With the IAB recently releasing a new State of Audio Ad Tech report, now is a good time to reflect on audio in advertising.
The IAB report found that while some form of audio accounts for 31% of consumer’s time spent on media, only 9% of media budgets were dedicated to sound. One specific audio medium that received repeated callouts in the report, for both its recent growth and ongoing innovation, is podcasts. It’s therefore worth exploring how the past year has advanced this relatively new channel’s advertising potential.
While it is no surprise that podcasts are continuing to grow in popularity, the key development for advertisers is the advancement of dynamic ad insertion and creative optimisation at scale. Creatives tailored to specific audiences can now be inserted, swapped or adapted, depending on live factors like location, time of day, weather and even mood.
This lets advertisers respond to their audience’s environment and context in real time, affording the brand’s message greater relevance and resonance. A key target for advertisers and brands when running a campaign is cost-effective reach – delivering your creative to the right audience, in the right place, at the right time. Against this goal, these recent developments in podcast advertising offer a clear use-case of how audio could strategically fit into media plans.
New research suggests that audio, and podcasts in particular, play a distinctve role in the behavioural change model of advertising. Differentology found that 64% of listeners pay full attention to podcast ads, while Kantar found that purchase intention increases across the board after exposure to podcast
advertising.
In a similar vein, the7stars recently worked with SimplyBe to tailor an audio campaign to emotional connection by utilising a well-placed podcast partnership with a range of famous faces, including Fleur East and Zawe Ashton. Positive sentiment toward the brand increased, organic search increased year-on- year, and particular praise was directed toward the personal stories that the campaign championed from audiences.
As new research and advertising developments in podcasts continue to evolve, and culminate in award- winning work, it is vital to keep reassessing how we use different media channels to tell individual stories effectively. In this case, podcasts excel as a medium that delivers highly resonant key messages by combining dynamic advertising with already-captivated audiences.
