made up 1.7% of the overall advertising spend in 2021, where projections for 2024 set programmatic on course to make up ~20% of podcast advertising budgets that are projected to top $4.2 billion.

Throughout 2023, Pacific Content worked with and tested many networks’ new programmatic offerings. While some are more intuitive and easier to use than others, they are all working to build an offering that makes podcast advertising easier and more approachable, while reaching the scale that brands and agencies expect.

With a targeted approach and well planned creative, this can be an excellent supporting piece to your brand marketing approach. 

So what is the best approach: go for targeted, or go for scale?

Both! At Pacific Content we are constantly testing new ad tech in an effort to help brands build meaningful attention and relationships with their target audiences. Programmatic gets the reach and scale, while strategic targeting is the answer for tapping into what podcasting does best: engaging an audience in a way they are familiar with and an invitation from a host they trust and respect. 

In strategically allocating your budgets to support your brand goals, you can optimize your dollars to take advantage of the myriad of ways podcast advertising is helping brands to develop a connection with their target audience.

There will always be a balance, but in the world of brand marketing there is a real opportunity to develop relationships with a podcast’s audience through their host’s endorsement or recommendation. Take that relationship and support it with your amazing pre-produced podcast creative on other podcasts across your ideal client’s/prospect’s playlist, and you have a winning combination that will put you top of mind for your perfect audience.

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