According to IAB’s Fall Podcast Upfronts last week, 2020 podcast advertising revenue grew to its highest level ever, reaching $842 million, a 19% increase over the previous year. For 2021, Eric John, Vice President of IAB’s Media Center, is expecting that podcast ad spending will top $1 billion for the first time ever, and more than double that by 2023.
One hot topic for podcasts is dynamic ad insertion (DAI). In 2020 DAI comprised 67% of all podcast revenue enabling advertisers to serve the right message to the right listener. Utilizing DAI provides the ability to target based on genre, age, psychographics, etc. Some of the added benefits of DAI are:
- 3rd party tracking
- The ability to refresh creatives
- The ability to capitalize on publishers back catalogs once a sponsorship has completed
- Provide advertisers greater control and transparency over campaigns
Historically, podcast advertising was exclusively represented by regional and national advertisers. Now, DAI makes it possible for local advertisers to run a campaign at scale, targeting by zip codes, DMA, and region.
With DAI, publishers can use AI to analyze and predict what content makes the most sense, or what content won’t be a good fit at an episode level. Guardrails can put implemented to protect advertisers from appearing in a show or aligning with a personality that has recently received negative attention socially.
Podcast audiences generally are more leaned in via deep relationships with the content given the 1-on-1 nature of the format, and the niche show topics. This connection builds trust and affinity between listeners and brands.
With 1 out of 2.4 adults listening to podcasts, over 2 million individual shows available, and over 48 million episodes, the wide array of personalities, topics and genres in today’s podcast space reaches every demographic imaginable.
Like most channels once the budget scales the products evolve. DAI opens up possibilities for podcast advertising that weren’t possible just a few years ago. Both Influencer Marketing and Podcasting continue to evolve as advertisers demand better tracking and targeting options.
This blog post was written by Stephen Brown, Media Planner/Buyer
