Since a few years ago podcasts had a revival and managed to enter the content consumption habits of Internet users, companies have begun to pay attention to them and try to determine how they can also take advantage of them.
The big content companies are already starting what could be the heir to the streaming war, the podcast war , to position themselves in the market and create the most solid option for access to content. At the end of the day, it is an increasingly competitive and increasingly attractive environment for the media industry.
Audiences do not stop rising and the confinement and the coronavirus crisis have affected upwards the data of listeners. A recent study, in fact, pointed out that podcast audiences had grown in Spain by 94% during the first half of the year. It is the leap that listeners have had, which made Spain a leader in listening to this content.
Some estimates say that, on an annual basis, the podcast market could grow between 25 and 30% per year for the next five years. Podcast listeners are also a particularly loyal audience . And where there are audiences there are advertisers, or at least there is the desire of advertisers to capitalize on that environment.
The rise of these contents is already generating a boom in the interest of advertisers , although they will not only have to understand how this market works and what is of interest, but also design a marketing and advertising strategy adjusted to that environment. When it comes to conquering the podcast market, simply positioning yourself there is not worth it. You have to know what keys to play and what formats work.
The mistakes of the past should not be repeated
Advertisers should not allow themselves the mistakes they have made in the past in other online channels, such as trying to recycle the advertising strategies they apply in other media, no matter how similar they are and no matter how similar their forms, to the new environment. It is something that the online video boom already demonstrated a few years ago.
Thinking that you could simply recycle the TV ad for this new channel was a mistake. What works in one setting and what is needed in another are not the same points. Therefore, when thinking about the advertising strategy for podcasts, brands must immerse themselves in the medium, analyzing what works and what listeners tolerate, and also understand which advertising formats have a positive impact and which do not.
Advertising on podcasts
One of the elements that they have to take into account is how the advertising format will be. The announcements in podcasts are still in a very basic phase: they are usually pieces of text read within the narrated story (and not so much advertising jingles or classic radio claims). One of the points of debate is who reads that content.
Do you want to be the host of the podcast or do you have to differentiate what is ad and what is not by changing the voices and using one linked to the brand? Data from a Nielsen study ensures that leaving that audio in the podcast driver is what achieves the best results.
Brand recall when read by host was 71%, based on Nielsen testing (which has asked podcast listeners based on data from 240 brands). If it was another voice who read the ad, the memory dropped to 62%. The difference between introducing an advertising voice and continuing with the known voice of the podcast was not only noticeable in the brand recall but also in the elements that triggered that ad.
The podcast voice improved familiarity by 33%, affinity by 67%, information search intention by 60%, purchase intention by 50% and recommendation intention by 50% compared to use of a new voice for that message.
