Nova Entertainment is commercialising its podcast offering, ensuring that it's not only simple, but attractive for advertisers to get on board.
As part of the move, the media player has inked a deal with Red Rooster to back three of its most successful podcasts. The focus on the lucrative media channel doesn't stop there, with Nova also currently researching concepts for original podcasts.
QSRH-owned brand Red Rooster is using the partnership to promote its new wing offering, with its messaging featuring on the Kate, Tim & Marty, Nova 100’s Chrissie, Sam & Browny and the Fitzy & Wippa show podcasts. The brand's involvement is limited to 25 seconds at the beginning of each podcast, with the talent reading individually crafted scripts about the wings product.
This advertising play from Nova was something that aligned well with Red Rooster's strategy, with head of digital at QSRH, Ken Russell telling AdNews the brand is doing slightly different things with its spend to not only make the most of its budget, but also doing things in a way that ensures its media is 100% trackable.
“We don't have the depth of pocket that McDonald's or Hungry Jacks do,” he says. “We do look to be more guerilla, a bit more tactical and even more targeted and that's why digital is actually taking a much larger focus with the business here, because it allows us to ensure that we get less wastage of our media spend and hit that key demo.
“We need to make every media dollar count and this is one activity that allows us to play with new digital formats, as well as allowing us to get 100% share of voice and a good level of targeted penetration that the product is targeted at.”
For these three podcasts Nova gets more than 80,000 plays per month and for Red Rooster the fact that it can reach this many people in a personal and uninterrupted way also made the deal a no brainer.
“If we can reach 80,000 people across our core demographic with the message about wings, then we're doing well,” Russell added.
For Nova this story isn't just about launching a brand partner for its podcasts, the key aim for the broadcaster was to make its offering easy for brands to get involved with, all the while respecting its audience.
Nova's head of creative service, Andy Milne told AdNews it seems really obvious brands sponsoring podcasts, however not many businesses locally are getting behind the medium, citing that one of the reasons for this is because it may be difficult for agencies and clients to buy podcasts.
“One of the challenges that media buyers and clients are trying to navigate is how you buy podcasts? Because radio companies are talking about recorded audio shows, it's not the same as buying radio,” he says.
“We've got to change the conversation in market about how you buy it. That also extends to the creative. With the Red Rooster campaign, I don't want to represent that we're doing something that's a media first, but what I would say is we're being thoughtful about how you buy podcasts and engaging with brands and audiences not as a traditional media company.”
Media agency Bohemia was also key to the Nova and Red Rooster tie-up, with Bohemia's digital director, Helena Gamvros, telling AdNews: “The podcast experience is an intimate and deeply engaging one-to-one moment that’s rapidly gaining momentum and popularity – and we wanted to ensure that Red Rooster, was there to help provide good Aussie content. Nova’s suite of podcasts not only aligned perfectly with our audience, but also offered scale.”
Nova is also currently working with different content creators on bettering their podcasts, as well as working on making podcasts that feature original content that's not centred around the its in-house talent.
Original podcasts have been particularly lucrative for fellow media company the Mamamia Women's Network, which recently launched its own podcast network, with Milne explaining that Nova is on a similar journey.
“We're delving into creating different shows with different creators at the moment with a very commercial mindset,” he says. “We want to build really engaging, really interesting, serialised narrative driven podcasts that are going to be attractive for advertisers.”
Nova recently partnered with AdNews for our podcast, you can listen to it here.
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