Is It the End of Ads in Podcasting?
Will Podcasters Be Stuck Punching the Monkey?
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Will Podcast Advertising Go the Way of the Banner Ad?
OK, this post is a little wordy, but that’s because it’s important.
I’m really worried about the advertising space in podcasting. Why?
Because I lived through the 90s, and if we go back, there were banner ads on websites, and they were making decent money because you were renting a space, much like a billboard on a street.
But by 1995, pricing had shifted from renting that space to our good friend CPM (cost per thousand impressions). There were ad servers like DoubleClick that enabled advertisers to track performance and move their spends between sites, which initially made banners feel targeted and more valuable compared with offline media, and it looked great.
The Race to the Bottom Begins
The problem was there weren’t that many websites until suddenly, well, there were millions of sites, blogs, and later apps. They all added display slots, and suddenly the supply exploded far faster than advertiser demand, and those cost per thousand impressions were pushed way down.
Click-through rates collapsed as users developed banner blindness. Advertisers, well, they shifted their budget towards better attributed channels like social and retargeting, which further pressured generic display CPMs.
Ad networks and then exchanges aggregated inventory, and they took, of course, their own cuts, so even when advertisers’ CPMs looked decent on paper, what actually flowed to publishers, especially the smaller ones, kept shrinking, and it’s that programmatic buying and real-time bidding that turned banners into a (for the most part) automated commodity, and in major markets, the vast majority of display spend is now programmatic.
Sacrificing Content and Experience for Pennies
Meanwhile, of course, there are ad blockers, slower and more cluttered sites, and too many units per page that basically reduce view ability and engagement.
I had a client of mine explain how he wasn’t getting any newsletter sign-ups. I went to his site and it just smacked in the face with multiple pop-ups and a barrage of Google AdSense ads. I couldn’t even find the newsletter, let alone sign up for it (and of course he got mad at me, ‘cause I’m taking “food off the table” when I suggest he back off a bit).
Is Podcasting Going Down the Same Route?
Now let’s look at podcasting. We can program our apps to skip the beginning of shows, especially when they start off with one, two, three, or seven ads at the beginning.
We can program our fast forward button, so that “we’ll be right back” is now gone from 30 seconds to 60 seconds to four minutes. Yeah, we can skip through that, and I really worry that podcast advertising may be walking the same path.
Not only can we skip ads at the beginning, I can dump out of the end as well in Pocketcasts (on a per show basis).
Now Every Podcast Can Add Advertisements
Five years ago, there weren’t tools to do dynamic ads, and now Captivate, Transistor, Libsyn, Blubrry, and RSS.com (probably more) all have the ability to insert ads. When supply outpaces demand, I just think it’s a race to the bottom.
Even if we all band together to demand higher rates, there are companies like Inception Point AI that flood our space with horrible content that will take (apparently) any CPM. They have admitted publicly they don’t listen to their own shows so integrity is not their strong suit (IMHO).
I think going forward we’re going to see more and more podcasters adopt premium podcasting. I think we’re going to see more patronage of just, “Hey, I want you to keep doing this. I want to give you money because you deliver value” with sites like Supercast and Patreon. Media hosts like Captivate and Buzzsprout have this built in.
The Negative Trends Started Last Year
I know three shows where the hosts make a living from ads. Last year they did the following:
Added more episodes
Made them longer (to keep the percentage of ads lower)
Why? Because they have children to feed. So when you used to make a living from podcasting, and now you make half that you either jam in more ads into your current schedule (because the big agencies want to turn podcasting into radio which is 30% ads) or add additional episodes so you have more ads (or develop a love of ramen noodles).
The problem is these additional episodes are often not the same quality and value of their original episodes, which may lead to people tuning out, which makes them panic and leads to people adding more ads to their current episodes (ruining the experience).
In some cases, I was listening to the show because it was short. Now it’s not.
Because the way it’s going now, more and more ads are getting squeezed into shows that often are now making themselves longer just so they can add ads, and that extra content there that they’re delivering is not up to speed with their typical remarkable content.
The Hallmark Channel Playbook
I watched some Hallmark Channel this holiday season. At one point, they showed seven minutes of content followed by four minutes of ads. I busted out my phone and after watching 30 minutes, the content I had watched was 32% advertising. One of the ads I would watch was pointing me to their Hallmark+ program where there are no ads, and the more I watch I earn credits to buy things in their store.
This strategy also used by YouTube, which is the annoy them into paying us strategy.
And yet I keep hearing the same thing.
A new energetic wanna be podcaster comes to me and says, “I want to start a podcast and make money.” There is nothing wrong with that until I ask, “How are you going to do that?” and the answer is, “Well, I guess through advertising.” They assume people are stuffing ads into their show because they are making some of that sweet sweet podcast money.
Then I explain that when I wrote my book on podcast monetization there were CPMs listed as $1.80 or $0.0018 per download. Now there are times when you earn $5/1000 which means if you get 400 downloads you might be able to buy a Mountain Dew.
Strap yourself in as we race to the bottom (?)
My Latest Content
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Hook Them Before You Sell Them
An Inch Wide and a Mile Deep
This is a clip from a musician and YouTuber I follow. She tries things and shares the results. If you think the “big companies” care about you, and believe they will help promote you, well….
Google Tasks
I’ve used Todist for my To Do List for years (decades?). I love it. I have found that I live in my calendar as I HAVE TO check it every morning. I don’t HAVE To check my to do list (I should but I don’t). I always saw the task list in Google calendar, and it may turn out, I could use this (Free) and the pray Google doesn’t cancel it.
What’s Coming In The Future
I haven’t done a “How to Start a Podcast” Episode in a long time, so I’ll be doing one for those who are beginners and this time, I’ll be talking video.
Need Help With Your Podcast?
Whether you’re just starting or a seasoned podcaster, the School of Podcasting can help. Helping podcasters is what I do, and I’ve been doing it since 2005
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