Post-Roll Podcast Ads: Harnessing Untapped Conversions for Your Show

This is Feed Your Brand with hosts Tom Hazzard and Tracy Hazzard. Welcome to Feed Your Brand. I'm Tom Hazzard along with my co-host and better half Tracy Hazzard, and today we are going to talk about tips for effective ad placement, harnessing the untapped potential of post-roll podcast advertisements. And I'll tell you, Tracy, anybody who is familiar with the term post-roll is probably doing a mental double take right now thinking, you're talking about what? Post-roll ads?

That's why I put it in the title here. That's why we did this because, I mean, we could have just teased you and said tips for effective ad placement, the ad spot you never thought about, or, you know, we could have come up with a title like that. We didn't because we wanted to put post-roll out there for you to think about. And that really is the key here. So what we've done is we've have at our Poditise, our company, we have an ad mixing system and we really think of it like a promo mixing system because we want our clients, our business-to-business clients, our business-to-consumer clients to use it like that, to use it to bring relevant promotions, ad, JV affiliations, whatever it is that you might be doing. It could be outside advertisers, so third-party ads as we call it, but doing something that's in a very specific resource to your listeners that you might be creating a promotion or ad for. And so when we look at that, when we say ads here, we want you to think promotions and ads, and sometimes we'll flip back and forth and call 'em promos. But what we're saying is, is that there is a very, very high conversion rate to post-roll ads for psychological reasons that you may not have considered here. And that's what we want to talk about today, that these are some of the most underutilized and underestimated and underfunded, underpaid, right?

Undervalued.

Undervalued. Yeah, thank you. That's a better word. Undervalued ad spots. You should charge more. For a post-roll ad spot. That's our opinion and our view because the conversion rate is higher. That's what we found from doing that. Now let's talk about ad spots, Tom.

Let—

why don't you just talk about the different positionings? Because some people may not even be familiar with what does the term post-roll mean. And I want to be careful here because we're not talking about these streaming services that stuff ads on the front and back. Those are not pre-roll and post-roll by real definitions that we are using here.

Well, so here's the issue. And like many, many different terms in the podcasting ecosystem or industry, different terms mean different things to different people. The most common one you probably heard us talk about on this podcast, if you're a longtime listener, is sometimes somebody will refer to their show and they mean their episode that just published, but their show to other people is the whole podcast and all the episodes. And, or they refer to their podcast and they mean, oh, did you hear my latest podcast? And they're talking about their episode and not just the show as a whole. So terms mean different things to different people. And of course, this gets even more confusing and is very true about ad placement. Places where you might put ads. So this is ad term placement according to Poditise, Feed Your Brand, and Tom and Tracy Hazzard. Okay. So, but generically it is true. Pre-roll ads typically tend to mean somewhere very early in the episode. Now, some systems will mean, oh, that's at the very beginning. It's the first thing you hear before the episode even starts. We don't agree with that. To us, a pre-roll ad something that occurs pretty early, maybe within the first 5 minutes or so. But there's no absolute rule.

Or right after the intro.

Or right after the intro. True, Tracy Hazzard. Yes, but there's no absolute rule as to when that is. And in fact, in the Poditise system for placing ads or marking ad spots, you are allowed to define where a pre-roll ad is on your own. And there's some good reasons why you may want to define certain ad spots as pre-roll. As opposed to mid-roll or post-roll ads, because then you can decide what kind of ads go in those locations in general.

Or you can decide the value of those ads differently as well.

That's true.

You sell them for different rates.

You can sell them different rates. And even large ad houses that are selling high-volume ads will seek out to buy only pre-roll ads or only mid-roll ads or whatever it ends up being. So pre-roll generally earlier in the episode. Mid-roll really generally means anywhere from after pre-roll. So it could be anywhere, anytime after 5 minutes. But generally we tend to see them somewhere in the 20 or 25% way through an episode, all the way then to maybe 75 to 80% of the episode. And again, you, the podcast owner or producer, whoever is in charge of the show, has the ability in the world of advertising on Poditise or monetizing on Poditise to choose what those ad spots are. So there's no absolute hard and fast rules.

So just as an example, my Binge Factor episodes are broken up in a way that makes the mid-roll spots really obvious. So I define pre-roll as right after the formal introduction with the music. So if I ran an ad spot, I would run a pre-roll right there before I've ever introduced the episode, introduced my guest, or done anything. Then I do an introduction of my guest and there's a natural break before I go to the interview where I throw to the interview. I consider that my mid-roll one, my spot one for my mid-roll. Then I do the interview and I have another mid-roll spot marking right before I go to my closing thoughts about what I learned from this guest. And so I have another mid-roll spot there. Then right after my closing thoughts, I have my post-roll spot before my outro runs. So that's my formal— so I can fit 4 ads into what is about a 45-minute show, and it doesn't seem overcrowded. It seems at natural breaks. So these are some things that you want to think about, but that post-roll spot is really key. I think of it both as my mid-roll 2, which is pretty close to the end. It's like 5 to 10 minutes from the end. My mid-roll too, and my post-roll as my most valuable ad spots. And the reason for this is what we want to talk about today. That's what we really want to get to, right?

We do. But the pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, you could define them how you want. Other people define them different ways. But just so you understand generally where they are and that, that, right? Hopefully it's clear.

And so thinking about it, it's like in the last 10 to 20% of your show, if you're running an ad spot, this is where the conversions are gonna happen. And I know this, the prevailing attitude from a lot of coaches out there hawking podcast launch programs and all kinds of podcast coaching services is that you should make your offer right up front. And the reason is because They think you're never gonna get any listeners who are gonna listen all the way through. And they wanna make sure that you slam 'em in a face with an ad, with a promotion, with an offer. And that's all that they hear because they don't believe you have great content. They don't believe you're gonna follow through. So they think you gotta just push it out there as fast as possible. And that is not what we found happens when you have really great bingeable content and people are listening again and again and again, they want to get into your content quickly and they're frustrated by the bombardment of ads at the beginning. So you're disrupting their process for choosing you, and that creates a sense of dissatisfaction with your show. That's not a good thing. They chose to come and listen to you, and what do you do? You sell them. In minute one. That's part of the mindset problem right there, right?

And there are many advertisers that will say, hey, I don't want to pay for any ads unless it's the first thing people hear because I want to make sure they hear my ad. I don't care about anything else in your show. That's really their attitude. And in fact, Spotify's entire monetization system of ads is built around that whole concept.

In fact, their stats are built around that whole concept because they really don't care if you get past a minute of listening. Once you get it, they don't measure getting past 60 seconds because all they measure is that you got the ad.

That's right. And it's really sort of disheartening when you see the tech behind it, see the details as I did, and realize, wow, Spotify stats aren't providing you any different of a record of a listen for anybody that listened to 1 minute or 60 minutes or 120 minutes. That a stream is a stream is a stream, and it doesn't matter. And you No idea. So that is really disappointing and disheartening. And clearly they only care about ads being put in those first 60 seconds so that they can get paid for it.

But I think you're podcasting for a different reason, all of you podcasters out there, right? The aspiring ones, I hope you're gonna choose to podcast for a different reason. That you're going to podcast because you want to deliver your fabulous message and great content to the world. You wanna get your voice heard and out there. You want your message to have impact. And when you've delivered that impact, what if at that point you made them an offer of what the next thing is? They listen to this, they learn something. What's next is what is in their mind at that moment in time. What's the next podcast episode I might listen to? What's a webinar that I could take to learn more about what I just learned about? What resource could I be using to take advantage of this tip I just heard? That's where post-roll ads— we're mid-roll to post-roll ads, the last 20% of the show— when you're presenting something in there, my mind is open to what's next. That's why the conversion rate is so much higher, assuming your ad or your promotion is relevant to what I just heard or relevant to why I'm listening to your show in the first place, right? Because it might be that too. But as long as it's that, there is no reason I'm not going to say, this fabulous host just served me for 40 minutes and now they're telling me that this is another episode that I should listen to, or they're referring me to another podcaster I should listen to, or they're offering me an opportunity to sit on a webinar or get on a call with them. And learn more. Why would I not do that at that point in time? It's the law of reciprocity, but I also have an open mind to what I'm gonna do next. I'm ready for it. You didn't disrupt the process of what I chose to do, and I set my mind to listening to your episode. You didn't disrupt that. Not in the post-roll.

Not to mention, when you think about it, the people that have listened through to everything and maybe Let's just say for the sake of argument, it's 75% of the people that started listening to an episode get all the way through it. And I'll tell you, statistically, we often see a lot more than that. Like even 85, 90, 93, 95% of people will listen all the way through, the majority through an episode. But let's just say 75% do, 25% didn't. Those are the people that have stuck with the show. They're getting a lot of value. They're more meaningful to you as a podcast host. They're listening to you. They like you. They want to hear more. They're gonna listen to an ad you run there late in that episode and be attentive and are more likely to actually be interested in what you have to offer, as long as what your offer is at least somewhat in alignment with why they're there to listen in the first place.

So it came to me as a question, Tom, recently from someone that I was interviewing on The Binge Factor, was asking me this question that won't they just stop listening to the episode if you run it right before you're out, if you run it at the end, right? But the reality is, is if you run it right before your formal outro and you're doing it in your own voice, it's not a separated kind of ad that is like a stock ad that came from a company, right? It's in your own voice. Host read, and you're transitioning essentially from the final part of your content into this ad, they haven't clicked move on, they haven't done forward, they're stopping, they're still listening. So as long as it hasn't transitioned into the outro itself, then you're in a good place. My feeling though is if you're using a service that only allows you to slap promos on to the end, and it's why we invented our system the way that we did, if you slap it on the end after that music and outro goes, You're done. They are going to skip it because the minute they hear that cue of music, if they're a binge listener, they've already heard it before, so they move on. They probably only listen to it once, so they're not really listening to your outro at that point. They're ready to move on to the next episode. But if you can get them right before they're ready to move on to that next episode and get them to move on to another one of your episodes and go search for it, or get them to move on and check out something else that you've got, You've captured their attention right at the moment they're ready to do something else. That's ideal.

And not only that, but if you plan this out right and it's your show, so you can, and when you record that host read ad, you can actually record before the ad part, right in that ad MP3 file. So when it gets put in. Does a little context, you say, and put it in maybe before the episode is completely done, not just immediately before that prerecorded outro. And you can say, hey listeners, there's a little bit more for you. Don't go away, but I want to share this important message with you or something to let them know, put some context, and even you can have fun with it. I am a big fan of making ads be fun. Because then people actually don't mind to listen to them. And there's probably another whole episode we can do on making them fun. But if you make it fun and you can have fun with it and say, now wait, wait, wait, I do have something I wanna share with you, but there's more. So don't switch off, right? Because you think this is the end of the show, 'cause it's not. You can have some fun and do that. It's your show. Do what you want. Do it in your style, obviously, that you're comfortable with, but have some fun with it. And just put that context, let people know there's more. In fact, when I put in mid-roll ads, I recommend putting it either at a transition point where your listeners know there's something else coming, that there is more that pays off from this episode, or you ask your guest a question and then they're— you're waiting for the answer, and then the ad comes in and say, Hey listeners, we'll hear the answer to that question right after this important message. So don't go away. Boom. Have your message and then, all right, now let's get back to hear the answer to that question or whatever. You have the ability to record whatever you want. And that's a part of the ad. So if you ever pull the ad out, that context isn't there. No one's like, oh, where I'm supposed to— what was that? I don't get it. I've heard actually episodes where people recorded a throw to an ad within the main episode and then they insert an ad. And when there's no ad there, the throw makes no sense. It says, hey, we'll be back right after this important message. Hey, we're back. And there's no ad, which is just absurd. All that should be in the ad that's inserted. That's what we designed our system to do.

Exactly. As long as you have a planned spot for it, and that's the way that I do it because there's natural breaks, it helps you and it just makes it a little cleaner and you always know where it's going to go. And then it makes it cleaner for you to decide how to record your ads and you don't have to think about it because it's not different every single episode. The time spot might be different, but the sort of conceptual spot, the organizational spot, is the same. But the last thing I really want to touch on before we like head out of this subject is really saying to you is thinking clearly about your audience's experience is something we don't do enough of. And understanding that we have people who come into our show for the first time What is their experience of it? And if their experience of it is that you're all about the ads, it says to me that your podcast is a vehicle for advertisements and I am being pushed to consume, not served. I am less likely to subscribe to your show as a new subscriber. Then I might still try it out, but I might not. I might just crash out of it right there. And that is a sign. If you start to see lots of early crashes, You really need to rethink your advertising at the beginning of your show, the promos that you're doing, the length of your intro, like the whole thing. What is the experience before they're getting into your content? And then if you're not getting a lot out of your show and, or this, I get this a lot from hosts, people come to you and say, what is it that you do? That says to me that you did not do a good job of offering them something and yet you served them really well and they want more from you. Didn't we not make that mistake in our 3D Fit podcast? Oh yeah. People would be like, How can I hire you? But what do you do? Because we never talked about it on the show because we weren't in the business of offering anything for 3D printing services, so we didn't think about it. We were just there offering the show. And so it made us really sit back and think about that idea that when you've really served someone, they actually want to find a way to reward you. And if you're not making an opportunity, an offer for something, then you're not giving them a chance to give back to you, which they would like to do. So you're missing that opportunity. And then the other part that I want you to think about is YouTube is out there doing and promoting and pushing end cards and related content. If you think about it, there's these little cards up there, and if it goes and links to another video and does that— and they know when you do it at the end, it does better than if you do it at the beginning because they're not ready. They're watching the video. They're not ready to click off. But YouTube has invested a lot of money, and they're giving a lot of promotional opportunity, mixing and matching and allowing you to do this and keeping you going to the next video and the next video and the next video. And they're doing this through their end cards and through their info cards, if you wanna call it that. They even offered it on Shorts. Now, that's how valuable that ending opportunity, that ending offer is. If YouTube is doing this, This is powerful.

It is really powerful. And when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. I mean, typical advertiser is not interested in the post-roll at all. It's a big missed opportunity in many ways. Honestly, I think it should be a position that they pay more for rather than the pre-roll, because honestly, if you think about it, early in the episode, you got your prerecorded intro, which everybody is used to hearing, and they're not really that attentive in listening yet, right? And so you throw a pre-roll at either before that or right after that. Sure, people are going to hear it, but are they really listening? Are they really focused?

So I do this all the time. You're so right about that, Tom, because I'll turn on a podcast and while I'm getting—

while I'm doing my hair and makeup in the morning, I see you do that. You do this Daily, pretty much. Yeah.

Yes. See me do it. I do it all the time and I turn on a podcast and I turn it on and I put it on my vanity and then I walk over to the sink while the intro's playing and brush my teeth and then I'll come back by the time the content starts.

And I bet you wouldn't even notice, Tracy Hazzard, the difference in that moment between the prerecorded intro and an ad that isn't the actual host welcoming you to the show and doing your thing. To you, it's all kind of background white noise waiting for the real thing to start, right?

Exactly. It is. I'm not bothering to fast forward. I'm not being active. I'm just doing something else that's distracting me at that moment in time because I can. And then by the time I'm sitting down doing my hair, I am totally listening to it. By the way, I'm not blow drying my hair while I'm listening to podcasts. It's usually just flat ironing or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, but anyway, this is such a valuable position. This is the position you wanna reserve for yourself, for your partners, for someone that you really believe in their product or their service, for the nonprofits you can get behind, for the resources you know people love and you know it's gonna serve your community. Save that post role for the thing that you can make most valuable for your audience and for the person who's doing the promo. So, or the advertising, and hopefully you. Right? In that process. So think this thing through. And if you have a service that is putting stuff on the very front and back, I hope that you're making a lot of money because if you're not, this is destroying your audience. This is destroying the listening experience for you and it is not serving you. It is making them a lot of money and making you a fraction of that.

The reality is it's even It's the reason why advertisers in a programmatic advertising sense, which is really what the vast majority of those are. If you hear the word programmatic ads, run the other way. Just under, well, just understand that means the cheap seats. It really does.

It's not where it's quantity over quality.

Yeah. It's not where the real money in podcasting is made. I'm having a flashback to Spaceballs with the merchandising, merchandising, where the real money of the movie is made, right? So it's not in the programmatic ads. There's a lot more value for your advertisers, for your listeners. And honestly, it's my own show. I set the price for my show. And I'll say, hey, advertiser, you want that cultural spot? That's the most coveted spot. And it doesn't matter that only 75% of the plays are going to hear it. Those are the people that are actually going to take action and you need to pay more for that spot. That's honestly, that's how I do it. If you set it up right and you show them the stats, you say, hey, look at my Apple Podcast analytics, which is admittedly better, but you can print it out and show it to somebody and say, look, people are listening through 92% of all of my episodes. So we have that post-roll ad before 92%. They're all going to hear it. And they've gotten such value during the episode, guess what? They're there, they're listening, they're paying attention much more so than they are in that first few minutes of the show.

And I guarantee you, if you've got 92%, you really have the majority of people doing 100%, and you have like this random few who started an episode, you're probably getting 100% listen through.

Yeah, they're probably more 100% of who your real listeners are. I would agree with that, Tracy. The percentage comes down because you got people who listen to the first couple minutes and stop listening, and that throws the average off, right? But it wasn't for them, so they're not listening. Fine. I mean, I'd rather you have a couple hundred raving fans getting value from every episode, every word you say, than have 10,000 casual listeners who are never going to really understand, get value, or take action on anything you recommend. Now, there's a nice middle in there too. And a lot of podcasters achieve that, but again, better to start small and grow steadily, provide value, get value back in a meaningful way. And that's really what we're talking about here with these kind of ads. If, if they're for your own stuff, but can easily be for third-party sponsors too. It's just maybe more of a flat fee arrangement for a campaign that's 60 days long, or, and it's not tied to. The number of listens potentially, but that's up to you. And not every ad service works that way. There are definitely pros and cons and different options, but today's message is just about the value proposition of the post-roll ad. That's the big thing. And it is all too misunderstood and undervalued everywhere.

So think that through. As you decide when you might make your offer of opportunity, even if you're just doing it in a call to action, then you're doing it amid the regular show and you're not even using an ad spot. Save it for the last 20% of the show. Make your offers, then make your calls to action, then make— suggest your opportunities for resources and webinars and other things in the last 20% of your show, and you're gonna raise your conversion rate. I'm— I know it. Our numbers everywhere show it. There is nothing about that that is fuzzy math here. This is definitively the best spot to be making an offer.

All right. Well, thank you so much for listening, everybody. Hope you got some great value. We've got a lot of other episodes and more information to anything we talked about, about this episode in the blog post at poditise.com. So check that out.

Yeah. And if you want to follow up this episode with another great episode, I'm going to make you that offer right now to show you how this works. And I'm doing it within rather than in an ad spot. But the next best podcast episode in Feed Your Brand that you can go to is How Podcast Advertising Creates Effective Ads and Promotions That Bring Results. That video, that podcast episode that we did will give you some framework on advertising and, and some of the ways to get better results from what you're doing in that promo advertising world. So that's the, my suggestion for the next episode you should listen to.

And you can search that up anywhere in your listening app. You can search it on Google and it'll show up the blog post for the episode and on our website in our blog. We have a search that works, goes through all our episodes too.

And if you're watching this on YouTube, it'll be on the end card, but it'll also be up in the corner on the info card as well. And I'm not really sure. I'm gonna point to both corners because I have no idea if I'm pointing to the right corner. Because you never know if it's mirrored, what is happening with it. So it's up there.

Can we put something in both corners?

I don't think we can, but, but hey, it's up there.

All right, well, that's a future episode. What corner should we be pointing to? And I always mess this up, even if I wanted to point To the Poditise logo. Oh, I got it right, but I was guessing, uh, half the time I probably would point to the Future Brand logo right here.

Well, anyway, thanks everyone for being here. We'll be back live next week on YouTube, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. We're YouTube, we're live everywhere, and we will be recording another great episode for Future Brand. Thanks everyone.

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