Creative Ways To Get More Ad Dollars For Your Smaller Podcast

Big Podcasting seems almost designed to collect advertising dollars, with very little leftover for small to mid-sized podcasts. Rather than fighting for table scraps, maybe the narrative needs to be changed.

Hello and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.

Consolidation and acquisitions have become commonplace in podcasting since, well, honestly, since the beginning of podcasting. But the pace has picked up big time in the last three to four years. And with the looming recession, or the one that's already here, depending on your experience, you can expect that to accelerate as companies who are flushed with cash will swoop in and grab the overleveraged companies or media properties looking for upfront payments or revenue guarantees for these uncertain times ahead.

In fact, just this week, we've seen Team Coco, Conan O'Brien's podcast production company, be acquired by SXM or Sirius XM. And WTF with Marc Maron has signed an agreement to let Acast handle his ad sales and distribution exclusively starting this summer.

Both of those deals, one an acquisition and oh, let's call the other one a strategic partnership, probably went for eye-watering sums of money, betting on the fact that even more envious piles of cash will flow out the other end, further enriching the parties on, well, all of the parties involved.

And that spells really good news for other shows that get tens or hundreds of millions of annual downloads and ad impressions to be sold against, but what if you're not in the millions of annual downloads range? What if you're just in the thousands? Which makes you more than a thousand times smaller than those really big shows. With the changing economic climate, will that mean more opportunities for you, too, to be acquired? Or will you get people sniffing around looking for a strategic partnership?

Probably not. You see, those deals, you know already, they happen because those shows have huge audiences that can be monetized even more so than they are today and can also be grown to rake in even more cash. They're a fairly safe bet seen from that perspective.

Better and more efficient ad buying, the network effect, more package deals and bundles that can, and often are, worth multiple millions of ad dollars on a single buy. It's a model that more and more big advertisers are turning to simply because, well, it's easy. Yeah, it's easy.

Look at this from a buyer's perspective, an ad buyer's perspective, and not just any ad buyer, but a big spender in podcast advertising. Magellan AI tells us the top 15 advertisers are spending more than $1.3 million each month in podcast advertising.

Now, at an average of around $25 CPM, that's a lot of M's, about 52 million impressions. How many podcasts do you want to spread that around? I mean, the answer is as few as possible.

Let's use a more modest ad spend for a moment, $500,000, roughly a third of what the top advertisers are spending. Now, as an ad buyer, who by the way, is also responsible, not just for vetting and placing those ads, but also tracking and reporting on the efficacy of the overall campaign spend.

Do you want to spend your hundred thousand dollars this way, where you spend it 1000 at a time on 500 shows? No, that's way too much work. No, you'd rather take that 500,000 and spend 50,000 across 10 shows. Or maybe $100,000 on five shows because it's going to get you as much return and, really, it will, for half the effort. So why wouldn't you make it easier on yourself?

Now, that's not good news for shows that have less than, let's do the math, 4 million monthly downloads, or a million downloads per episode. How can shows that are smaller than that compete? Now, not surprisingly, I have some suggestions for you.

I recently read an article from Digiday that talked about the disconnect between scrappy podcasters who want to do something more creative than just run host-read or programmatic, pre-produced ad units on their podcast and then the ad buyers, who I just mentioned above. The bottom line, the ad buyers, at that level at least, aren't interested in creativity. They're interested in spending money as efficiently and effectively as they can.

And of course, yes, sure, having a positive ROAS - return on ad spend - is important, or at least having data that their bosses can interpret as a positive ROAS. But creativity? For what?

And that's where smaller shows, mid-level and below, can really shine. The big spenders may not care about ad creativity, but the smaller spenders sure might. But only if we, and by we I mean you, stop trying to sell ads on your smaller podcast the way that ads are bought and sold by the big players. That's almost always a losing proposition.

So, instead of trying to justify why spending $500 worth of advertising on your show is worth some insanely high CPM of 50 to $200 or more, a fight you're going to lose nine times out of ten, reframe the conversation. Don't even talk about CPM. It's not worth it.

And don't even offer to run ads as they're generally known. Ads, at least the way we think about them today with pre-rolls and mid-rolls and post-roles, dynamically inserted or host-read, those are all ads and you're automatically competing against other shows who can run ads way more effectively and efficiently than you can.

Change the narrative by offering something different. Offer custom sponsorships that are unlike anything the potential ad buyer has heard before from podcasts. I'm talking about custom, highly creative deals that would be extremely cost prohibitive to convince a big show to run, but a smaller, more nimble show like yours could seriously lean into.

How about a branded segment of your show? Three to five minutes of sponsored, but highly valuable, content that your audience will still love. No, no, no, not just a long host read. I know you've done that. Get creative. Turn your sponsor into a partner and craft a segment with them that really, really works on your show.

Or what about a completely branded episode? Or maybe even a series of episodes that you produce in conjunction with the sponsor? No, not an infomercial. That's just an ad and then you're back into that trap once again. I'm talking about solid content that you can only make because of the involvement from that sponsor. That means more than just getting their money so you can afford to do something. Really working with them.

Smaller companies are often looking for ways to outdo, but not outspend, their bigger competitors. They're used to being scrappy and are always looking for interesting ways to parlay their brand and their dollars into doing creative executions their big competitors don't have time for.

Look, I think it's going to get tougher out there for the middle sized and smaller podcasts as more ad dollars will be reallocated to a smaller number of larger podcasts. So trying to get some of that just isn't worth your time.

But, being creative and providing real value through clever partnering and sponsorships that only your show can deliver?  That's something worth trying.

With that, I shall be back next week with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He's on a mission to make podcasting better. Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes section of your podcast listening app. A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected transcript, both created by Allie Press. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. Find out more at Simpler.Media.