Tracy Hazzard breaks down podcast cold opens: they build anticipation but often confuse listeners, especially when a guest speaks first instead of the host. Less than 5% of shows use them, and they work better for video. Host-led teasers beat guest clips.
So there's a couple different schools of thought on that. It can build anticipation and give foreshadowing some of what's going to happen. You don't want to give away all the goods there. But something that is intriguing and like, oh, all right, I can't wait to hear this discussion. Great. The thing that I hear from listeners a lot of the time, feedback on that. And I want to tell you, I think, I don't even think 5% of the podcasts that we support do that. It's not as common. That doesn't mean it's wrong at all. It may be great, but a lot of times it can confuse people because usually the first voice they're hearing isn't the host of the show, it's someone else. And it's not always in context either. So it can confuse the listeners, like, wait a second, did I push play on the right podcast episode? You know, and they're looking around and I think that's because a lot of people who do it are not discerning. They're not making smart choices for their business. They're not specifying it. They're leaving it up to us or to their producer. And they're not. And we're going to pick the sound bite that is going to be like the best like sounding sound bite, not the necessarily best lead in to the episode. That is only something you can do, the one that leaves that message and impression that you want to do. And if you're not willing to select that, then you really shouldn't be doing this model. Now, it does work better on video. We do see a lot of that video trailer, that kind of thing, video shorts. Ben's mentioning that here in the chat. We see that working because they're using a short at the beginning and they're going to use that as their video short. And it's a trailer and it teases in and leads into the video. So I can see what this video is about before I go into watching it. But it also can be where people stop and they're like, okay, I got enough. Like, so you have to be really careful. We've also seen it go it down, play through rate when you do a more. I'm going to call it an expansive teaser. As a listener, I'd say most people just don't do it well. There isn't 1% of you who do such a good job that that didn't confuse me in the start of your show. And if you're going to do advertisements, it's really not a great way to start your show. It's now very disjointed if you have that. Some intro music and then an ad.
So keep that in mind too. Some that I feel do it better. It's never the guest, it's the host. You know, the host comes on and says, hey, future band listeners, today we're going to talk about this. I've got this guest and oh my gosh, it was fantastic. You're going to love it when she talks about this. So let's get on with the show and then get to. That's that teaser trailer model. Then you could run your pre recorded little intro and then get right to it. It's just a different way of organizing the content and presenting it to the listener. But I think those work better.
