The recent update to Australia’s Podcast Ranker gives media buyers more confidence in the space and could lead to more advertisers adopting the medium, according to industry indsiders.
Last week, Triton Digital began including download and listener figures in the ranker after previously only reporting a ranking of total downloads of shows.
Cassie Longmuir, client solutions director at media agency Half Dome, says the rapid growth of podcasts, particularly throughout the pandemic, means transparency in the sector had been behind other digitally tracked media, leading to a “significant” amount of ambiguity in podcasts.
“This has, not surprisingly, made it difficult for clients to find trust, and for agencies to recommend podcasts, without a good backbone of measurement,” she tells AdNews.
“Prior to this addition with Podcast Ranker, agencies and clients would need to rely on publishers’ discretion to make a decision on what podcast was best for them. Although there can be trust in this space, it had proven difficult to compare podcasts against each other as there was no single source of truth.
"Triton’s updates to the Podcast Ranker help give the control back to agencies and clients.”
Craig Cooper, chief investment officer at Carat Australia, also welcomes the update, saying the industry has been “flying somewhat blind."
“These numbers will give both agencies and clients the confidence to further utilise this channel for impactful and targeted audio campaigns,” Cooper tells AdNews.
“The ranker list provides us information around scale and which networks are dominating in this space as of today, but it won’t necessarily change which podcasts are recommended to clients in the future. Podcasts are a rich one-to-one territory that provides us with talent or genres that would be specifically relevant for a demographic. It’s this micro-targeting that is a huge benefit for the channel, and whilst we understand the reach more clearly now, relevant targeting layers will still be important.”
Craig Cooper
The addition of download and listener numbers has shaken up the ranker. For example, The Kyle & Jackie O Show slipped from third spot to seventh in August because while their monthly downloads remained high, at 1.62 million, their listenership figures are lower, at 290,541.
“This highlights the disconnect between downloads and true listeners and the need for transparency in this space,” Longmuir says.
“My expectation is that these reports will make it easier for clients to take the now-smaller step into the podcasting space.”
Cooper adds that the additional figures give better insight into which genres are popular among audiences.
“Now with exact listener and download numbers, it is remarkable how much Australians consume True Crime content,” he says.
“The cumulative reach of this genre is huge, but it’s very tricky to align brands to this content - but there would be some that could have positive outcomes here e.g. Crimsafe doors etc."
Both Cooper and Longmuir would like to see the podcasting industry continue to make developments in the space.
“To do this, the industry should focus on improving the measurement and tracking capabilities even further, such as introducing third-party ad tracking,” Longmuir says.
“At this stage, brands and agencies are mostly relying on publishers to serve their ads dynamically or programmatically. This addition of tracking will give brands a more holistic view of the customer journey and their customers’ media consumption behaviour.”
Cooper would like to see the radio industry body Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) work on integrating the data with agencies’ planning tools.
“The top line numbers, whilst providing us with the reassurance of the strength of the channel, would be even better suited within a planning system that we can use to model the most optimum plan for clients based on their objectives and targeting strategies,” he says.
“Once we can have ready access to this data, the podcast channel will begin to thrive from a revenue point of view. We encourage the CRA to focus on how this data can be integrated within agencies planning tools as a long-term goal."
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