The Rundown: Podcast production companies and platforms pitch diverse audiences and ad targeting improvements at IAB’s Podcast Upfront

By Sara Guaglione

Improvements in podcast ad technology, as well as the diverse audiences and creators in the audio space, were the focuses of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s three-day Podcast Upfront this week, which wrapped on May 12.

The key details:

The IAB forecasted podcast ad revenue to surpass $2 billion in 2022.
The podcast industry is fully embracing dynamically-inserted ads.
On the other hand, some podcast companies touted the benefits of longer-form branded ad segments.
Machine learning can help advertisers target specific content and conversations in podcast episodes.
Upcoming programming being pitched to buyers ranged from true crime to comedy.
Industry execs touted the diversity of content, creators and audiences in podcasting — and the need for advertisers to back them up financially.

Podcast ad spend continues to grow

On Monday, the IAB released its annual U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue study, which found:

Revenues increased 72% year over year to $1.4 billion in 2021.
The IAB forecasted podcast ad spending to exceed $2 billion in 2022 and almost triple by 2024 to over $4 billion.
Pre-roll advertising increased its share of podcast ad revenue to 32% in 2021, from 22% in 2020.
The share of podcast ad revenue served via dynamic ad insertion (DAI) — i.e. ads inserted at the time a podcast is downloaded or streamed, versus “burned-in” or “baked-in” ads, which are embedded in the podcast file and part of the episode’s content — has almost doubled in two years to 84%.
Both host-read and announcer-read ads are largely being served via DAI (84% and 85%, respectively).
Announcer-read ads grew its share of ad revenue to 40% from 35% in 2020.

The industry fully embraces DAI

With the industry quickly shifting to DAI, more advertisers are moving into the podcast medium because they can use the same data they have to target their desired audiences on social and connected TV, for example, and apply that to their audio strategy, said André Swanston, svp of the media and entertainment vertical at credit reporting agency TransUnion, during a panel conversation on Wednesday’s event (as opposed to an embedded ad, where every listener hears the same ad regardless of who or where they are). TransUnion, it should be noted, is a provider of that data. Acast, which claims it invested dynamic ad insertion back in 2014, touted its DAI tech and programmatic ad arm during its presentation.

DAI has also helped to open up podcast advertising to more categories, said Eric John, vp of the IAB Media Center, on Tuesday. In the same panel with Swanston, Ken Lagana, evp of digital sales at audio company Audacy, said the flexibility of being able to “put [dynamically-inserted ads] up and take them down in periods that are important” has opened up the podcast medium to advertisers in categories like automotive and for those promoting TV shows or selling tickets (the arts, entertainment & media category in IAB’s report grew from 9% to 11% year over year — auto grew from 2% to 4%).

Longer-form branded ad segments

But, not everyone is behind the rapid adoption of dynamically inserted …read more

Source:: Digiday