Podcasts are a channel with rich potential for advertisers, but while an increasing number of brands are making podcasts part of their media mix, many have yet to explore significant investments in the podcast market. These organisations are missing golden opportunities to leverage engaged and attentive audiences.
At PodPod and Campaign’s Podcast Advertising Summit last month, the topic of how best to approach these opportunities was a key point of discussion. This week, we’re bringing you one of the conference’s expert panel sessions, including Hiscox UK head of brand marketing Ed Birth, Vicky Handley, brand communications lead for Lloyds Banking Group, Spotify’s Ed Couchman, head of sales for Northern Europe, and Steven Dunlop, founder and CEO of AMA, moderated by PodPod’s Reem Makari.
AI is multi-purpose
“I see AI within our industry in three categories,” Dunlop says. “The first has been around for a long time, which is using smart algorithms and machine-learning to work out where audiences are, to match audiences across channels. Lots of companies do that kind of thing. The second is voice synthesis and using AI to actually be a voice you recognise, or maybe a synthesised voice that we can use that doesn’t require a human to go into a studio. And then the third is generative AI, and this is the thing that’s got us all excited since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, and has got the whole world thinking about AI.
“Digital advertising spits out data in every dimension, and lots of it. So using computers to the best of their ability, which is churning through all that data, to then work out where the patterns, the trends, the audiences, the movements are, is very helpful. Not something we do, but other adtech firms can help with that stuff.”
Attention is everything
“I think everyone can see what’s happening within the media landscape. I think brands are fighting for attention more and more as time goes on. It’s getting more and more difficult to target customers, then also to get them to listen to what you’re actually saying.
“When you’re looking at a full campaign media mix, the power of podcasts is that you have that full attention… Listeners and customers are making that time to listen to that specific podcast and they’re tuning out from everything else that’s going around them – and that’s absolute gold dust, because if you look at all of the other media channels, you just don’t get that. You don’t get that kind of 100% attention.”
Emotion beats logic
“I hope this isn’t a controversial thing to say,” Birth notes, “but not all the advertising and not all the host reads that I see in the world of podcasting are that good. There’s some excellent work, [but] I just see it done sub-optimally over and over again, and I think the rules of what ‘good’ looks like are the same as ‘good’ in a lot of other channels.
“Emotion rather than rational: I see so many rational messages without that sense of storytelling, which all the effectiveness evidence tells you is what unlocks really disproportionate performance, so I think that’s a big part of it.”
