Loading
Podcast Advertising Resources

How To Measure Podcast Advertising

If your brand has been thinking about diving into the world of podcast advertising, there’s never been a better time to take the leap. Podcast advertising is booming with a projected ad spend of over $1 billion by the end of 2020.

With many people still working from home, listening to podcasts serves as a constructive, educational, and entertaining way to pass the time. As listeners build relationships with their favorite podcast hosts, the ad spots they hear on these podcasts becomes more impactful.

Whether you’re looking for more brand awareness, clicks, or conversions, podcast advertising is an exciting new form of media advertising to explore. But before you get started, you may have some questions about tracking and how to measure podcast advertising campaigns. Below are answers to five of the most common questions we get from new Ossa brand partners.

Q: How do we know how many people we’ve reached?

A: You’ll know your expected reach pre-campaign with Ossa. When curating the campaign, we gather the latest average downloads per episode metric from each podcast that you’d like to book. This is a powerful metric because it’s the minimum number of people who have this podcast’s episodes downloaded directly to their devices. This will be your expected reach, so you’ll know exactly what you’re investing in ahead of time.

*Note: Many more people stream podcast episodes rather than download them, so this is why average downloads per episode actually reflects your minimum reach. In other words, you’ll probably get even more bang for your buck than the download metric reflects!

Q: How do we know that I’m reaching my target audience?

A: We work very closely with our podcasters to determine their audience. Their hosting platform has demographic data that we verify prior to the start of the campaign. This is just one example of a standard hosting dashboard with demographic data:

measure podcast advertising
Source: Anchor

Q: What if a customer comes to my site but forgets to use the coupon code?

A: This is a real bummer and one of the biggest hurdles that the podcast advertising industry has to overcome, as it is so important to measure podcast advertising with accurate attribution.

Having a vanity URL helps remedy this issue, but if that’s not possible, comparing pre and post campaign traffic will give you a better sense of overall performance regardless of whether or not customers used the code/URL.

Some brands also run into the issue of customers using a different coupon code posted online rather than the podcasters’, even though they were referred to your site by the podcast. In this scenario, it helps to exclusively have the podcasters’ coupon codes active and usable during the campaign if possible.

Q: How do we measure podcast advertising performance? 

A: If you have a way to track traffic from a unique coupon code or vanity URL, you’ll be able to see exactly how much traffic the podcasters brought to your site by tracking the codes that they verbally promote on their episodes during ad spots.

If you don’t have the ability to track analytics from coupon codes, again measuring pre and post campaign landing page traffic/clicks is the best way to measure the campaign’s success. Our podcasters are here to amplify your brand awareness and bring people to your sales page. Just like a social media campaign, podcast advertising increases brand recall and brings new audiences to your site, so measuring traffic spikes is the best way to measure success.

Q: How long after an episode airs should we wait before gathering data?

A: Four to six weeks post-campaign is ideal. On average, more people listen to podcasts monthly rather than weekly. This means that you’ll get a more accurate picture of listenership (and therefore, reach) about a month after your ad spots begin airing on the podcast, and you’ll probably see more lift from the campaign in the following weeks as well.

Additionally, while the most podcast episode consumption usually occurs within the first 72 hours of release, 45% of listeners do not finish an episode on the first play. It’s best to give listeners time to go back and finish to make sure the ad spot was heard. Many podcasters find that mid-roll placements are just as powerful, if not more, than pre-roll (but remember that each audience is unique, and the hosts tend to know their audience and their behavior best😉).

To measure podcast advertising, you need close relationships with podcasters and accurate data. Ossa provides both for your brand, making your podcast advertising plan easy and impactful. Ready to take the next step and start booking with Ossa podcasts? Head to our brand partner page for more info!

Reference:
https://musicoomph.com/podcast-statistics/

Back To Top