On the day of its presentation at the IAB Podcast Upfront, iHeartMedia announces a partnership with Catalina, a shopper intelligence and real-time database company, to provide podcast advertising attribution related to offline shopping. The alliance and the information it delivers are targeted to CPG companies.
To unpack this a bit, iHeart explains that current podcast attribution, which is a fast-growing field spearheaded by a number of specialized companies, has focused on delivering what might be described as mental effects — brand recall and purchase intent, for example. The purpose of the iHM/Cataline arrangement is to give iHeartMedia advertisers “visibility into the true offline sales impact of their marketing dollars,” according to iHeart’s announcement.
While podcasting is the main focus of the publicity around this partnership, the scope is actually bigger, and includes CPG ad campaigns placed in iHeart’s vast network of broadcast radio stations and their streams. The alliance has been in a testing phase for a year.
Catalina owns what the company calls ” the world’s richest real-time shopper database,” and focuses the business on CPG brand advertising. The firm, which has a global footprint, works across the board with those product companies, retailers, and ad agencies.
“Podcast listening continues to skyrocket, with more than 115 million people in the U.S. anticipated to listen to podcasts this year – and podcast advertising expected to double over the next five years,” said Brian Dunphy, SVP of Catalina’s Strategic Partnerships and Channel Sales. “As the medium continues to rapidly grow, Catalina’s multi-path identity resolution capabilities combined with iHeartMedia’s unique multiplatform audiences at scale enable us to match deterministic shopper households across a variety of identity paths helping advertisers measure the effectiveness and success of their podcast campaigns.”
“We have been impressed with Catalina’s ability to deliver highly-scaled, extensive data and insights for CPG advertisers, enabling them to measure the effectiveness of their brand messaging on in-store sales,” said David Shiffman, EVP of National Research at iHeartMedia. “We continue to focus on cross-platform measurement and attribution capabilities for advertisers and now in partnership with Catalina we can provide CPG advertisers tools to maximize their podcast campaigns’ ROI, with measurement and attribution solutions to more effectively plan and execute their multi-platform audio campaigns.”
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