Podcircle Podcast

[00:00:00] Mickenzie Vought: with baked in ads, it really limits you. because people are listening not just to the episode this week and the ad that you've given them that's relevant to this week, but they're also listening to your back catalog. and you're gonna have a slew of out-of-date ad content you're still promoting old lead gen or event dates or webinars or promotions that just really aren't relevant anymore. And

[00:00:20] Kyle Cummings: to the Podcircle Podcast, where we bring practical tips and insights for every podcaster.

[00:00:25] Mickenzie Vought: Whether you're just getting started or you're already a seasoned podcast pro, these conversations dive into all the topics that matter most to you. So in the last episode, we mentioned dynamic ads and baked in ads, and so we really wanted to kind of dive a little deeper on this and define the difference and talk to you about why you should be thinking about dynamic ads. They are the way of the future.

So between dynamic ads or baked in ads. Baked in ads are those that you've created an entire episode and in the file of your episode. I'm saying this in layman's terms, Kyle, for people who are not

audio engineers, you put an ad right in the middle of it. You say like, okay, I'm gonna create a midroll or a pre-roll or a post roll.

So. Those are the three terms in a pre-roll. It's gonna be before your episode starts. Mid-roll is gonna be in the middle, post rolls after everything rolls, but it's basically a part of the larger file that you then upload to whatever you're using for your podcast hosting platform. If you don't know what we're talking about for podcast hosting platforms, go back to a couple of episodes before this where we kind of define what those are, but.

with baked in ads, it really limits you. So coming from someone who just spent LA the last two years doing baked in ads every single week, I would send Kyle my interview, my intro, and then here's the ad to throw in there. and it really limits you

because people are listening not just to the episode this week and the ad that you've given them that's relevant to this week, but they're also listening to your back catalog.

[00:01:53] Mickenzie Vought (2): That's something that I think I didn't really realize when I assume people would just only listen to this week's episode, but if someone just found you, they're gonna wanna go back and listen to old episodes. I have backlog episodes that I listen to some of my favorite podcasts just because I didn't listen to 'em when they were alive.

And I go back in the week because I listened to this week's episode and. Want more.

[00:02:11] Mickenzie Vought: and you're gonna have a slew of out-of-date ad content

[00:02:15] Mickenzie Vought (2): when you have a baked in episode,

[00:02:16] Mickenzie Vought: you're still promoting old lead gen or event dates or webinars or promotions that just really aren't relevant anymore.

And

[00:02:22] Mickenzie Vought (2): I think you can make that conscious decision. Or you can limit what you can promote and only promote evergreen things.

what I often say is you don't have a lever to pull from a marketing standpoint. So for example, right now I host a podcast and we're running an ad that's like, Hey, if you join and do a program and this month, you'll get this X percent off simply for being a podcast listener. It's a lever that we can pull to say our numbers are low this week and this month. Let's give some people incentive for people who are loyal raving fans to come and engage with us at a deeper level.

maybe you have an event that's coming up and you're low on attendance and you wanna give a flash sale.

You can be responsive across your marketing got dynamic ads. So

tell us about dynamic ads a little more, Kyle.

[00:03:11] Kyle Cummings: totally. And to your point, specifically, instead of running that ad in just the most recent episode or episodes, you can run

that ad across all of your episodes. So the key

difference .Between burnt in ads and dynamic ads, is that burnt in ads? They're there forever.

they're edited into your episode they're not really to be changed out with new, more relevant ads, which

so dynamic ads are ads that can be updated. You know, say if you've been running dynamic. You know, your, your podcast is set up for dynamic ads and you have a hundred

episodes. You could do a whole campaign, and you can run that ad campaign. Maybe it's a, a midroll ad and then a postal ad. So an

ad that plays in the middle of your episode and one that plays at the very end. And you can run that ad campaign across a hundred episodes because again, like you said, people go back and they, they consume your backlog of content, especially your raving fans. Especially new people that found your podcast and they're just binging.

[00:04:08] Mickenzie Vought (2): Where do you think the best place to put a midroll ad, Kyle? Because you're saying like basically whoever's

managing your podcast, whether yourself or someone who's managing your hosting is gonna indicate like, Hey, at this Mark, this is where you'll insert the ad. Right.

[00:04:21] Kyle Cummings: Yeah. I love that question. I always say to put at least one ad in the first

10 to 15 minutes after that, like when you get into the 20 to 30 minutes, your listeners can tend to drop off. And so you wanna make sure that they've actually consumed and listened to that ad. a really great place to put an ad is at the very, very beginning.

But,

[00:04:38] Mickenzie Vought (2): Yes.

[00:04:39] Kyle Cummings: like the way that you've been doing this McKinsey with, with your guys podcast and that you run a pre-roll, but you're only doing that for like episodes that are maybe like five or six episodes back that just aren't

getting as many listens just 'cause they're not newest episodes.

And you're putting a pre-roll on all of those episodes, which I think is really, really smart. And then for your newer episodes, you're just running a, mid-roll. you can even run, you know, a post roll. So all this stuff is made possible by the dynamic ads Functionality that some of the best podcast hosting platforms allow you to do. I was just telling McKenzie before our call, podcasting is a time investment. It's a money

investment, so why not get the most bang for your buck? You know,

uh, especially if you're creating evergreen content that people are going back and consuming. You can, you can run relevant ads on those old episodes and I just think that's awesome.

[00:05:32] Mickenzie Vought (2): so what if you are

like me and spent two years doing baked in ads and then you maybe switched over to a platform like Transistor where you can now do dynamic ads? What do you do with that? How do you unbank them so you can run dynamic ads? Um, I mean, I kind of had this conversation with you and you said we can manually edit all of them out.

That can be done. it'll be time and a money investment. And I kinda weighed that and said, is it worth it for me to go and my catalog of 135 episodes, actually 150. Over 150 with

bonus episodes to pull out all those ads, or is there another solution and you came up with a really great solution and said, let's leave those baked in ads.

Maybe we pick our top 10 or 15 that are getting extra views or getting extra listens on a consistent basis, which is something that you can do. Kind of look your analytics and say which episodes have the most relists? Or what are our top episodes that continue to get, Kind of like some post, you know, release consumption.

And then you said, let's run a pre-roll on every episode pre, uh, migrating over to transistor. And

that's what we've been doing. We do a pre-roll on that. We also put a post-roll on all of them that said, Hey, subs, if you like this, make sure to like and subscribe or follow us some social media or like, you could do some kind of post as well

because you've got the features.

And if someone's listening all the way through, might as well throw another one at them.

[00:06:52] Kyle Cummings: I'll speak

to that for just a second. And you may be wondering, like, how is it that you can run a pre and post-roll

[00:06:56] Mickenzie Vought (2): Mm-Hmm?

[00:06:57] Kyle Cummings: ad on old episodes without having, it's because have to edit anything out. So

[00:07:02] Mickenzie Vought (2): Yes.

[00:07:03] Kyle Cummings: a pre-roll, you can just tag and it runs at the very beginning of the year, episode. so that nothing in terms of a content perspective or productions perspective, nothing really needs to be edited. Now.

Your old baked in ad still exists there,

which may be still relevant, it may not be relevant. again, like McKenzie said, to go and remove those requires you to go to your, your podcast editor and say, Hey, maybe you have a hundred episodes that have baked in

ads.

They actually have to go in and I've done this and do this for clients Still. Certainly don't mind doing it. it is a time investment, you know, and, and so you, as the podcast, owner, the host, you have to kind of weigh that investment.

that's why I talked to McKenzie about, we just take it the, the 10 top performing episodes and we,

we remove the baked in ad from those and then

make them,

[00:07:51] Mickenzie Vought (2): optimize them for dynamic

[00:07:53] Kyle Cummings: optimize them for dynamic ads. And then the rest of 'em will run new pre-rolls and post rolls which doesn't really require unak anything.

So I really like to give people options there, but

honestly I've had several clients that say, you know, we, we really wanna, we

[00:08:09] Mickenzie Vought (2): wanna

have a clean slate?

[00:08:10] Kyle Cummings: they only have 40 or 50 episodes, so it's, it's less of a cost to them to go back and

do that. but when you get into the hundreds, that's when you kinda start getting into like, man, this is, this is gonna be a lot of work. So my best advice is just to start off on the right foot,

um, and which is why we're quite literally doing a three part series on podcast hosting platforms because most people say, I just need to get my podcast up. I just need to get distributed. And I'm just like, okay, pump the brakes. Let's get you

on the right hosting platform first, that is built for the future. When you

decide to start. Advertising and running ads to where you don't have, where you get into this whole thing where it's like, oh crap, I've got 20, 30, 50, a hundred ads. podcast where I have baked in ads. What do

I do now?

[00:08:55] Mickenzie Vought (2): Yeah, just take a little time on the front end

to set yourself up for success of where you want to go.

I think, you know, kind of holding that balance of not getting everything perfect before you start getting ready to launch and launching in a sustainable

way. We really do wanna help you launch in a sustainable way.

I mean, that's why we created an entire complete podcast starter kit, we want to give you all the resources because I think when you start off strong and on the right foot in a sustainable way. You're gonna have more fun with your podcast and it's actually gonna last.

[00:09:24] Kyle Cummings: Totally.

[00:09:26] Mickenzie Vought (2): so if you are like me and burnt in ads, do not worry about it.

but also if you are starting off, this is a great way to say, I wanna start off in the right foot. Let me get a platform that's gonna be built for the future and built for the future of my podcast.

so I think a lot of times we have kind of this feeling of ickiness around advertising, so I just wanna speak to that as we round out this episode, because if you're sitting here saying, I don't wanna bother my listeners with ads, podcasting is a money time investment and we as a society, as a consumer, are used to ads programmatic advertising, which is basically dynamic ads where it's specific to the consumer, it can be responsive. All those things is forecasted to account for more than 90% of our total ad spending in 2023. So a lot.

And by 2026, global programmatic ad spending is expected to reach a staggering $725 billion.

So advertising is the way of the future, but advertising that meets your consumer where they're they're at, I think that's the difference here. If you get an ad, if I got an ad for a A RP, it wouldn't be the right ad for me. I'd be frustrated, I'd be annoyed. But But if someone finds me on the internet and gives me a, targeted ad for a product that I'll use, I'm not annoyed. It's only annoying until it's not convenient.

And then when it's convenient, you're like, give me all the ads.

So a survey actually found that US consumers, 78% of US consumers don't mind ads or messages in their podcasts. So we expect it. We like it. And if you can meet them where they're at, they're gonna have a conversion. 62% of listeners consider new have considered new products or services after hearing about them from a podcast advertisement.

So encouragement to you is make it relevant to your

audience.

[00:11:21] Kyle Cummings: Yeah, and I would say too, if, it bugs you enough, if you really

don't want to have. Ads. Then you can also create a premium subscription to your podcast.

There's multiple different ways to do this. You can do this with a private podcast. You can do this with Apple's new subscription service

that they, they've just rolled out. then you can offer ad free episodes to premium listeners for three, $5 a month and for a small fee. Your listeners can get ad free episodes. Maybe you

can release bonus content, which I would really recommend for them,

and just really, really nurture that loyal fan base of yours. in general, I would just say we've all gotten pretty good.

Let's be real. an ad comes up that we're not interested in and we're listening to a podcast, we all

know

[00:12:07] Mickenzie Vought (2): we know how to

[00:12:07] Kyle Cummings: the fast fast forward button. that said, You have something of value to offer. You shouldn't feel bad about talking

about it. You know, it's, there's nothing, nothing wrong with that.

That's, that's just kind of the, that's the world we live in. And if people, if it bugs them, then, you know, they can just fast forward right through it. But,

[00:12:25] Mickenzie Vought (2): Exactly. And if you want to, learn more about how to monetize your podcast, because I think ads is one way to do that. We did an entire episode about different ways and thinking outside of just ads to monetize your podcast. So go ahead and check that out too. I wanna make sure that you know about that.

So,

Anything else you have to add to this as we round out?

[00:12:43] Kyle Cummings: you're asking some questions around starting a podcast,

um, around which, you know, podcast hosting platform,

dynamic ads, some of those things and you're just kind of starting out or maybe you're early on. would encourage you to grab our podcast starter kit. You can find

it at pod circle.com/start. It's a set of PDFs that are we just downloaded all of our knowledge of starting podcast recording equipment. Recording virtual interviews via, via Riverside, and we just put it all and package it up and put it all together that for you. So again, you can grab that at pod circle.com/start. If you are a podcaster and you're feeling maybe you're 10, 20, episodes in and you're feeling a little bit stuck, you remember the reasons you started a podcast, but now you're kind of starting to reevaluate and you're like, man,

I'm not, not quite ready to give up on this yet, but. I need to see some return on an investment. And you have maybe some, some questions around your podcast strategy. set up a call with McKenzie and I, it's

called a

podcast

strategy session. we do them all the time. They're a lot of fun and we're gonna help you get very, very clear.

We're gonna ask some big questions and, uh, help you get some clarity around your podcast and, and the next steps and the way forward, help. Define your goals for the podcast and then have everything else kind of speak into that.

Um, so if you just wanna learn a little bit more about that, you can jump on a call with me.

The link is, in the show notes and just do a brief 20 minute discovery call to figure out if that strategy session might be a good solution for you. So I think that's all for me. Anything else for you, McKenzie?

[00:14:19] Mickenzie Vought (2): That's all. We'll see you next week!