I know, I know, it seems obvious but at Ad Results Media we don’t take anything for granted.  We always ensure we provide data-driven performance insights to our clients as a way to help steward their investments in podcast advertising and produce high-performing creative.

In another demonstration of our excellent grasp of the obvious, we know that podcasters are humans and humans can be unpredictable.  But there is also tremendous power and influence in personality-driven media and endorsements; and reliably measuring the impact of podcast advertising requires a nuanced approach. A lot of our most successful campaigns leverage “baked-in” or host live read creative and it is essential to evaluate multiple aspects of creative and delivery to understand what is or isn’t driving the performance efficiency and effectiveness of your media.

To help navigate this unique space, we developed a proprietary podcast ad grading methodology and reporting infrastructure. We analyze a variety of key criteria in the context of their ability to deliver on each individual ad’s desired goals.  Each client and campaign are unique and our flexible measurement framework empowers our team of dedicated analysts to deliver customized creative reporting with actionable guidance.

We currently evaluate over 75 different ad criteria to ensure the most effective analysis.  As an example, some of the key evaluation criteria we scrutinize include:

  • Endorsement Quality
  • CTA Quality
  • Production Quality

As mentioned earlier, we like to use data to evaluate and inform virtually everything we do.  As a way to validate our ad grading methodology in-market, we recently ran a post-evaluation study on 2,000 podcast shows from all of 2020 (Note:  results from 2021 year-to-date are similar).  The results could not have been more clear – the better the score, the lower the CPA.

These results were of particular interest to our direct-to-consumer marketing partners who focus most of their advertising effort on lowering their CPA and attracting new audiences with killer creative.  In direct contrast to advertising on social platforms where brands need to be concerned about creative burnout occurring campaigns because their audiences have seen the same ad one too many times; podcast host endorsements are new and fresh each time.  Each ad can be personalized or customized for the host, episode, seasonality or cultural moments in time.

Let’s dig into the results of our study.

Our grading methodology is based on a 10-point scale; with 10 being the top grade. We found that campaigns we scored with a 9 or 10 significantly outperformed the baseline CPA by up to 13%.

The lower we graded each spot, the progressively higher the CPA became over the baseline – clearly validating our methodology.

In addition to our team of 15 quality assurance analysts specializing in audio ads evaluation, we also recently added Tony Carnevale as Creative Director to further build out our creative offering capabilities and lead the charge in developing the most innovative, robust and imaginative agency offering in the audio industry .  Tony brings over a decade of experience writing highly effective ad copy for a variety of industries.

In Tony’s own words “I've used video, podcasting, interactive gaming, live experiential events, and the written word to help convey clients' messages as powerfully and clearly as possible. I view each new business challenge as a fascinating puzzle to be solved with passion, teamwork, and creativity.”

We are very excited he has joined our team to help bring our data-driven insights to life through high-impact copy. We are proud to offer our clients full creative services – from concept to execution to optimization – all with the goal of delivering meaningful and measurable business results.