The Future of Podcast Advertising

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to feed. Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host, Tracy Hazard. Today we're going to talk with you about why programmatic ads are a waste of time. Really? We're going to talk about the future of podcast advertising, and a lot of you might be surprised with what we have to say. We're not shy about this topic and might be a little controversial.

I don't know what we're shy about in the podcast industry. I don't think the shy would ever describe either one of us.

But that's the great part, right? I'm going to tell you like it is. We are going to absolutely give you the straight shot. What's going on here?

And programmatic ads are really rarely in anybody's interest. And I mean anybody. I mean the advertiser, the podcaster, the podcast listener. I mean, it's really the trifecta of mediocrity, if you ask me.

I'm. Programmatic podcast ads are a total waste of time. That's like my absolute opinion. Anyone who's investing in the technology to do more programmatic ads are wasting their money unless they are getting detailed and targeted. And I am not seeing that anywhere. In fact, I'm seeing it broader and broader and broader. And the real problem is, Tom, right, as you and I both know, it's because it's a numbers game. When you have programmatic ads, you're selling them and you need more shows to put them on because the conversion rates are so low. So you got to have the numbers that way up and downloads, right?

Yeah. Ding, ding, ding. The conversion rates are so low. Why? It's a shotgun approach. You're not targeting any specific demographic of people. You're not targeting any, you know, specific interests of people. You're just throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it's going to be relevant to some people. And that's why the rates for the ads are so darn low. It's because the return is low.

And the more that the return is low, the lower the rates will be and the less people who benefit from this so it's all in all a losing proposition. A race to the bottom with programmatic ads. And I think that's number one reason why we're seeing less and less of this working for people and less and less people opting in, which is making harder for you to achieve it. But we're also seeing the dollars go up on the other side of it. So I just want to create this, like, dichotomy of it. We're here about all these amazing shows like Better Call Daddy and the Kelsey Show. I forgot what it's called.

What?

The Kelsey Brothers. I don't actually remember the name of.

Their show, but yeah, Something Heights, anyway. Something Heights. Anyway. It's a great show that I can't remember it for the life of me, but it's where they used to live. Anyway, they're getting lots of great deals.

Why?

Because it's more than the deal for the podcast advertisement. They're getting association with a celebrity, they're getting association with a great show. They're getting guaranteed listener growth that is happening on those shows. So it's a very different proposition at the top. But there are so few shows like that I can count on maybe under 10. Under 10. New heights. That's the name of the show, right? New Heights.

That is the name of the show. Yeah. Sorry I just mentioned it to you. I didn't want to interrupt you.

No, that's okay.

Okay.

New heights. Yeah. But this is the new heights of podcasting. There's probably less than 10 shows, 10 shows that qualify for that kind of dollars and deserve it. There are shows out there who get it, who don't deserve it. Like Meghan Markle show did not deserve the ad dollar set. It didn't make it in terms of audience, so. But they sold it because it had a name associated with it. So that happens a lot too. So it's perception. But then the results don't come out. The show doesn't stick. Right. That's what we see a lot. I think the iHeart model is very clear on that. Like, you see a perfectly great show and it never makes it outta season one. Why does that happen? It's because the ad dollars weren't there. Really? Clearly there were no ad dollars. It couldn't achieve the sales that they anticipated on it.

Very disappointing when you go and put all that effort into it.

Right. So the top is not a measure of how the rest of the industry is doing and whether or not we should participate in programmatic ads, whether join network, who's promising you programmatic ads. It's going to succeed. Oh, I mean, unless they give you guaranteed dollars up front, I wouldn't do it. I would never sign.

I've got some podcasters that we work with that have really good shows that are reaching a decent audience of thousands of people every month. I mean, for an independent show, that's good and obviously, and everybody would love tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. And those shows are out there, and a lot of you have those kind of audiences. But a lot of independent shows providing great value. Few,000 to five, 6,000 listeners. And I'm even talking about like downloads and stuff, but just listeners or how many people listen to the average episode. Okay. And the reality is, even if you put programmatic ads on decent independent shows like that, get how much money people are making on that, it's so little that the podcasters that do it can't even tell me how much money they make. When I ask them, like, oh, I don't know, you know, 20 bucks, 30 bucks a month, it's like, okay, what are you doing? Because all you're doing is annoying your audience.

Well, so let's talk about that part of it, Tom. So programmatic as our programmatic, meaning they belong to the programming of whoever is serving them up. So for some, that might be Megaphone, Spotify, for others that might be the network itself that is programming in the ads. Some might be on iHeart, as I mentioned before, and iHeart controls the ads, or Sirius controls the ads, something like that. How they're served to your show is a mechanism, right? Like that's Megaphone's mechanism or some other server's mechanism. Potatoes. We have our own ad server that is independently controlled by each show. Not in a programmatic way, although you can do that too. But we just choose not to for a reason. Right? And so it's think of it like you sell blanket ads to any number of shows. The advertiser doesn't get a vote in what shows they go on for the most part. Like, unless you're at the elite level and you're buying to the one show, but you don't get it. You don't have any idea what show you're advertising on. And the show host doesn't get a vote in what ads run on their show. It's run a program, run of show, run of network. Right? All of those types of terms you may have heard in the radio industry. So this is very old school. That's what I want to point out is that programmatic advertising, selling that distributing it is an extremely old school model and it is based on as many impressions as you can get of the ad. Right. How many times can that ad be played? Because that's how they make their money. They do not care about the show, they do not care about anything else. They just care about the numbers of how many times it's played.

That's absolutely right. And it takes aggregating an awful lot of independent podcasts in order to make any kind of volume of plays of those ads that are going to be valuable to the advertiser. And that's why programmatic ads are, they're trying to get anybody and everybody to sign up to be a part of it because they need an awful lot of little shows to create a big enough total number of impressions that's going to meet the need of the advertiser. And let's not kid ourselves, the need of the advertising distributor and, or the podcast hosting platform that is brokering those advertising deals. They're making money and making actually usually about half of the money that is allocated toward your show.

Oh, up to 70% in a lot of places. So it's even up to 70% in a lot of places. So you're getting 30%. So your net is very low. And so that's the biggest problem right there, Tom, is like you're mentioning is the layering of it, right? So the advertiser puts the dollars in, so whoever sold the ads makes the first cut. Then the next cut goes to the distribution platform. Then the next cut sometimes goes to the hosting platform on top of that, who is maybe facilitating that. So because there's ad distribution and distribution into the shows, so you have a multi layered before the rest of it is distributed to the host. So when you can only sell it for under 20 bucks, and that's the going rate right now is about, is just under 20 buc per 1000 listeners, per 1000 plays of that ad, right? Like think about that. It's not per 1000, so 20 bucks for that and your cut ends up somewhere around 7 to $10 maybe.

And I've even experienced some programmatic ad distributors that are only offering in the $3 and $4 CPM net after all the other cuts are divided up. It's, that's why you get somebody who has, let's say five, six thousand plays over a month. You can make like 25 or $30. I mean, is that even worth your time to sign up and be a part of it and to distract your audience? Because I mean, you also like, you Said Tracy. Don't get any control over what those ads are that play to your audience. And we have some, shall we say, family friendly shows that were shocked that people that were participating in programmatic ads and this is something that prompted them to leave that platform and come over to potatoes was because they had no control of those ads and they actually, on a family friendly show that's talking about youth, girls issues and parenting and all that, had ads for condoms on their show and they had no control over it. And they're like, how did this happen? It's like, well, you have to talk to that ad distribution network or whoever you signed up with to do this because they're in control of it.

But the majority of them have no mechanism to control or block your show from it because of how it's run of run of network and programmatic across it. They have no way to block that. So you are stuck with whoever advertising. And today there's a lot of shady supplements out there. If you're a health and wellness podcaster, you may not want them advertising on your show. There are things that are incongruous with your messaging on your show and that's why, frankly, we never agree to it. We get contacted by many, many ad distribution groups because we have a very large selection of podcasts in our network who are also very well produced shows. Right. Because we also have production services. So we have the combination of the two. So higher quality, Right. And more commitment to it and continuity, which is really helpful to them because it doesn't do any good to sign up and have them be pod faded after 10 shows and it's no good anymore. Right? So it's a lot of effort for those distribution companies, but they come to us. But until they give us control where we can block a show, where we can block these things, until they allow us to do that, we are not going to participate. It doesn't make any sense. So I want to know what ads coming in and they can't give you that information.

No, because it's not decided what ad is going to be inserted into your episode or at the beginning before it plays until the moment that somebody presses play in their app requesting the episode be played. I mean, all this stuff happens in real time most of the time. There are some systems that it may be put on in the MP3 file for a period of time, but usually not. Usually they're just actively played right at the beginning.

But here's what most of you don't know. So you go and you get like Sold a good bill of goods on how fabulous you're going to make a couple hundred bucks a month. You know, whatever this is they offer you that makes you think, okay, I can fund my show. This is going to be worth it to me. I mean I wouldn't do it for less than 5,000 personally like that at that level, but that's totally not me. You might be willing to do it for a couple hundred dollars or 100 bucks. Let's just say $100. So $100 guarantee. They promise you they're going to serve up enough ads. In order to serve up enough ads, they may have to cram your show just to make the hundred bucks that's necessary to meet the minimum. They may have to cram your show with three minutes worth of ads at the beginning just to get enough listens because you don't. Or views or you know, whatever you want. Impressions. Let's keep calling them that. I think that's the easiest way to do it, right? Impressions of the ad. How many of your listeners are going to be so frustrated by three minutes worth of ads before you then play your sometimes 60 second intros? You guys have intros that are too long, but 30 to 60 second intro. So another minute goes by and then you make your own offer. I hear it all the time because lots of you are coached out there by someone who told you you have to hit him in the first minute of your episode and and make sure you make the offer because if they crash out, you got to make sure you sold them first. Well, that might be the biggest mistake you'll ever make. But now you've gone five minutes and you didn't give them anything and you asked them for something of your own and five other people and ads ask them for something how willing to really be open minded and listen to your message are they at that point?

It's really an old school approach. It just doesn't work today. And yeah, I've heard those. Also two and a half, three minutes of ads before you ever get to customer's content. Guess what happens? People switch off and they don't get to the content. So that's the reality of it. And the big tip for placement of ads. And why again, programmatic? Because by the way, programmatic always puts them up front for the same reason we just mentioned for what Tracy just said. Because whoever is distributing the ads has to guarantee that the ads at minimum get played even if the rest of your podcast doesn't. So the only way they can guarantee that is to Shove them all right up in the beginning of the episode. Okay. But for those of you that really care, either to promote your own stuff, advertise your own stuff, or give real value to a sponsor who's paying, and you have more of a different kind of relationship, that's not programmatic ads. The best place with the most conversion for an ad in your episode is in the post roll spots. And what I mean by that is two thirds or later, 2 thirds, 3 quarters of the way through your episode.

Or later, we have a whole podcast episode on that. We'll link that in the blog post for this episode so that you can go back to that and then find it. But we have absolutely, like, gone over all the details of why that is so much higher conversion than any other ad spot. And it is usually used to be when you would run radio ads, those would be the cheap spots. They call them the post roll.

Right.

The cheese spots. In the old school, they were almost the throwaway.

They were almost the throwaway. And actually a lot of people in podcasting still consider them to be throwaway ad spots today and either throw them in for free or the charge very little for them. Biggest mistake happening in podcast advertising today.

Totally agree. Well, I want to just address one more thing. When you were talking about them putting at the beginning, Thomas, this is why, and this is the big aha for most of you out there. The reason it's called a start and they track it at Spotify is because they report that to the advertiser, not because they care about your show at all. That has nothing to do with you. It is making sure that that 60 seconds worth of ad was played and that they can get paid for it from the advertiser. That's why they're tracking it. It is not for you, your listeners, anything having to do with the quality of your show, the conversion rates on your show, making these advertisings worth anything. It is just making sure that Spotify gets paid for actually running the ad. That's it. So this is a good indicator that it's not working. So if programmatic ads are a complete waste of time, what needs to happen in the industry? Where's the future of podcasting? That's what we're here to talk about today, right? To finish that up and wrap onto the flip side of that. Tom, what are your thoughts on that? Where do you think the future of advertising really is?

Thank you for bringing me back to reality because I was getting a little ranty there because I just am so.

And a little depressed. Right.

Yeah. It makes my blood pressure rise just thinking about how many people.

Right. I'm angry for our podcast hosts. Aren't you angry for them that they're getting so scammed in this process and cheated and it's not working and they're putting in all the work. It's their content people are making money off of. So I do agree with you. I'm ranting about it, but let's flip it to where it needs to be, where that future really is. Where is the future of podcast advertising?

Future of podcast advertising is, to me, can be summed up in one word, although there's a lot of different variations and facets to it. But to me it's relevance.

I agree. That's such a great word for it. But I mean, Google has proven that relevance matters, right? Like if we get the keywords right, if we get the audience right, we get all these things right. But today I think relevance is even higher because of AI. Our consumers, whether they're our listeners or the person who's going to click through buy something or listen and buy something, right? That consumer expects relevance. They expect everything to be smarter. The fact that these programmatic ads are so dumb, in a smart world, there's no excuse for it. AI has proven that it's not needed the way that it is. The technology, the process, the systems, these networks, they're all archaic. Your listeners know that. And when they hear that, they go, why would I want to give my business to this company?

Right. I agree.

They're not serving me. They don't know me, they don't understand me. And the problem is when you, the podcast host, opt into those things, when you're not making enough money, especially like, I mean, if you're making millions off of it, go do it. Like, just do it. But if you're not, you're telling your audience that you don't care about them. You're telling them that their relevance, that your curation of things is not as important as you making 10 bucks. So your audience isn't going to value you or trust you. That's harmful. So we have to flip that into relevance. I totally agree with that. Tomorrow, what does relevance look like? To me, it looks like targeted ads, like really specific ads that are really targeted, not just to the type of show, because that sometimes happens when you broker your own across the board ads. I mean, when we used to do our 3D print show, we had 3D print relevant ads, right? But making it relevant to the topic of the show as well. The episode Level itself.

That really makes a lot of sense, Tracy. And the problem with Programmatic is they can't engage at that level. Right. But believe me, you structure a deal with advertising partner or with a sponsor directly, and you have content that is very relevant to what that company either is selling or to the people that company is trying to reach, then you're going to get a whole lot more engagement and conversion from the listener because you've given them something that's in alignment with their needs, their interests. You know, it's not out of left field.

And I think also baked in ads have a problem. They're as archaic as the ad as the programmatic ads. So let's be clear here. And baked in ads mean you took an advertiser and you edited them into your audio file, you edited them into your show, and they're stuck in there and they stay there. We don't do that at Pottiti's. We actually got rid of that a long time ago. Because then the story goes that when we started our podcast and we took our first advertiser, who happened to be Makerbot, and Makerbot was one of the largest manufacturers at that time. I mean, they invented home 3D printing. Right. Like, I mean, it was. They sort of championed that department that whole time period.

Really, that, that industry.

Yeah. And so they were our first advertiser and we were doing five episodes a week. So we had a lot of content. We're gonna edit all the ads in. And I went to our editor, who's today now our son in law who edits another show, and he said, oh, it's gonna cost just as much to remove those ads at the end of the month as it is to put them in. Because I wanted to sell the ads on a monthly basis. Because what happens if Makerbot's model changed next month or something different happened? I didn't want to have old irrelevant ads in my show past a month. I also wanted to maximize the dollars we could make. So I wanted to sell a month's worth of listens. Right? So he was like, it's going to cost just as much to edit them out. So many of you who do baked ads, you put them in and you never take them out. So we invented a system. It's part of how potatoes got started. Sorry, I'm not selling you on it, I'm just trying to tell you the story. But we invented a system where we could take ads in and take them out and bake them anywhere within the show so they didn't run on the front and the back, because that's what we didn't want. We wanted to. We knew the relevant positions were after you delivered some content, then put the ad because they're more accepting of that ad at that time period. So that's what we did. And that's how potatoes came about. So baked in ads are in just as much trouble as programmatic ads because they're no longer relevant. Right. When they age out and they're stuck in your show, but yet new listeners find your show binge on the whole thing and now they get these really outdated either time sensitive ads that are no longer the sales. Whatever was running is no longer running. The companies are out of business. That happens all the time with a lot of E commerce. There's no product left to buy. There's frustration to your listener on that. And it says, you don't take enough care of me, the listener, to keep me updated. That's a problem too.

Yeah, it just further dates your episodes. And the reality is old episodes get listened to by new listeners every day. They really do.

What did we do? You remember the numbers we just checked 3D, the WTFF, the 3D print podcast. We just checked it the other day and we were like, guys, still getting listens every month. It still gets over a thousand listens a month.

Oh, no, well, more than that.

Well, more than that. Like 3,000 or something. Anyway, it still gets listens every month, which means that they were listening to old shows. Which if we left those ads in there, which, because we have a system where you can just take them out. Which we did. Right. If we left those ads in there, they'd be served up ads for stuff that doesn't exist anymore. That would be terrible.

It really would be terrible. It makes no sense. And you know, anybody who's had a podcast for any length of time and you look at your analytics, you're going to find that the plays that you have every month do not come from just the new episodes that you're publishing that month. In fact, in most cases, more than half come from episodes that published in previous months. News people are finding your show and they go back and listen to old episodes. Why should they hear an old, outdated, no longer relevant promotion? You know, and even if you don't have a modern one to run, take the old one out. So there's none in it that makes, you know, sense too, sometimes for a period of time, but.

Right. And then one more thing that I always think is really, is that sometimes we cover a really sensitive topic like you were mentioning that you. We have a show that is dealing with teen daughters, teen girls. And if you had a really sensitive subject about that, the last thing you want to do is run any ads and sense of serious show. So being able to block a single episode from an ad is critical as well. I and that most of the programmatic ad companies don't allow that. It's like any show, every show, anywhere they want to put it. You're stuck into it once you sign on with them. So that's also something that I'm. I'm really careful about. It's one of the things we built in too because I never wanted to see that we had done an episode on 3D print guns. The last thing I wanted was such a serious subject to be surrounded by some bubbly kind of like ad or something irrelevant. Like it would have been terrible. So we always blocked that episode. So there's things like that that you do need to think about as well. So relevance. I agree with you, Tom. Relevance, targeting, alignment with your audience, putting it at the right time to where they're right to make a choice to choose to do something. Once I've listened to most of the stuff like you talked about that post roll or that last quarter of this episode, I'm ready for what's next. I'm open to the idea of what's next. Great place to put it. The other thing is, is that most ads are so difficult to take action from. They are so hard.

Absolutely. That's one of the things that I sometimes just laugh when I am listening to a new show. It's usually somebody that I'm evaluating their podcast and doing a podcast power appraisal for them and I need to listen to their show. In the very beginning I hear these often programmatic ads and then they recite this long web URL. Then they first of all, they didn't create a short referral URL which would be the number one thing I would do. But then you're going to recite it and especially ones that have an unusual spelling or anything. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm driving the car listening to your podcast and I can't first of all type that in to my phone as I'm driving to try to go there and if I've got to try to remember it and go back to that later, it's just not likely to happen.

Well, and again, radio old school model of it. Repeat the number. Repeat the number. But there was one number. There wasn't a URL.

Phone number 800 something. And it was memorable. Right. 1-800- mattress, which, you know, I always remember from when we lived in New York City and that ran all the time. And, boy, that was easy. You can remember that. Sure. Right.

So, you know, we were watching the. I'm going to date this episode in time, but we were watching the baseball playoffs, and so we watched a lot of ads in the last week, which we don't normally do. Right. We normally don't stream everything and don't watch any ads at all. But we were watching ads, and I was noticing even on the television, the streaming shows, there were no mentions, no website addresses announced, no phone numbers announced. They would say to the number on this screen to the QR code here. Right?

Yeah, that was. I was gonna say. The other thing you're seeing on all the modern ads these days are QR codes. So you can hold your phone up from wherever you're sitting on your couch or wherever, and then it'll take you to a landing page for that ad. Now, we don't have QR codes in podcasting, but what do we have?

Episode descriptions.

Wherever anybody is listening is the description. And this is the new modern thing that again, not to oversell potatoes, but I mean, there's a reason, a good reason why we've developed some of the things that we have to help people monetize their shows in not only an easier way, but in a practical way that's going to convert. You got to make it easy for the podcaster and not be reciting, go to. And I hate it these days when people recite a web address, they say www.can we just all agree to drop the www right now? Because it's unnecessary. Every web browser, every web URL, you don't have to put that in anymore. That's a very much Internet 1.0 need. So anyway, whatever the URL is, the whatever.com, but you don't even have to do that. And the great thing is, you know, a lot of times you want to change the landing page. You could use the same ad, you're selling the same thing for the same sponsor or for yourself, month after month. But you want to change the landing page, you're making the offer a little different. You're changing the discount, whatever it is, right? All you have to do is say click the link in the description or.

Check out our discount in the description, right? And so you're enticing them to go look at it. Makes it easy to click through and go to that. That is the new way of looking at things. And that cannot happen with Programmatic Ads, because Programmatic ads cannot touch anything about your show.

No. It's only in the audio itself. So all they can do is make an audible call to action to try to send you somewhere else. Now, a savvy podcaster who knew what the ads were going to be. And again, with Programmatic, you don't know. You could put an ad in your description. But Tracy, we are just reviewing a podcast on Potatoes has a thousand episodes and some of those popular ones are early episodes. You think that podcaster is going back and changing links in the descriptions of all thousand episodes? It's a lot of work for a sponsor. It is a lot of work unless you have software that does it for you, which is, again, we're podcasters.

We've experienced this targeting relevance, future. Right. Being able to make sure that you're tracking, that's like the next part of relevance. Right? Because if I want to sell ads and I want to get my sponsors, I need to show them proof that people click through, that people did something. So I've got to track it. And that tracking is so bad right now, it's what's downing the Programmatic Dollars. It keeps downing them because the tracking isn't working. Because how do you track from somebody having listened to a phone number, listened to a URL and then typing it in somewhere? There's no tracking, there's no ability, there's no UTM codes for those of you who do that in your links. Right. It's not working. And that's why that old school model is just never going to stick. It is not going to be around. So the future of Programmatic podcast ads, I think it's done well. I think there's just people who haven't given up yet because they haven't figured out what to replace it with.

Yeah, they'll keep trying to do it just because there are some people making money on it. It's just not the podcaster. Right. Who's making money on it. Yeah.

And it's gonna take us boycotting it. Honestly, us podcasters need to boycott. If you don't pay us enough money, we're not giving you our content to put ads on. Stop doing it. That means you stop hosting with the free hosting companies like Anchor. You stop hosting over at those places and they don't have an ability to put ads on your show like, that's it. You're in control of that. So you make those choices different and you will change the industry for everyone. So that's also the future is to take control. And if you are not willing to take control of your content, you will never be a true influencer. An influencer has to take responsibility for the choices that they're making. Now, there are lots of influencers and youtubers and other people out there who I think are making very bad choices, and they're very harmful to who they're influencing.

But they're making the choices, Tracy.

But they are making those choices. And now some of them are getting held responsible for those choices, too. So you have to remember that. And that is one of the reasons why Tom and I always like the idea of being able to remove ads. Because we had companies that we did business with that we would never. When we found out more about them, we would remove their ads. Yeah, I mean, it was. We would remove their episodes.

We actually had to delete a few episodes because we had interviews with like, CEO of the company who now is in federal prison for one thing or another. Right. So that stuff happens.

So you've got to make those responsible choices. And you're not in control of making those responsible choices in Programmatic Ad model. And if you're baking in your ads and you're never taking the time and energy to removing them or removing the links or updating your descriptions, then you are also being irresponsible when things go wrong. So you need to. When you know something happened that was wrong, it's one thing to not know, but another thing. When you do find out that something occurred, go remove your episodes. Go fix them.

Yeah.

This is your responsibility to keep your audience safe. Because if they don't feel safe with you, if they feel like you scammed them, then they will never trust you. Your influence is useless.

Absolutely. And you know the new function. I was serious about a thousand episodes. You're not going to change links. But if you use a system, and truly we invented this one and it's patent pending, so I don't think anybody else is doing anything like it. Where with your audio ad goes in a call to action and link into the description and it comes out when you remove it. So you don't have to manually do it. That's the only way it's going to work. Especially when you get a lot of episodes.

Right. So check them out, because we did that on our preview episodes here. So if you haven't seen them, they're called Next up. And so we've been giving you a little sneak peek of the next live stream because you podcast listeners out there who are listening to the show really are getting it like three weeks after it aired. So it aired live on LinkedIn, YouTube. Obviously we're here in Zoom, answering questions from our audience there as well. So there's. I think we might be live on Facebook as well. I think so, yeah. So we're at least live in three places. And we wanted you to know that we were live so you could catch it sooner, if you are interested. So we started putting out these nextup episodes. They're like under three minutes. They're just a couple minutes of Tom or I telling you about what's coming up, what this next episode's going to be about. And in that, we utilized our own ad system to drop the links in so that you could go straight to the event page. Because the event page is different every time we do it. The event page changes. It's new. So we did that so that it could rotate and get you straight to the event you're looking for.

Well, that's the way things should be. It should be changing. It should be relevant. It should be. Never be aging out. I mean, gosh, even when they run reruns of. Which drives me nuts. Like late night TV or something. Any of the lightning shows. Choose your. Your preference. When they run reruns, they don't run old commercials. They're always running current ones. Right. So why are you doing it different, by the way? Just for reference, to close the loop on WTFF listenership. Tracy, in the last month, all the episodes received almost 5,000 total downloads. I just looked at all the numbers.

Wow, it's up again. Maybe it's up because of the fall. Like, I think I. Last time I really checked it out was the summer. Sometimes it's lower in the summer, but yeah, I mean, look, we haven't produced that show since June 2020. Yeah, I think we maybe did one show in 21 episode. In 2021. We did like a preview of.

I've recorded a limited series to sort of resurrect it. Cause I had a topic to do, but I haven't. I haven't put it on.

Of course not.

I'm too busy. The Cobbler's Kids have no Shoes. It's something I'm passionate about, but I don't really have a lot of time to deal with it.

Right. But 5,000 listens a month isn't nothing.

It's probably worth putting out there some new content to keep that audience a little fresh anyway. But the point is it still has value.

Or sell the show to Somebody who wants to take it over. Right?

That's true. Yeah. Yeah, that's always possible.

See, there's always some way to, like, think about how you could be utilizing your show.

Right.

How could you be doing something that is really helping your audience get more when you're done with something?

Well, and remember, Hewlett Packard came to us to advertise on that show in 2019-2020. What was it? I forget somewhere in there.

Yeah, that was. It ran in June of 2020. We ran the series, the 25 episode series.

All right. They did that. Not as much because the podcast downloads were what they were interested in. It was more because of the web content we created and how our website was ranking on the first page of Google Search, which is because of all that content was created from the podcast. So advertising on the podcast was a means to an end, to reach their audience. And they didn't care if it was people that listened to the show or visited the website. That's what their goal was. So, anyway, lots of things to consider in the modern world of sponsorship and monetizing your podcast. It's not just one thing to do. There's many different things to do. And just make sure you're not jumping on the easy bandwagon and you're just going to set yourself up for disappointment.

And expecting high results. Yeah. This is the other thing that I just want to leave you with, is like, if anyone makes you sign a contract that commits you to a year, don't do it.

I would run the other direction pretty quick.

And if anyone requires you to give them your username and password to your hosting, or they take over your hosting for you and you now have a producer's account or a network account run the other way as well. You need to stay in control of your show.

Oh, my gosh. I'm really surprised how many podcasters I meet don't actually have access to and control over their own analytics. They don't even see it. And producers are networks don't share it with them. I can't. I mean, it's really shocking to me that people actually agree to that and don't have the ability to see their own numbers. I'm sorry, but I need to see it.

That's because a lot of it's not true. Like, I'm just going to tell you.

That'S my doubt and skepticism meter goes up really high. If they're not going to show you the numbers or they're going to screenshot and send you screenshots, I mean, I've actually seen very falsified numbers from people in the podcast industry. You need to see your own numbers. So just from a transparency perspective and being able to make smart decisions or your podcast, you should always be able to see your own numbers. And this is a very important aspect of monetizing your podcast. Right. You've got to know what the real numbers are.

Absolutely. All right, let's wrap up today and this future of podcast advertising. I'm sorry, but I think the nail is in the coffin of the programmatic podcast ads. They just don't know they're trapped in it yet. Like, I feel like that's the case.

They're asleep and they don't know they've been buried already. Huh. Maybe. We'll see.

That's right. They're buried alive, and they don't know yet. But it's gonna, you know, we'll see. I think it's still there for the elites, but just not for the rest of us.

No, no, it's. I mean, look, the big, big. Heavily produced, heavily promoted. Heavily promoted. The ones that have the most money behind them. But you're right, Tracy. It's not the independent podcaster.

It's really not our game. All right, we'll be back next week. Don't forget, podcasters united.org you can sign up there for our newsletter, which has tips in all past episodes and all kinds of things. Nothing. We sell nothing through that newsletter. That is the only thing we will send you. It is a complete nonprofit organization, and the only thing we send you is the newsletter.

And.

And it gives you the topic for next week. So you'll always have the topic a week ahead of time, the week, the day ahead of time. So go there, podcastersunited.org and sign up for the newsletter.

All right, until next time, spend time with Tracy Hazzard on feed.

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