ABOUT GESSICA: Linkedin | Paired

ABOUT ROCKETSHIP HQ: Website | LinkedIn  | Twitter | YouTube


KEY HIGHLIGHTS

🤝How podcast ads came about for the team.

💡How to decide what podcasts to feature on.

🔧Attribution and mechanics involved in tracking the efficiency of podcast ads

💬Framing the message for podcast hosts

🧪When should one look at testing podcast ads

😍Intangible benefits of testing podcast ads

❌Common mistakes that advertisers make with podcast ads

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Shamanth: 

I’m very excited to welcome Gessica Bicego to the Mobile User Acquisition Show. 

Gessica:  

Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. 

Shamanth:  

It’s certainly an honor having you because I’ve followed your work for a very long time. 

I think I first came across your work when you wrote this article – A Mobile Marketing Symphony. I think it was a very interesting perspective. 

Today, we’re going to talk about a theme that I haven’t seen being dived into in a lot of detail or depth. This is certainly something you’ve explored and understood with a lot of nuances, as we found out when I last spoke to you. So I’m excited to dive into podcast ads with you.

To start at the beginning, what inspired you and your team to start testing podcast ads? 

Gessica: 

First of all, thank you so much for your kind words. 

I started to invest in podcasts at my previous company. I currently lead marketing at Paired. Before that, I was with Blinkist for six years and Blinkist is an audio product. So the connection with podcasts was really close. We wanted to advertise on an audio platform. If we went for radio ads, that would’ve been quite expensive. I tried in the past but it didn’t really work. 

I felt that the podcast audience was much closer to the product audience so that’s how we started. We just thought that there was a lot of intersection between the two audiences. 

In my current job though, we don’t have that similar product. I still believe that podcast is a really interesting channel, mainly because of the audience that we’re trying to target. 

So what I recommend is, to do a little bit of market research and try to understand where your audience is spending their time. Do they watch TV? Do they look at social media? Do they listen to podcasts? If yes, for how many hours? 

That’s the first step to really evaluate if it makes sense for you to be spending on this channel.

Shamanth: 

That makes so much sense. Especially with Blinkist being an audio product. 

You did say you were testing podcasts for your current product, as well. In your experience, how do you recommend deciding what podcasts are good to target for your product? 

Gessica:

So first of all, I think a podcast is a really complex environment.  There are so many podcasts out there, it takes a lot of time to reach out, negotiate the deal, find the right brief, etc. So I recommend if it is the first time always go through an agency or through a platform where you find multiple podcasts.  

I’ve tried to work with podcasts that are closely related to the business. So in the case of Blinkist, it will be more about business and these kinds of topics, when it comes to Paired it is more about relationship advice. So try to be close to your niche. The reason is that, if it’s super close to your product, you can also make it work on podcasts that are maybe a little bit more broad. 

Now, one thing that I have to say though is that while the topic is important, it’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is the CPM because you have shows that maybe are super close to your audience. They make so much sense. They’re talking exactly about the topic that you are talking about in your app, but then they’re crazy expensive, and although there’s such a strong connection, they will never work. 

This is one of the mistakes that I made the first time I went to a podcast. I saw the finance & business themes working so well and I was like okay, let’s double down on that.

It was nice, but I think I limited myself too much and when you limit yourself, you can’t grow.  

When I started to explore, I saw that actually, there are a lot of podcasts out there on completely different topics, they’re cheap, the CPM is low, but also the host is so amazing and the listeners are so loyal to them, that they can sell literally everything. 

Shamanth:

It’s easy to lose track of that CPM and some of the obvious things, so it certainly can be very critical to bear that in mind. This leads me to a point about measurement. Attribution can be inexact in podcasts, just because nobody’s clicking. 

You could argue that on iOS, you’re not gonna get any data back. Talk to me about how you think about measurement or attribution. And what some of the different mechanics involved are in measuring the efficacy of podcast ads? 

Gessica:  

In a world where we want to be able to track everything in life easily, for a lot of companies to tap into podcast advertising, it is not possible to track everything. Luckily, due to iOS 14, I think we all got used to having no visibility. So probably right now it’s not a big problem anymore. But there are a few different ways to do it. 

The first way would be to give a voucher code to all the listeners. Prompt them to go download this app and use a voucher with the name of the podcast. So in this way, you can track everyone that purchases from the voucher. 

There was only one problem with that – you get only the people that actually purchase and not the people that are interested. So you’re missing out a little bit on the part of the users. 

The second way is to give a discount landing page. So you can offer a discount, 15 to 25%, or even more if you want and you tell everyone to go to website.com/name of the podcast. Most of the people that go there will convert. So if you look at a trial, conversion is much higher for that than for a Facebook campaign. But it’s still okay because there are a lot of people that go to the page and then maybe they don’t purchase at the end. 

And then the last thing is, you just tell people, to go look for this app and just download it. In this way, the only way to track it is through organic uplift. 

Now, these are the three ways. But you could use a combination of other things to understand the real effects. Because again, it can be that someone listens to the podcast, maybe they don’t have time, so they visit the page later, or maybe they don’t visit the page at all. 

So what do you do? 

The best way is to add a “how did you hear about us” survey, where you ask people where they heard about the app and podcast is one of the answers. 

I did it in both of my experiences with podcasts. One thing that I need to recommend is launching the survey before you start investing in podcasts. You calculate what is the baseline because there will be people already saying they heard about you on podcasts even if you’re not doing podcasts.

What you measure is the uplift of people responding to this podcast, and you take these percentages and you apply to the entire size. 

Another thing that you can do, this is something that I have not done yet, but I saw some companies that are highly relying on influencer podcasts. They even have a second layer on the survey. So you first choose a podcast influencer, and then there’s an open field where you can write the name of the podcast, you can go as deep as that. 

Shamanth:  

People mistype or mischaracterize names which is why I think getting a baseline is so important because then you see how many people are already choosing the different options. So I think that’s very smart to do that. 

You mentioned a bit ago about the hosts and how they can make a difference. 

What would you say are some of the best practices around picking messaging for podcast ads? And how do you frame it for the shows in which you’re featured? 

For instance, is it typically left with the host? Do you exert a lot of control over the messaging? Talk to me about how you think about the messaging and how it’s communicated. 

Gessica:  

Absolutely, I think this is really similar to what happened with influencer marketing, where you definitely need to give talking points to the host, but you also need to give them the freedom to talk about the product in their own way. Otherwise, the risk is that they sound like a salesman.

I prepare a brief with a couple of talking points. So for example, one would be how do you define the app? Then for example, let’s say that for you it is important to talk about the use cases, when you use this app, you give a list of things and you tell the host, you can pick one, you can pick two, or whatever. 

What I like to say as a guide is to give them a real example. Now what we’re trying to do is that we give the host the app for free of course for a year. If we give them the app this month, we request them to talk about the apps the month after. I want them to use it for a month, and I need them to talk about what they discovered in the product. That’s the best way to do advertising, to be honest. 

If you have a content app, then what you can also do is already prepare a list of things. So I’m thinking, let’s say that you want to advertise an app that has multiple shows, for example, and you’re advertising on different podcasts, you can really prepare a list of content that they can consume that is relevant for them that they can recommend. In this way, you’re just making things easier for them. 

Then of course the best way to select a podcast and a host is to always listen to what they’ve done before. Because you can really get a lot of information. You really need to pay attention because unfortunately, there are hosts that don’t do a very good job. 

Shamanth:  

Something that stood out was what you recommended about giving them the product a month or so before. I think that is so critical. We do that with UGCs. 

We actually learned that when we were working on an app for kids. The kid is not going to be able to fake it. We just need to have them play for a couple of weeks and they enjoy it. 

But to your point, I think it’s so critical to have them look and appear natural while they’re engaging with the app or at least speaking about it. 

For an advertiser that’s never on podcast ads, that wants to run tests, at what level of scale, If that’s even the best criteria, does it make sense to start running a test? 

Gessica:  

So it depends on the product. 

With Blinkist an audio product, it made sense to start podcasts in an earlier stage, because there was so much connection. I think, if you have a product that you can easily sell on other platforms, maybe you don’t need to go to a podcast right away. You can wait until you spend 50 to 100k per month or even more actually, probably 150k on other platforms before you start moving on to podcasts.

If someone has a product that is more into the intimacy space and they are not able to advertise on other platforms, influencers, and podcasts are the first platforms for them. 

I would say, start with other channels simply because it’s a channel that takes a little bit of time. Plus you have an agency probably that is going to take care of that. 

Regarding what is a good budget to start the test, then that depends on what you want to achieve, and how many people you want to reach. So in general, the CPM for podcasts and impressions for a listener of a podcast goes from $15 to $150. There are literally no rules. And so that really depends on how many shows, how big they are, and what you want to test. 

I would say that a good starting budget would be maybe 10 to 15k. Because it gives you the flexibility to explore a lot of different things. Of course, you’re not going to have The Tim Ferriss Show, but you’re still going to have podcasts that are enough to drive some traction. You can explore, you see what works and then you double down. 

Also, a podcast is not a channel where you start and you immediately invest 100k. You start with, let’s say 15-20k, and then you increase month over month. So the first month, you need to find what works for you, once you have found the podcast that works for you, you actually try to get a deal for the entire year. So you’ve mentioned every month once, and you’re going to have better CPM than just choosing every month what you’re going to be advertising. And so you find the one that works for you, and then you start exploring another one. So that’s what I’ve seen, usually, you can increase 10 to 30%, month over month, not more than that. 

Shamanth:  

Sure. And that’s a very different playbook from rapid scaling that you could do on digital platforms like Facebook and Google and I think that makes a lot of sense. 

I would also just underscore what you said earlier on about some apps that may want to start earlier on if they are more intimate focused, I’ve certainly seen verticals where approvals on Facebook and Google are a nightmare.

There’s FintTech, there’s women’s health that I’ve seen get hit and in some ways, it just seems so unnecessary. But, it makes so much sense to start with influencers and podcast channels that are less governed by such regulations. 

We talked a bit about the imprecise attribution and the last time we spoke, you did mention that there are also benefits of podcast ads that are relatively intangible, and relatively hard to objectively quantify.

Talk to me about what you mean by some of these intangible benefits and how you justify this. 

Gessica:  

Of course. Similar to the influencer space, what you’re doing with podcasts is you’re associating your product with someone that is an authority in their space. What you’re doing, you have someone that is like a celebrity or someone that has a certain authority, that is endorsing your product. So certainly, if you’re performance-driven like me, you want to see the results, you want people to listen to this and convert. 

But a lot of time, just because someone is like, oh my god, this is my favorite podcast and I heard the host talk about this product, then when they see an ad somewhere else, they’re more willing to give it a try, they’re more willing to trust that. That’s the unmeasurable effect that I’m talking about. 

The best way to really track this effect is to look at brand awareness. If you’re doing a lot of other activities and you see your brand awareness going up, it may be that there’s another reason. What I would recommend is maybe try to run podcast advertising in a market where we don’t run anything else and try to see what effect you’re able to achieve. So that’s for me, one of the benefits, and another benefit that is actually measurable, is the long-term effect of this. 

That actually is good and bad at the same time. Podcasts stay there in theory forever. This means that if a user likes a podcast that goes viral and suddenly they have millions of followers, they go back and listen to old episodes, you’re going to have people see that this host has endorsed you in the past and this gives you a nice uplift that usually is between 5 and 10% in revenue coming from just users that go back and listen to old podcasts. 

Why do I say it is bad? Because if someone does something bad suddenly you’re associated with them forever. 

Shamanth:  

Your reputation is hitched to them, of course. There’s also an interesting point about what you said about the halo effect of the podcast host rubbing off on you guys on the product. It also ties into what you said earlier, about if you find a podcast that is working, you buy an entire year’s worth of inventory. I think that makes so much sense. 

You’re almost looking at this as building your brand equity over a longer period of time, which is why you buy it for a year, and why you continue to invest in it as well. I think that makes so much sense. This is a very different mindset and thinking compared to a lot of performance advertising.

Post ATT this has changed fundamentally, and I don’t think a lot of the instant changes that we used to be able to do three, or four years ago are even possible just now.

But I think this is a good playbook to draw from as well. 

What would you say are some of the common mistakes that advertisers make with podcast ads?

Gessica: 

I would say the main mistake is probably to stay in the vertical instead of exploring. It’s not about the topic, you can really make everything work if you have the right host, and if you have the right deal. so I really see people like sticking to that vertical. And not moving beyond. 

Another thing is not negotiating and not being creative. This is not a channel where you put an ad and you go, you need to come up with different ideas, you need to create a series of content, you need to play with the host, you need to let them experience the product, and come up with something that is a little bit different.

And probably another mistake is not being able to track or you don’t look at the performance. It’s really important that month over month, you measure what’s going on and try to improve your performance.

Shamanth:  

Certainly. Especially for someone that’s trying podcasts for the first time, it’s very critical to remember these, because these can be easy pitfalls for someone that isn’t familiar with this playbook.

Gessica, this has been incredibly instructive.

As I said, this is a very different playbook from what a lot of performance advertisers are accustomed to. So I think this would be very interesting to learn.

This is perhaps a good place for us to wrap up. But before we do that, could you tell folks how they can find out more about you and everything you do?

Gessica:  

Of course, you can find me on LinkedIn

Currently, I’m CMO at Paired and always happy to connect with other folks in the marketing world to share some insights. 

Shamanth: 

Wonderful, Gessica. This is a good place for us to wrap. Thank you so much for being on the show. 

Gessica  

Thank you again for having me.

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