There aren't many digital advertising platforms that work for podcasters, mainly because strategies like Facebook Ads and Google AdWords aren't designed to measure how many subscribers you receive from a particular ad campaign.
That's where third-party apps like Overcast, Podcast Addict, Castbox, and Pocket Casts come in!
So in this episode, Travis and Badr will peel back the curtain and show you results from sponsored campaigns within Overcast and Podcast Addict so you can decide if it's a worthwhile investment for your podcast.
Links from this episode:
Record your podcasting question at Speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout to be featured on a future episode.
Review Podcasting Q&A in Podchaser to let us know what you think of the show.
There aren't many digital advertising platforms that work for podcasters, mainly because strategies like Facebook Ads and Google AdWords aren't designed to measure how many subscribers you receive from a particular ad campaign.
That's where third-party apps like Overcast, Podcast Addict, Castbox, and Pocket Casts come in!
So in this episode, Travis and Badr will peel back the curtain and show you results from sponsored campaigns within Overcast and Podcast Addict so you can decide if it's a worthwhile investment for your podcast.
Links from this episode:
Record your podcasting question at Speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout to be featured on a future episode.
Review Podcasting Q&A in Podchaser to let us know what you think of the show.
In today's episode, we're going to talk about buying ads and sponsorships in podcast listening apps to promote your show. So in this episode, me and Bob are going to be hanging out talking about podcast ads within podcast apps. Now, for those podcasters that are familiar with digital ad, spend Google ads, Facebook ads, that kind of stuff. What makes platforms like overcast and podcast addict? good choices for podcasters that are trying to grow the number of subscribers to that particular show?
Badr:Yeah, good question. I think apps like overcast and pod podcast ad make good platforms, because it's exactly where your listeners and your audience are. They're using podcast apps, like overcast and podcast attic. So why not go to those type of platforms to push your podcasts.
Travis:And what's really unique about using these podcast apps as a way to promote your show is you've already dialed in the exact type of person that you want to promote your show to. There's someone that knows what a podcast is, they know how a podcast app works. And they already listened to other shows. So much of the the friction with promoting your podcast on places like Facebook or other social media platforms, or even on Google ads, is that you're trying to convince somebody to dedicate 30 4060 minutes to check out your podcast, they might not be in that frame of mind, they may be just looking for, you know, pictures of their niece's birthday party on Facebook. And so they come across an ad talking about your awesome podcast, and you're like, Well, that sounds great. But I don't really have time to look into that. But by sponsoring your podcast on a podcast listening app, while someone is listening to a podcast, you're catching them at the perfect time. So the two main places that bother I know that you've had experience with is overcast ads, and podcast addicts. So tell me a little bit about the setup process for each of those. And then what kind of results you saw as a result of that set
Badr:up for both of those were pretty similar. Each one of them has a dedicated tab on their website for purchasing ads, they give you a list of the different categories available. So I went with the leisure category, because that fits my podcast theme the best. But there was some for sports, media nonfiction, it just a whole gamut of different podcasts subjects. So you're able to see the different prices, they give you a rough estimate about the type of results that you know, you can expect from said, categories and how long they run, I think both of them only offer one month ad runs at the time, which is a pretty good a decent amount of time to go ahead and gauge the type of results that you're going to get. So you go to select the category you go to and make your payment. And it I mean, it's pretty seamless, pretty straightforward like that, you eventually get an email afterward with a link to to your tracking. So you can go in and track the results as they happen in real time to the best of their abilities.
Travis:Yeah, and bother just kind of glossed over this. But this is actually really key. With platforms like Facebook, and Google AdWords, there are so many different things that you need to know, in order to not lose your shirt in order to not completely waste all of your your budget for when you're promoting your podcast. But these other platforms, you're really just saying, Hey, here's the link to my podcast in the app. With overcast, you're able to write like a small like a short sentence, pitching the idea of the value of your podcast. And they show your artwork and the title of your podcast. And it's a link that somebody can click to go and check it out if they're interested. So you don't have to be a seasoned professional marketer in order to see good results from using these kind of platforms. And they do allow you to track in real time, how many people are clicking on your ads, and how many people are actually subscribing to your podcast, like they have physically pressed the button to subscribe to your podcast and get your future episodes. So it really is a great fit for podcasters that have some budget to grow their show, and are looking for a really simple way to do that where the response that you're tracking is someone actually signs up to listen to your podcast, not that they just saw an ad on Facebook and then clicked on an image but you can't actually see did that actually turn into a listener?
Badr:Absolutely. And I'm glad you brought up the categories and ease of use, because that was something when I was using social media ads, that was a little challenging, you know, having to narrow down your your preferred audience, you know, what's their age range? Where do they live? What are their likes, you know, there's a lot more that goes into it. What I liked about using ads with overcast and podcast attic was that they kind of took the guesswork out of it, you know, they were able to generalize it into category that fit my podcast needs. And they had a whole bunch, like I mentioned. And the other best thing was that because it was running an ad within the application, well, my audience didn't have to jump through hoops to subscribe or find my download or my podcast. It was right there within the app, you know, so this not forcing them to jump to another app, or do additional steps. It was very ease of use on my end as well as the users then
Travis:right because that's the other part of the equation to write. It's like you run an ad let's say you do a Facebook ad campaign to promote a new episode. When they click that button. Where are you sending them? Are you sending them to Apple podcasts you sent on a Spotify your website? Like what link? Do you actually put in there. But when it's within the app itself, they're already using their preferred podcast app. So they just click the button. Oh, that looks interesting. I'll subscribe and start listening to episode. So it really is, if you're have some budget to spend to try and promote your podcast and get some more, some more listeners, we really think that investing in a 30 day advertisement spot in one of these podcast apps is a really great way to go. Now, but why don't you share the results from your ad campaigns just so people get an idea of how much the investment is for that 30 day feature? And then what kind of results you got from those two different ad campaigns?
Badr:Absolutely. I'll go to start off with the latest one that I did, which I ran an ad and podcast addict for the month of January, I ran it in the leisure category, because once again, it just fits my podcast theme the best way. And my results so far have been impressions I've got I got about 781,000 impressions
Travis:who, yeah, that's a lot of people colossal.
Badr:The clicks was about 12 117. And I got 29 subscriptions out of it, which is fantastic to know, because that's one thing with social media as that you're never really too sure. Yeah, you get to see the impressions, and maybe the reach and things like that, but you're never really confident on Well, how many of them actually became subscribers? How many of them are new listeners to my podcast now?
Travis:So you got 29 new subscribers? And how much did you pay for that? 3030 day spot?
Badr:$150 for the month.
Travis:Okay, so about $5 to get someone to subscribe to your podcast, like that's actually really good. To give you some context, if you run a Facebook ad campaign promoting something$1 per click is what you can typically expect to get. So if you spend $100 in Facebook ads, that means 100 people will visit whatever website you want to send them to. So the fact that you got 29, almost 30 subscribers for $150 is a really great ROI compared to the other platforms. What about overcast? Because I know that you also ran a an ad campaign in overcast? How did that compare to podcast addict?
Badr:Yeah, so an overcast overcast, I ran it for the month in December, and my results were got about 70,748 views. So they call the impression the views in this instance 614 taps and 24 new subscribers. Now the thing to note when it comes to these ads, too, is even though it stops after that 30 day mark, they're still collecting and processing the information. So even at day 35, you'll notice that some of the stats have changed as well. So I think last time when I checked, it was actually closer to 30 subscribers with the overcast ad
Travis:set. And how much did you pay for that particular slot in overcast? Oh,
Badr:$250. That's about $100 more than the podcast attic that it ran.
Travis:That makes sense. So the reason that makes sense is overcast, was really the first third party independent podcast app to incorporate this kind of podcast advertisement, where there's just like a little banner on the bottom of the screen as someone's listening to a podcast they're already subscribed to. And then it's like an add to your podcast. And so a lot more people know that overcast ads. And so platforms like pocket casts, podcast addict and even castbox are starting to incorporate this model, and overcast and podcast attic seem to have the lowest rates if you just want to dip your toe into it. But if this is something you're really confident and you have a podcast that appeals to a lot of people, then you can reach out to a salesperson from pocket casts from castbox to a larger ad buy and get really really great results. I know that Alban did some ad buying for castbox or Podcasting, Q&A. And we paid for, you know, a significant amount but our audience like quadrupled in size. Wow, just from running a castbox campaign. So if you're looking to grow your podcast audience, and you have some money to spend using something like overcast, which is a Apple iOS app, or podcast addict, which is an Android app, to grow your audience is a really fantastic strategy. Any last words for someone that's considering investing some money, some actual budget into promoting their podcast on one of these apps?
Badr:Absolutely. So one thing to know for overcast and I think you might have mentioned it is that it does give you the option of creating a unique tagline or byline you know something that you can alter it to be a lot more attention grabbing than just outside of the name of your podcast. podcast at the moment at least, does not allow you to enter like a tagline or word or anything like that. It'll show the image of your podcast or as well as the name. The other thing I'll mention too, is that these ads as they're getting more popular, more people are becoming aware of these ad opportunities. They they sell out quickly. If you go on overcast right now, you'll notice that some of the more popular categories, you know, whether it be sci fi or religion, or any of the other categories, they're sold out, and you'll have to wait, they do give you an option to sign up for email notifications to let you know, hey, this category is back up and available. But I have noticed that the prices are steadily increasing as more and more people are incorporating ad spaces.
Travis:Yep. And we'll leave links to everything. So you can go and check out overcast ads, go and check out podcast attic ads, and figure out if it's a good fit for your podcasts. Well, thanks for listening to Podcasting Q&A. If you want to submit a question for a future episode of the show. Just go to speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout or cli k the link in the show notes nd leave us a brief audio messag, you can subscribe to the Bu zsprout YouTube channel to wat h future episodes of Podcas ing Q&A. Or you can find out yo r favorite podcast listen ng app like overcast or podcas attics. Well that's it for to ay. Thanks for listening and as always keep podcasting