3 Things to Know About Personalized Podcast Ads & Their Impact

Things that you need to know about Personalised Ads

If you want to make sure that you get the most out of your podcast, then you may want to look into personalised ads. If you do this then you will soon find that it is easier than ever for you to get the best result out of your experience. Take a look below to find out more.

What’s Podcast Ad Personalisation?

Podcast ad personalisation essentially refers to the act of using listener insights and information so that the relevancy, in general, can be increased. Podcast ads tend to come in three different variants. You have pre-roll ads, which appear at the beginning of the podcast and you have mid-roll ads, which tend to appear during the podcast. You also have post-roll ads which occur when the podcast is over.

Which Podcast Ads get the Most Engagement?

Out of these three ads, the mid-roll ads tend to get the most engagement. The main reason for this is because they appear within the content. They also cost way more when compared to other ads.

What Types of Podcast Ads are There?

There are multiple types of podcast ads. The first type is baked-in sponsorship. The host will read an advertisement pitch in the middle of the podcast. This is part of a single audio file, that the listener can then download or stream. You also have dynamically inserted ads. The hosts don’t tend to record these ads. They are produced elsewhere and then added to the podcast. One major reason why dynamic ads tend to get less engagement is that they cannot be personalised as much. A lot of consumers say that they will only get engaged with an offer if it is actually personalised based on their previous interactions.

What you Need to Know about Podcast Ad Personalisation

While podcast ad personalisation opens the door for advertising opportunities, it’s important to know that there are things that you need to keep in mind. This happens to include industry standards, pricing and viewership. Pre-roll and post-roll ads tend to be around 15 seconds. Mid-roll ads on the other hand tend to be around a minute long. Even though mid-ads can be placed at any point of the podcast, they are usually injected in the last third of the podcast. You will usually get paid $25 for every 1,000 listens for the mid-roll ad or you’ll get paid $18 for every 1,000 listeners on the pre-roll ads. Lastly, it’s safe to say that podcast viewership is growing across the world. Podcast listeners are always increasing and now 12-34 year-olds are starting to listen to podcasts on a regular basis. The great thing about this is that it has helped to open the gates for various advertising opportunities. Personalised podcasts have helped to drive a lot of substantial growth for businesses. Companies such as Beaconstac have stated that personalised ads have helped them to drive way more substantial growth to their business. They have seen a surge of 70% in free-trial signups for their site.

Podcast Listeners are Engaged

It’s safe to say that podcasts are very easy to consume. Consumers can listen to them while they are working out, exercising, commuting or even doing the laundry. The best thing about podcasting advertising is that it isn’t limited to certain channels. You can easily reach your potential customers across every single channel. Podcast listeners are also very selective, and this allows you to be way more relevant overall.

Should Hosts be Worried?

Since personalised podcasts are booming, one question that is rising is if they are a threat to the general privacy of the listener. Even though the answer depends on the privacy risks in general, for the most part, you have to know that it is not a threat. The podcast hosting company easily gets access to the IP address that the request is sent from. There are no additional cookies and there are no tracking mechanisms either. Since the IP addresses themselves are assigned dynamically, the actionable data for targeting and advertising is limited. There’s no risk associated with the personalised podcast and no digital advertisement carries a risk for the advertiser or the user.

That being said, some issues may arise, but this depends on the platform that is being used. Podcasts are nothing but an RSS feed. The users can stream from any server, and they can do this without sharing their personal information. That being said, there are platforms such as Spotify and this can easily combine user behaviour with app behaviour. Since podcast listeners have zero control over the way that platforms collect and then store data, it could well be a worrying threat. The speculated issues that come with ad personalisation are in no way limited to ads either. The majority of customers who use the internet are worried about privacy threats that come with personalised ads. With this in mind, it’s important to understand that the world of data collection will change, and advertising will evolve as well, meaning there’s a bright future for podcasts.