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For brands that want more transparency into campaign performance, agency leaders who are struggling to stay efficient under the burden of massive and disparate data sets, and media buyers who are contemplating yet another job switch to escape manual reporting duties, the very notion of “automated reporting for digital advertising” sounds almost too good to be true. Key word: almost.
But here’s the good news: Automated reporting exists, and it exists to make your life easier. The even better news? You’ve come to exactly the right place to learn what report automation is, how it works, and what its benefits are.
So settle in, make yourself comfortable, and get excited about a world where your team isn’t wasting hours of each work week on manual, error-prone data consolidation and campaign performance report generation tasks.
Automated reporting consolidates performance data across marketing channels such as search, social, and programmatic and uses that data to automatically generate holistic campaign analytics reports.
To best explain how automated advertising reporting works, let’s start by looking at how manual marketing reports are made. After all, the many hidden costs of manual reporting are what spurred the innovation of automated reporting.
Consider the following statistics from a recent survey of 300 CMOs:
Why is manual reporting such a burden for marketing teams? Well, to create reports manually, marketers must collect and verify data sets from multiple sources, identify and isolate the common metrics they’re interested in across those data sets, consolidate the data sets based on those metrics, and manually interpret that unified data before creating charts, graphs, and presentations to communicate their findings to clients.
Sounds...not great, right? Frankly, we’re getting bored just thinking about it. Worse yet, all that manual manipulation of precious campaign data creates numerous opportunities for human error, inconsistencies, and redundancies—all of which add up to low confidence in the reports themselves. Plus, the work involved in creating these reports is tedious, repetitive, and unfulfilling for marketers. It’s the kind of work that, in the context of the Great Resignation and a cutthroat job market, brands and agencies would do well to reduce—if not eliminate.
Automated reporting, by contrast, uses sophisticated technologies to automate the collection, unification, and presentation of campaign data, so marketers can create visually appealing, holistic reports just by telling the tech which metrics and date range they’re interested in.
Automated reporting offers an array of benefits, all of which can add up to major competitive advantages for agencies and brands. Here are five of the biggest pros:
Automation streamlines the collection, consolidation, and presentation of campaign analytics—achieving those tasks in a fraction of the time it would take someone compiling those reports manually. As a result, marketing organizations using automated reporting are more efficient, with more time each week for strategic tasks, networking, ongoing education, or even TikTok (we’re not judging, promise.)
When humans manage the manual collection and consolidation of data, it’s easy to inadvertently copy and paste the wrong field or hit the wrong key—especially because this work is often frustrating and mind-numbingly tedious. Marketing teams can eliminate these kinds of human errors by leaving the collection and consolidation of data to technology.
Data privacy will shape the current and future eras of advertising. In response to consumer demand for data privacy, legislators have passed digital advertising regulations like the EU’s GDPR and California’s Consumer Privacy Act, which aim to protect consumers from the unethical or unconsented use of their data.
As a result, marketing teams must handle their consumer data with extreme care. If your organization doesn’t collect, store, and use its data in ways that comply with industry regulations, fines and even legal prosecution may follow. While manual reporting can open companies up to costly errors related to data compliance, automated marketing reporting keeps the process clean.
Economic upheaval, supply chain disruption, and global crises have cumulated in a cutthroat environment where consumers are increasingly switching brands, driven by lower prices and/or limited supply. With brand loyalty at stake, brands need frequent, crystal-clear reporting to identify what’s working in their campaigns and what isn’t. Tools like automated marketing reports streamline this process and, for agencies, can improve client communications and relationships.
Finally, in today’s candidate-driven market, the need to retain staff is urgent, but manual reporting is a known pain point for highly skilled marketers who don’t want to spend their time on tedious, repetitive tasks. Providing your team with tools that make their jobs easier and more enjoyable is a productive way to show them you’re looking out for their wellbeing. And if it just so happens to help them work more efficiently? All the better.
Like any opportunity, the brands and agencies that adopt automated reporting early will gain a significant advantage over those who don't, giving them an edge in this highly competitive industry.
But reporting is just the start when it comes to the power of advertising automation. Billing automation and workflow automation, for example, can also provide game-changing efficiencies for brands. To learn more about how automation is poised to transform and improve the marketing industry, check out our guide, Meeting the Moment with Advertising Automation.
Welcome to Scout! Each week, our team tracks down the best digital marketing articles, POVs, and reports—so you don't have to. Here’s what to read from the week of 7/1/22 - 7/7/22 to stay ahead of the curve:
The repeal of Roe v. Wade is one of many high-profile events driving people to the internet for vital data. Unfortunately, misinformation is rampant, and access to vetted information is an urgent matter in this and many other cases. Marketers can help ensure brand suitability by advertising ethically and making sure their ad spend isn’t supporting sites that peddle misinformation.
As this Cannes Lions AdWeek panel shows, younger workers expect their employers to embody values that align with their own—a fact that’s forcing marketing departments to “put their money where their mouth is” when it comes to climate change.
Climate change, inflation, war in Europe, and talent shortages: What a time to be alive and marketing (*insert melting face emoji*)! In today’s competitive landscape, brands need every bit of efficiency they can get—and bid shading is one solution that offers just that.
It’s been quite a year for digital advertising regulation! Just this week, European lawmakers approved two new pieces of sweeping digital regulation, paving the way for clashes between regulators and the world’s biggest tech companies over how those rules should be applied.
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Each month, Basis Technologies’ Programmatic 101 series tackles a different facet of programmatic advertising—from best practices for buyers, to competitors in the space, to trends you should know.
With the introduction of programmatic media, brands and advertisers suddenly had access to an overwhelming number of options. Whether it be the rolodex of publishers to work with, the various data points available for targeting, or the sheer number of key performance indicators (KPIs) they could measure, there were a lot of decisions to make—and brands and advertisers needed help sifting through all the options.
Bid automation software was developed to answer this call for help. New algorithms and software were created to take on some of the manual work initially required of media buyers, quickening and streamlining the process of programmatic bidding.
Read on to learn what automated bidding is and what benefits it offers, and to explore a few examples of what automated bid management looks like in context.
Manual bidding is when a buyer sets the price of how much they are willing to bid on an impression. Generally, the buyer will use historical performance or will manually pull reports each week to assess eCPM, or effective cost-per-thousand impressions.
Automated bidding strategies, on the other hand, allow technology to decide how much a brand should bid to achieve their goal. The technology can ingest various data points in real time and use that information to update the bid price. That doesn't mean that bidding is out of the media buyer's hands, by any means—in fact, it gives them back the time they would have spent manually assessing reports to better control and optimize high-level strategies.
The biggest advantage of automated bidding strategies is their time- and cost- efficiency. With bidding automation, buyers don’t have to manually pull reports and analyze the data to confirm if their bid is set at the right price. Some automated strategies even ingest high-quality data that isn’t readily available to brands or advertisers—such as historical campaign performance, auction insights, or time of day—adding an extra layer of intelligence and depth to their decision-making.
To illustrate what bidding automation looks like in practice, here are a few examples of automated bidding strategies available within Basis:
Algorithmic optimization (AO) seeks out which inventory is performing best for each tactic included in a campaign. Marketers can set the algorithm to focus on either placement-level or domain-level data. After a learning period, AO adjusts the bid prices depending on how a particular domain and/or placement is performing. It can either increase the bid or stop bidding altogether on under-performing domains and placements.
Machine Learning Optimization (MLO) is a model-based solution that leverages artificial intelligence to optimize towards a campaign’s desired KPI. MLO analyzes data from more than thirty tactic parameters, at the brand level, and dynamically creates models in real-time that determine how much a tactic should bid on each impression based on the likelihood that it will result in the desired outcome—whether that be clicks, conversions, video completions, or viewability.
Bid Shading utilizes an algorithm to analyze historical bid data and determine a minimum price that is lower than the default CPM bid, while maintaining a high probability of winning the auction. Bid shading provides time savings and cost efficiencies that make it a no brainer for programmatic.
Bid Multipliers allows a single tactic to submit various bids based on how the parameter is performing. For example, let’s say a buyer notices that desktop inventory is leading to more conversions. Bid multipliers allow buyers to set rules so that when a desktop impression appears, the technology will automatically bid higher to ensure the impression is won. In the same vein, buyers can also decrease bids for inventory, domains, frequency, or creative if they are under- performing.
Put simply, automated bidding strategies leverage technology to help buyers make informed decisions about their bids. As a result, buyers can:
Curious to learn more? Check out our guide, Meeting the Moment with Advertising Automation, to learn about the many variations of automation, and how they serve to improve the lives of media professionals.
A growing SaaS company boosted its brand awareness with a high-frequency omnichannel campaign that reached 91.4 million people and resulted in 4-point brand lift.
How fast is SaaS (Software as a Service) growing? The SaaS industry keeps growing rapidly in the business-to-business space, with no end in sight. SaaS remains the largest market segment and is forecasted to reach $145.3 billion in 2022, up 19% from the previous year. With more than 15,000 SaaS companies worldwide, competition has never been fiercer. And when companies want to learn more about a particular product, they turn to well-known industry leaders. Our customer, an innovative SaaS company, is one of those leaders. They provide leading B2B software solutions to simplify and automate operations that drive increased profitability and greater efficiencies across an entire organization.
The SaaS company turned to Basis Technologies to provide a strategic digital media recommendation that would achieve their business goals. They had worked with Basis Technologies for numerous campaigns previously and knew they would deliver unmatched digital media planning, buying, and activation through their expert teams and owned and operated demand-side platform (DSP), Basis. Together, the SaaS company and Basis Technologies developed a high-frequency, omnichannel campaign inclusive of walled gardens, rolling it out nationally with a localized heavy-up approach. Additionally, the team leveraged Basis Technologies' Media Sciences to provide in-depth vertical, market, and consumer insights based on syndicated/proprietary media research to improve campaign performance. The team didn’t miss a beat. Basis Technologies provided access to a custom Datorama Dashboard to provide transparency and analytics to manage cross-channel campaigns while providing insight and optimization recommendations to reach and exceed KPIs (key performance indicators).
CTV and Pre-Roll
Basis Technologies focused on a full-funnel approach that leveraged :15 and :30 ads across programmatic CTV and pre-roll video—as well as Basis' extensive private marketplace (PMP) library—to access high-value premium inventory. The video completion rate (VDC) for CTV achieved a high 97%. Additionally, the Pre-Roll video format achieved a high 73% VCR, exceeding the goal of 70%.
Behavioral and Contextual Targeting
The team maximized touchpoints by serving standard and native display ads on mobile devices, tablets, and desktops. Behavioral targeting via LiveIntent and contextual tactics drove the strongest eCPM efficiency with 34% of all display impressions. The campaign achieved a $4.68 eCPM, exceeding the goal of $4.93.
Industry Targeting is Costly but Effective
To move further down the funnel and capitalize on scale, the team implemented a Meta and LinkedIn campaign. Coverage on these platforms provided the most robust targeting capabilities including
by industry, job title, interest, and retargeting engagers. The Meta campaign attained a $1.77 CPLPV (85% over benchmark). Meanwhile, LinkedIn achieved a $27.40 CPLPV (47% over benchmark) and played a critical role in reaching a senior-level target audience at an above-average CTR of 0.42% (among those with founder, CEO, and owner job titles)
Welcome to Scout! Each week, our team tracks down the best digital marketing articles, POVs, and reports—so that you don't have to. Here’s what to read from the week of 6/23/22 - 6/30/22 to stay ahead of the curve:
Did you hear? In the U.S. alone, audio garners upwards of 31% of all media activity—but ad spend is at an underwhelming 8.8%! Podcasts specifically are on the rise and come with many advertising benefits—here's what marketers should know.
How will the overturning of Roe v. Wade impact the marketing world? While it's too soon to know for sure, some marketing experts are weighing in with predictions related to keyword and media bidding, political advertising, and more.
Amidst economic upheaval and uncertainty, marketers might be wondering how to navigate their ad budgets—time to slash them? Double down? Go dark? Abandon all hope?!? Here, experts share why brands should keep advertising, even if they adjust their targeting or messaging strategies.
Megan Thee Stallion, Paris Hilton, and Issa Rae all graced stages at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, infusing some necessary fun into serious panel discussions about web3, a possible recession, diversity, and climate change.
Netflix was another big topic at Cannes Lions—specifically, their efforts to launch an ad supported tier. The streaming giant is reportedly considering partnering with an established media company to get those capabilities off the ground rather than buying a platform of its own...at least in the short term.
Wait, we’ve got one more Cannes Lions theme to talk about! Beyond the Greenpeace protesters, two panels—both linked in this article—tackled how marketers and agencies can avoid greenwashing and take concrete steps to reduce their carbon footprints.
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Midterms are inherently turbulent periods for political advertisers, but the 2022 election cycle promises an entirely new level of instability.
To begin with, the political and advertising landscapes are each reeling in their own ways from the ongoing pandemic, inflation, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the world of politics, redistricting, unfinalized electoral maps, and concerns about Russian meddling in this year’s midterms have added an additional level of intensity. In advertising, meanwhile, new consumer privacy regulations and decreased targeting options from giants like Meta are forcing brands and agencies to rethink their approaches to finding their audiences.
As all these factors come together in the context of the upcoming midterms, there’s one question on advertisers’ minds: What could possibly go wrong?
...OK, maybe that’s not the question. Marketers are actually wondering how to target like they have in years past when they are operating without many of the tools and capabilities they had during previous campaigns. And the question of targeting isn’t just about putting the right message in front of the right people—as one factor of a holistic marketing strategy, targeting is wrapped up in everything else advertisers want to do: spend effectively, cut through the noise, create seamless consumer experiences, and foster affinity and loyalty.
Luckily, alternative methods of targeting are available for political advertisers, and while they may look and feel different than third-party cookies, they offer new benefits—the most important one being that they use audience data in non-invasive, consumer-approved ways while staying conversion-friendly and cost-effective.
Read on to learn about the challenges to targeted political marketing in 2022, as well as some new targeting solutions marketers can use to cut through the chaos.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: The advertising industry is facing an identity crisis as it looks ahead to the impending deprecation of third-party cookies in 2023. As that 2023 deadline looms closer, regulatory bodies and tech providers alike are taking steps to move away from cookie-based targeting and towards less invasive tools for reaching target audiences.
New and proposed digital advertising regulations across the globe further illustrate the need to proactively move away from third-party cookie-based targeting. For example: The UK’s new Digital Services Act, which “aim(s) to create a safer digital space where the fundamental rights of users are protected,” will ban targeted online ads based on ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.
Meanwhile, tech giants have adjusted their offerings in response to calls for increased privacy as well. In January, Meta removed many detailed targeting options that were based on potentially sensitive identifiers. These included sexual orientation, religious practices, and the kicker for political marketers: political beliefs.
As governments pass new legislation and tech providers alter their offerings, marketers are tasked with staying up to date on the changes and working around them, all while maintaining performance. It’s a tall order—and in order to fulfil it, marketers will need to tap into new, privacy friendly targeting opportunities.
There’s no silver bullet for replacing third-party cookies. There are, however, a variety of effective and cost-efficient alternative targeting options that meet the new standards for consumer privacy. Below, we’ll discuss two viable opportunities. Note that these aren’t the only privacy-friendly targeting solutions available to political marketers, as there are many, but tapping into these two will put you well on your way to better identifying, understanding, and speaking to your target audiences as you ramp up media buys for your campaign.
In many ways, contextual targeting is a throwback to the times before internet advertising and third-party cookies, when advertisers bought ad space in linear TV, print, and terrestrial radio. To place their ads in front of the right people, marketers identified contextually relevant environments within those channels. For example, a record label might identify Rolling Stone as a contextually relevant environment for their messaging, because they want their ads to reach music fans.
Today, contextual targeting is having a moment in digital advertising because it doesn’t rely on user data. It's clear that the method of using contextually relevant content to group audiences is here to stay—it’s foundational to Google’s new Topics API offering, for example. Contextual targeting is also more cost-effective, on average, than user ID-based targeting. Finally, contextual inherently adds a layer of filtering for page quality, protecting brand safety by avoiding low-quality content. In an age where consumers are rejecting brands that advertise irresponsibly, this is a priceless benefit.
In the political advertising realm, few things are more valuable than accurate and hyper-local geotargeting. This is especially true for congressional, state, and local campaigns, where candidates have finite dollars to reach voters in specific areas.
In days past, political marketers had to manually identify dozens of zip codes for the state and local legislative districts they wanted to target in their campaigns, then upload that data into a programmatic ad platform before using it in their campaigns. However, new capabilities empower political advertisers to reach their target audiences more effectively and efficiently. Basis’ state legislative district geo-targeting, for example, automates the delivery of L2's high-quality voter data into Basis DSP, then streamlines the discovery, selection and exemption of districts to target. This process reduces manual (and human error-prone) labor on the part of media buyers, allowing more time for strategy, creative messaging, and optimizations.
Additionally, L2’s partnership with Comscore combines L2’s data with Comscore’s Predictive Audiences methodology, empowering marketers to access a variety of political audiences without third-party cookies. Using this feature, marketers can tap into audiences based on political behaviors like voting likelihood and political affiliation.
The state legislative district geo-targeting feature is a good example of how to effectively target audiences in a privacy-friendly way—it starts with high quality data, employs automation to streamline the delivery and execution of that data, and combines with additional useful methodologies to offer more granular targeting.
However political marketers decide to approach the 2022 election cycle, privacy must be a focus. While consumers demand authenticity and responsible advertising from advertisers of all stripes, candidates and causes marketing is particularly susceptible to the court of public opinion.
By relying on privacy compliant targeting solutions like contextual and hyperlocal geo-targeting data, political marketers can both find and identify the voter audiences they want to connect with. They’ll also set up new, privacy-friendly advertising workflows that will come in handy in coming years as the industry continues to move away from user ID-based targeting.
And if—scratch that, when—the 2024 election cycle is even more chaotic than this year’s, not having to start from scratch when it comes to cookieless targeting will be a welcome relief.
Looking to make the most of your 2022 election advertising? Connect with Basis Technologies to learn about our award-winning Candidates and Causes team!
What’s new in the realms of paid search and social media? Basis’ Senior Vice President of Paid Search and Social compiles all the latest news, trends, and resources each month for easy access.
Channel Factory’s global research report reveals key insights across the US, UK, Italy, Singapore and Australia to illustrate how people are using social media platforms today compared to in 2020.
According to a recent eMarketer report, social media ranks higher than search, display, or video in terms of ability to measure ROI for paid media.
Search Engine Land summarizes the most important announcements from this year’s Google Marketing Live event.
In partnership with Analysis Group, Meta released a whitepaper discussing the potential contribution of the metaverse to global economic activity—if it were to evolve similarly to prior successful technologies in terms of rate of adoption and impact on GDP.
A new research study by Snap and IPG Magna explores augmented reality's place in marketing and how it’s being embraced across industries.
The Reddit for Business LinkedIn account recently shared a useful infographic to help guide advertisers on the top copy and creative considerations for headlines, static images, video, and overall tone.
The May edition of this Google report provides a look into how consumers are reacting to the rising cost of both essential and nonessential items they need or want to buy.
Google found that more than 80% of people say they use another device while watching TV. With this in mind, they are rolling out a new feature that lets you connect your TV to your iOS or Android phone to bridge cross-device activity.
In an effort to provide more transparency for users, Meta's updated Ad Library will now include information on the social issue, electoral, and political ads a Page runs using each type of targeting (such as location, demographics, and interests).
TikTok's new partnership allows WooCommerce merchants to connect their accounts to TikTok in order to sync store catalogs, implement pixels seamlessly for results tracking, and target custom audiences quickly.
Snapchat recently introduced their own version of dynamic travel ads, likely due to a resurgence in travel since the pandemic began.
An award-winning cannabis retailer leverages Basis Technologies' programmatic expertise to achieve 8x higher return on ad spend.
A Michigan multi-location medical and recreational cannabis retailer was looking to bring their digital advertising in-house to improve their media performance and business goals. They knew it would take time and training to transition, and they would need an expert partner to help lead their campaigns while they migrated their digital media operations.
The cannabis industry is quickly growing and evolving with new regulations and geographic nuances constantly changing the landscape. This chaos creates complicated and confusing paths to execute and reach the right audience at the right time to create a meaningful connection.
The retailer was confident that Basis Technologies' Path to Self-Service solution provided the flexibility and expertise to take their digital media campaigns to the next level. For their first campaign, the Basis Technologies team focused on prospecting through trusted partners such as Fyllo, which offers one of the largest ecosystems of cannabis and CBD-derived purchase data and is available directly through the Basis DSP Platform. The team implemented a data-driven campaign with programmatic, display, contextual targeting with Peer39, and retargeting to reach the desired audience. A universal pixel was also implemented to create various models for targeting, attribution, and subsequently optimization for a more efficient return on investment.
We each encounter a stunning array of stimuli in our daily lives. The images and advertisements that flood our social media feeds, the apartment maintenance team revving up the weedwhacker just as we sign on to a Zoom meeting, our pets softly snoring as we write a blog about podcasts...but we digress.
If everyone was to pause and make a list of all the things they could see and hear in just this precise moment, many would understandably get lost in that sea of sound (and, of course, wind up with some extensive lists!)
Why does this constant state of stimulation matter, specifically for advertisers?
Experts say that it leads to a phenomenon of “continuous partial attention,” in which many things get just a bit of our attention, but a single thing rarely gets it all. This matters for marketers, as attention drives sales. And one particularly under-utilized area of advertising that garners a lot of attention? Podcasts.
Today, we’re digging deep into all things podcast advertising: how it’s currently utilized (or under-utilized), where its value lies for marketers, and where it’s projected to go in the next several years. Read on to learn how podcast advertising can help marketers cut through the noise—pun very much intended!
The vast amount of input we encounter daily is visual—with some images front-and-center, and others in the periphery. This massive visual input is, in no small part, due to the number of ads we see. Sources estimate that most Americans encounter up to ten thousand advertisements each day! It’s no wonder that our attention is constantly divided.
Audio advertising provides a break from visual overload. 56% of Gen Z and millennials agree that audio serves as a much-needed escape. It’s a way to reach consumers without requiring them to focus their attention on an image or video. Within the broad umbrella of audio advertising, podcasts are an especially compelling opportunity, as most people listening are doing so because they want to learn.
Plus, people listen to podcasts everywhere. Recent data shows that most listening happens on smartphones, which means that listening can occur virtually anywhere: in the car, on a walk, at home, etc. As such, podcast ads provide marketers with a captive audience—ripe for high engagement—at any time, and in any place.
Unfortunately, that’s not entirely the case. Despite the popularity of podcasts, podcast advertising is presently an underutilized and undervalued opportunity, especially given the format’s explosive growth in the last several years.
Let’s touch on a few of the current stats on podcasting, which demonstrate this discrepancy between advertising opportunity and utilization:
Now, onto podcast ad spend:
Despite the evidence that podcasts are booming and that podcast ad spend is on the rise, audio advertising is, collectively, under-invested. In the U.S. alone, audio garners upwards of 31% of all media activity. But in terms of ad spend? An underwhelming 8.8%!
Imagine this: a listener of a lifestyle podcast hears the host share their experiences using a certain product. This host is someone the listener trusts, as they listen to the podcast each week. They recall that the host has talked about this product before, and their interest is piqued. Later that week, that same product appears in their Instagram feed or alongside their virtual shopping cart. Because they heard about the product from a trusted source, and have now experienced ads across various channels, they’re ready to hit "Add to Cart."
Podcast ads are a powerful tool marketers can add to their omnichannel strategy that allows them the flexibility to meet their ideal consumer in the right time, and in the right way. They offer opportunities for marketers to authentically engage with consumers, to personalize for distinct audiences, and to employ a flexible marketing strategy.
Let’s dive a bit deeper on these key strengths of podcast advertising.
Advertising within podcasts provides an opportunity to connect with relevant audiences in an authentic way that drives engagement. These ads can captivate listeners with strong storytelling, fostering an authentic connection to a brand or product. Marketers have listeners’ undivided attention, as users cannot listen to anything else while a single audio ad is playing. Though listeners have the ability to skip podcast ads—and this is certainly a challenge with this ad type—audio ads tend to stick in listeners’ minds: upwards of 70% recall audio ads they’ve heard over the past few months!
Beyond the fact that podcasts offer a captive crew of listeners (and the ability to reach them in a way that doesn’t add to visual overload), many podcast listeners are incredibly loyal in their listening habits. Regular listeners are deeply committed to their favorite podcasts, with 46% listening within 24 hours of each episode’s release.
What’s more, podcast hosts have established rapport and trust with their audiences. For most listeners—especially millennial and Gen Z—trust, loyalty, and authenticity are critical factors that drive their purchases, especially during times of economic upheaval and inflation. Reaching them through a platform they regularly use and where trust has already been established is a huge win for marketers, and data shows that podcast ads read by hosts are perceived positively.
Yet another benefit of podcast advertising: its strength when it comes to personalization, especially through contextual targeting.
Marketers can gain significant insight into audiences just by paying attention to the podcast’s topic, tone, and audience. In a land shaped by constantly-shifting digital advertising regulations and the coming deprecation of third-party cookies, using podcasts’ topics and audience demographics to place relevant ads within the context of those podcasts is an impactful strategy.
Advertisers can ensure their message is reaching the audience, in the right way, by placing ads in podcasts that align with their own brand voice and values. An audience already captively listening to a podcast on personal finance will be more receptive to ads directly related to that industry, just as someone listening to a true crime podcast might be more responsive to their podcast hosts touting a home security system.
Once marketers have identified their target audience, using a DSP to access premium biddable and guaranteed direct audio inventory is a great way to ensure they are connecting with that audience. And, utilizing private marketplace inventory allows advertisers to further leverage contextual targeting to reach audiences with precision and in brand-safe audio environments.
Beyond contextual targeting, advertisers can narrow and further personalize their advertisements by embracing dynamically personalized audio messages. These allow marketers to personalize the audio ads that listeners are hearing based on criteria such as age, language, weather, day of the week, and more.
In today’s complex digital landscape, the need for a flexible, dynamic marketing strategy has never been greater. Advertisers need the ability to test new strategies within different channels, as well as employ strategies across channels in a way that keeps brand voice and messaging consistent. Luckily, podcast advertising has developed in a way that allows marketers to lean into these demands.
First, there are many different styles and types of podcast ads that marketers can use. Though 15 to 30 second host reads currently take the cake, longer custom-branded segments are becoming more widespread. As trends continue to shift—both based on what consumers respond to and what the industry can provide—marketers have the flexibility to embrace podcast advertising strategies that meet their distinct needs.
Further, for marketers who are working to expand their reach by employing an omnichannel strategy, podcast ads offer the flexibility to do so without putting a strain on resources. For advertisers who have not yet ventured into video or audio, audio has a lower barrier to entry—podcast ads have lower production costs and have fewer components to edit than video ads. And, unlike video ads, podcast ads do not have to be ‘in-view’ to have an impact on consumers.
Finally, podcast ads offer marketers the flexibility to adapt their strategies to meet consumers where they’re spending the most time. Today, most podcast listening happens on smartphones. In the U.S., the average mobile user spends nearly four and a half hours on their phone each day. Using podcast ads increases the likelihood that consumers will be exposed to your brand or product across a variety of channels. And, as users spend more and more time on their smartphones in the coming years? Podcast advertising will continue to offer marketers the flexibility to increase their interactions with consumers on just that device.
Podcast advertising demand is skyrocketing and will only continue to grow in the coming years. As programmatic audio advertising technologies evolve, alongside AI-driven contextual targeting functionality and improved data capabilities, advertising in podcasts will continue to become more sophisticated and competitive. Savvy marketers can stay ahead of the curve by prioritizing authenticity, embracing the flexibility of this audio format, and staying informed on current trends.
Want to learn more about how audio advertising could be a part of your media plan? Whether you’re looking to add programmatic audio to your digital media strategy or you’re more interested in direct buys through various private marketplaces, the opportunities are many. Check out our Audio Advertising Guide to learn more.