Not All Podcast Ads are Created Equal. Here's Why.

Summary:

• Programmatic buying consists of a publisher listing ad inventory on a Supply Side Platform and advertisers buying this inventory through their own Demand Side Platform.
• Programmatic buys can take place in a biddable environment as well as via Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deals.
• Veritone One can help you put together the perfect mix of programmatic and direct IO buys to meet your campaign goals.

Common misconceptions around programmatic

After attending this year’s Podcast Movement event in Los Angeles, our team noticed something curious: it seems “programmatic” is the word on everyone’s lips these days, which we expected, but it also seems that, for most attendees, the word has taken on a new meaning. I most commonly heard the term “programmatic” to describe any ad spot that is not a host-read endorsed podcast read—which is not the case.

There are two main categories on which Veritone One focuses when buying podcast inventory: Host-Endorsed and Targeted Podcast. For a targeted podcast buy, we utilize targeted ad solutions across the entire podcast network, leveraging first- and third-party data to reach our target consumer, no matter where they are consuming podcasts.

Both of these can be bought programmatically or via a direct insertion order (IO). We’ll dive into the strategy behind each of these methods further down.

First things first, however. For media buyers—and especially for anyone who may be new to advertising on digital channels—it can be quite confusing to hear industry leaders use a term as simple as “programmatic” in disparate ways. So, let’s take a moment to define the term.

So, what exactly is programmatic buying?

What do we mean when we say “programmatic”? Simply put, it is the use of advertising technology to buy and sell digital ad inventory. Seems simple enough; yet, it’s a bit more complex than this.

The first thing to note here is that programmatic buying does not involve the signing of Insertion Orders or contracts, and in most cases, it does not require direct contact with the publisher.

Instead, the publisher (in most cases, the network on which the podcast in question runs) makes their ad spot inventory available via their Supply Side Platform (SSP). This allows for an ad exchange where media buyers and advertisers can bid on that inventory via their seat in a Demand Side Platform (DSP).

For our purposes, “programmatic” refers not only to the technology behind each ad buy, but to the type of marketplace it creates for buying and selling digital ad inventory.

The difference between programmatic buying and direct IOs

Buying media programmatically has its advantages, but there are certain limitations to keep in mind. That’s why the digital team at Veritone One buys a mix of direct IO and programmatic podcast inventory, depending on the needs and goals of our clients.

For a direct buy, we utilize first- and third-party data to target listeners within a certain network. Once we’ve agreed on target audiences, CPM goals, and impressions, we sign a direct IO.

For a programmatic buy, we utilize our preferred Demand Side Platform to create inventory packages with relevant targeting and genre specifications. We also determine campaign deliverables based on the type of programmatic buy we execute.

Different types of programmatic buys

Some programmatic buys occur in a biddable environment, meaning that the buyer (advertiser) adjusts their bids based on presumed impressions. The same ad spot inventory can fetch different bid amounts depending on the current market; as we get closer to this year’s general election, for example, we can expect an increase in Cost Per Mille (CPM) for political content. The more demand there is for that inventory, the more buyers are willing to bid on it.

Because the volume of impressions is not guaranteed at the outset, you always run the risk of underdelivery with this method. With strategic bidding, however—something the media buying experts at Veritone One are well versed in—there is the potential for the buy to deliver impressions at a cheaper CPM than it would through a Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deal.

A Programmatic Guaranteed deal is just that—a buy in which CPM and impression volume are guaranteed. The buyer and the network would agree on a CPM and impression load for the campaign to deliver in full. As an advertiser in this scenario, you will likely end up paying more in CPMs than you would in a biddable environment, but the benefit is that you can guarantee yourself the impressions—and save yourself the uncertainty.

Once the programmatic buy’s terms have been outlined,  we use the DSP to traffic the ad units and monitor Cost Per Mille (CPM) bids and delivery on our end.

Veritone One can help you put together the perfect buy.

As you can see, depending on your campaign goals, you may benefit from either a direct or programmatic buy, which is why at Veritone One, we pride ourselves on being experts at both.

For a broader target, a direct buy allows you to reserve your impression volume, often at a lower rate. But when you want to target more niche markets, a programmatic buy allows you to get granular with targeting and with more scale opportunity.

At the end of the day, as Podcast continues to prove itself a viable and effective marketing channel, the ways we buy and engage audiences within the ecosystem are evolving. The first step in ensuring the perfect buy for your brand? Making sure we’re all speaking the same language when we talk about it.

Edited by Rubi Mora

Summary:

• Google is in the process of turning off cookies for Chrome users, a lion’s share of the browsing market.
• This could affect the number of conversions advertisers can report on, necessitating change to their measurement and attribution models.
• Veritone One is ahead of the game here, using tracking methodologies that are unaffected by this change and continually updating our approach to deliver accuracy and campaign optimization.

A World Without Cookies?

First things first: internet cookies may be much-maligned (no one really likes navigating those permission banners when they visit a new site, do they?) but they can be very useful for a consumer.

For example, cookies save the items in your shopping cart when you leave a website—as well as your login info when you come back to it. But they’re also a useful tool for advertisers, allowing them to target and re-target users based on their web history and interests. As such, they’ve served as an integral part of the ecommerce experience.

Until now.

As we entered 2024, Google phased out cookies for 1% of Google Chrome users, which amounts to approximately 30M users. This will limit cross-site tracking by restricting website access to third-party cookies by default.

By this time next year, Google plans to officially phase out cookies for 100% of Chrome users. And that’s significant: Google currently holds 66% of the browsing market share.

Now, you might ask yourself, why would Google do that?

Google is shifting to a proprietary algorithm, one that better tracks users and is a lot more secure and private than cookies, which traditionally track users across the web and may leave them vulnerable to privacy breaches.

This is good news for Google and advertisers that advertise on Google. It’s a challenge, however, for those that use other marketing platforms that still rely on cookies and older methods to target users.

That’s because this change in cookie policy will impact audience targeting and how advertisers track and record data and attribution models (such as First-Click and Multi-Touch). While clients should not see a dip in sales, advertisers can expect fewer reported conversions—which may have the unintended effect of making campaigns seem less effective.

As advertisers, we know this isn’t ideal. But there are ways to approach this and stay ahead of the game, and Veritone One is here to help. By acknowledging the changing landscape of digital advertising—and adapting to a few of the strategies below—advertisers can continue to leverage efficient targeting tactics and combat a cookieless future.

Targeting Through First-Party Data

One way to circumvent cookie depreciation? Invest in your first-party data, or CRM.

Collection of users’ first-party data is not affected by Google’s emerging cookie policy. Additionally, first-party data has always been considered inherently more privacy-compliant than third-party data.

First-party data also allows for strong hyper-personalization: brands can tailor their own data based on users’ individual preferences and behavior, and from there build custom audiences to target and retarget.

Plus, brands can collaborate with advertising and measurement partners by sharing that personal data, allowing partners to onboard and build a lookalike or retargeting audience. This can both expand reach and increase customer lifetime value for the brand.

Second- and Third-Party Data

From a vendor perspective, as well, the depreciation of cookies should be no cause for concern, as vendors can continue to provide brands with second- and third-party data to further identify consumers’ demographics and priorities. Second-party data would consist of the vendor’s site-owned information, such as a user’s age, gender, and geographical location, provided by said user when they set up an account on that site. Third-party data, meanwhile, is anonymized data from partners like Experian that vendors can use to match with email addresses or device IDs.

Neither of these sources of information rely on cookies; as such, we don’t anticipate any reduction of fidelity on vendors’ recruitment processes.

Consider Contextual Targeting

While cookie-based targeting uses the historical behavior of individual users, advertisers can easily target ads based on the actual site, audio, or video content that a user is currently consuming, placing relevant ads that align with the content consumed. Your ultimate goal with this approach is to serve an ad that complements a consumer’s current “interest,” regardless of who the user is or their past browsing history.

What about reporting?

From a reporting perspective, the end of third-party tracking cookies can certainly disrupt an advertiser’s strategy—but it’s not the end-all be-all of how advertisers can demonstrate successful campaigns. On the question of pixel tracking, consider the approaches below.

Claritas

Claritas has never been fully dependent on cookies as a measurement solution; as such, they are very well prepared to navigate this change.

Instead, Claritas uses their proprietary Identity Graph, encompassing a comprehensive product suite, to connect with consumers beyond the cookie. This includes a combination of data from the US Census, American Community Survey, and First Part Financial Track Survey, as well as third-party data for financial-related data points. It allows them to identify an audience with data points rooted in who users are and what their household looks like, including their IP address, postal data, segmentation and demographic information, financial and product consumption history, and more.

On top of this, Claritas is rolling out an AI-Driven In-Campaign Targeting Enhancement Beta in the service of driving more conversions. This feature is based on over ten-thousand highly predictive demographic and behavioral indicators, allowing advertisers to hone in on the best-performing audiences week over week. So far, results are promising: in an initial testing phase of over 350 campaigns, advertisers saw an average of over 15% increase in performance with the same volume of impressions.

Podscribe

Podscribe, too, has long transitioned away from the use of third-party cookies. Their web tag instead sets a first-party cookie, which will remain unaffected by Google’s policy.

When possible, Podscribe also requests that brands include first-party data with conversion events, such as hashed emails, which tend to have a better match rate to household IP addresses in the Tapad Device graph and allow Podscribe to match cross-IP conversions with better accuracy. They also rely on mobile ad IDs (IDFA, GAID) for in-app events.

These first-party data points not only improve the accuracy of their tracking methodology—they also future-proof that methodology pretty handily.

Brand Lift Studies

Great news here! Brand study vendors don’t rely on cookies for recruitment, so brand lift studies do not appear to be impacted at all. We don’t anticipate any reduction in the fidelity of brand study recruitment processes arising from the depreciation of cookies.

Brands have a direct integration with partners like Nielsen and Kantar, which allows them to use ad-log data in lieu of cookies and tags. Instead, first-party data comes from logged-in data and device data. For third-party audience data, they leverage device IDs to reach audiences through our data partners.

Since these partners are already set up in a cookieless environment, Google’s cookie ruling does not affect them.

And don’t worry—Veritone One is on it.

The best news? Veritone One is already implementing these solutions to stay ahead!

In a landscape where change is the only certainty, Veritone One again emerges as a beacon of innovation. Our winning combination of awareness and preparedness have left us with no concern that the depreciation of cookies should impact our business. By proactively adapting our strategies to meet the technological landscape of today and beyond, we can continue to outpace the dynamic shifts in the advertising world and scale positively for our clients.

Edited by Rubi Mora

Summary:

• Big Game ad spots can be cost-prohibitive for most brands, driving brands to get creative.
• Veritone One brought two of our legacy clients together for a strategic brand play that capitalizes on the Big Game and Valentine’s Day—without the Big Game price tag.

The Huddle

For those of us in the industry, the Big Game means one thing above all else: prime advertising real estate. And that doesn’t come cheap: a 30-second spot during the 2023 telecast cost advertisers an average of $7M.

To be a part of the conversation this week while maximizing ROI, a brand has to get creative with their strategy. Or, they can partner with an agency like ours.

“With Valentine’s Day taking place just three days after the Big Game, it was crucial for us to find creative ways to capture the attention of consumers across the country, which is why we approached Veritone One,” said Abhay Patel, Brand President of 1-800-Flowers.com.

So Veritone One put together a game plan to play matchmaker for two of our biggest brands, teaming up 1-800-Flowers.com and DraftKings to tackle both the Big Game and Valentine’s Day messaging with ultimate efficiency. The result? Our innovative “Don’t Forget the Flowers” campaign.

The Big Matchup

The “Don’t Forget the Flowers” campaign is the first of its kind, stemming from previous conversations to develop potential cross-promotions between the two advertising giants. Both the Big Game and Valentine’s Day are huge marketing opportunities in general, but for these two brands and their demographics, they are especially resonant.

“With so much hype around the Big Game, it’s a challenge to cut through the noise,” said Jason Danahy, Head of Revenue, DraftKings Media & Sponsorship of DraftKings. “When Veritone One approached us with the idea to collaborate with 1-800-Flowers, we were immediately intrigued. This unique collaboration allowed us to attract new customers to DraftKings by thinking beyond traditional advertising and forging a partnership that no one saw coming with a brand that shares our audiences, especially this time of year.”

Between the campaign’s launch on January 22 and May 12, for every “Don’t Forget the Flowers” eligible bouquet purchased, customers received a $10-$50 DraftKings gift card to be used for online and fantasy sports gaming. For sports fans hoping to celebrate their loved ones this holiday, it’s a win-win.

Everyone Wins

“This campaign allowed Veritone One to do what we do best: develop a winning advertising strategy based on creativity, extensive audio and video advertising experience, and intuitive matchmaking skills,” said Richard Varalla, our VP of Account Management. “The Big Game set the stage for 1-800-Flowers to drive visibility and sales in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, creating a dynamic opportunity for our team to develop a creative and comprehensive strategy apart from purchasing a big ad spot.”

Patel agrees. “By matching us up with DraftKings and helping conceptualize the promotional offer to develop a first-of-its-kind campaign, Veritone One was able to help us get in front of football fans outside of the traditional thirty-second ad.”

With conversions as their end game, both brands are poised for victory. Veritone One couldn’t be more excited to be a part of this winning team.