Taking aim at host read podcast advertising

The former VP of EMEA and multi-market sales at Spotify, Marco Bertozzi guns down the idea of host reads and believes the podcast industry should think scale instead

I am getting Deja Vu reading the article from Million Ads’ Lindsay Shelton about personalised, dynamic host read podcast ads.

First thing that struck me was it’s a sales person’s nightmare, having to explain personalised, dynamic, host read, and podcast ads all in one PowerPoint slide. I did not disagree with any individual bit of the article but taking a step back and looking at the sum of its parts, I ended up feeling like it was heading in the wrong direction.

The danger with this particular new sheriff is that it looks like many of the old ones, most of whom have been gunned down.

We are in danger of repeating the mistakes of digital media’s past by leading with product and tech before outcomes and benefits.

I can see the seller now, both in sales and at an agency having to go through all this and explain it when it would be so much better to go something along the lines of:

“Dear advertiser, you want to reach target audience x, we know what they like and are into so we can reach them through interests, genres etc and play them an audio ad while they listen to a podcast. Hand over the money. Thanks.”

To add to this, it has that whiff of – because we can, we will.

Our industry though is going slightly in the other direction. The world of internet advertising just jet-packed back to 2000. With as many as 90+% of people opting out of being tracked, personalised now feels a little uncomfortable and very much in the spotlight.

I genuinely feel like we should be looking for other currencies to lead the industry right now. We should take the opportunity to offer a simpler sales narrative that focuses on reach and interests, especially in podcasts where the ability to engage people at multiple points in a genre, outweighs hitting someone once on a Wednesday at 12pm who listened to a particular episode.

The podcast industry has the window to change the narrative and move away from performance marketing.

Dynamic is a great creative opportunity, has been for years but so few advertisers really embrace it in audio.

I know they do, we did a fair amount at Spotify, but relatively speaking it’s still lots of talk.

I don’t know why exactly but it has always seemed an uphill battle, perhaps creative agencies prefer to make the ads in a complete form versus a tech company sewing lots of elements together in a platform.

So back to the start, this is a sell that has to be worked hard and it’s this that should be avoided.

Let’s end with host read.

Really interesting topic in podcast world. Host read has issues like does the host want to read this advertiser’s guff, or if they do, what will they want to say exactly.

Some advertisers only want to pick certain shows and it all takes time. Again, I don’t disagree with the benefits of a host read but what we need to talk about is how the podcast industry scales.

Host read ads can be the icing on the cake, the premium opportunity but we should be thinking of how fast can we scale, how do we become part of wider audio planning and buying and how can we take advantage of existing processes?

That’s what this is all about, what do we lead with and where does podcast inventory sit in that eco system?

Those with vested interests in host read advertising will always want to push that message and I agree with a number of their points, but more importantly, this industry has to start to make serious money and fast.

If you speak to anyone making podcasts, it is so hard to create scale and monetise it. Yes, the lucky few are hitting that mark but most are not and so as an advertising industry we need to focus on how we scale and create revenue versus how we micro target.

That can come later as the scale and revenues grow.

How should that be achieved, well let’s look to create planning and buying that will allow people to easily access the market place with their considerable spends.

Let’s aim to aggregate scale inventory that brings all creators the chance to benefit.

Let’s allow creative that is easily accessible and deliverable.

It is clear everyone is worried about the impact of what ads will do to podcasts but lets be honest, before very long there will be a Premium Ad free experience and a free experience, and that free experience needs to be scaled and monetised fast.