Does Anybody Hear If A Branded Podcast Falls Off the Charts?

What is clear to me when I talk with marketers everyday, is that they vary greatly in their appreciation for the value of having a branded podcast. I’d like to go a step further and suggest that ensuring a branded podcast lands on the global podcast charts is not yet a “thing” for marketers.

But it should be.

The podcast goals of marketers are still fairly timid, such as “finding an audience of 10,000 people” or hoping for a “brand lift”. I find that this limited confidence and lack of awareness of value leads marketers to grossly underinvest in their podcast production, hire freelancers or produce podcasts in-house off the side of their desks. This has created a flurry of branded podcasts from large brands that can often sound like college radio.

This lack of experience by brands leaves the podcast charts wide open to professional and amateur podcast producers, who in turn sell podcast ads back to the same brands who fail to see the value in competing with the podcasts they themselves are renting space from. For any brand that is smart and courageous enough to produce a branded podcast to fill this gap and get on the podcast chart, the sky’s the limit for ROI.

Let’s quickly look at some examples of podcast value to see if I can help alleviate this serious branded podcast problem.

I’m personally not a big Joe Rogan fan, but if there was any doubt about the value of the podcast charts it was put to rest with the reporting of the $100 million dollar deal Joe struck with Spotify to move his podcast there last September. Yes his podcast was downloaded 190 million times per month, and yes he has a Youtube channel with 10 million subscribers, so clearly he is a known celebrity who is worthy of a large distribution advance. However, what is most fascinating is that the top of the US podcast chart is being paid the equivalent of 23 billion streams on Spotify, meaning that Spotify values this podcast more than any musician in the history of the world.

In other words podcasting has finally killed the music star. At least at the top of the charts.

So let’s look much further down the charts to one of my personal favourites: Ezra Klein. During these politically tempestuous times, Ezra’s podcast in my opinion has been an oasis of intelligence, empathy, insight and inspiration. This week he is currently #72 on the US Apple Podcast Chart, but he charts everywhere globally, and his media publisher Vox produces podcasts that currently occupy 6 of the top 200 Global chart positions around the world. Reportedly Vox is on track to produce $20 million in revenue (2x their 2019 performance).

Let’s keep in mind that the majority of non-brand podcast producers are largely supported by advertising. That advertising is set to reach an estimated $1 Billion per year in 2020. Let’s be very clear and note that this $1 Billion is being spent annually by brands (albeit some of it is being spent by other podcasts). The ad spend is spread out amongst the most successful for-profit podcasts with 22% going to news, 17% going to comedy and 13% to society and culture.

To help determine the value of podcasts further down on the podcast charts, for argument’s sake, let’s set Vox’s advertising cpm at $25. Simple math suggests that they are reaching 800 million people in aggregate. But they are also only including about ten 30-second ads in their content of greater than an hour.

As each podcast on the top 100 chart has hundreds of thousands of listeners, let’s multiply $25 cpm x 100 thousand people to get a simple guesstimated advertising value of $2,500 per podcast episode. If each series had an episode twice a week, then the value of the podcast would be $2,500 x 104 episodes = $260k per series per year, give or take.

Let’s stop for a minute.

What I am suggesting using very basic math is that each podcast on the top 100 chart is worth easily $260k in ad value. If we extrapolated the cpm to cover the remainder of the hour of content that listeners are engaging with you would have a podcast with an additional annual value of $14 million. But frankly this is where I typically lose people, so let’s just stick with the advertising value of $260k for the moment.

Now let’s go one step further as we know that those who are power podcast listeners, listening to many podcasts on a weekly basis, demographically make more money than the average citizen and are more educated than the average person. This translates into higher purchasing power per listener, particularly if we include the purchasing power listeners have as B2C consumers and as B2B commercial purchasers. For example, technology podcasts are targeted at CTO’s and developers, and both represent large consumers of software, hardware, cloud, security and other purchases. So this $260k basic value estimate doesn’t take into account the millions or potentially billions of dollars in sales that can be derived from the brands that may choose to produce a chart topping podcast.

For example, if a tech company has 100,000 CTO’s and coders listening to an hour twice a week, the goal would be for a percentage of them to purchase products from these brands, versus the brand that decided to sit out of podcasting or worse, produce something off the side of their desk that wasn’t listenable.

What I’m suggesting is that podcasts that chart each have engagement values in the multi-tens of millions of dollars plus.

But if the assumptions above are true then why are marketers from some of the largest and fastest-growing brands in the world reluctant to assign the budget that will give them a chance to chart and create the millions of dollars in ROI that are waiting for them?

As a final example, let’s take a look at the Tech industry. Globally, Tech is a $5 trillion dollar business. Yet when we look at the top 200 Global Tech podcast chart, there are only 11 brands present. There are many more branded podcasts in the tech industry of course, but unfortunately they are often poorly produced, too ‘on the nose’, often with hosts that are inexperienced, too ‘inside baseball’ or the audiences are intentionally narrow. The result is that they have no chance of charting and creating the value that they potentially could achieve.

To help marketers avoid these mistakes, here are my top 6 recommendations to achieving superior podcast ROI:

1. Never produce a branded podcast off the side of your desk. There are professional podcast companies with years of experience available that will increase your chances of charting and building tens of millions of dollars in ROI.

2. If you decide to produce a branded podcast in-house, be careful to ensure that you have the creative team with years of experience in audio storytelling that can guarantee a remarkable listening experience.

3. Avoid hiring individual audio freelancers. There are a significant number of professional podcast companies with case studies proving success.

4. Prepare a realistic budget, one that expects to pay a minimum of $8,000+ per episode ($48k for 6 episodes, $208k for 26, or $416k for 52) so that you can tell remarkable stories that will build strong audiences and chart. Budgets of this size guarantee a team of professionals including: Creative Directors, Producers, Writers/Researchers/Directors, Recordists and Editors.

5. Spend the same amount on marketing & promotion. Remarkable stories cannot be found if they are not promoted. We have seen many large companies fall down when trying to market their series on their own. Expect to spend a minimum of $10,000 per month x 3-6 months, plus a $5k – $30/month ad spend during launch.

6. If your existing podcast is not charting that is a very serious problem. Talk to a professional podcast production company with demonstrated experience rebooting series to understand why.

The spoils are currently going to the Joe Rogans, Ezra Kleins and media companies of the world as they are ones who have taken podcasting most seriously. But they are often not large brands, nor are they always well capitalized. These chart leaders can only charge for 5 minutes of ads, and they are still making millions. I strongly suggest that it’s time for large brands to step in and tell the remarkable stories that will chart, that in turn will produce even more significant ROI.

Paul Stewart is JAR Audio’s Director of Outreach.