Where We Think Podcast Advertising Is Going

0:00All right. So today, we are going to talk about where we think podcast advertising is going. So in 2020, we saw Spotify spending hundreds of millions of dollars paying for Joe Rogan, paying for other... I think they bought Luminary as well. Maybe the podcast subscription thing. They spent on Megaphone. They spent on Podsites. They bought Chartable. These are all podcast software products. And we want to talk about where we think podcast advertising is going in general. Yeah. So podcast is booming. It's been booming. it's booming more so in certain regions over others like in China podcasting is really huge in the US it's getting bigger and bigger and India is starting to grow at a rapid pace based on the stats and the data I saw and it's just a new form of radio ads but the cool thing about podcast ads is it's digital you can do a lot of interesting things to make more trackable based on how people are listening to it versus like you know someone listening in their car which makes a little bit harder to track.

1:00But depending on how they're listening to it, you can do some really cool stuff. I'll give you a great example of this. A lot of podcasts do video formats and I'm starting to see popular podcasts do ads with QR codes in them so people can scan them while they watch the videos, right? You can consider that a podcast or video version of it, but that's a little bit interesting because it makes it more trackable and you can do really creative offers right then and there to people. And you can rotate it up based on the landing page that you're sending people to. So you can have your offer, people scan the QR code, and then boom, you can start rotating and switching up the landing page over time as your offers change as well.

1:40But I think it's going to boom. I think there's a huge ROI in it. And it's really, really amazing for branding. What I've experienced, and I don't have any stats or data on this one, When we've leveraged podcasts advertising at our agency, NP Digital, we found that you don't necessarily reach as many people as you would through some of the other channels, of course, compared to Google or Facebook. But more so, we're seeing the quality of the individual from a buying power perspective much better in which the people listening in podcasts typically have more money to spend, at least based on the sources where we're advertising.

2:17Yeah. So I wanted to share something real quick in terms of our chartable that shows how we stack up, how our audiences are when it comes to our podcast. So with Marketing School, I'm just going to share my screen. Those of you that can see, and I'll read it off as well. So let's take a look at this. So basically, you can see from Marketing School, the dark blue line is where we are. And then the yellow one is the benchmark. So let me just read this off. So those of you that are listening. Light blue line? Sorry, light blue line. So 200 household income, US household demographics, so household income, 250K or more.

2:51We're basically kind of on par with the benchmarks. And then 200K to 250K, we're a little below. But then 175 to 199K, we're way above. Same thing for 125. And then for the most part, some of these were behind, but some of these are way ahead. But people are pretty educated in our podcast. We're above the benchmark when it comes to college. and we're a little below the benchmark when it comes to some college. So I can say that pretty affluent. And we're behind, which is actually good. When you look at the budget ranges of 15 ,000 all the way to 49 ,000, we're behind the industry benchmark, but we make it up when which we have more listeners who are making more money.

3:31Yep. And then the other thing here too, is that you can see that I'm just going to pull up this Edison chart over here. So podcasting familiarity is continuing to grow over time, even though it seems like the growth kind of decelerated a little bit because of the boom in 2020. Let's just call it that. But podcast listing is continuing to grow. So you can see it went from in 2021, 57 million or so up to 62 million. And you have to keep in mind, this is based on the United States, which is 330 million people approximately. It doesn't look like I have the right screen up, but here, I can share this.

4:02Here we go. This is the right screen. So you can see 79 over here and then 62 over here. And then Edison, this is where the report, I'm pulling up this report from, they released this basically in March of 2023. They always have an annual report that you can take a look at. The final thing I'll call out here is that when I look at advertising for our podcast, we've had a great partner in Dreamhose for the last couple of years. And we've also tested with other partners because obviously it's a shorter podcast. We don't want to have too many partners. But we did a test with Shopify and they've now come back to us to say, we want to do another test.

4:37And that actually says a lot because you're not going to continue to market unless you're seeing results. So we're doing a test with Shopify. We're doing a test with Athletic Greens right now. And then we're also doing a test with Microsoft. That one's exciting to us because the Microsoft, shout out to Scott, it's a Microsoft Clarity. Shopify as well. Yeah. So Shopify, Microsoft, and AG1, and potentially even 8Sleep, which is a company I put some money into. It's the Sleep tech product. So I think it's going to continue to boom. And it's been nothing but good for us since we started doing this almost seven years ago, Neil.

5:08We've been podcasting for seven years now? Yeah. We started, yeah, almost seven years. I think podcasting is great. I haven't seen tons of business from our own podcasts. You know, here and there we get some referrals, but I believe in the omni-channel approach, I know you do as well. And if you're going to do stuff, you know, might as well have podcasting in the loop as well or in the mix. And I would go with podcasting, video ads, banner ads, media ads, all that kind of stuff. Like a thing I was talking to one of my executives about today was a lot of people know me as Neil Patel, but they don't know I have an agency, NP Digital.

5:42And we're just like, all right, maybe we should blitz ad week, ad age, campaign, and a lot of the places where CMOs read for a year straight and just spend millions of dollars doing that. So that way our name gets across. Well, here's some perspective. I think the branding is worth it, just like Nike, right? You buy Nike shoes, not because you did a Google search. It's just people are familiar with Nike, the brand. Here's some perspective on our side. So when people reach out to my agency, our salespeople, So they've told me that 70 % to 80 % of people actually know who I am. And a lot of it's actually from the podcast.

6:17And so obviously, you've been in the game for a while, right? You've been producing a lot of content everywhere. And so my bet is that they probably know of the pod as well. Because a lot of people that have seen my stuff, they listen to the podcast too. And so even though they come through organic or they come through a social channel, a lot of them listen to the podcast. It's just we don't know because it's hard to track this stuff. And that goes back to an episode we did maybe a month or two ago about how this concept of dark social, where you should try to track as much as you can, but you also shouldn't stress over trying to track every single metric.

6:49And you shouldn't stress the ROI from every single marketing channel as well. Some channels are there for branding. Some are there to get you a direct ROI. Like it really varies per channel and like your business objectives. Right. All right. So that is it. Please don't forget to rate, view, and subscribe. It helps us grow and we will see you later.