Per the report, they have a mobile-first mentality and adapt quickly to the latest technologies, such as smart speakers, over-the-top content (OTT) platforms and wearables. This group tends to gravitate towards streaming, on-demand programming and self-curated content.
With an estimated $1.3 trillion in buying power by millennials in the U.S., this group is a highly valued audience for advertisers. But if they don’t subscribe to the tools that advertisers depend on, how do we reach the unreachable?
Enter Podcast Advertising
Edison Research just released their 2018 Infinite Dial study, which found that 44% of Americans say they've listened to a podcast, up 4% in just a year. So, it’s no surprise to me that the report showed a consistent increase especially among millennials and Gen Xers.
In 2017, the media picked up on the continued podcast growth curve, comparable to the growth Google and Facebook experienced nearly a decade ago. We could detect growth in advertising, content and listenership, but what makes podcasting so powerful, in my opinion, is the shifting dynamics of consumer behavior behind the medium.
From a marketing perspective, podcast content and advertising checks all the boxes. Podcasting reaches a generation of individuals who turn to mobile phones for media consumption and have a desire for on-demand content that aligns closely with their personal perspectives and interests. From my experience, “unreachables” crave an intimate connection to the programming, characters, narrators, authors, hosts, etc. The feeling of connectedness amplifies the individual’s desire for more of this content and a willingness to trust and engage with that content.
Podcasting is truly an opt-in medium that creates listener trust, fosters intimacy because it’s consumed audibly and is measurable and scalable. Additionally, most ads come in the form of a host-endorsed message, which is an incredibly effective method of converting a call-to-action to a sale.
In the third quarter of 2017, our company Ad Results Media found that endorsed ads that are baked into the content are 3.5 times more effective than dynamically inserted ads that are not endorsed. In a world where fake news is rampant, connecting with content that a user has identified as authentic, genuine and trustworthy is paramount to the show’s success.
With podcasting, reaching the unreachable is actually possible. According to the Edison report, 80% of podcast listeners tune in for the entire, or at least most, of the podcast and actively listen to an average of seven different podcasts a week. This audience is engaged and loyal to the shows they’ve chosen to listen to.
From a measurement point of view, we’ve opened the black box to podcast advertising through promo codes, vanity URLs and post-transaction surveys. These results help advertisers understand how effective and efficient their ad dollars are and how tapping into this shift in consumer behavior actually translates to sales.
So, what was once considered an upper funnel tactic that could help with reach, awareness and other core campaign-activation support quickly evolved into a lower funnel channel that could be grown and scaled quickly and profitably.
To get started in podcast advertising, here are some questions you should ask yourself before engaging in a podcast ad test.
Do I have enough budget to test? Ensure you have enough in your marketing budget to develop a test plan that will enable you to gain statistically significant learnings across a wide variety of shows.
Am I spending in core digital channels? Podcast adverting should not be the first channel you market in, nor should it be the only. Ensuring you have a media mix that is diverse and fills all parts of your customer acquisition funnel is essential to maximizing your overall marketing budget and ensuring long-term growth. We recommend that advertisers first, or simultaneously, spend in the core digital channels of paid search, shopping feeds and Facebook acquisition.
Do I have the resources necessary to develop measurement tactics? To ensure proper visibility into your success, you will need to create vanity URLs, promo codes and post-transaction web surveys -- either one or a combination of these.
What are my campaign goals? Are they performance-driven or brand-driven goals? Your definition of success will dictate the best way to develop a plan, whether it’s with shows that have larger reaches but don’t tend to perform as well from a cost-per-conversion perspective or smaller shows that tend to outperform when it comes to listener engagement with the ad.
The podcast space is still relatively new and, like other media, continuously evolving. With the inertia behind this segment of audio and its ability to reach a previously unreachable target audience, I believe that it’s no longer a question whether or not podcasting should be a staple in your media mix.
As consumer habits continue to evolve and consumption becomes even more fragmented, podcast advertising will be the key to reaching the “unreachables” by directly connecting audiences in an organic, authentic and measurable way -- paramount for brands in their quest for continued growth and relevance.
-Kurt Kaufer, Ad Results Media Chief Marketing Officer
Link to original article here: Reaching The 'Unreachable' Audience With Podcast Advertising
