The difference between host-read and programmatic podcast ads

Jun 6

Podcasting has become a popular medium for advertisers to reach their target audience. As the industry continues to grow, podcast advertising is becoming more sophisticated, with two main types of ads: host-read and programmatic. Today I will explore the difference between these two types of advertising, their benefits, and their potential impact on the industry.

According to the Audio Advertising State of the Nation Report for 2023, 78% of media agencies intend to increase investment in podcast advertising in 2023. This is an indication of the growing importance of podcast advertising in the media industry.

Host-Read Ads

Host-read ads are where the podcast host reads the ad copy. These ads are usually scripted and are delivered in the host's own voice. Host-read ads are more effective than programmatic ads because they feel more like a personal recommendation than an advertisement. Listeners are more likely to trust the host and follow their recommendations.

The Australian Edition of the Audio Advertising State of the Nation Report for 2023 shows that 86% of advertisers' agencies have used host-read ads. This is a clear indication of the effectiveness of host-read ads in the industry.

The leverage that you have for making money and having a better relationship with advertisers is through Host-Read Ads for sure. Your audience will be more inclined to accept host-read ads because they don't feel like ads the same way that programmatic ads do.

Programmatic Ads

Programmatic ads are inserted into the podcast episode automatically. These ads are usually not read by the podcast host and are delivered in a pre-recorded format. Programmatic ads are less effective than host-read ads because they feel more like traditional advertisements.

The intention to buy audio advertising programmatically has increased steadily over the last few years. According to the Audio Advertising State of the Nation Report for 2023, the intention to buy programmatic advertising has increased to 82%, up from 64% the previous year. This shows that programmatic advertising is becoming more popular in the industry.

What’s the Impact?

The growing popularity of podcast advertising has several implications for the industry. Podcasters can now monetize their content by including ads in their episodes. This can help them generate revenue and grow their audience.

Clearly, brands want to advertise on podcasts based on all the data that has been collected, and the return on investment these brands are achieving.

It is important to remember however that podcast advertising should be aligned with the podcast's mission and values. Listeners are more likely to accept ads that are relevant to the podcast's content.

Don’t be afraid to give it a go on your show, and know that you can always switch the ads off if they’re not feeling like your jam. There are plenty of other ways to make money from your podcast too. Check out our masterclass on monetisation if you’d like to learn more.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome to my face. My name is Brianna from Bamby Media. I'm the head honcho of podcast and video production agency here. Bamby Media.
Today, we're gonna go through the difference between host read and programmatic advertising. If you've clicked on this video or you've clicked on this episode in your podcast platform, then you already are interested in advertising on your podcast, so we're gonna go through these differences for this and not worry too much about like why you would want to have an ad in your show because you are already kind of exploring that yourself.
First thing I wanna go through is the stats, few of the stats that have come through from the audio advertising State of the Nation Report for 2023.
[00:00:45] Thanks to IAB this is the Australian Edition, and we're gonna have a quick look at a few things that are kind of gonna help you understand and realize how important or how much advertisers want to. Be involved in podcasting at this state of the game. So in this particular stat that we have here in front of us, and if you are listening to this, I'll explain it as best I can.
[00:01:10] 78% of media agencies intend to increase investment in podcast advertising in 2023. That's a very big number, you can see that 22% of them want to increase it significantly. 59% want to increase it slightly. 15% wanna remain the same. And then you've got 2% decreasing and 2% that are investing for the first time.
[00:01:34] So this is fantastic news for you as a podcaster because you can go, well, clearly brands want to advertise on podcasts. You have some leverage that you didn't even realize that you had. Well done. Congratulations. It's worth doing. Okay, so that's the first thing that we're kind of gonna go through here.
[00:01:54] The next thing we're gonna have a little look at from the stats perspective is [00:02:00] programmatic and the expecting increase to that. So the intention to buy audio advertising programmatically has increased steadily over the last few years with a significant increase this year to 82%, and it was 64% the previous year.
[00:02:18] Intention to buy programmatic guarantee deals has increased the most intention to buy bundled with other media has also increased slightly this year as well. And then in front of you, you can see there is a big l bunch of stats there lots of data based on different types of programmatic ads that are being bought.
[00:02:39] And so if you are interested in that stat, then I will certainly include a link to this whole report in the show notes for this, for podcast listeners as well. Just so that you can kind of go through them and, and have a look at how good really this part of the industry is going. programmatic ads are the ones that you hear. In a show or on TV or on YouTube where it's just an ad that comes up at some point during your listening or watching. It's not the host that has put the ad in, that has said the ad. It's just ad for something. this can be kind of a bit jarring for people sometimes, like that are creating content to go, well, I don't want. Other things being advertised on my show and I completely understand that and I'm with you on that.
[00:03:31] As far as if a ad isn't aligned then I don't want to hear it and it, I definitely don't want it to be on my show. So if you are gonna go programmatic advertising, you wanna make sure that the ads that are being served to your show make sense for your show. And there are certainly some really good options these days on the different types of programmatic advertising that you can explore.
[00:03:55] So if we go into a few of the hosts that currently do it, [00:04:00] Buzzsprout has its own programmatic advertising section Now. If you are hosted on Buzzsprout in the monetization section, you can actually go through and go to the ads and add that on as something that you want to do. They will assess your viability for that, making sure that you have a paid account, all that sort of thing, and then you can start to actually go through some ads.
[00:04:26] That are being put in front of you and decide whether you want them to be on your show. It's really simple to get started with programmatic advertising, especially if your host has it as an option and you can start to make money off of it pretty much straight away. When I say make money though, it's not a great deal of money depending on how many downloads you're getting.
[00:04:50] So in this one you can see as an example. Buzzsprout pays you 1.40 cents US per download. So if you are a smaller show, let's say you're getting a hundread downloads per episode, you're releasing four episodes a month, then it's maybe you're making $5 60 or something a bit more than that per month.
[00:05:13] Not a huge amount. And that's something you then kind of have to think about. Well, is it worth having an ad in my show? Like, am I pissing off my listeners by having these programmatic ads in my show? And I would want you to, once you turn it on, to actually listen to your episodes and your yourself and just make sure that it makes sense for you to have it in your show.
[00:05:34] Buzzsprout's good. Or it can be good it will decide where to put the ad. The mid roll kind of it, it picks like a good gap in the wave form, I suppose, and puts it in there. It's not always gonna be super accurate and good because maybe you've got a gap there for dramatic pause for some other reason.
[00:05:53] And so that can be something that I, I don't like because you can't change where the ad is actually gonna [00:06:00] go. Buzzsprout does that, so, Just be aware of that with Buzz Brown. That is, I think, a feature that I'm not a huge fan of, but yeah, it is in there. So that's one way. That's one host. We've got Podbean that does it too.
[00:06:14] They've been doing it for quite some time. We've also got a cast that has a marketplace and we've got Spreaker that has a marketplace as well. Most hosts are getting on board with this kind of thing now because it's like an easy win-win for everybody. It's like they can have ads. Advertisers coming to them, they're making money off of it, and then you are making money off of it, off of it as well, and everybody wins and has a fun time.
[00:06:42] But what I would say is it's something to be clear on from the get-go, that it means that you're gonna have ads in your show firstly, and that you need to be okay with that. And you need to be feeling okay that those podcast ads are aligned to your mission to your show and that your audience is okay with it.
[00:07:03] Now the stats do show that the audiences are pretty much like totally fine with having ads in a podcast. They're used to it now. The Australian market took a little while to be okay with it. They were sort of like, no, I hate ads. But then the more you hear it and the more you actually understand how much money it can take, To produce a show, then audiences are a lot more willing to accept it.
[00:07:30] While I'm on that, what you can do is you can prep your audience. So before putting ads on your show, you could put a little sort of audio in your episode. So coming up to it, go. Hey guys, I'm trialling putting some ads in my show and I would love your feedback. Do you hate it? Are you okay with it? If you could fill out this quick form or reach out to me in the DMS or
[00:07:54] Something so that they can give you that feedback, then that's gonna help them feel like you are [00:08:00] communicating with them. And in your scripting around it too, you can say, it costs me a lot of money to make this show for you every week. And in order for me to get to where I want to go, I'd like to start making some money off of it.
[00:08:13] And the easiest way for me to do that is through programmatic advertising. So you can prep them and then put the ads in and then check how you feel about it. And. See how it feels. There are no rules. You don't have to keep going once you've started. You can turn it off at any time. But it's a cool way to just explore that world and as you grow, you can, you know, start to make some, some, okay.
[00:08:39] Money out of programmatic advertising. The other option that we have is something called Host read Ads. So Host read Ads are the ones where you can hear, and my perfect example that I love is probably the show Smartless. So they have quite a lot of ads in their show, but these are host read where they have a script, they read the script, or they work together with the brand and they come up with something funny and then the ad is put in the show.
[00:09:09] But it's their voices. So these go a lot better. These, perform a lot better for the advertiser because the listener is already know liking and trusting the person that's delivering the information. It doesn't feel like an ad as much. It feels like a personal recommendation. And the smartless ones are particularly good because like I wanna listen to them because they're funny, they're silly.
[00:09:35] They kind of poke fun. At the brand sometimes, and you know that it's something that they have to do and that they're doing it in a way that makes sense for them. So I think that it's, it's totally a fine way to do it and host read ads are really, really good. If we go back to the statistics that I was talking about earlier I'm just gonna show you.
[00:09:59] [00:10:00] The agency usage of podcast creative formats. So host read podcasts and recorded radio spots remain the most used podcast creative formats amongst agencies. There is also a high appetite to try branded podcasts and brand supplied podcast spots. That's kind of happening a lot more these days, but you can see that
[00:10:20] 86% of agencies of advertisers have used host read ads So this is a format that if you're willing to do this, and if your show has enough leverage, as in you have a good amount of downloads, you have good other collateral, maybe you've got some socials, you've got some other things that would go really well.
[00:10:40] Host read ads can make you a lot more money because they are your voice. It's your tone. It's your audience that loves you, that trusts you, and you are putting in an ad that you believe in and you're aligned with, and that makes sense for you. With host written ads as well, I like to have. Some music in there so that there's something a little bit fun and cool about it.
[00:11:06] And you can get your music from Art lists.io. That is a great place that we use. I'll put a link in there for art lists so that you can check it out if you're looking for some music to go behind your host read Ads. But the leverage that you have for making money and having a better relationship with advertisers is through Host read Ads.
[00:11:24] And your audience will be more inclined to accept those because they don't feel like ads the same way that programmatic ads do. So that's my hot take on programmatic versus host read ads. I have a masterclass that's on our Bamby media.com/masterclass site that you can actually access.
[00:11:46] It's a 60 minute replay of a fantastic class that I ran talking all about the different ways that you can monetize your show. I went through all these different options from a very small show to big [00:12:00] shows to working with networks, programmatics host read ads dynamic ads. Baked in all sorts of things.
[00:12:08] Sponsorships, pitching, reaching out to advertisers, the actual emails that we send out, the spreadsheet that we use, all the things. It was a really, really good class. And so I recommend checking that out if you want to. Know all the ways that you can monetize your show in 2023.
[00:12:25] There's also resources that come with it. There's some information on grant funding and things if you're in Australia as well. So it's definitely a very good class. It's not a. Free class. It is a paid masterclass. I wanna make that clear. It's not a freebie. I don't do freebies other than this format here where I'm providing this information to you on YouTube and in the podcast for free.
[00:12:48] So check that out, if that's something of interest to you. I hope you now understand the difference between Host read and programmatic and how you can use both or neither or one of in your show. And I really wanna hit home here. That everything is trial. It's absolutely fine to try something, see how it goes, switch it off, try something else, try a different ad.
[00:13:15] It's gonna fail sometimes. Sometimes the conversion's not gonna be as good, and that's okay. This is a completely new ballgame and podcast advertising is also relatively new, so I want you to feel really empowered to give this a solid read hot go. And see what kind of money you can start to make. So I hope you've enjoyed this. If you have, please subscribe to Bamb Media on YouTube and I can't wait to give you some more info when I have it.
[00:13:44] See ya.