The Skinny on Simulcast, a Win-Win Strategy for Paid Media

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.

See how Veritone One is implementing DEI values into our media plans.

Summary:

• Despite growing listenership and demand for Black-hosted podcasts, only 14% of podcasters identify as Black.
• Veritone One has led a thought leadership initiative to combat the lack of diversity in podcasting, including an 15-20% increase of ad spend on minority-owned podcasts.
• By retooling internal processes to produce quantitative data that informs more diverse media buys, we are helping clients and networks value underserved voices in the podcast ecosystem.

An Industry-Wide Problem

Let’s set the scene: it’s Podcast Movement 2022 in Dallas, Texas, and the Veritone One team is excited, as always, to connect with and learn from our peers in the industry. Among the usual encouraging insights, however, was one disconcerting takeaway: the lack of diversity in podcast advertising and namely, the lack of Black podcasts in the space. According to that year’s The Creators, a study by Edison Research in collaboration with Sounds Profitable, just 14% of podcasters identify as Black and/or African American.

While we appreciated the industry-wide visibility Podcast Movement brought to this issue, we knew that bringing attention to it was just the first step. So, in response, our SVP of Growth Bart Roselli, Account Strategist Kedric Walls, and Senior Podcast Buyer Morganne “Mo” Cameron led the thought leadership initiative for our agency to support underserved voices in the podcast ecosystem.

Speaking to Black Listeners

2023’s edition of Infinite Dial, a long-running annual study by Edison Research, reports that 45% of Black Americans ages 12 and up listen to podcasts each month, while 28% are weekly listeners. The study broke down the top ten podcasts Black Americans listen to as a whole and found that over half feature Black hosts, illustrating the demand for Black voices in the space. The Breakfast Club, Drink Champs, and The Joe Budden Podcast are among the shows topping the list for Black podcast listeners.

People want to hear Black perspectives, to learn from them and in some cases, see their experiences reflected. Another report from Edison Research, in collaboration with SXM Media and Mindshare, the Black Podcast Listener Report, revealed that 75% of Black monthly podcast listeners frequently or occasionally follow or seek out podcast content that focuses on Black narratives and features Black voices, with 63% considering it “crucial” for podcasts to do so.

Furthermore, of special interest to our clients is the fact that Black weekly podcast listeners are more likely to engage with podcast advertisers than the overall U.S. weekly podcast listener. After hearing an ad spot on one of their favorite podcasts, for example, 52% of Black weekly podcast listeners (compared with 44% of U.S. weekly podcast listeners) purchased a product or service.

Currently, Veritone One is focused on guiding the creation of new content that speaks to listeners’ wants and needs, with the understanding that an increase in resonant content for listeners will lead to a demand for advertising inventory from our clients. This then becomes a positive feedback loop: if our network partners continue to see a push for these types of placements, media plans, and advertising opportunities, they will continue to push for these shows to be created and supported.

Our Impact So Far

Anyone can “talk the talk” when it comes to wanting to see diverse creators in podcasting, but at Veritone One, we’re fortunate enough to have the infrastructure and leverage in the space to walk the walk. This means, for example, focusing on growing discoverability for DEI-centered content across our media plans and overall buy strategy.

Over the last few years, our teams have forged deeper relationships with key vendor partners that stand behind amplifying a range of voices—Slate/ForeverDog, Studio71, SXM/Midroll, iHeart – Black Effect Network and Outspoken Network, Lemonada Media, Acast LGBTQ+ Voices, and Urban One Podcast Network to name a few—for our client brands.

So far, Veritone One has seen an estimated 15-20%—and growing—increase of ad dollars into minority-voiced podcasts. These ever-evolving long-term partnerships serve as a test-and-learn tool for our clients to understand, connect, and broadcast to wider audiences.

As we look ahead, we intend to expand our advocacy and amplify the influence of diverse voices in a meaningful way to drive results for our clients. In addition to thoughtful media rationale and strong recommendations on our media plans, we are building naming conventions into our tech and internal processes to support our strategy with quantitative data.

This is where Veritone One’s proprietary data comes in; with years of historical spend under our belts, we are uniquely positioned to make a compelling argument for diversity that’s motivated by our values, but proven out by dollars and cents.

Beyond internal processes, we are dedicated to remaining educated on the state of the industry through participation in engagement research and webinars, such as “Understanding Black Audiences & Their Connection to Audio,” powered by SiriusXM Media. Per the Black Podcast Listener Report, 48% of Black monthly podcast listeners have been listening to podcasts less than a year. We know listenership in this demographic is only growing, and on behalf of both our agency and our clients, we strive to meet listeners where they are.

Diversity teaches us to acknowledge. Inclusion teaches us to learn, connect, and build. And at Veritone One, we are just getting started.

Edited by Rubi Mora

The research is in: here’s the type of podcast ad that brands should shape their strategy around in 2024—and the type they should skip.

Summary:

• As the medium and listenership continues to evolve, YouTube has emerged as the most utilized platform for accessing podcasts.
• Consumers describe native YouTube advertising “annoying” and “disruptive”—but have a much more positive opinion of host-read podcast ads.
• Veritone One can help your brand make the most of the medium as you shape your digital advertising strategy for 2024.

The most popular way to consume audio… is now video.

What a year 2023 was for audio. As we return to work, many of us will start to compile our learnings from the previous year to plan on building out our strategies for the new year. Brands now know that podcast advertising will become—if it isn’t already—an essential part of their digital strategy in 2024.

Per end-of-year stats from Insider Intelligence, 41% of people in the US tune into a podcast every month and 28% of the population do it weekly, consuming around 11 episodes on average. In addition, around 144 million people listen every month.

And where is all this podcast consumption happening, you might ask? This is where YouTube enters the chat.

YouTube as a podcast platform has been growing since 2019. It is currently the most utilized podcast listening platform in the U.S., followed by Spotify and Apple. However, if you are like me, when you are immersed in a podcast on YouTube, nothing ruins the experience more than the jarring native ads that pop up and interrupt your stream. Sometimes they’re much louder than the podcast you’re enjoying; sometimes they’re just a complete shift away from your content that ruins the mood. Even when you’re able to click the “Skip Ad” button after a few seconds, the damage is done—simply put, those ads are aggravating. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

There’s just one problem: traditional advertising is no fit for such a personal medium.

In one of 2023’s most compelling deep dives on the subject, Sounds Profitable’s Sound You Can See: Podcasting’s Video Dilemma, a study showed that native advertising is viewers’ chief complaint with accessing their favorite content on the platform. Yep, turns out no one is a fan of those annoying interruptions.

In fact, the top five terms used by my fellow ad skippers to describe this type of spot were “annoying” (43%), “disruptive” (40%), “too frequent” (26%), “irrelevant” (26%), and “too long” (21%)—hardly the headspace in which your brand wants to reach consumers.

This presents a challenge for brands advertising on YouTube, especially when we consider that the authentic connection podcast hosts can foster with their listeners is the very foundation on which the medium’s success was built.

With over $2 billion in placed media of proprietary host-read ad performance data, Veritone One can confirm the following:

• Listeners have a better opinion of and pay more attention to ads that are host-read.
• Hearing the host talk about a product in their own voice reinforces the direct link between the sponsorship and the podcast.
• That being said, podcast ads delivered by the host come across as more of an intimate recommendation than a paid advertisement, allowing a brand to build credibility in an organic way.
• Host-read ads within podcasts are considered less jarring than traditional radio or TV ad breaks; because they tend to feel more like content, users are less likely to skip them.

That’s why our ethos at Veritone One is to create ads that enhance, not diminish, the personal connections between podcast hosts and their listeners. Hearing what hosts have to say about their favorite products is just another way to get closer to them—and the hundreds of campaigns we’ve scaled successfully just go to show how lucrative that can be for your brand.

Host-read ads to the rescue!

The same Sounds Profitable study above revealed an interesting dynamic: video and podcast consumers are not by any means mutually exclusive. Oftentimes, they are the same people. And while they consider native ads on YouTube intrusive, viewers express positive sentiment towards ads within podcasts delivered by hosts or other personalities—say, a fan-favorite producer—associated with the show.

And this is especially true for Premium users: close to 90% of those consumers said that they don’t mind host-read ads in their favorite podcast, compared to only 6% who dislike them. The top three attributes these viewers used to describe host-read podcast ads were “informative” (33%), “interesting” (26%), and “relevant” (25%).

As you can see, it’s not the advertisement itself that rankles listeners, but how it’s executed. The right type of podcast ad, fueled by strategically crafted messaging and a targeted media buy, makes all the difference. And that’s where Veritone One enters the chat.

In conclusion, not all podcast ads are created equal.

As we navigate the dynamic landscape of audio in 2024, the surge in audio consumption, particularly on platforms like YouTube, brings both opportunities and challenges to the savvy advertiser. Here at Veritone One, our teams understand the evolving landscape of audio, as well as how best to continue harnessing the power of podcasting’s authentic and influential nature to create meaningful connections with our audience.

The future of audio is exciting, and by aligning our strategies with the preferences of the evolving consumer, we can make 2024 a landmark year for audio advertising. Trust me: you won’t want to skip this.

Edited by Rubi Mora