Podcasting’s $400 Million Intrinsic Added Value

Audioboom
3 min readApr 15, 2021

By Thomas Mancusi, EVP Global, Sales & Development at Audioboom

Added Value or Value Added refers to extra inventory added to a sale to sweeten the deal for the buyer. As a salesperson through the years across Radio, TV, Streaming Audio, Pre-roll Video, Display Advertising, Double Opt in Email, SMS Marketing and even today in Podcasting, each potential buy is accompanied with a request for added value from the buying agency to maximize their clients advertising plan.

In the Podcasting Advertising Industry, when the audio ad is listened to, it naturally goes over the sixty second duration that is negotiated or sold and purchased. Each network and each podcast fluctuates in the amount of added value that is given intrinsically through the average duration of their respective ads.

When you purchase a sixty second ad in Radio, TV, Spotify or YouTube, you only get what you purchase. When you buy a sixty second ad in Podcasting, your purchasing dollar has a long tail or goes a long way, you can say.

Working with Magellan AI and using their extensive rich data, a nice little story can be told about the medium and added value it brings to most brands. You get more than what you pay for, but just how much?

Magellan AI pulled the data based on the top 3,000 podcasts in Apple iTunes from this past January, in these four popular genres, limited to ads from direct response advertisers that ran within content and not in a pre-roll position.

We see some eye popping durations, and thus built-in added value as well:

Comedy delivers an astonishing 58.48% increase from the purchased duration on the average.

TV & Film delivers a resounding 52.45% increase from the duration purchased on the average.

Society & Culture delivers 28.07% increase from the purchased duration on the average.

True Crime delivers 23.25% increase from the purchased duration on the average.

The leading 3,000 podcasts across these genres are delivering an incredible level of additional value to advertisers with an average ad length of 84 seconds. That 40% increase over the purchase value could equate to around $400m of added value to brands during 2021, a year in which the US Podcast Industry is slated to hit $1 billion in ad revenue.

At Audioboom, we coach our podcast partners and creators, helping them produce better shows and deliver strong advertising. We implore the talent to go well over the sixty seconds in duration and to keep the ads as organic as possible. As a result, when calculating the added value due to length of ads, Audioboom stands out from the overall industry.

At an average of 102 seconds, Audioboom Ads are providing 22% more value than the wider industry and 70% more value than the purchased spot.

At Audioboom, we pride ourselves on the effectiveness of our ads. As a result, when placing a podcast buy with Audioboom you get the most value of your dollar in the podcast space when compared to our competitors.

I am proud that Audioboom stands out amongst a group of publishers who are all delivering incredible value to the brands that advertise with them. The podcast industry is a unique value driver — how many other industries could bring $400 million of added value to their customers?

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Audioboom

The leading podcasting and on-demand audio platform for hosting, distributing and monetizing content. Need help? https://support.audioboom.com