Podcast advertising has strong potential to grow but clients and agencies need to be guided on how to best utilise the medium, says GroupM CEO Mark Lollback.
Lollback, speaking on a panel at Commercial Radio Australia’s Radio Alive 2019 event in Brisbane, says while podcasting is “really attractive” for brands, there’s still a big education push that needs to happen for brands that have more channels than ever to consider in their mix.
“If you look at it from our clients point of view, at the moment most of their heads are spinning,” he says.
“They’re trying to sort out voice, what to do with Google Home, what to do with Alexa and what’s a brand voice. Something like 80% of brands have a definital brand manual about what their logo should look like, while something like 8% have a voice definition.
“On top of that they’re trying to deal with a revolution happening with Facebook, Google, digital outdoor, digital radio, podcasting, catchup TV, BVOD - it’s never been more complicated.”
The WPP agency boss was joined on the panel by Southern Cross Austereo’s head of podcasting Grant Tothill, Nova Entertainment’s head of podcasting Jay Walkerden and Australian Radio Network’s commercial product and audio partnerships director Corey Layton, who agreed the podcasting space was starting to see the fruits of labour on educating clients of opportunities of podcasting.
Lollback later added that one challenge within the podcast space alone is that there’s so many options which makes it “a little bit like Foxtel”.
“Nobody knows how to advertise what’s on Foxtel because there’s just too much,” he says.
“There’s like 400 channels, how are they going to advertise and each show is probably not big enough to justify just one investment.”
Currently, podcast awareness in Australia hovers around 30%, and Lollback says with the right effort from podcast producers, including radio, it could explode to 70% in a year’s time.
Another challenge for advertising on podcasts is getting the creative right, something Lollback thinks podcast makers are best positioned to educate them on.
“I don’t think clients still know what the right creative is to put in that environment,” he says.
“Just like we’re still screwing it up with Facebook by putting 15 second cut-down TV commercials on the platform,” he says.
“Viewability of videos on Facebook with the sound on is 3%, so 97% of the money has been wasted because we’re just not educated or done enough work.
“Anything you guys [podcast producers] can do to educate the agency-side and the client around what’s the right sort of content - should it be integration, should it be sponsorship - the better you get that, i think you’ll get more people.”
A positive, Lollback says is that he’s finding most clients aren’t taking money off radio schedules and putting it into podcasting. Instead they’re taking it out of a ‘test and learn’ budget or digital.
ARN’s Layton added there are many brands still trying to get into the space.
“A lot of brands currently want to make a podcast without realising that it may not be the best opportunity,” Layton says.
“It’s not that easy to make a podcast and not every brand should make a podcast.”
Layton says they need to consider the investment producing their own podcast is and to consider alternatives such as branded episodes.
“Brands spend all this time and money on production and think they’re done when it goes live but actually that’s only half the job done,” he says.
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