Looking to advertise your business on podcasts? Don’t spend a penny until you’ve read this.
I remember the day Ahrefs’ CMO Tim told me I was “now in charge of podcast sponsorships.”
I said: “Awesome!!!”
I had never listened to a podcast in my life.
Naturally, the rest of my day was spent getting real intimate with Google. We covered important topics like:
What is a podcast;
Why are podcasts popular;
Podcast ad examples;
Standard podcast formats
You get the gist. Here’s an overview of what Google told me that day:
Podcasts are highly‐targeted. There’s a dedicated, top‐quality podcast for every imaginable niche out there, from true crime case reports to discussing Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This also means that we can reach just about any audience we want to.
Podcast listeners are among the most engaged and loyal audiences ever. The nature of the medium means that podcast hosts speak directly into our ears for over 30 minutes at a time, and many listeners build a strong affinity with the content and show host. Makes sense!
The traditional success metrics are impressions and downloads per show. Obviously, the higher the numbers, the better.
Podcast advertisers generally choose to have a dedicated landing page and a promotional offer for each podcast they sponsor – this is how they track conversions and the overall success of their ads.
I also learned that there are three main categories of ads in podcast sponsorships:
Pre‐roll: ~15–30 second ad at the start of the show.
Mid‐roll: ~1-minute ad in the middle of the show.
Post‐roll: ~15–30 second ad at the end of the show.
As a general rule, mid‐rolls are the telemarketing list most expensive, followed by pre and post‐rolls.
Cool, I thought, this all sounds pretty telemarketing list straightforward.
You know how the story goes by now: I was quite wrong.
Over the course of half a year, I trial‐and‐errored my way through all the things that Google doesn’t tell you (at least, until this page starts to rank for podcast‐related terms.)
The good news? I’m about to share everything we learned with you.
Let’s start right from the beginning, shall we?