Where is the best place to put an ad in your podcast episode

Recently, I read a super interesting article from Marketing Brew that included a survey of 15 podcast industry experts talking about the best place to put an ad in your show.

The results will speak to you whether you’re advertising your own offers and services, doing some affiliate marketing, or running an ad for a sponsor. It’s really important for you to know where to put the ad to maximise conversion.

In this episode, I wanted to explore the results of the survey so you can start using their tips today!

Surprisingly, a longer ad (around 60 to 90 seconds) has a higher rate of converting to sales than if your ad is sitting around the 30 second mark.

You’re able to explore your offer in depth and take the time to convince your audience to find out more. But remember, if you put in too many ads, your listeners will get angry and frustrated and completely switch off from listening.

There’s definitely a balance.

I’ll give you an example of one of my midrolls to showcase where to input your own ad and how engaging it can sound when it’s done with music and sounds awesome.

I’ll then run you through prerolls, midrolls and postrolls to show you the places you can put your ad and which one is the absolute best to engage your listeners.

Take a look at your current advertising strategy and make use of these killer tips today.

In the USA, research has just come out that has placed podcast ad revenue at 1.4bn. That number is expected to grow to 4.2bn by 2024, so advertising in podcasting is not going to go away.

It's something worth thinking about, and trying out on your own show.

You don't have to have a big show either. You can be advertising your own products, using affiliate links or maybe you have a collaboration with a smaller brand.

Ads don't have to be slimy, salesy or super boring. If you get creative with it, spend time finding great music or working on a really relaxed/fun script for the ads they can convert well and help you make money from your show.

Transcript:

00:00
Welcome to Pump Up Your Pod today I'm going to go through some information that I found that came through morning brew.com. So it was done by marketing guru. And they were interviewing or asking a question or 15 podcast industry experts about the best place to actually put advertising in your show. And if this is something that you've been thinking about doing yourself, perhaps you're running your own show advertising, like your own advertising for your own programmes, offers, services, products, those sorts of things in your shows, or perhaps you have sponsorship, or you're looking to grab some sponsors for your show, you want to do a bit of a brand collaboration or something like that. This is good information for you to have as far as where is the best place to actually put the ad to kind of give you the best chance of that converting into something. It's also a good place to put affiliate marketing that you want to do as well with your show. So if you don't have sponsors, and you don't have brands, and you actually don't have any services of your own, but your perhaps your podcasts that reviews, other equipment, gear, or software, things like that, and you actually want to do some affiliate marketing for your show, then this is another place another way that you would know how to actually do that.

So what they did is they interviewed or asked the question to 15 podcast industry experts over email to describe the perfect length and place for a podcast ad. So they've actually found that going long, having a ad that is around that 62nd mark actually converts better than having a shorter ad. And that is because a 62nd ad, it actually allows you as the host to really dive into what it is that you're trying to sell or tell people about. So if you've got 60 seconds, you can actually go a bit deeper than you could if it was just 30 seconds, it's like if you only get 30 seconds to describe it, you won't get very far before you're wrapping it up. So especially if it's something that the host is really excited to talk about, then yeah, it's a really good way to actually have that done to do the 60 seconds or 90 seconds to display the best thing. One of them actually said that up to five minutes is something that works if it's a branded segment. So if you are discussing something that you really love, or you or a collaboration with a brand or you know, that sort of thing, then you could have a proper branded segment where perhaps you talk to the CEO of that thing, or in marketing specialist of that product, or whatever it is. And it's actually dropped in there as a as a proper segment.

Did you see what I did there? I faded the music app. This is the mid roll. So if you've been thinking about joining a community or feeling more supported in your podcasting journey, then I would like you to think about joining the pod lovers. It's a free community it is for podcasters and people interested in podcasting. It's where I curate information. So this is where I go a bit deeper on the things that I'm learning about podcasting, what I think our community would benefit from knowing about and the ways that I feel like you could really increase your listenership and grow. And that's the whole point you want to reach more people you want to impact people you want to inspire people. And the public is is a great place, it's an easy place, it's a free place to go and just explore, look around. You don't have to interact with other people. If you don't want to, you can just go there for the knowledge. And I really love delivering some free content to everyone that's in there. So if it's something that you feel like resonates with you, head on in there, the pod lovers.com It is where you can find that, join it, I will be adding other paid content within that platform as we grow. I have a course in there already. It's called Let's get launchy if you haven't started your podcast yet. And the pod lovers plus is for those who really want to go to that next level. And that will be ready very shortly.

Okay, let's get back to it. Okay, what did you think of that ad? So that was just around 90 seconds. Did you feel like you wanted to skip through that? Was it engaging enough because I was talking about something that I was really interested in and I wanted to tell you about how did you subconsciously feel again is subconscious is hard? Or how did you feel? How did you feel listening to that? Was it boring? Or Did I keep you engaged, I wanted to do that specifically for this episode so that you could get a feel for what the flow is like when there's a mid roll, the fact that I put some really nice music in there, and it was something that you could listen to and connect with. It wasn't just me talking, there was something else to listen to something else that could keep you engaged through that moment where I was explaining something that I really wanted you to connect with and feel like you could be a part of. So there you go. Think about that for a second.

Certainly some of the podcasts that I've been listening to, if we take Smartlist. For example, if you listen to their show, and you're not subscribed, as in, you don't pay money to not have ads. If you listen to their podcast, there's, I think there's two segments throughout the show that have about three or so ads within each segment. And that, to me is excessive, like, I love that show, I absolutely love it. But I just feel like the ads go for too long, and there's too many of them. And there's this thing called ad load, where if you have ads, or too many ads in a show, then you can get overloaded with ads, and then people start to just really get angry about that. So it's something to absolutely be thinking about when you are deciding how many ads or if you're gonna put ads in your show. So interesting concept there, I would say there is enough evidence here to suggest that if you want to go as long as 60 to 90 seconds on something on an ad that you want to talk about, then that's okay, people don't get overly pissed off about that.

Okay, and so then as we go further down, it starts to talk about whether it's mid rolls, pre rolls or post rolls, that is a good place to put them. So a pre roll is obviously before the show gets going. A mid roll is somewhere in the middle of the show, you talk about what you're going to talk about. And then the post roll is at the end of the show. Now, this is not surprising to me that most people said mid rolls are the place to put them because it's less likely that someone's going to skip through a mid roll, they will almost definitely skip through a post roll. And there's only a few examples as to win a post roll is a good idea. At the beginning of the show, you've press play, you've still got your phone in your hand, so you're likely to actually skip at that point. So pre roll is not the best for that. And then mid roll, you're normally doing something else at that point. So maybe you're going for a run or you're driving and that sort of thing, you have less access to actually be skipping the ads, so you don't do it. So you're going to have better attention from the listener, if you put it in the mid roll. There are certainly places where a pre roll is a good idea and places where a post roll is a good idea. But most of the time, the evidence is suggesting that mid rolls are the best place to put them.

This was a really interesting article, I would suggest you go and have a look at it. If it's something that you like to read through. I will supply a link to it so that you can make your own decisions here. But the thing to take away from this is that podcast advertising is not a dirty word. So if you have been thinking about putting some sort of ads in your show, whether that's affiliate marketing, it's your own programmes, your own services, your own offerings or you have sponsorships and brands that are interested in working with you know that the mid roll is the best place to put it and around that 60 to 92nd Mark is proven to be well received. That's it for me today. I hope you've enjoyed the episode and I will talk to you later.