Playing Safe is Playing Broke.

Light Roast - Q4 Podcast Planning

Q4 is always a “gold rush” for brands. It’s peak gift-giving and consumer season. But by the time you’re reading this, you’re already behind the advertising ball.

But, if you sprint now you can still catch up—and here’s how:

Q4 2024 will likely be one of the strongest turnouts for podcast advertising this decade (in measuring performance per $ spent).

Four major reasons: It’s the holiday season (Oct-Dec), optimal True Crime season (Sept/Oct), Back to School (Aug/Sept, technically Q3 but bear with me) but most importantly it’s election season!

If you’re a Meta Ad buyer, you’re probably scratching your head as elections generally make ad buying harder. It actually gets easier for scrappier, risk-tolerant brands on podcasts/YouTube.

As a Canadian, I wish I could avoid the drama of the American news cycle but it only subsides for a moment to rest on the Olympics (go Canada!)

Both sides of the political aisle are hot for virality right now with everything happening and as a brand, it’s your opportunity to jump into the fray.

Many brands choose to back out during this season as it feels too risky.

You know, “What if I sponsor someone who says something damning?”

It can happen and has. Valid fear, my friend.

In 2023, after a shooting in the States, a political commentator we’ve worked with for some time made a tweet that got him and a number of our clients in a mess.

It was exhausting. We’ve worked with him for years, and this is the first time any issues have arisen. We work with his manager to pull spots. We took the hit. You name it. Brands weren’t happy… for about two weeks.

Within the month, most brands were back on. The value was worth the risk, and more importantly, it didn’t last long. The emails and comments to brands lasted for under two weeks.

Also, the people commenting were nearly never the brands’ customers. Yes, we can search your emails/names and look up past orders.

We’ve had many fire drills in past—but historically they subside within 1-2 weeks as the general public’s ability to recall the past is about as good as my ability to post a LinkedIn post without a typo (not great).

In my experience, it’s been worth it. I think there’s an over-emphasis on brand safety that is plaguing our industry. Brand safety concerns are real, and they’re more relevant the bigger you get. But there’s a difference between advertising on content and endorsing the content.

There’s a tact to it. Maybe don’t sponsor people with a high ratio of controversial takes like Alex Jones? Or do… it’s your brand.

To avoid too much brand risk, I recommend not leaning one way or the other severly. Take a balanced approach and you have an admiral defense. And where possible, stay closer to the middle—though in my experience the farther from center you get the higher the ROI… tread at your own risk.

Helix Sleep has done this well.

Helix is one of the longest-standing advertisers and has relatively stayed out of major conflict all along. Yet, they sponsor some of the biggest names in independent news/politics.

Helix is equally spending money with conservative voices like Ben Shapiro and Bongino while also heavily invested in Liberal voices like Pod Save America and David Pakman.

Lean too heavily one way and you get typecast, lean both ways and you are just a smart spender.

Remember, it’s about the audience you’re reaching.

News audiences are HIGHLY influenced. I think of it like this: If someone can sway your voting decision they can probably sell you what breakfast cereal you eat.

A few quick takes to keep in mind:

• Breaking News content has a short lifecycle. Be adaptable and ready to buy quickly. Results won’t come in much after 1-2 weeks (don’t buy the full catalog, dummy you’ll kill your performance).

• True Crime is picking up towards Oct (get ahead of the spooky season).

• It’s probably late to start, but Back to School/Mom audiences are about to pop off in August/Sept. If you can, put some dollars here to support those campaigns.

• Don’t miss out on the “gold rush” of an election year like this, but keep a balanced approach to political media.

• Save 10%-20% of your budget for remnant buys—thank me later for when last minute deals cross your desk.
  
  Again, don’t buy dynamically inserted full catalog ads for breaking news/politics… it’s genuinely stupid (longer schpeel in the dark roast).

  But in short, full catalog buys are punished by virality not enhanced (like some networks have tried to convince me).

Medium Roast - Podcast Movement Bingo

Last year, I talked with Jay Green at Soundrise about making a Bingo Card for Podcast Movement. It was a light-hearted convo about the predictability of the event and what we’ll see or hear. Maybe this year will be different?

I’ve been to three PMs and a Podcast Show now. I love them, and the predictability is lovely—it feels like coming home.

If I were to create a bingo card I’d start here:

1. See someone wearing a Podscribe Hat

2. Take a meeting in the Sounds Profitable lounge

3. Tell someone, “We should start a podcast”

4. Someone talking about AI disrupting our industry

5. Hear Dan Granger mention Brand Safety on a panel

6. Hear someone complain they bought a ticket after they realized they only sat at the lobby bar the whole event…

7. Get pitched a podcast that is sure to be the next Serial or S-town.

The list goes on—and I want to hear your suggestions. If we get enough feedback, I’ll create a card for us to use at PM this year.

In all seriousness, I love Podcast Movement. It helps me connect with those I interact with online in person. The dinners, events, and sporting events are all fun and I value each moment with my industry friends.

I truly think face-time is critical to the success of my work.

I mentioned in a LinkedIn post this week how I think podcast advertising is easy (it is). However, what’s hard is relationship building. We’re a tight-knit community, and I love us for that but it’s also what is holding us back from exponential growth. the more Facetime and knowledge sharing the better we all will be in the years ahead.

I love travelling to see y’all and I think most of us prize our time together.

I’m all booked up for meetings this go around, but if you want to connect and chat just send me a note and we’ll find time. I am a crazy person at these events trying to ensure face-time with everyone.

Dark Roast - Illogical Uses of Dynamic Insertion

If you try to sell me full catalog, dynamically inserted ads on a show that covers breaking news or time-sensitive content… I will give you a lengthy berating (kindly, of course).

Breaking news content is some of the best content to buy for brands. It’s fast impact, often high impact, and has a high potential for virality relative to most other content.

If you care about ROAS and you aren’t buying breaking news content, you’re missing out (see above).

However… there’s one way to get dupped while buying breaking news: Say yes to full catalog DAI buys and you’ll say goodbye to ROAS.

It’s never been a secret that I loathe much of what DAI has done to our industry, but what I loathe most is how it’s enabled great minds to cease working.

I have grown to appreciate DAI tech more as iOS 17 fixed many issues. I buy more of it now than I ever did before and with a 1-2x per user freq. cap it’s not as bad (I still prefer episodic).

Truly, I see its use on evergreen shows like Prof G., Ologies, True Crime, DnD shows and the like. Stuff where people are consistently and intentionally listening to old content because it’s either topical or linear.

THAT SAID!

I have yet to hear a sound excuse why breaking news content, which has a lifecycle hardly longer than two weeks needs to sell back catalog impressions.

I’m not saying there aren’t any actual downloads there to sell, as there are. I’ve seen the screenshots. I just don’t think most of them are “real” or relevant.

For years, it was because of Apple Podcast’s auto downloads (many still are, as it’s true not all devices are upgraded… we still see on some campaigns 10-20% issues of devices auto downloading).

Prior to these iOS changes, daily shows were MILKING, and I mean MILKING ad dollars from brands on near fraudulent downloads (unknowingly, I hope).

Here’s why: the more episodes you publish, the more auto downloads, and the more auto downloads the more to sell. So shows released daily or with high frequency had more back catalog downloads rolling in that were not “genuine.”

Some networks would consolidate shows into one feed that was more popular to have a higher upload frequency to then sell more impressions. Putting low-influence hosts on high-influence shows with their feed to inherit the downloads from the main feed making it more sellable.

Put on your thinking cap with me and answer this question:

When was the last time you listened to a sports or news show about something that happened 2-3 months back? i.e. a game breakdown or about a specific news story.

If you say, “all the time” I worry for your mental health. Most people hardly can keep up with today’s news let alone have the time or capacity to listen to old news except for research purposes.

It just isn’t logical.

We didn’t need Apple to fix this to realize something was wrong, we just needed to step back and think for a moment…

To my chagrin, two large podcast publishers, both publicly traded or owned by a publicly traded company run DAI, uncapped frequency, on breaking news content still… and they get away with it by selling to brands over and over while burning them out. How do I know? Because two brands this week alone expressed how they were burned by the same company over-promising, booking ads this way, and then delivering devastatingly low results.

Knowing this I’d rather run a marathon with cheese graters for shoes than buy their content—and you should feel the same.

This is a waste of money. It’s a bad listener experience, and ultimately, brands with poor tracking methodologies buy it and get taken advantage of.

No, I’m not going to blast any companies by name publicly. I give them enough berating behind closed doors. Not because I think they’re evil (at least not entirely) but because without education how will they improve—see LinkedIn post on “Hanlon’s Razor.”

Often, I think these publishers just follow the easy money rather than what makes sense. And they don’t have anyone speaking up to them because they’ve shut out the voices and only sell to those who don’t have the education to speak up (hearsay, I know).

The good news is that many of them have changed. I’m grateful to have the privilege of speaking with nearly all of the leading publishers in our space. Almost all of these will now, if pressed, offer episodic options (especially on news/politics) content.

Some are slow. Some have intentions to with tech limitations. Others tell me to kick rocks while actively acknowledging their customer base doesn’t ask questions so why would they change? I had a nice public conversation with a network at PM LA about this… I was told “It’s not my job to educate the brands buying from me”

Oh well. despite some frustrations, I can say that these email headers are no longer uncommon in my inbox:

I love seeing the changes our industry is making after the past four years of questionable actions.

If you’re a brand, reply to this email and I’ll give you a list of partners of ours that are open to episodic that you may have historically avoided due to the above reasons.