Restructuring Your Podcast To Be Advertising-Friendly

Advertisers big and small are taking a fresh look at podcasts of all sizes. Some producers who never considered offering sponsorships are getting requests. A few simple tweaks to your processes can make these money gifts easier to handle.

July 8, 2020

Article

I’m no fan of advertising. I've spent the better part of the last 20 years running digital advertising agencies at the VP level. And I can tell you with some authority that a lot of advertising is total garbage. I believe in my heart that advertising is a tax paid by the unremarkable. Longtime listeners of my podcast know that I've been critical of podcast advertising, mostly because I'm good at math

But thinking, like things, can evolve. And my thinking on advertising in the podcasting space is shifting.

It’s shifting because it’s impacted my company. My clients are starting to not only get unsolicited requests from advertisers but are actually booking deals. Last week, I closed a couple of first-time ad buys for a couple of clients. Another client somehow landed deals with six different advertisers for his show, and now we have to figure out how to place those ads in episodes that have been produced already but not yet released.

That’s the impetus for this program: re-factoring the process of making episodes so that advertising, sponsorship, or just good news messaging fits inside of our podcasts.

Dropping non-episode content into a podcast episode that wasn’t designed to handle advertising or sponsorship messaging feels clunky and weird. And no one relishes the idea of un-doing all the work that went into making eight episodes so that the final product with the ad messaging doesn’t sound clunky or weird.

Of course, lots of podcasts are set up to run ads. Many have great processes set up so that ads can be swapped in and out without interrupting the rest of the production process.

But most podcasts have never really considered advertising, so they really have no strategy for handling ads or sponsorship messages. Let’s fix that.

Serve Your Listener First, Advertiser Second

Your relationship with your advertisers or sponsors is fleeting. Your relationship with your audience is not. And remember: it’s your audience the advertisers want to reach. Jeopardize the relationship with your audience at your own peril.

To that end, I would avoid running pre-roll ads. Pre-roll means just that: an ad that runs (rolls) before the actual podcast episode content begins. Yes, it’s very easy to place an ad at the front of your content. It doesn’t change the format of your actual episodes and is fairly simple to drop in if your episodes are already produced. That client of mine with the eight episodes already produced? We may be stuck dropping ads in the pre-roll position for those episodes. And I'm not really happy with that.

Re-factoring Podcast Segments As Ad-drop Locations

One natural place to run ads is during the natural breaks within your episode. Take this show by way of terrible example. What you hear as one contiguous recording is mostly one contiguous recording, but there are distinct segments.

It starts with a cold read, where I narrate a few hundred characters of text to tease the topic. Then you’ll hear a little sound logo for some branding (astute listeners will notice I changed it up for Season Three). After it’s played, I roll into my monologue for a few minutes. When I reach the conclusion of my pontificating, I have a call to action or two (Yes, I know you should only have one CTA. Do what I say, not what I do.), and then I sign off and let the same short logo branding audio clip play.

Each one of those segments, even on a short program like mine, could accommodate an advertisement, a message from a sponsor, or just a good news message. If it were planned, obviously. Since I’ve not yet had designs to run ad messages in my episodes, it would sound clunky and weird if I dropped in ads after the fact. And I don’t want my episodes to sound clunky or weird.

You don’t want your episodes to sound clunky or weird either. To avoid that, you’ll probably need to change how you structure the various segments of your show.

For example, you may need to stop teasing the next segment the way you are currently. If you say “Here’s my episode with Santa Clause… enjoy!” and then roll straight into an ad, message, or anything other than that interview, it sounds clunky and weird.

Not that you shouldn’t tease the next segment. I think that’s a fine idea. You’ll just need to do a different way so that listener isn’t wondering what the hell just happened.

Plan It Out On Paper First

To make the least clunky and weird episode as possible, you need to plan it out before you plop down behind the mic or crack open your DAW. Because while it’s simple enough to find a transition point in a 25-minute interview where an ad drop wouldn’t feel clunky and weird, it’s a lot harder to do that for the other segments of your show, either scripted or freestyle.

So plan it out. Get a whiteboard, a collaborative online document, or a piece of paper out and figure out where ads not only make sense, but where they can fit nicely. No, you don’t have to script out your entire show if you don’t want to. But you should script out the entire structure of an episode if you want to be strategic.

Plan For The Ad Inserts To Fail Gracefully

Remember earlier when I said your relationship with your advertisers is fleeting? At some point, you’re going to come up goose-eggs on an ad or sponsor deal, and you’ll have nothing to insert in that space you just made. So make sure your episode doesn’t sound clunky and weird when no ad or sponsor message runs.

Practically, that means DO NOT bake in “We’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.” into your episode content to mark where you plan ads to run. Likewise, don’t bake in “And we’re back!” when you resume regular episode content. That’s an old broadcast ripoff that we really don't need in podcasting.

If you think your ad breaks need those demarcations (they don’t), then bake them into the edges audio of the message you’re dropping in. But you really don’t need to do that. Just plan for some natural-sounding pauses and that should do the trick.

Practicing Ad Inserts For Good

If you're having difficulty conceptualizing how you would do this for the episodes of your podcast, I understand. So move it from concept to practice, and start “running ads” for some cause or organization that you feel is worthy of mentioning on your program.

If it helps, pretend they've actually paid money to you and your job is to make an ad and run it in your show in such a way that it doesn’t annoy your audience and gets the organization or cause the exposure they’ve (not really) paid for.

How will you incorporate that message into your show? How long will it be? Will you use bed music to show it’s different from the rest of the content? Where’s a good place to run the ad? What do you need to do structure-wise to make that happen?

Rather than thinking about how you might do it: Do it! Why not? I'm recording this in late 2020, and there are a great number of worthy causes struggling to get their message out. Pick one with the values, ideals, and ambitions you can get behind… and get behind it! Not only is it a Good Thing, it’s good practice for you for when advertisers come knocking at your door.

Now, as I mentioned, I do not run ads on this show. As you can see from my terrible example earlier, it would be kind of hard to do. But you can go to BuyMeACoffee.com/EvoTerra and toss a couple of shekels my way. Monthly financial support from my listeners/readers is awesome!

And even though social distancing has made it really hard to do it, I would really appreciate it if you told one other podcaster you know about Podcast Pontifications. Word of mouth really matters for niche shows like mine.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Transcript

PPS3E3 Restructuring Your Podcast To Be Advertising-Friendly Transcript

Evo Terra: [00:00:00] Advertisers big and small are taking a fresh look at podcasts of all sizes. Some producers who never considered offering sponsorships are getting requests. A few simple tweaks to your processes can make these money gifts much easier to handle.

[00:00:22] Hello and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo, Tara. No look, I'm no fan of ads in podcasting, regardless of what my Twitter account might look like. I've spent all those 20 years running digital advertising agencies at the VP level. And I can tell you that a lot of advertising is total garbage longtime listeners.

[00:00:46] Like yourself of my show. No, I've been kind of bearish when it comes to podcast advertising because I'm good at math, partially. It's part of those things. Um, but you know, things evolve, things change. And my thinking on advertising has changed at least in the podcasting space for, for a small piece. I'm I'm not going gung-ho at it, but nonetheless, it's look, here's a fact.

[00:01:10] It's here to stay. It's not going anywhere. And as I said, in the preamble of this, we're starting to get requests, shows that don't even want to run. Ads are starting to get requests, legitimate requests. From advertisers who want to spend the money on their program. So that's interesting. That's that's new.

[00:01:28] Well, it's not necessarily new, but it's new to me just in the last couple of weeks, I've closed a couple of different advertising deals for clients slash friends of mine. And that's great. It's a great feeling too, to be able to help these shows do this. Now I realize that. Not everybody out there wants to run ads, but nonetheless, good bear with me for a second.

[00:01:47] There's some value in for you as well. One of my other clients reached out to me recently. They he's got goodness five or six different advertisers lined up. And so now, and the impetus for this program, he and I are going through the process of re factoring his show because it was never built. With the idea we'd be running ads.

[00:02:11] So they feel clunky. They feel weird. We've got eight episodes produced. It's kind of hard to do a live host read without redoing, if not the entire episode, at least segments of the episode. So what I wanted to talk about today, Is helping you think through the concept of if ads come, if sponsorship money comes or maybe people just want to use your podcast as a platform to get their good news message out there.

[00:02:47] Are you set up to do that today? Probably not. Of course, if you're running ads right now and you're making all sorts of money. Fantastic, good for you. But for the rest of us out there, who've not really considered advertising previously or maybe we have, but we never really baked it in. That's what we're gonna talk about today.

[00:03:07] So step one, when you're thinking about your ads is, think about your listeners. First, first and foremost, you've got to have your listeners in mind. Please, please have your listeners in mind, do not do anything that somehow damages. The listening of the list, inability of your program. So always keep that in mind.

[00:03:33] First to that end, I would seriously consider not running pre-roll ads. That means an ad that runs before. People hear your voice. That's an easy place to drop an ad. In fact, that's what we're doing for that one client of mine who already has eight episodes already produced. We're just dropping an ad in the front.

[00:03:54] I'm not really happy with that. But, you know, it's what we're doing. So that's the easy way to do it, but a smarter way to do that is just think about the structure of your show. I mean, take this show. If you will, as an example, what you hear is one contiguous recording is mostly one contiguous recording, but it's got various sections.

[00:04:17] There's the cold read, or I just read. A few hundred characters of text, then there's the little sound logo. Do you like the new logo for season three? I think that's kind of cute. Then I do my long diatribe, which has a natural ending point when I'm done talking about the point. Then I get into the couple of things I want you to do.

[00:04:37] And then finally send off with the same logo sounds afterwards. Each one of those spots is a natural place where an ad, a sponsorship message or just a good news message, whatever you want to call it. Can be dropped, can be inserted either electronically. We're not going to get into doing dynamic ad insertions, or just simply by rerecording something and putting it in your editing workflow.

[00:05:09] Each one of those break points between segments of a program, even as short program, like this could be the place. We're an ad or sponsor or just good news message can run, but it would have to be planned. I didn't plan to run an ad message in this particular episode. So even though I have those segments, it will be tough to come in after the fact and do that.

[00:05:34] But if I really wanted to take advantage of ads and I think you've plenty of you listening out there might actually really want to take advantage of ads. Then start structuring your show in such a way to where that makes a lot more sense. Don't for example, lead, uh, what's the word I'm looking for?

[00:05:51] Don't tease the next segment at the end of your prior segment, because then it's weird, right? If you say coming up and interview with, so, or let's get right into my interview with Elon Musk and an ad plays, it just feels weird. Right? So don't do that. I mean, that's the simple way to do that. Don't tease it in a different way.

[00:06:12] But the real trick to doing this right, is doing it on paper strategy is what matters here. Look, yeah, you could just shove an ad anywhere. Of course you can. If you've got a 25 minute long interview, you can find a pause between, and the answer between the answer the guests gave you. And your next question is an easy place to cut.

[00:06:31] Spread it apart, drop an ad in there. Sure. You could do that. You could do that, but you could also be a lot more deliberate about it when you're in your episode, planning stay, you do have an episode planning stage don't you where you at least outline the item note. Really? You should do that when you really should do that.

[00:06:54] When you're outlining those individual stages, those individual sections make a spot for. Some sort of messaging. That's not about the episode. Again, that's an ad, that's a sponsorship. That's some good news. Please make a spot for it. Just plan it out. I'm going to do this, this, this, but here's the real big trick.

[00:07:14] I have lots of tricks in this episode. Apparently the real big trick is make sure that. It's okay. If nothing happens in that dynamic content, if you will, that's not really dynamic, but whatever, make sure that it's okay. If nothing really runs there. So what I'm saying is don't say we'll be right back after a message from our sponsor.

[00:07:37] And then no sponsor ad plays and you say welcome back. Ugh, terrible cheap old school radio stuff that you don't have to do first off, nobody goes anywhere. So just find a better way to make that space, but make it in such a way to where it doesn't feel, um, missing. If in fact it's not there. This is all doable.

[00:07:59] It just takes a little bit of planning on your part. In fact, one of the best things, pieces of advice I can give you is, you know, maybe you should just start running some good news spots right now. If you're having difficulty conceptualizing how you would do this, then you choose out of your own goodness of your heart to create a sponsorship message for some cause some organization that you feel is worthy of mentioning.

[00:08:27] And pretend it's a sponsor, pretend they've actually paid money to you and you're here to deliver content to them. How would you drop that? 32nd minute and a half, four minute bit, whatever. How would you incorporate that into your show? Just do it rather than think about how to do it, actually think it through and then implement it and do it because why not?

[00:08:50] I'm recording this in late 20, 20. There's a lot of messaging that needs to get out to various people. It's okay to do that, especially. It's okay to do that. As practice before the bigger advertisers come knocking at your door, get ahead of it. You'll feel better. You'll be better suited when the money comes pouring in later.

[00:09:11] Now, as I mentioned, I do not run ads on this show. As you can see from my terrible example earlier, it would be kind of hard to do, but you can go to buy me a coffee.com/evo, Tara, and toss. A couple of shekels. My way monthly support is awesome. I would really appreciate that. And even though social social, yes, social distancing has made it really hard to do this.

[00:09:32] I would really appreciate it. If you would tell one. Other podcast or you know, about podcast. Pontifications word of mouth really matters for niche shows like mine. Thanks for your attention. Thanks for doing all those things. And I shall be back tomorrow with yet another podcast. Pontifications cheers.

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