Why is 90% of advertising on podcasts trying to sell me a make-at-home meal delivery service?
I'm a huge podcast listener and I really enjoy the variety of really great content. But the commercials sometimes leave a lot to be desired. As of late, I'm noticing more of these meal plan prep ads. Is it just because we're all home from Covid, or is advertising in podcasts just too narrowly focused? I promise I'm not listening to only food podcasts. In fact, I never listen to food podcasts.
Answers ( 3 )
Advertising online is a bit recursive and not very bright. In addition, it's full of relics of print and network buying from the 20th century.It could be a combination of any or all of these factors:
Network buying is a factor. Advertisers still primarily pay networks to do their advertising for them, so if the media buyer bought X number of hours on a podcast site and only 30% of the ad buy is used up by listeners of food podcasts, the remainder of the hours will be on whatever is getting the listeners.
Listener demographics is another factor. For instance, you may be listening to podcasts with a large young, single, mid to high income male listener demographic. The demographic that used to, pre-pandemic, eat out a lot and cook in less. Without people to cook for them or with them or for them to cook for, this audience was out and about and now, may not have cooking skills or confidence - the perfect audience for meal box sevices.
External influences. Yes, pandemic and the meal services may just be heavily investing in podcast advertising.
Sponsors. Some shows take what they can get. If they get sponsored by meal box services, then you get ads for meal bix services.
Algorithimic thinking. You listen to a podcast with food advertising and you don't think about it. Now the system says, well...you didn't freak about the meal ads, so..here's another one. Then it says, you clearly don't mind meal ads, so here's another. And another. The next thing you know, the system has you tagged for meal box service ads.
The ads I tend to hear read by podcast hosts are for remote mental health services, postage services, online learning platforms, high quality socks, insurance, other podcasts, and web hosting services. I listen mostly to science based podcasts and some news, interview, and entertainment, so the ads you hear more often may differ somewhat from mine.
In the past mail order foam matresses and mailed meal kits were massive spending leaders in podcasting. Good market research will point you to whatever advertising channels where your customer base is more likely to encounter your message.
Dynamically inserted ads were making up 48% of podcasting advertising by 2019, and this can be expected to keep rising.
Although figures can vary from month to month, acording to Inside Radio the top 15 pocast advertisers for the year 2019 were:
"ZipRecruiter, Geico, Indeed, Squarespace, SimpliSafe, Quip, Robinhood, Zenni Optical, Madison Reed, Casper, Skillshare, ThirdLove, Care/of, Stamps.com, and Progressive."
http://www.insideradio.com/podcastnewsdaily/and-the-top-15-podcast-advertisers-are/article_39fc7ea8-346f-11e9-bb8c-2f5f034c477d.html
The article below describes the trends in the listener base for podcasts.
https://www.convinceandconvert.com/podcast-research/new-demographic-research-shows-who-really-listens-to-podcasts/
There are two potential reasons (and very little to do with the shows you listen to):
1) You're personal data, based on website visits, searches, social media interaction and broader demo/geographic info about you (and a target of the advertiser) reflects this is a type of service you would be very interested in.
2) This advertising category is in a strong growth stage, and the podcast networks are trying to fill as many impressions requested by these advertisers as possible (and against some criteria target) and will serve the ads to you to help fill that request.
BONUS #3). It could be a combination of the two! ;0)