Q&A: How Podcasts Can Help Advertisers During Back to School Season

TPX President Lina KIm SITS DOWN WITH VP JEFF ULSTER TO TALK PODCASTS AND “BACK TO SCHOOL” STRATEGIES FOR AD BUYERS

Share of ear for buyable audio — Podcasts’ share of ear for buyable audio has doubled in Canada since 2020, while AM/FM Radio and free music streaming services have seen their shares decline. Podcasts are now almost twice as popular than free music streaming, with 25-54 year-olds spending 24% of that listening time with podcasts. (Radio On The Move, Signal Hill Insights)

Jeff. What makes podcasting a good medium for advertisers as the school year kicks off in September?

Lina: Let’s start with the fact that parents are podcast listeners. About a third of adult Canadians are parents with a child under 17 in their household. Research from the latest Canadian Podcast Listener report shows that regular podcast listeners line up with that same percentage.

And podcasting has become a mass medium. The research tells us that 34% of Canadian adults listen to podcasts at least monthly, and about one in four listen weekly. In terms of time spent listening, podcasts are now the second-most popular buyable audio format for 25-54 year olds, which lines up nicely with the parent demo.

AN ENGAGED AUDIENCE.

So it’s the right audience - and it’s an engaged audience. Six out of ten podcast listeners say they’ve taken some follow-up action after hearing a podcast ad, and that’s up and down the funnel. So that’s great.

From the 2022 Canadian Podcast Listener survey.

I think the other thing that's really important is leveraging the right creative. So not just pushing out a repurposed 30-second radio ad, but actually taking a bit more of an integrated approach into how you build creative out. Especially when you're trying to sell during a key retail period like “back to school”, and even more so during a recession.

BE WHERE YOUR TARGET IS.

During this key retail period, where people are very much in the mid-to-low funnel stage, they're researching, they’re thinking, they're building lists. You need to be where your target is. And where you are doesn't always have to be “relevant parent content”, because listeners of all kinds are parents.

It's about finding a space where they’re engaged in order to have influence with your message, and just getting them at the right time and place with enough reach, with enough frequency and having great creative.

Jeff. Right. So how do you get them at the right time? And how can podcasting make a difference for advertisers?

Lina: When it’s back-to-school season, parents are on a timeline - they don’t have a lot of time to choose, and there's lots of clutter tactically in sales from a retail perspective. People are spending less per child in 2023, especially for back to school, and they are being very price conscious, and conscious around quality, because they want things to last … because God knows what the economy will be like next year. When they're listening to podcasts, they could very much be in the presence of mind to buy.

Some agencies approach the season by just punching out a lot of creative. They do a lot of cookie bombing, because it's all acquisition driven - it's all about sale. Some just go for the lowest common denominator. If you're doing banners, you're just literally cookie bombing so you can have the ROI. So it's not a very targeted approach.

BUILD BETTER ADS.

To leverage podcasting’s strength, you want to make sure that what you're gonna do is done well and will actually break through. Part of our expertise at TPX is really influencing people and clients to build better ads that make sense for the medium.

Jeff: You mentioned the right creative is key … so what do you mean by “better ads”?

Lina: It’s a few things. For one, I think making sure the creative addresses pain points for parents will be helpful because then you're just going to draw them down the funnel even faster and quicker with more influence - if you can do that within a piece of creative that's trusted. I think this is definitely what brands have to double down on to punch through the clutter.

So anything standard, I would say, throw out the door! With a podcast ad, you can reach the right people, it can say the right things and drive you down the funnel in a different way. It's not just a 30-second ad, it's not a flat carousel Instagram post - it’s leveraging the lean-in listener with a meaningful ad, delivered by an authentic voice who’s essentially reviewing the product and helping save consumers time and effort.

Jeff: By authentic voice, I assume you’re talking about host-read ads. We know they are the least-skipped ad format for listeners.

TAP INTO A TRUSTED, AUTHENTIC VOICE.

Lina: Yes, and listeners also say they’re more receptive to podcast ads in general compared to what they’re exposed to on TV, Radio or online. They’re also viewed less negatively than ads on other media. So they’re open to a targeted message that resonates with them. Product endorsements and “reviews in an ad” are really powerful ways to demonstrate value and trust to consumers, and no medium does that better than podcasts.

It’s a very competitive marketplace, and your goal is to make money versus every other similar competitor out there. And if you're not going to win on price you have to win on other things, like quality and advocacy. So a recommendation helps consumers understand why they should choose your product. It’s about honing in on the trusted kind of intimate space that podcast is and tapping into that authentic voice to really bring home that message.

Jeff: How can advertisers know they’re reaching their target audience effectively with podcast ads?

Lina: It's the inevitable challenge planners have with agencies. How do I know this is gonna work? Why should I take a risk?

The great thing with TPX is that we have data at our disposal to help narrow down on how to make selection. We actually have the data power to provide legitimate tangible, third-party research - and we know the genres and podcasts where parents over-index.

But it's also - you can't fight the tide here, right? Think of how TV broadcasters were fighting streaming, then they just had to lean into it, and now they're making tons of money on the back of it. So I think it's a bit of like, how do I know? You don't know until you try. There's a lot of research that says why it would be successful, but you have to do it, right? You can't just throw 10 million impressions out buckshot with mediocre creative, and expect to stand out, right? So come to us as the experts, to do it the right way.

HOW DO I KNOW IT’S WORTH IT?

So, back to “how do I know it’s worth it”, especially when the CPM might be higher than some other media. Well, listen - track it, like you would for anything. I think that's a big misconception with podcasting. Part of what we want to do at TPX is help agencies and brands understand what kind of performance metrics you're able to deliver with the channel, and how to do that effectively and strategically, by understanding the space.

Another way to find out if this is the right channel for you, or if your creative is nuanced in the right way, is to run attribution tracking if you can do it - tracking all major site events, conversions, etc. Brand lift studies are also a great way to confirm your message is effective. I tend to lean on Brand Lift Studies a little more for overall brand health metrics and also for testing nuances of the creative - those are smart ways to use them.

Jeff: You mentioned TV broadcasters fighting streaming. Do you see podcasts as the “new streaming”?

Lina: Well, podcasting is its own thing, but just like streaming is an extension of linear TV, podcasting is also an extension of terrestrial radio and streaming audio. It's the same idea as when you're buying TV now - you're not just buying GRPs, right? You're buying impressions off connected or streaming video. The same applies to radio and podcasts.

A recent U.S-based report from Sounds Profitable says a large number of young podcast listeners are just not listening to the Radio or watching TV at all.

I do find there's a hesitancy for terrestrial radio buyers to migrate over to podcasts. I feel like the TV transition was janky, but it was a bit more seamless. The adoption of podcasts by buyers is not as strong as it should be - and will be - but the audience and the opportunity is there now.

EXCLUSIVE, INCREMENTAL REACH

Jeff: So we’ve talked about back-to-school in the context of parents looking to purchase on behalf of their young children. But older kids - university and college students — are heading back to school, too. Is podcasting a good way to reach them?

Lina: Absolutely - podcasting is a great way to reach young adults! For one, podcast listening skews towards young, educated, higher-income consumers. On top of that, it’s increasingly hard to reach them via traditional media. For younger listeners, podcasting adds an exclusive, incremental reach of almost 20% to a legacy media campaign, because many of these listeners just aren’t listening to the Radio or watching TV any more.

BACK-TO-SCHOOL RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AD BUYERS

For more about how podcasting can help your back to school campaign, or about podcast advertising in general, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at TPX.

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