Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: how the tech are you. I recently got a note
Speaker 1: from my editor that my rushed intro is starting to
Speaker 1: slurn together to the point where it's completely incomprehensible, so
Speaker 1: I'm working to reverse that. You can thank TORII. She's
Speaker 1: the reason why uh I I have I have been
Speaker 1: curbed of my chaotic behavior. Anyway, Twitter user Ryan Barrier
Speaker 1: sent me a message that read quote, Hey, Jonathan, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear about how podcast advertising works. Early on
Speaker 1: in your show, I remember hearing the same ad for years.
Speaker 1: Toyota Camera not currently a sponsor of this episode. That's
Speaker 1: just metorializing. Then it seems they became more dynamic. Now
Speaker 1: even old episodes have current ads. Thanks end quote. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Ryan Barrier. And yes, our podcasts have ads
Speaker 1: that stay current. Even if you were to go back
Speaker 1: and download a very old episode of tech Stuff, you
Speaker 1: would hear current ads in the ad breaks. And as
Speaker 1: you say, the ads are dynamic, we call them dynamic
Speaker 1: ads are really dynamic ad insertions. But let's start off
Speaker 1: with the different kinds of ads that you can encounter
Speaker 1: with podcasts, because it's good to know how advertisers think,
Speaker 1: how content creators think, and the frankly difficult path of
Speaker 1: balancing commerce and art, or in the case of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: commerce and the technology podcast made by a twit. Now,
Speaker 1: this stuff is not going to relate to ads initially.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give a little bit more background, but
Speaker 1: it is important to understand to kind of get a
Speaker 1: grasp on the evolution of podcasting and then the subsequent
Speaker 1: incorporation of ads. Now, in the old old days, most
Speaker 1: podcasts were not really monetized, at least not through advertising.
Speaker 1: It was a brand new medium, and so typically a
Speaker 1: podcast came out of either someone's hobby, so it was
Speaker 1: being done just for fun zies, with no expectation that
Speaker 1: it was going to generate revenue. In fact, more than
Speaker 1: likely it was costing the person who was making the
Speaker 1: podcast money, or it was going to be used as
Speaker 1: an extension of some other media companies output. There were
Speaker 1: a few exceptions. A couple of podcasts set up subscription
Speaker 1: models pretty early on, so they were kind of like
Speaker 1: an audio magazine. Listeners could pay to download episodes month
Speaker 1: to month. So there were some early versions of podcasts
Speaker 1: that were supported directly by listeners, and obviously that model
Speaker 1: still exists today. There are subscription based podcasts out there
Speaker 1: that are behind a paywall in other words, but ads
Speaker 1: really would come a bit later for podcasts. So even
Speaker 1: though there were some early paywall podcasting, there weren't a
Speaker 1: whole lot of podcasts that contain ads early early on.
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example of a podcast that
Speaker 1: was used for brand extension. Uh, there was a podcast
Speaker 1: I used to listen to. It no longer exists. I
Speaker 1: mean you can find old episodes, I imagine, but it's
Speaker 1: no longer produced. And this was way back in like
Speaker 1: the mid two thousand's, before I was ever a podcaster myself.
Speaker 1: It was called buzz out Loud and it came from
Speaker 1: c Net. Tom Merritt and Molly Wood were the the
Speaker 1: anchors of that show, with other hosts and producers also contributing.
Speaker 1: The Buzz out Loud show covered tech news and was
Speaker 1: part of a c net brand, but it wasn't necessarily
Speaker 1: a revenue generating show on its own, at least not
Speaker 1: most of the time. Rather, it was helping you know,
Speaker 1: introduced the brand of c net to new audiences, and
Speaker 1: the hope was that these audiences would then find their
Speaker 1: way to c net dot com, where traffic was monetized
Speaker 1: through various means like web page ads and whatnot, you know,
Speaker 1: all the regular web advertising strategies. Maybe that visitor would
Speaker 1: then become a regular at c net, which means they
Speaker 1: would also be a regular source of revenue, or rather,
Speaker 1: their traffic would be a regular source of revenue. It
Speaker 1: all gets a bit wibbly wobbly when we talk about
Speaker 1: this stuff. Really, whenever you talk about advertising, there's there's
Speaker 1: a level of kind of vague uncertainty in the mix.
Speaker 1: When I started podcasting, which was back in the summer
Speaker 1: of two thousand eight, it was much the same for
Speaker 1: us over at what was then how stuff Works dot Com.
Speaker 1: To be clear, how stuff Works dot Com still exists,
Speaker 1: but my part in How Stuff Works split off several
Speaker 1: years ago and we haven't had any real contact since then.
Speaker 1: But back in two thousand and eight, I was a
Speaker 1: writer for how stuff Works dot com and I focused
Speaker 1: primarily on tech articles. Big surprise there, and our buss
Speaker 1: a guy named Conal Burne who has actually been our
Speaker 1: boss on and off a few times over the years.
Speaker 1: It kind of feels like we would go our separate
Speaker 1: ways and then come back and then do it again. Um.
Speaker 1: He decided in two thousand and eight that podcasting would
Speaker 1: be a good way to extend brand awareness of how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Uh. The first of those podcasts,
Speaker 1: technically the first, I believe was brain Stuff, which was
Speaker 1: Marshall brains podcast. He was the founder of how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com, and then later on that podcast would
Speaker 1: pass to other hands. But the first big one to
Speaker 1: come out that really was the flagship was Stuff You
Speaker 1: Should Know Now. It was important to try and extend
Speaker 1: the brand of how stuff Works dot com because most
Speaker 1: of the traffic coming into the website was from web searches,
Speaker 1: primarily Google. So, in other words, most people who are
Speaker 1: going to how stuff Works dot com, we're not going
Speaker 1: there just to browse articles. Most visitors were not fans
Speaker 1: of the site who just wanted to learn about all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff, from tech to history to culture to food.
Speaker 1: By the way, how stupp works dot Com still a
Speaker 1: fantastic website with amazing, well written, researched articles, and I
Speaker 1: highly recommend checking it out if you're of a curious
Speaker 1: nature and you want to just learn stuff. But now
Speaker 1: most of the people coming to the website had a
Speaker 1: specific question that they wanted to answer, like how does
Speaker 1: a steam engine work, for example, and they used a
Speaker 1: search engine, our site would pop up and they would
Speaker 1: come into the site to get their answer from one
Speaker 1: of these well written, well researched articles, and then once
Speaker 1: they got their answer, they would bounce. Well, while we
Speaker 1: loved all the traffic coming into the site through search,
Speaker 1: there was no denying that it sure would be nice
Speaker 1: to have folks stick around a bit more and brows
Speaker 1: and become regular visitors. Also, this is a good time
Speaker 1: to mention that search engines change over time. Right. The
Speaker 1: Google search algorithm has changed many times over the years,
Speaker 1: and whenever there's a change in the algorithm, there's a
Speaker 1: change in page rankings, which means you might at one
Speaker 1: point have been the dominant player in search results for
Speaker 1: various topics, and then once there's a change in the algorithm,
Speaker 1: maybe your results appeared lower down on the page or
Speaker 1: or worst case scenario, off of page one. Because hardly
Speaker 1: anyone goes beyond page one of search results. Hardly anyone
Speaker 1: goes below the fold. So not being highly ranked in
Speaker 1: SIR could be a death sentence if you were depending
Speaker 1: heavily upon traffic coming from search engines. So again a
Speaker 1: strong incentive to find a way to bring people over
Speaker 1: to the website beyond just searching for a specific answer. Right. So,
Speaker 1: the podcasts, while not initially monetize herble directly themselves, we're
Speaker 1: seeing almost like an advertising tool for the website. In fact,
Speaker 1: when we first launched the podcasts, we had a rule
Speaker 1: every episode needed to relate to a specific article on
Speaker 1: the website, and we would refer listeners to go and
Speaker 1: read those articles in the hopes that they actually would
Speaker 1: go check those articles out and then maybe branch out
Speaker 1: from there and explore the site. We were trying to
Speaker 1: make How Stuff Works a destination site. UH that had
Speaker 1: limited success as far as I'm aware. I mean I
Speaker 1: wasn't and analytics, so I couldn't really see what, if
Speaker 1: any effect this had. However, we did not too long
Speaker 1: after that mandate dropped the requirements so that different podcasts
Speaker 1: could actually do UH topics that were not directly related
Speaker 1: to an article on the site, And we dropped it
Speaker 1: immediately over at tech Stuff because a lot of the
Speaker 1: articles that were on the site that we're relating to technology,
Speaker 1: Obviously they would get out of date very quickly because
Speaker 1: technology evolved so fast, and so we would have an
Speaker 1: article of and the examples in an article might be
Speaker 1: really kind of embarrassing in in retrospect, Like if you're
Speaker 1: doing an article or a podcast about CPUs and the
Speaker 1: article is talking about pentium processors, that's kind of embarrassing
Speaker 1: because those are dinosaurs. Right. So anyway, we switched over,
Speaker 1: and you know, it also turned out that it's it's
Speaker 1: a difficult cell to convince someone who's listening to a
Speaker 1: podcast to then go to a specific U r L right,
Speaker 1: because it all depends on how they're listening. If they're
Speaker 1: jogging and they're listening on headphones, they're not going to
Speaker 1: stop and pull out their phone and navigate to the website.
Speaker 1: If they're driving, I sure as heck hope they aren't
Speaker 1: going to stop, uh paying attention to the road and
Speaker 1: then try and navigate to this website to read an
Speaker 1: article while they're driving. So yeah, it was tough to
Speaker 1: use podcasts in this way. And honestly, there could have
Speaker 1: been the chance for podcasts at how Stuff works to
Speaker 1: just go away because the limited return on investment, But
Speaker 1: we stuck with it and we grew, and that would
Speaker 1: end up paying off because eventually, not immediately, but over time,
Speaker 1: podcasting would become a relevant way of generating revenue all
Speaker 1: on its own thanks to advertising. Okay, now, before we
Speaker 1: get into that, it's time to have an example. We're
Speaker 1: going to actually take an ad break right now. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Okay. So podcasts when they start off
Speaker 1: aren't really monetized beyond being behind a paywall in some
Speaker 1: rare instances, but let's skip ahead. Gradually, some brands, particularly
Speaker 1: of smaller companies, started seeing the possibility of reaching customers
Speaker 1: through podcasts, and that opened up some opportunities on all sides.
Speaker 1: One opportunity was to have an ad baked into a podcast.
Speaker 1: Another opportunity was to pay for a fully sponsored and
Speaker 1: possibly themed episode. That second option is more expensive, and
Speaker 1: it also means that a single advertiser pretty much has
Speaker 1: domain over the whole episode, so in other words, you
Speaker 1: won't hear ads from other brands appear in that episode.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about baked in ads or burned in ads,
Speaker 1: depending upon whom you're talking to. Now, back in the
Speaker 1: old days, there really wasn't any sophisticated content management system
Speaker 1: for podcasts. So the way it worked was you would
Speaker 1: record your audio, maybe you edit it, you might add
Speaker 1: in some music and some other stuff, maybe other effects.
Speaker 1: Then you would publish this finished audio file on a
Speaker 1: publication platform. That platform would then push the podcasts RSS
Speaker 1: feed to the various podcatching services out there, most notably iTunes.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, iTunes was the dominant source for podcasts.
Speaker 1: In fact that we call them podcasts because of the iPod.
Speaker 1: So Apple, while it had not invented either the MP
Speaker 1: three player or the podcast, was kind of the the
Speaker 1: nexus of all things podcast in the early days. Now
Speaker 1: to this day, iTunes is still a really important piece
Speaker 1: of the puzzle. Interestingly, a lot of the tech stuff
Speaker 1: listeners out there are getting this show through other podcatching
Speaker 1: services because I can see that a ton of y'all
Speaker 1: are listening on Android devices, which is, you know, awesome,
Speaker 1: and I also listen on an Android device. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we're kind of an outlier because a lot of podcasts
Speaker 1: still get the majority of their traffic through iTunes. All right,
Speaker 1: So originally most of the companies that would actually purchase
Speaker 1: advertising on podcasts were these smaller companies that could not
Speaker 1: necessarily afford a big national campaign on you know, traditional
Speaker 1: media like TV and radio, but podcasts also have national
Speaker 1: or global reach, and podcasts were not nearly as expensive
Speaker 1: to use for advertising. Heck, there were podcasts out there
Speaker 1: that had no idea what ad rates to charge or
Speaker 1: what metrics to use in order to guide negotiations. It
Speaker 1: was really messy and chaotic. Now it would all more
Speaker 1: or less get worked out over time, but in those
Speaker 1: early days it was It was just confusing because no
Speaker 1: one really had any way of of quantifying what add
Speaker 1: time on a podcast was worth. Anyway, a baked in
Speaker 1: AD is one that's recorded right inside of a show itself.
Speaker 1: It is part of the audio file. So you might
Speaker 1: be talking about like a transponder one moment. Then you
Speaker 1: might say in the podcast, before we go any further,
Speaker 1: let's talk about our sponsor blah blah blah, and then
Speaker 1: you might transition right into an AD, and it's all
Speaker 1: part of the same recording session. It's all part of
Speaker 1: the same file. And most of the ads back in
Speaker 1: those days were what we would call direct response advertising. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a kind of ad that asks the listener
Speaker 1: to take some sort of immediate action, such as purchasing
Speaker 1: a product or service, and there's typically a code associated
Speaker 1: with whichever podcast has the ad in it. And when
Speaker 1: you hear me in an ad say something like use
Speaker 1: promo code stuff or something like that, that is a
Speaker 1: direct response ad. The ads efficacy is largely measured by
Speaker 1: how many folks actually went to the trouble of going
Speaker 1: to the site and using that promo code. Now, in
Speaker 1: the old days, you'd hear a lot of the same
Speaker 1: companies advertising across different shows, like Casper Mattresses and Meanis
Speaker 1: and Dollar Shave Club and stitch Fix. These are all
Speaker 1: great companies. By the way, I actually really liked working
Speaker 1: with all of these brands. They were great, and it
Speaker 1: was it was kind of a rising tide lifts all
Speaker 1: ships because I really believed in the products. So listeners,
Speaker 1: if they were using the the code, we're getting products
Speaker 1: that I believed in. They were getting a discount, so
Speaker 1: that was the benefit to the listeners, and the brands
Speaker 1: were getting broader reach across and more customers, so everybody
Speaker 1: was winning. So it was kind of like a a
Speaker 1: bootstrap approach to business, you know. These were companies that
Speaker 1: again probably would have had trouble accessing traditional media on
Speaker 1: a national level, and here they were being able to
Speaker 1: tap into something that was having an incredible impact. Like
Speaker 1: the podcasting experience is a very intimate one. It has
Speaker 1: this relationship between host and listener, and especially a host
Speaker 1: red ad can have a huge impact on listeners, particularly
Speaker 1: the host is being sincere about it. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was this kind of magical com nation right now. Podcasting
Speaker 1: was growing in popularity in general. I mean you kept
Speaker 1: on seeing news about podcasting his back or the podcasting renaissance,
Speaker 1: and you would have people who have been podcasting that
Speaker 1: whole time saying, don't call to come back, I've been
Speaker 1: here for years. Shout out the Scott Johnson um and
Speaker 1: some podcasts were doing really, really well, right Some would
Speaker 1: go on to be like the superstars of the medium. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not a fan of his his beliefs
Speaker 1: or his delivery, but there's no denying Joe Rogan hit
Speaker 1: the stratosphere as far as podcasting is concerned, and he
Speaker 1: launched that show I think in two thousand nine. So
Speaker 1: this was that's an example of a show the win
Speaker 1: to the stratosphere. Here at at I Heart and actually
Speaker 1: previously at How Stuff Works. Our big flagship show was
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. I'll mention them again in a
Speaker 1: little bit. So this opened up the opportunity to do
Speaker 1: sponsored and themed episodes because the shows were getting to
Speaker 1: a point where if you were an advertiser, and you
Speaker 1: are an advertising client maybe who had the money, then
Speaker 1: getting a sponsored show could be really attractive because of
Speaker 1: the reach of these podcasts. But this is where things
Speaker 1: get really tricky, um because this is where you've got
Speaker 1: increased overlap between advertising and editorial content, and that can
Speaker 1: produce like advertorial content is one of the phrases for it.
Speaker 1: It's one I hate, but it is what it's often
Speaker 1: used to describe a show that is supposed to combine
Speaker 1: the promotion of a sponsor with the content itself. Now, ideally,
Speaker 1: a themed podcast, a themed sponsored podcast should appeal to
Speaker 1: regular listeners, even if it was themed to promote whatever
Speaker 1: sponsor was sponsoring the episode. If it is done poorly,
Speaker 1: then the episode is going to come across as a
Speaker 1: very long advertisement for the respective sponsor. And ain't no
Speaker 1: one out there who loves that. Apart from advertising executives,
Speaker 1: who seem to think it's a win, even though that
Speaker 1: kind of content almost never performs well once it's released. Now,
Speaker 1: there are ways to do a themed sponsored episode well,
Speaker 1: but that approach is delicate and needs a really good
Speaker 1: level of understanding between the content creators, the advertising reps,
Speaker 1: and the sponsor itself in order to make it happen.
Speaker 1: And frankly, it always surprises me when I encounter folks
Speaker 1: pushing to make a show more explicitly an ad for
Speaker 1: a company or its products and services or whatever, because
Speaker 1: I maintain audiences are really smart. I mean, we all
Speaker 1: know how to spot and add. We've been encountering ads
Speaker 1: our entire lives, so of course we know an ad
Speaker 1: right away. And if we suspect someone is trying to
Speaker 1: pass off and add as quote unquote real content, we
Speaker 1: get irritated about it because we feel like the content
Speaker 1: creator doesn't respect our intelligence. Right It's like the content
Speaker 1: creator is trying to pass off this advertisement as if
Speaker 1: it is otherwise content and they would have created anyway,
Speaker 1: And the disingenuous nature of that offends a lot of people,
Speaker 1: including me. I mean, I I'm likely to bounce off
Speaker 1: a video or a podcast if I sense that it's
Speaker 1: not a genuine piece of work and is instead an
Speaker 1: add masquerading as an episode. Now, all that being said,
Speaker 1: some of the best episodes of some podcasts have come
Speaker 1: from sponsored and themed episodes. It can be done. It
Speaker 1: just takes a real collaborative effort of all the parties
Speaker 1: involved and an understanding on the part of the sponsor
Speaker 1: and the ad reps that pushing their narrative too hard
Speaker 1: is going to have the opposite effect that they want. Now,
Speaker 1: let's move on to dynamic ad insertion, which actually I
Speaker 1: guess I'll get to after we take this break for
Speaker 1: a couple more ads. Okay, dynamic ad insertion. As podcasting
Speaker 1: grew in popularity, you had companies that were creating more
Speaker 1: sophisticated tools for publishing and hosting podcasts, Like there was
Speaker 1: an industry there, so there was an incentive to innovate
Speaker 1: in the space. And one tool, one that was already
Speaker 1: in use on the Worldwide Web, was dynamic ad insertion,
Speaker 1: and it does exactly what it says on the ten.
Speaker 1: Dynamic ad insertion is the practice of inserting ads at
Speaker 1: the time someone encounters the content. So when someone downloads
Speaker 1: a podcast or when they stream an episode, that's when
Speaker 1: the AD gets inserted. So instead of having a baked
Speaker 1: in AD that was recorded at the time that the
Speaker 1: podcast itself was recorded, the dynamic ad insertion tool plops
Speaker 1: a current AD into the ad breaks. That means, if
Speaker 1: you download an episode today and someone you know downloads
Speaker 1: the same episode a year later, the two of you
Speaker 1: are going to encounter different ads at the time that
Speaker 1: you listen to the show when you hit those AD breaks.
Speaker 1: And the way this works from our side is pretty simple.
Speaker 1: We create AD breaks in our show now some folks
Speaker 1: like yours. Truly, We do that as we record, so
Speaker 1: you've heard it in this episode. I just keep an
Speaker 1: eye on the time, and when I hit certain time lines,
Speaker 1: I will pause to throw in an AD break. We
Speaker 1: have UH standards in our our company about how many
Speaker 1: AD breaks go into a show based upon how long
Speaker 1: the episode is. So if my episode is going to
Speaker 1: be longer than say twenty minutes, I know that I
Speaker 1: need to put an AD break in every ten minutes
Speaker 1: or so. If it's gonna be like five minutes, I
Speaker 1: can go to like fifteen minutes or so. It again
Speaker 1: depends upon the length of the episode, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to give all the details about it, because one
Speaker 1: those change over time, so I can't guarantee that by
Speaker 1: the time you listen to this it will be the same.
Speaker 1: And too, it really doesn't matter. So I pause my episode,
Speaker 1: I'll throw in an ad break, and then my super
Speaker 1: editor Torii can, while editing, chop the episode there and
Speaker 1: insert a little digital marker, and that digital marker essentially
Speaker 1: tells our publication platform here is where you can put
Speaker 1: a mid role ad. Mid role is just a type
Speaker 1: of ad that appears in the middle of a show.
Speaker 1: You also have pre role obviously that happens before a
Speaker 1: show starts, and post roll those are ads that play
Speaker 1: after a show ends. Then I just picked back up
Speaker 1: and carry on until I hit the next benchmark, and
Speaker 1: then I insert a new ad break throw and Torii
Speaker 1: chops the show there when she's editing and puts in
Speaker 1: another digital marker. Now that little digital marker that TRY
Speaker 1: adds in is really the secret sauce, and we typically
Speaker 1: have parameters set for what our ads can be in
Speaker 1: our various positions, So mid role ads tend to be
Speaker 1: sixty seconds long each. Now once in a while we
Speaker 1: might have a longer ad depending upon the specific AD deal.
Speaker 1: Like you could have a two minute AD instead of
Speaker 1: a sixty second AD, but then that would essentially take
Speaker 1: up two slots in your AD break, Right, So each
Speaker 1: AD break allows a certain number of ads per break,
Speaker 1: or really a certain amount of AD time per break. Now,
Speaker 1: why would you want to use dynamic ads in the
Speaker 1: first place. Well, to understand that, it's helpful understand a
Speaker 1: little bit about AD deals themselves. Typically, an AD deal
Speaker 1: is made to either last a specific amount of time
Speaker 1: or more frequently, in order to reach a specific number
Speaker 1: of impressions. Now, impressions means the number of times that
Speaker 1: particular AD was downloaded or streamed. So let's say we
Speaker 1: strike a deal with I don't know, the ACME corporation
Speaker 1: from the old Warner Brothers cartoons, and we're trying to
Speaker 1: sell anvils. So our deal is to hit one thousand
Speaker 1: impressions with this hypothetical AD deal. So ACNE pays us
Speaker 1: whatever our AD rate is to reach that impression limit,
Speaker 1: and we get to work on delivering those impressions by
Speaker 1: getting people to download a hundred thousand episodes or stream
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand episodes that have or or you know,
Speaker 1: instances that have that AD in them. Now, if you
Speaker 1: have a baked in AD where you've actually recorded it
Speaker 1: within the body of the podcast and it's not something
Speaker 1: that can be easily chopped out, that podcast ad is limited, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's true that episodes typically see the highest
Speaker 1: number of downloads on the first week of publication. After that,
Speaker 1: things trail off really really fast. It is rare for
Speaker 1: you to see a spike in an old episode unless
Speaker 1: something really relevant to that episode happened in the news.
Speaker 1: But there is a long tail there. People do go
Speaker 1: back and search back catalogs, and they do download and
Speaker 1: stream old, old episodes of podcasts. And if an ad
Speaker 1: has been baked into a podcast, well, technically that podcast
Speaker 1: is still delivering impressions even after the ad deal has concluded.
Speaker 1: And advertisers love that because you know, they paid for
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand impressions. But if it's a baked an ad,
Speaker 1: they're going to keep getting impressions on that ad beyond
Speaker 1: that one thousand deal because the ad was baked in.
Speaker 1: So anyone downloading that episode years later is going to
Speaker 1: hear that old ad and maybe you know, the promo
Speaker 1: code is not gonna matter anymore, but the ad might
Speaker 1: still drive people to go to that that particular company.
Speaker 1: So it's like everything you've got above the one impressions
Speaker 1: you got for free, or if you want, you can
Speaker 1: think of it as the price per impression continues to
Speaker 1: decrease over time. But dynamic ad insertion means that number one,
Speaker 1: podcasts can more nimbly switch from serving one ad to
Speaker 1: a different ad as various ad deals conclude, and two
Speaker 1: they can rely on the back catalog to contribute to
Speaker 1: the number of impressions agreed upon with the current advertiser.
Speaker 1: So in other words, by swapping out the ads, you
Speaker 1: can meet the obligations faster, and then you can sell
Speaker 1: that da da da brand new ads. It's a more
Speaker 1: lucrative way to do business. Right, So if if only
Speaker 1: my newest episodes were able to hold the latest ads,
Speaker 1: it would take longer for me to meet my obligation
Speaker 1: to the advertiser. But because it goes through the entire
Speaker 1: back catalog and people are always downloading old episodes, then
Speaker 1: those ads are getting served more frequently because of the
Speaker 1: long tail, So I meet that obligation faster, and then
Speaker 1: I can conclude one ad deal and go to a
Speaker 1: new one. When I say I, I really mean my
Speaker 1: sales team. I don't do any of that work, thank goodness,
Speaker 1: because I would be terrible at it anyway. This also
Speaker 1: means that folks listening are going to hear relevant ads,
Speaker 1: even if they're diving into the back catalog. They're not
Speaker 1: going to hear an ad for some company that stopped
Speaker 1: existing like seven years ago. Now, there are some different
Speaker 1: ways of doing this. One way would be to a
Speaker 1: mass prerecorded ads that can run across an entire network.
Speaker 1: We call these run off network ads. So these would
Speaker 1: be ads where the company I Heart in this case,
Speaker 1: would have agreed that it would deliver a certain number
Speaker 1: of impressions per ad, but it doesn't really matter which
Speaker 1: shows that ad appears on. So theoretically my Heart could
Speaker 1: put that ad on every show on the network and
Speaker 1: push it out there to meet that impression requirement immediately.
Speaker 1: It's a lot like the ads that you would encounter
Speaker 1: on radio or on television that they aren't made specifically
Speaker 1: for one podcast like one show, and they may or
Speaker 1: may not be read by a podcast host at all.
Speaker 1: It might be produced by some ad company, and no
Speaker 1: one that you know of was related to the production
Speaker 1: of that ad. That's one way to do it here
Speaker 1: at I Heart. Yeah, we do have run of network ads.
Speaker 1: We have some of those, and those might run on
Speaker 1: certain shows, but not all of them. But we still
Speaker 1: largely depend upon host red advertising, so we still have
Speaker 1: hosts reading our ads. Like you know, the ads you
Speaker 1: encounter on tech Stuff more often than not, those are
Speaker 1: ads that I'm doing. It's just that now those ads
Speaker 1: that were recording are going effectively into a database of ads,
Speaker 1: and the dynamic Ad Insertion tool can pull from and
Speaker 1: PLoP those ads into our respective shows, all the episodes
Speaker 1: of our respective shows. In fact, so if I do
Speaker 1: a read for a specific company, that spot can now
Speaker 1: appear on every episode of tech Stuff I have ever published. Now,
Speaker 1: it doesn't physically insert the ad into every episode at
Speaker 1: that time, It just happens whenever anyone downloads or streams
Speaker 1: the episode, that's when the ad gets inserted. Otherwise, you
Speaker 1: can think of the ad breaks in these undownloaded episodes
Speaker 1: as kind of being ready to go to pop in
Speaker 1: whatever relevant ads should go in that space at that time.
Speaker 1: This is great for me because it means that I
Speaker 1: am delivering the most relevant ads at any given moment,
Speaker 1: and that those then cycle off the show once the
Speaker 1: ad deal has concluded and new relevant ads can appear,
Speaker 1: and I don't have to worry about people listening to
Speaker 1: stuff that doesn't exist anymore or that has a promo
Speaker 1: code that has long since stopped working. And host red
Speaker 1: ads tend to be more valuable than generic prerecorded spots.
Speaker 1: When I say generic, I mean an ad that's been
Speaker 1: recorded for any show, not for a specific show, right Like,
Speaker 1: you could hear that same ad on whatever podcast you downloaded.
Speaker 1: It doesn't relate to the show you just listened to.
Speaker 1: Now it feels weird for me to talk about this
Speaker 1: because you know it's it's how the sausage is made.
Speaker 1: But this is info that's readily available if you want
Speaker 1: to look for it. It's not like I'm giving away
Speaker 1: trade secrets. There are articles dedicated to this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: including articles that quote my boss Conal Burne, the guy
Speaker 1: I talked about earlier talking about the value of host
Speaker 1: read advertising, because you know that has a real connection
Speaker 1: to it to listeners. Also, Connal refers to baked in
Speaker 1: ads as burned in ads, so he's one of the
Speaker 1: people who says burned in rather than baked in, and
Speaker 1: he talks about how those have really big limitations. I
Speaker 1: think one reason that our host read ads are seen
Speaker 1: to have a lot more value than you know, preprogrammed
Speaker 1: ads is here at iHeart, hosts have a ton of
Speaker 1: authority when it comes to choosing what ads can run
Speaker 1: on their respective shows and which ones can't. So hosts
Speaker 1: have the chance to review and accept or reject ads
Speaker 1: and sponsors. Times out of a hundred, it all works
Speaker 1: really well. Right the host says, yeah, I'm fine with that,
Speaker 1: or I would rather not do that, and that's it.
Speaker 1: Once in a blue moon, you might get a little pushback.
Speaker 1: Happened to me recently. If a particular ad deal is
Speaker 1: seen as really crucial for the company, then it might
Speaker 1: prompt a deeper discussion rather than just a thumbs up
Speaker 1: or thumbs down, so that we can get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of where is their resistance and is there a
Speaker 1: good reason for it or is there a way to
Speaker 1: present this that doesn't have that resistance. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of room for negotiation, and ultimately someone can still
Speaker 1: say no. Uh, maybe they compromise, or maybe they just
Speaker 1: said listen, this is a hard no for me. I
Speaker 1: just can't do it and we move on. So here's
Speaker 1: the thing we all understand. Podcasting cannot continue without generating revenue.
Speaker 1: Everyone working on the shows has to eat and pay
Speaker 1: rent and you know all that kind of stuff, and
Speaker 1: you can't do that just for free. So there is
Speaker 1: a business. That is why you have to balance the
Speaker 1: commerce part. It has to happen or else podcasts don't happen.
Speaker 1: So this is really just figuring out the right fit
Speaker 1: per show, and the right fit for one show is
Speaker 1: not the same as the fit for the next show.
Speaker 1: It's again why I'm glad that my Heart does things
Speaker 1: the way they do because they cater to the individual
Speaker 1: show as opposed to having a cookie cutter approach that
Speaker 1: all shows have to follow. So as an example, most
Speaker 1: of the time, you are not going to hear me
Speaker 1: advertise for any kind of alcohol on this show. I
Speaker 1: once did and add for mixers. I want to say
Speaker 1: it was one of the rare occasions where I allowed
Speaker 1: an alcohol related ad to play on this show. Now,
Speaker 1: it's not that I'm strictly anti alcohol. I mean I
Speaker 1: do not drink, that's true, but it's that I know
Speaker 1: there are a lot of younger folks listening to the podcast,
Speaker 1: and I just don't want to advertise alcohol to younger listeners.
Speaker 1: That's not who I am. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: It's the same with tobacco based products or tobacco substitutes.
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that either. There have been
Speaker 1: a few times where I have allowed an add through
Speaker 1: that later on I regretted, but those cases were almost
Speaker 1: always my own fault for not looking into a company
Speaker 1: or product thoroughly enough before I gave the thumbs up,
Speaker 1: and then later on it was brought to my attention, Hey,
Speaker 1: that thing you advertised, it's not on the up and up.
Speaker 1: It's kind of shady, and I felt awful about it.
Speaker 1: And again that was my fault because it didn't do enough.
Speaker 1: It wasn't I didn't do the due diligence, and uh,
Speaker 1: I try very hard now to do it. Occasionally, you know,
Speaker 1: I might slip up, but I try anyway. My point
Speaker 1: is that this level of review and approval means that
Speaker 1: the ads that do appear on our shows have typically
Speaker 1: passed at least some level of scrutiny from the hosts themselves.
Speaker 1: If it's not a run of network ad, that's definitely
Speaker 1: the case. Even with run of network ads, we're given
Speaker 1: the chance to say what out ofgories we absolutely do
Speaker 1: not want running on our show and which ones we're
Speaker 1: okay with, So we even have a little bit of
Speaker 1: control when it comes to that, and this scrutiny is
Speaker 1: a reflection of our respect for our listeners. I like
Speaker 1: to think that that's what makes the ads on our
Speaker 1: shows more valuable. It's because we hosts care about y'all,
Speaker 1: and y'all know that we You know, we care about you,
Speaker 1: And hopefully the ads you listen when you do listen
Speaker 1: and you don't just skip the ad break, are ones
Speaker 1: that are potentially helpful for you. You You maybe you find
Speaker 1: a new product or service that you didn't even know
Speaker 1: you needed. That's when it all works perfectly. And I
Speaker 1: keep saying, it doesn't do anyone any good to serve
Speaker 1: up bad junkie ads to folks who only get angry
Speaker 1: about them. That just hurts everyone down the line. It
Speaker 1: doesn't do anyone any good. So I always want to
Speaker 1: make sure that ads I do are adding value both
Speaker 1: to the advertiser and the sponsor and to the listener
Speaker 1: and to the show. Like that's that's my goal. It's
Speaker 1: hard to do and it doesn't always work, but that's
Speaker 1: the goal anyway. That's the secret sauce behind dynamic ad insertion.
Speaker 1: It's a strategy that tons of podcasts are using these days.
Speaker 1: For the ones that still use host red ads, it
Speaker 1: can be a really useful tool. Now, if you go
Speaker 1: strictly programmatic with this approach, where you're just using these
Speaker 1: prerecorded ads that have nothing to do with the shows themselves,
Speaker 1: you really risk losing some of the special touch that
Speaker 1: podcasts have with their audiences. So there is a line
Speaker 1: to walk. If you can do what I Heeart does
Speaker 1: and use dynamic ad insertion that largely depends upon host
Speaker 1: red ads for those specific shows, that's that's the golden touch,
Speaker 1: but it requires a scale that's difficult to achieve. My
Speaker 1: Heart has been around for ages and has an enormous
Speaker 1: podcast network, so it's a little easier for us to
Speaker 1: do it then for a smaller network. Also, there are
Speaker 1: still a lot of podcasts out there that use some
Speaker 1: form of baked in ads. For example, My Brother, My
Speaker 1: Brother and Me, which is an incredibly popular comedy podcast,
Speaker 1: has an ad break that they call the Money Zone,
Speaker 1: and those ads are all baked in. I think, like
Speaker 1: I don't think they used dynamic ad insertion in the
Speaker 1: Money Zone at all. Um. I definitely know that the
Speaker 1: old Money Zone ad breaks are baked in because I
Speaker 1: did a deep dive into the back catalog when I
Speaker 1: was trying to catch up on the show, and some
Speaker 1: of their classic comedy bits are actually contained in the
Speaker 1: ad break itself. So if you skip the ad break,
Speaker 1: you miss some of their best stuff that just happens
Speaker 1: organically as they're riffing on their ads, which means if
Speaker 1: they had gone with dynamic ad insertion, those comedy bits
Speaker 1: would eventually get swapped out over time and you would
Speaker 1: lose some pretty amazing material in the process. Now, I
Speaker 1: wish I could provide you with my favorite example of
Speaker 1: a Money Zone bit, but it contains language that's inappropriate
Speaker 1: for tech stuff, so uh, it's uh, it's it's a
Speaker 1: little a little more raunchy than what tech stuff typically is.
Speaker 1: It is a very funny bit. It's the ballad of
Speaker 1: a fictional character who has a uh, somewhat juvenile name.
Speaker 1: That's all I'll say. But it was a very very
Speaker 1: funny bit, and again it was in the Money Zone.
Speaker 1: So if they had done dynamic ad insertion, then eventually
Speaker 1: that whole section would get pulled and swapped out for
Speaker 1: something else and you would lose a classic bit of content.
Speaker 1: So there are tradeoffs here. Um. It all depends on
Speaker 1: the style of ad presentation. And in the case of
Speaker 1: my brother, my brother and me, it's actually part of
Speaker 1: the comedy show. So you know, your mileage may vary. Alright.
Speaker 1: That is the wrap up on how the sausage is
Speaker 1: made as far as dynamic ad insertion. Hope you learned something.
Speaker 1: I hope you have a deeper appreciation for the way
Speaker 1: that podcasts generate revenue. Um, if they're not like direct support,
Speaker 1: you know, like a Patreon style or paywall style, then
Speaker 1: this is this is something that we have to deal
Speaker 1: with in order to bring you content and do also
Speaker 1: fulfill our obligations on behalf of the sponsors who support us. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's again a delicate ecosystem, but when treated properly, it works.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for future topics on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: please reach out to me. One way to do that
Speaker 1: is to download the I Heart Radio app, which is
Speaker 1: free to download, free to use. You can navigate over
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. There's a little microphone icon that you
Speaker 1: can click on and leave a voice message up to
Speaker 1: thirty seconds in length, Or you can pop on over
Speaker 1: to Twitter and send me a message. There the handle
Speaker 1: that we use as text Stuff hs W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again, Release soon. Y text Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.