Podcast advertisers now buy pet owners, not just age and gender
Brands pair a host endorsement with automated ads that chase the same listeners on other shows.
PodBiz | Where's The Money In Podcasting? · How Privacy-First Data Is Changing Podcast Ads with Emma Raz of NumberEightPodcast advertisers are no longer just buying women 35 to 44. They are buying pet owners and grocery buyers.
That is the shift described by Emma Raz, an executive at NumberEight, a British company that builds audience data for podcasts. Age and gender, the longtime bread and butter of advertising, still sell, she says. But demand has moved to deeper slices that match other online advertising, from affluent consumers down to even more specific niches.
The same logic now applies to shows. A brand that got a good result from a few podcasts can treat those listeners as its core audience and buy a podcast lookalike, finding other shows with similar listeners and similar content to reach more of the same people.
Many brands pair the two approaches, she says, running a host endorsement and then extending it with automated ads that chase that same audience elsewhere.
Questions people ask
What is programmatic advertising?
Programmatic ads are placed by software in fractions of a second, with computers bidding for each listening opportunity the way traders bid for stocks. In podcasting, the winning ad is then inserted into the listening experience for that specific person, rather than being read live for everyone.
What is a host-read ad?
A host-read ad is an endorsement delivered by the podcast host, often in the host's own voice and style. Advertisers value it because listeners tend to trust the host, and they now often extend that trust by using data to find similar audiences elsewhere.
How would an advertiser know I am a pet owner?
Data companies infer those traits from observed behavior, such as apps used, content consumed, and location patterns, combined into audience models. A regular buyer of pet supplies or groceries, for example, can be grouped with other people with the same habits, without an advertiser ever seeing a name.