The team from Triton Digital has looked back on the past few years and ventured some predictions for 2023 for the realm of radio and podcast advertising and marketing.
Stephanie Donovan, global head of revenue, predicts that programmatic buying will dominate the year. “In the last five years, we have seen it surge over 500%,” says Donovan. “Advertisers have signaled with their media budgets their preference for programmatic buying, but publishers will miss out on revenue opportunities if inventory is not available in a programmatic exchange.” Donovan adds she expects audio to continue to be of high interest to buyers. Therefore, ad spend via programmatic exchanges will continue to show significant growth as brands aim to reach an engaged, mobile audience.
On podcasting, Donovan predicts 2023 will be another banner year for advertising in terms of both volume and publisher CPM rates. “We’ll see dynamic ad insertion continue to steal the spotlight from baked-in ads, building upon 2022 momentum. Couple the flexibility to precisely message intended audiences with potential revenue growth opportunities, and we can expect programmatic to remain at the forefront for advertisers and publishers in 2023.”
Audience measurement
Daryl Battaglia, Triton’s SVP market development and strategy for audience research, believes that big data from streaming will be a crucial part of panel-based measurement in 2023. “Over the next year, we’ll begin to see the emergence of insights captured from streaming logs used in combination with panel measurement to gain a holistic understanding of audiences,” says Battaglia, “but it won’t be picture perfect right away. Reaping the benefits of a multisourced approach to measurement requires detailed knowledge of the big data from streaming logs, the normalization of data across publishers and removing invalid traffic and other non-human streaming sessions.” Battaglia suggests that when embracing this transition in audio measurement, it will be essential to ensure a fair and consistent approach across publishers, relying only on high-quality big data that companies can integrate with panel measurement.
Audio marketing
Triton’s Chief Product Office Ben Masse says in 2023, radio stations and podcasters will need to evolve marketing tactics. “As we enter a post-cookie world, it will be critical to use the proper tools to activate and track advertising campaign effectiveness,” says Masse. “Many ad tech providers operate as if we are still gravitating around a browser-centric world. There is still too much focus on replacing cookies and MAID with persistent IDs. These IDs require registration, which is not applicable to the non-registered open web, third-party apps on connected devices, podcasts or broadcasts.
Masse suggests 2023 is the year publishers and advertisers should work hand-in-hand on scalable and relevant approaches that are not reliant on tracking listeners on an individual basis, but embrace probabilistic cohort-based targeting and measurement, compliant with the new privacy laws and audience expectations.
Content formats
According to Sharon Taylor, Triton’s SVP of podcast strategy and product operations, in 2023, publishers will experiment with content formats, and industry titans will battle. “With 38% of the US population listening to podcasts monthly, down from 2021’s record high of 41%,” says Taylor, “publishers will need to experiment with content formats and push the boundaries of podcast marketing. We can expect to see more publishers running more than one ad per marker to open inventory, experimenting with exclusive sponsorship buys and contextual offerings, and turning to new programmatic buys with brand safety enabled.”
Taylor also believes that in 2023, YouTube, Apple and Spotify will continue to battle it out over ultimate monthly active users and time on each platform. “Publishers will feel the pressure to expand their slate of shows — needing to experiment with paid content and video publishing while resisting the notion that all podcast content needs to be one or the other.”