How Programmatic on Podcasts can Pave the way to Profit

Listen up! Podcasts are a big business and ripe for digital advertising wins.

According to Insider Intelligence, 144 million people in the U.S. listen to a podcast every month. 28% do it weekly.

They are using dozens of different platforms to get their podcast fix–Soundcloud, Spotify, Pandora, NPR, and ESPN among them.

Are you reaching these listeners? If not, there’s never been a better time to start.

There’s never been more ways to reach more eyeballs–and now, eardrums

Marketers know that digital advertising has exploded the number of options for reaching more eyeballs. Different screens, social networks, and display tech have created what seems like an endless choice.

But reaching eardrums? That’s typically been reserved for radio–great for broadcasting ads to general audiences but not so great for reaching specific targets.

Podcast programmatic with the power of PII

Podcasts are changing where your audio-based advertising can air–erm, stream.

Name a topic, there’s probably a podcast for it. Many celebrities, entertainers, academics, athletes, and experts have them too. They are attracting a growing audience that spans men and women in every age bracket and across the country.

Programmatic podcast advertising can be targeted much the same way as display. Importantly it can now leverage the power of people-based advertising, leveraging personally identifiable information (PII).

We’ve discussed extensively on this blog how cookies are falling to the wayside and a rise in PII-based advertising is ushering in a new more cost-effective, privacy-friendly, and accurate approach to reaching consumers.

In short, when you know who you’re targeting, a world of opportunity opens. You can measure better and see vastly improved results. The same PII-based approach that has been proven on display, email, and connected TVs can now help you reach podcast listeners.

This means ads can be targeted based on geographic location, time slots, interests, and media preferences. They can be run as audio-only or alongside companion banners (on a mobile phone, for instance) to foster increased engagement and conversion rates.

There are a range of benefits advertisers enjoy with PII-based podcast programmatic:

Access to premium inventory and publishers on trusted platforms
Option to target (or avoid) based on genre or subject matter
Ability to integrate as part of a multichannel campaign (e.g., display, connected TV, and podcasts), complete with retargeting capabilities based on knowing who you’re reaching.
Opportunity to get started quickly, today with an added speed benefit for advertisers that already have radio ads created.

Tap into a fast-growing, audio-driven ad opportunity

According to Statista, By 2026, 86% of overall digital advertising revenue will come from programmatic ads. Podcasts are a fast-growing piece of the pie, with women making up about half (48%) of monthly listeners, according to Edison Research.

In this firm’s study, women podcast listeners were more likely to consider, recommend, purchase, and spend more on brands they hear advertised on podcasts with hosts or producers who are women compared to other podcasts.

The numbers will only grow–100 million active podcast listeners are anticipated for this $2 billion industry by 2024. Remember, these are highly engaged (often captive) audiences that can be reached in a more intimate setting. You control who is targeted and the frequency. Reporting and attribution look the same as other PII-based display campaigns you may have run.

Recently, a major national parcel service worked with us to increase recruitment efforts in specific markets nationwide. We worked with them to create a target audience out of the more than 250 million people in our database and used podcast programmatic to connect them with more than one million real people.