A JEWELER WHO TAKES digital marketing seriously has probably run Facebook ads. They’ve probably run search ads on Google and possibly Bing. They may have tried display ads or dipped their toes into geofencing or YouTube ads. And when it comes to audio, they may have even tried running ads on Pandora or Spotify. But the one medium that they probably haven’t tried is Podcasts. And it could become accessible in a whole new way in 2020.
Why Businesses Run Ads On Podcasts
Podcasts are an amazing medium. People who listen to them give them their attention in a way that they don’t to other mediums. The average YouTube video was under 12 minutes in length in 2018. But the average podcast episode is about 37 minutes long. People who listen are buckling up for a ride.
They listen to podcasts while driving, doing dishes, jogging, biking and folding laundry. But they’re not multitasking in the same way that people do while looking at their phone while the TV’s playing. Instead, these activities take up a lot of time, but not a lot of mental energy. So they’re able to fully pay attention to what they listen to.
For this reason, some big successful companies have really invested in ads on podcasts and reaped big rewards.
Why You’ve Probably Never Run Ads On A Podcast
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If you’re a local jeweler, you probably haven’t run ads on a podcast because it’s hard to coordinate, tough to measure, limited in options, not built for your size, and not local. Until now.
Traditional podcast ads are read by the podcast’s show host. Big companies make big deals with big podcasts and roll out a slow and labor-intensive process of sending out scripts and communicating what they do and don’t want to be said. These ads don’t get a consistency of voice, because every podcast host has a different voice. They are powerful, however, because they benefit from the trust that the audience has with the podcast host.
But the future of podcast advertising has another option. It’s already started and could very well open up to local retailers in 2020.
Dynamic Ad Insertion: The Future of Podcast Advertising
A new technology called “Dynamic Ad Insertion” is adding new options for podcast advertisers. But more importantly, it’s making advertising on podcasts possible for new advertisers who wouldn’t have been interested in the past.
Lex Friedman from Art19 talks about it in an episode of the Reword Podcasts which questions the ethics of the new practice. But Friedman is comfortable discussing and defending the new practice. Here’s how it works:
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Today, most podcast episodes are uploaded to the internet and can be downloaded and listened to by anyone at any time in the future. The listener will hear the exact same recording no matter what time it is and where they are when they listen. Dynamic Ad Insertion makes it possible to insert a different prerecorded ad into the audio file based on the IP address of the person who is downloading the episode. That means that Sally in Milwaukee can hear a different ad on Thursday that Dan in San Diego will on Sunday.
This is a big deal because it enables ads to be location-based, time-based, and pretty much allows them to work a lot more like the ads that a jeweler might run on other platforms. If you have a limited time offer, you don’t have to worry about people hearing the ad after it has expired.
At the time of the recording, Art19 was selling these types of ads by invitation only. But they and many other podcast companies see Dynamic Ad Insertion as the future of podcasting and the technology exists now. That means that jewelers could see the opportunity to benefit from the cult-like following that podcasters have developed from their listeners as soon as this year. This is definitely one to keep an eye on in 2020.
