"Pod"Casting Call: Millennials - Podcasts as a Modern Marketing Medium

Who listens to podcasts anymore, right?

Contrary to the belief that podcasts are no longer listened to by the younger generation, Millennials are actually gaining major points for increasing user listening rates on these thought to be outdated news and entertainment sources. Believing that podcasts were a thing of the past, I myself (a millennial) rarely choose to listen to content through this medium. However, research shows that 36% of Americans over the age of twelve had listened to at least one podcast in 2016 (27% of those aged 12-24 listened to a podcast in the past month), a 75% increase from three years prior among the demographic. Among those young podcast listeners, a majority of them used a mobile device to listen in on their audio content (64%). All of these touch points translate to the fact that young people are listening to podcasts more, and choose to listen on their mobile devices.

How do we market to Millennials through audio podcasting?

This does not give permission to marketers and advertisers to start spamming young people with ads. Advertisers are increasing their spending on podcasts ($35 million/year projection), but how they are spending that money is key to any successful marketing strategy.

In recent years, Programmatic Advertising (Dynamic Ad Insertion Technology) has been heavily used to ease the process for advertisers to feed ad content to their audience quickly and seamlessly. This form of advertising uses Big Data software technology to buy and sell ad space without the need for salesmen to do the hard work. This process happens instantaneously, and often reduces effort, time, money, reliability, and headaches with corporate.

Many people believe that programmatic advertising is the future of the marketing and ad industries, What these professionals do not realize is that taking the easy way out is not always the best method towards a successful campaign in most cases. For podcasting, traditional or programmatic adverting integration does not work.

Millennials, the next generation of content listeners, have short attention spans (guilty as charged). Simply put, pop-up ads do not work for this age bracket anymore. For millennials, it is all about procuring the information fast and from a source that they trust. The people who choose to spend their valuable time listening to podcasts do so because the content is coming from sources they trust deeply, especially for quick information. Thirty-second audio or video ads do not stand a chance with the younger consumers. These Gen-Xers and younger are more educated than previous generations, making it more challenging to gain their attention and trust.

Solutions to this generational problem are through the use of pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads, outro ads, and billboard ads. See Podcast Motor's description of these in-content advertising techniques below:

All of these types of ads are effective not necessarily for what they contain, but because of who they are coming from. As stated earlier, Millennials trust the people they receive their content from. If the origin of the advertisement is from their trusted sources, they are much more likely to listen, retain, and act on that information. Additionally, it is increasingly less likely for a listener to "skip" or leave a podcast or its advertisement when the ad is brief (10 seconds or less) and is mixed in with the informative part of the podcast that the consumer is motivation to listen to. For example, if a 25-year old is listening to his favorite sports podcast, he or she is less likely to ignore the ad if their trusted host brings attention to a brand or product right before, in the middle of, or at the end of the podcast's subject matter. This reduces the desire and motivation to ignore an ad if it is mixed in with their valued content. It is much easier for a 30-second commercial to deter someone from continuing with the content, however the recommendations above are sure to help any podcast listener better retain the information they heard from a non-traditional, non-programmatic audio advertisement. For those podcasters who are struggling to retain a young audience, remember that time does not always equal money!


Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/under30network/2017/08/25/why-millennials-are-choosing-podcasting-over-blogging-to-build-their-personal-brands/#139124fb383a
http://adage.com/article/agency-viewpoint/authenticity-trap-marketing-millennials/306181/
https://digiday.com/media/what-is-programmatic-advertising/
https://www.podcastmotor.com/get-rid-programmatic-ads-instead/
https://www.podcastmotor.com/4-ways-millennials-are-changing-the-way-we-consume-audio/