Marketing Examined - 🔍 How To Create Effective Podcast Ads

Good evening, everyone!

While researching for this case study, I realized I am what they call a podcast “super listener” —  who listens to five or more hours of podcasts weekly.

Podcasts and podcast ads are part of my routine. Most of the ads are just in one ear and out the other. Not from the podcast I am going to share in the case study today.

Whether you are a podcaster or advertiser, you can learn something from their atypical ads. Give it a read!

Let’s say you have an email list with 100,000 people on it, your current open rate is 25%, and your click-through rate is 2%.

That means you can always count on 25,000 people opening the email and 500 people clicking a link.

Let’s say you’re directing those 500 people to your landing page, which has a 3% conversion rate for your product that costs $250.

So, now you know every time you send an email, you know you’ll do $3750 in sales.

Now, imagine if you used a specific strategy to double your open rate to 50%, and now 50,000 people open your email.

Without your click-through rate or conversion rate changing, you just doubled your email revenue by improving your open rate.

This strategy is exactly what Inbox Mailers will walk you through in its guide.

And even how clients have tripled their email open rates, improved email deliverability, and re-engaged dead email lists.

You can snag the guide here.

In a tough economy, a lot of things are unpredictable. What’s to be expected is having marketing spending on the chopping board. The recent earnings result from platforms like Meta and Snap reflect that reality, advertisers are scrutinizing their marketing budget.

Podcast streamers, however, show no signs of slowing down. Spotify reported a mid-30 % range YoY growth in podcast revenue. Podcasts reportedly have been killing it on the performance front for many brands.

Although podcast ads are no longer the shiny new medium, we’ve rarely seen people talk about good podcast ads.

Most are indeed generic and follow the templates of traditional radio ads that have hosts read prewritten scripts from brands (trust me…for listeners, it’s more obvious than you think).

However, Down to Chat, a relatively new podcast hosted by CMO (Cody Plofker) and CX lead (Eli Weiss) from Jones Road Beauty, took a refreshingly new approach in their podcast ad. It’s so good that I often rewind to listen to & watch their ads.

Let’s see what they did.

Eli and Cody use their sponsor’s technology in their daily job at Jones Road Beauty. Because of that, the ads are them sharing actionable tips and tricks of how they use the product to make them work better.

Listeners get to hear the hosts sharing how they personally benefit from the sponsor product (in their own words) instead of cookie-cutter marketing copies. The hosts show their confidence in the product by not being afraid to put it to the test, which gives more credibility to the ads and builds trust with listeners.

Eli and Cody take a step even further. They “sell” the sponsor not only by sharing specific use cases for Jones Road Beauty but also by making the ads relevant for different episodes to show they have been continuously using the tool.

In the ads for one of their sponsors, Peel Insights, in one episode, they talked about how the tool helped them uncover mascara being a very high LTV purchase.

“…The other kind of super interesting one that is relevant on the growth side and retention side is we talk about mascara being a very high LTV purchase. Customers that hopped on a mascara end up spending almost double of some of the other products customers coming in on. From a growth perspective, Cody thinking about the ads, and from an experience perspective, what products should we be pushing to our customers, what products should we be optimizing for in emails, SMS, etc. That’s something we learned entirely from Peel.”

In another episode post-Black-Friday, they touched on how people can use the tool to target first-time customers who came in on Black Friday.

“…We can see first-time customers that came in Black Friday to get a better understanding of their AOV, and LTV, but also export this audience into Klavio with a unique messaging or Attentive to send them a text or turn them into a direct mail customer. ”

For repetitive listeners of the podcast, they can learn different features of the sponsor product. The ad rotation also ensures listeners don’t get ad fatigue and stop paying attention after listening to the ad once.

For your next Podcast ad, find hosts that are already fans of your product or seed them with it. Let the hosts talk about you in their own words based on their own experiences. If they can, let them switch it up between a couple of variations for different episodes.

Down to Chat uses the video podcast capability available on Spotify - making their ads more impactful.

Eli and Cody often screen share to demo different functionalities of their sponsor tool. Seeing is believing. Compared to audio-only ads, visual evidence of hosts using the product is more persuasive. The visual content can also better capture the attention of viewers and keep them more engaged.

According to Edison Research, over half (55%) of Super Listeners ever listen to podcasts through YouTube, and they often consume podcasts that include videos.

For advertisers, video podcast ads can be easily repurposed and adapted for different channels to extend their lifespan.

For creators, video podcasts make the ads more convincing, help to get your podcast in front of a wider audience, and you can charge more for usage rights in other channels.

Eli and Cody sound and act exactly the same as they do during and off ads. Cody can even be seen rocking his baby during one of the ads. Why wouldn’t you if you are just sharing with your audience something you love?

Some of the “best practices” in podcast ads are to be concise and use an engaging tone. This often leads to script-like ads that sound nothing like how the hosts normally speak — something listeners can quickly spot after hearing hosts talk for hours.

To build trust in podcast ads, you should use the host’s tone and style to create a personalized ad that sounds like it fits naturally within the podcast. Emma Chamberlain also does a great job at this.

The best ads don’t look like ads. The best podcast ads don’t sound like ads.

• YouTube Tests New Hub of Free Streaming Channels
• Spotify’s test of a Friends Tab on Mobile Hints at Expanded Social Ambitions
• Podcast Marketing Statistics for Businesses
• After Layoffs And A CEO Change, Cometeer’s Frozen Coffee Pod Business Is In Hot Water
• An epic ad from PopCorners — now I will never forget the name.

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Have you found any other podcast ads you ACTUALLY listen to?

Send them my way, and we'll credit you.

Alex & Chi