Toronto-based TPX (more lengthily known as The Podcast Exchange) is announcing the availability of programmatic podcast advertising. The tech is powered by Triton Digital. While this initiative obviously targetsCanad, TPX’s home market, the PR carefully points out it is for “premium domestic and international podcast publishers.”
Programmatic advertising in podcasting is neither new nor legacy — it is new enough to create questions about how it fits in with traditional bread-and-butter sponsorship messaging, often read informally by hosts, which has been the mainstay of on-demand audio. TPX preempts the questions by offering lengthy answer in a press release nearly 1400 words long.
This document anticipates questions in four categories:
BRAND SAFETY: Like blogging before it (and still today to some e xtent), podcast threatens some brands with the disagreeable possibility that their message will be positioned inside undesirable content, or their copy will be read disagreeably by a host. TPX reassures buyers that they are experts in brand safety “whose entire business is 100% exclusive to podcasts and podcasts only.” There is even a bit of anonymous shade-throwing: “Some other competitors in the programmatic space are selling blind — they don’t necessarily know which individual shows they’re representing, or the nature of the content.”the last thing creators want is to diminish that relationship and negatively impact that unique openness to brand messaging. At TPX, we feel its our job to protect that relationship and listening experience
LISTENING EXPERIENCE: TPX evangelizes the attentiveness of podcast listeners and notes, “The last thing creators want is to diminish that relationship and negatively impact that unique openness to brand messaging. At TPX, we feel its our job to protect that relationship and listening experience.” TPX offers to work with brands on the creative, “so that the creative is produced to match the format.”
TRANSPARENCY: Here, TPX addresses “blind buying,” and pledges to guide campaigns not only to brand safety, but to targeted audiences to elevate return on investment. TPX emphasizes tht its podcast inventory is not offered in the Open Auction, a Triton environment which is favored by some digital audio campaigns, but deemed unfavorable by TPX for its podcast representation.
NOT A RACE TO THE BOTTOM: This section tackles the age-old (at least, as old as programmatic advertising) worry that programmatic podcast advertising will drive down CPMs and damage the creative and ownership sides of the industry. “Podcast campaign CPMs are at a premium for a reason,” TPX says, “they target desirable, hard-to-reach consumers that are deeply engaged and loyal to their medium of choice.”
Read more HERE.