More is better, plus key knowledge points from Podsights Conversion Benchmarks report

Podcast attribution company Podsights has released a Conversion Benchmarks report (download HERE) that shines lights onto key factors in a successful podcast advertising campaign. In addition, a hefty appendix section illuminates parts of the anatomy of the podcast ad business.

The report is authored by Podsights Data Analyst Havilland Voss.

Key Takeaways

The front part of the report provides the company’s Key Takeaways:

  • Sequential advertising (multiple spot placements) yields higher conversion
    rates for site visits and purchases
  • Larger campaigns in terms of impressions yield higher conversion rates
  • Average conversion rates rose slightly for site visit conversions and install
    conversions this quarter, while they dropped slightly for purchase and lead
    conversions

To our eye, this amounts to a more-is-better conclusion, which seems intuitive. Multiple placements — for example, pre-roll plus mid-roll, or total ownership of an episode’s scheduled spots, yields higher conversion results. Same for more impressions. The message seems to be that the more a listener hears the branded message, the more likely will be retention and some kind of attributable action. Attributable actions can include store visits and/or purchases. The idea behind pixel-based attribution platforms like Podsights is to differentiate from discount codes widely used by direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertisers.

The graphics which fill out this front section of the report tell interesting granular stories. Below we see the distribution of how advertisers place their buys:

A lot of mid-roll buying in there.

Other graphics in this section show details of the “more is better” thesis, and are worth looking at. (Again, HERE is the download.)

Other Insights

The “Fun Facts” section shines light on how attribution works across different segments of podcasting, compares advertising on one publisher vs. across publishers, and more. A couple of glimpses:

The chart below shows conversion rates by ad type across podcast segments. Look at that sports spike. Also worth noting that DAI (Dynamic Ad Insertion) performs better than embedded (baked in) commercials in many segments. There is a certain intuitive logic that Podsights clients, attracted to pixel-based attribution measurement, might engage with DAI spots as well as (or instead of) live host reads baked into the show.

How well is conversion achieved by direct-to-consumer (DTC) campaigns compared to B2B advertising, you might ask? See below:

The following chart illustrates conversion rate by industry:

It appearsĀ  that advertising across different podcast publishers works better than sticking with one content source. The supposition here is that when listeners are exposed to messaging across different listening sessions, or contexts, the message sticks better and motivates conversion.

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Brad Hill