Expand Your Audience Reach with Audio Ads
Did you know that the average American sees between 6,000 and 10,000 ads a day?
Listen Time 23 Minutes
Customers are overwhelmed with visual advertisements. From Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to YouTube, Netflix, and CNN, ads are everywhere you look. This number is difficult to navigate— not only for customers on the lookout for the right service or product to match their interests but also for marketers trying to reach and expand their target audience.
So how can you make your ad stand out in this sea of campaigns?
The answer: audio advertising.
In this episode of the Smart Route podcast, Eric Yang of AudioGO joins host Courtney Tyson to uncover the power of audio advertisements in reaching your target audience and expanding your customer base.
In this episode, you’ll learn why
- Audio ads are 220% more memorable than a TV ad
- A vanity number is still worth the investment for marketers
- Audio ads are one of the most cost-effective marketing options for small businesses
And more! Also, as a special offer from Eric, you’ll get a $200 ad credit for AudioGO when you use the promo code featured at the end of this episode.
Listen now and discover how your company can use audio ads to build brand awareness and loyalty among listening customers.
Listen Now:
Additional Resources:
As a special “thank you” for listening to us, use promo code CTMPODCAST for a $200 ad credit when you create a free AudioGO account!
About Eric Yang
With over 15 years of experience in marketing and technology, Eric Yang is passionate about working with marketing agencies and businesses to help discover innovative marketing trends. Eric holds an MBA from Wharton and currently leads BD and partnerships at AudioGO, a digital audio advertising platform.
Want to know more about reaching your audience with audio ads? Check out AudioGO on social media.
Episode Transcript:
Courtney
Hello and welcome to smart route episode 15 I’m your host and strategic partnership manager at call tracking metrics Courtney Tyson. If you’re listening to this podcast you’re likely listening on some sort of streaming service and if you’re like me, you access your music through services like Pandora and iHeart music for example and what’s great about audio is that we can listen to it from any device. Anywhere and so when you think about it. Audio is a huge component of our lives and so today we’re going to talk about audio advertising. Historically audio advertising has been expensive. It’s been hyperlocal. It’s difficult to start to track but with the introduction of new technology and streaming services. A lot has changed. Um, so here to talk to us more about the power of audio advertising and how to be successfully using. It is Eric Yang director of strategic partnerships at AudioGo. Thanks for being here Eric we’re excited to have you.
Eric Yang
Thanks for having me Courtney!
Courtney
So to share a little bit about you with our audience where we get started Eric holds an Nba from Wharton and. Currently leads business development and partnerships at audio go the digital audio advertising platform with over fifteen years of experience in marketing and technology. He’s most passionate about working with marketing agencies and businesses to help discover innovative marketing trends hence why Eric is here to talk to us today about. Audio advertising and how to be successful through this channel. So Eric can you give us some background on yourself and audio go?
Eric Yang
So yeah, you actually did a great job introducing me so I won’t add too much but I do head up partner strategic partnerships and business development for AudioGo. We’re actually a part of the larger company which is Pandora Radio and Sirius Xm but what we really want to focus on is the small businesses and sall agencies who are looking for a solution that you can’t get traditionally with traditional radio or even some of the larger platforms like our parent company Pandora. Maybe even I heart and Spotify in the past historically you know audio was a medium that wasn’t really accessible to a lot of people as you mentioned you know higher prices and then having to work with a sales rep sometimes just doesn’t give you that flexibility. But now what we’re trying to do with audio go is to make it accessible to everybody with a really simple self-serve ad-buying solution that you can kind of manage on your own you can launch ads at any time of the day. And so this is an area that I became really passionate about after getting my NBA I kind of looked at what was kind of the new up and coming trends and to be honest with the pandemic going on smart speakers kind of coming into fruition and growing in popularity I saw a huge bump in audio and when consumption of content rises then. See a consumption of monetization arise and so that was a really cool space for me to then jump into audio go to see if we can help make things a lot easier and help little businesses or smaller businesses. Be able to monetize off this awesome medium.
Courtney
So you know marketers have obviously all sorts of channels that they can advertise through and I think when we think of audio for some reason our minds go to like radio right? and it’s one of those things where it’s audio advertising is a lot more than that. It’s come a long way and there’s you know, really fun stuff that you can do with it. Um, but let’s talk a little bit about you know audio ads and how they’re different. Could you tell us a little bit more about how audio ads differ from different from other ad forms?
Eric Yang
There are a couple of things that I’ll mention that even though there’s I think a various a numerous amount of different differentiations between audio and some of the other platforms but one of the things is brand recall now if you kind of think through soundtracks theme songs of your favorite shows. Even catchy jingles you know da da da I’m loving it like when I sing that Jingle pretty much everybody will know you know what company that’s for and audio is just so powerful and studies have shown that audio is one of the most emotional you know, kind of physically reactive forms of advertising that consumers actually appeal to and it’s just not used as often as let’s say Tv or print and especially these days digital advertising but studies have also shown that the memory and quoting off of the audio advertisement is actually to up to 220% greater than Tv so people just remember these things over and over especially when you hear it on audio especially with the way that your brain works and it’s just something that’s really fascinating with audio that you don’t get with the other platforms. Obviously, you do get it with Tv but then you also get visual with that. Another thing with brand recall that audio’s really unique about is just the number of ads that are served one of the reasons it’s easy to remember is because you don’t get served that many ads. But when you think of digital advertising which has obviously grown in popularity in its say the last 5 to 10 years with Facebook like Facebook Google. Instagram and obviously like Linkedin Microsoft’s there’s a study that says that ah you’re shown about 6 to 10000 ads a day that’s kind of crazy like who’s gonna remember who’s going to be able to pick out one company out of 6 to 10000 I’d say you’re shown. But. With audio. There’s only you know one of a few and especially on podcast. The listeners are just so much more engaged in the podcast into audio than other forms. You know whether it’s video or just people browsing online. Um, that’s one of the reasons you see you know content like. Tick talk especially with the music becomes so popular these days and then the last differentiation that I’ll kind of point out is kind of the effectiveness and then the return on value that advertisers will see through audio. Just out of curiosity Courtney when’s the last time you skipped an ad on Youtube?
Courtney
Ah, probably yesterday.
Eric Yang
Yeah, so to be honest, you’re not the only one so there’s a study that I read that said 90% of people skip an ad on Youtube the second they see the skip ad thing pop up, and to be honest, my two year old who watches Coca Melon will skip the ad like know how to skip ads. And she can’t even read she doesn’t even know she just skips the ad when that little skip ad button pops up and the way the audio platforms work streaming platforms. It’s just not skippable and so when you’re paying for an ad. Why would you pay for an ad that gets skipped after 5 seconds versus audio where your listen-through rates are generally in the high ninety s so that’s something really unique. You just get people to listen to the entire ad and I feel like that’s something that especially with small businesses or smaller businesses who are more cost-conscious about budget. It’s just something really important to you.
Courtney
It’s interesting I think there are too a lot of cool things you could do with audio just in terms of calls to action right? and telling your audience to go and do something right? but I also do love the fact that you brought up the jingles because a company can have a Jingle for decades and and it’s just evergreen right? I love that. So what types of companies should consider expanding into audio ads as part of their marketing strategy.
Eric Yang
That’s a good question. I would say actually let me ask you a question. First what does a nonprofit. Let’s say promoting a fundraiser or a pizza parlor heading into super bowl weekend or let’s say a dentist who’s new to a city trying to open up his practice his or her practice.
Courtney
Okay.
Eric Yang
What did they have in common and there you go and how could they do it through audio ads and then basically the whole thing there is I basically brought up 3 different types of businesses and 3 totally different industries you know, marketing to 3 different types of…
Courtney
They only need to get people through the door.
Eric Yang
Target Marketers or target segments and they all could use audio advertising and what’s cool about is something that you had mentioned earlier the technology that allows you nowadays audio technology allows you to do things like geo-targeting personalization and allow you to essentially be very efficient with your marketing spend. Targeting Only those who are relevant to your listeners. So That’s something that I think people have a misconception that you know audio is for a certain industry to be honest, it’s for all industries.
Courtney
And I think that’s what really cool too about what you guys do in helping your customers to really reach this target Niche audience right? like that that they need to reach. It’s no longer just working with a sales rep at your local radio station and just throwing the audio ad up there now you can literally pick and choose who you want to serve this ad to which is so important in spending your marketing budget efficiently which obviously is our whole messaging here at call tracking metrics right?
Eric Yang
Oh yeah.
Courtney
Here to help you understand which channels are driving those leads. Um, so totally get that you’re kind of closing the loop there which I think is great. So moral of the story is audio advertising is for everyone right?
Eric Yang
Totally I mean you brought it up. It’s wholly about efficiency at the end of the day and efficiency is spend. That’s one of the most important things that we want to make sure that our customers see.
Courtney
Yeah, but you know was gonna ask you about you know what types of products and services or audio ads most useful for. But I think you’ve kind of answered that question too. But if you have anything you want to add to that you know there’s any you know types of products or services that you’ve seen have success with.
Eric Yang
I would definitely say consumer products tend to do a little better than Enterprise products. Um, just because the listeners are obviously the listeners are all types of folks but especially on the audio side. We see a lot more consumer products be more successful, but what’s interesting is on the podcasting side. We’re seeing a lot of Enterprise businesses and one of the examples is SaaS platforms. For example, like yourself, if you were a startup for example, raising money something you can do is not only target the consumers that you’re trying to sell to but you can also target.
Financial podcasters and to be honest, every Vc listens to you know a finance podcast here and there if you ask any of your Vc friends and you know you can be heard and then your name is being put next to some of these larger brands who also you know, advertise on these finance podcasts and. You know, having that correlation just makes you seem bigger than who you really are maybe or even just helps you get your name out there and then who knows who’s listening at the end of the day so that’s really cool where you can spend. That’s, say, $25,500 you know, smaller marketing budgets just targeting a specific segment. So I would say again on the audio side consumer products on the podcast side. We do see consumer products but we also see more enterprise but just in the past five years we also see big spending in healthcare entertainment retail staffing and services I’d say health care was great because of the pandemic and then entertainment then fell. But then during the non-pandemic times we see entertainment really drive a lot of our business and then staffing has also been a big one recently I know there’s ah, a staffing shortage really across the United States and that we’ve seen a lot of business. Come instead of Indeed in the Linkedin people are looking for alternative ways and what’s interesting enough is we have an unemployed segment that you can choose to only target those that are employed so that’s a really unique segment for anybody looking for staffing help.
Courtney
It’s so interesting to think about how ah ah, a business can use audio advertising. That’s that’s very interesting. That’s a great use case. We talked a lot about targeting right and being able to make sure you’re serving your ads to the right people. Um. Let’s talk a little about conversion rates. So Of course you know they’re always top-of-mind companies Marketers What? what is the expected conversion rate for audio ads. Yeah, this is tough.
Eric Yang
Yeah, and I don’t want to we get asked that question all the time and and I don’t want toly.. It’s a tough one, especially whether they are for audio and so I will you know First of all say audio is more of a branding market like a branding activity when it comes to marketing similar to let’s say out of home or print. It’s hard to track conversion rates at the end of day track hard to track Attribution. It’s not like clicks at the end of the day or digital banners where you can track the user from one to the other or end to end. Ah many folks listening to audio a lot of times are either running driving working. You know you kind of have it in your background and you can’t have those consumers or expect those consumers to. Click while they’re listening to the ad again.
That’s why I brought up the retention earlier but with that being said, Audio is actually a great compliment to your digital campaign to digital campaigns if your digital campaign. Ah you know is is performing X Amount studies that we’ve seen and we’ve done some studies ourselves even see an average of 4 X when you pair it with audio because that way not only are you hearing something but then when you get back to your computer people are then clicking so audio isn’t necessarily the best when it comes to conversion rates. But it’s actually great to increase your current campaigns or your current marketing campaigns. But this is also another reason that you know one of the reasons that we’re talking to you to. We’re talking to you guys is actually it’s super important to have a clear call to action and one of the biggest call to actions and the most used widely used call to actions is actually having a phone number on there if you’re in the services industry Insurance Agents homebuyers. If you want to talk to a person have that personal connection. It’s so important to have a phone number in your audio advertisement and not having a call to action is like the biggest taboo you can do with audio unless you’re doing a Psa which is a little different.
Courtney
That’s very interesting. You talked a lot about brand recall and jingles and how we kind of associate the jingle to a company but we don’t think about how phone numbers kind of do that too. There are companies with those you know one a to.
Eric Yang
Yeah, and we see vanity numbers perform much higher than non-vanity numbers again like 1 2 3 4 7 7 you know is a harder number to remember than like you said like 1 800 call a lawyer or something like that.
Courtney
And a lawyer right? like you think you, you remember those things when you hear them. That’s very interesting and I love that you’ve confirmed ah you know obviously we can’t promise conversion rates right? This is a great branding play. This is a great compliment to have anything else. You’re doing digitally which I think is a great point. So let’s talk about budgeting. How much money should a company expect to invest to get a reasonable return on investment and I guess you know for it to be considered a good test too right?
Eric Yang
Know it’s always about the money. Yeah yeah, no, it’s all about the money. Obviously we’re trying to be cost conscientious and we want to make it available to everybody and so. Ah, to be honest, one of we’re one of the only platforms that allows you to start advertising campaigns on audio for two hundred and fifty dollars and a campaign just means launching a campaign. It could be a week it could be a day It could be a month it could be a year Obviously for 52 when you know run it for a year. You’re spreading like a lot of impressions over a year
I wouldn’t recommend that two 50 s usually a 1 to 2 wo week campaign but we give you the optionality but there’s no true answer in terms of what the budget is to be honest, something I learned from the Nba class is it depends. The answer is always it depends and then here’s the mba framework look at the size of your target market. Ah, you know, look at either demographics or a geography look at the industry that you’re in. We’ve got ah some conversion rates and average conversion sizes or market sizes within certain industries and then look at the marketing message and here’s an example if you’re in l a. You’re probably looking for a bigger market versus let’s say a Tuscaloosa Alabama it’s a smaller market. So your spend in la would most likely be bigger than Tuscaloosa if you’re in. Let’s say a very specific health and wellness function. You’re targeting you know acupuncture of a certain area that’s going to be a smaller budget versus um.
Ah, gym 24 hour fitness let’s say you’re going to be you know more applicable to a wider range again. Your budgets will be larger when you you brought your message or your brand your your segment versus the smaller ones and then marketing message if you’re doing a general branding campaign. You’re looking at you know, longer periods of time. You’re probably spending. A smaller budget but over a longer period of time. Let’s say two fifty over six months to get that name recognition out there. But if you’re just promoting a sale. You’re a dealership. You know you got to get the cars off the lot now you’re probably running a higher spending campaign but doing it for a shorter period of time and we see a lot of seasonality with like. Super bowls around the holidays. Valentine’s day mother’s day is coming up. You know all the flower companies. The brunch companies. These are just historically what we’ve seen from mother’s day be really popular for advertising you know, mother’s days mother’s day’s activity. So these are just things to to think about.
Courtney
Lots of factors to keep in mind and to to to plan for yeah, you got to think about all of them because it oh it all adds to the strategy behind the ad um and I’m sure you guys have tons of you know, knowledge articles and stuff on on that.
Eric Yang
Definitely. But it’s an easy factor. It’s all simple exactly. And what we found is most people are already thinking about it in the same way that we’re thinking about you. You have these specials for the for the holidays and you know you’re thinking about seasonality. So it’s not that hard to convert what you already do to an audio ad so.
Courtney
And best practices and everything right. So this has been great. You know we talked a lot about of course conversion rights and we can’t promise them right? We talked about budgeting and how much think about putting into an audio advertising strategy which I felt. You know why? Audio advertising is is useful, right? We talked about brand recall and being able to associate you know, ah a jingle to a company or a phone number to a company. Audio advertising is emotionally reactive whereas obviously print ads can’t be talked a lot about the fact that we can measure effectiveness and ROI. Targeting is is super effective too with audio ads. There’s so many benefits um to to this channel. Um, now we talked a lot about targeting Eric what about and in the and the terms that like we can take your your we can go into AudioGo right? and target specific audience that we’re looking to reach what about Um, you know on the flip side reaching out to like an individual podcast to try to like get featured. I’m assuming. That’s my um, obviously a much harder lift than just being able to go on AudioGo and you know place an ad right.
Eric Yang
So yeah, it’s definitely different. Um Hostro ads are great to be honest with you. They convert really? well you know the audience is engaged and you hit a very specific customer but I will say that they’re more expensive you’re you’re paying a lot to sponsor an entire podcast directly.
They’re also a little more time-consuming as you said they’re a little harder you get to kind of think through all the different types of engagement and that’s also one of the reasons why they convert they convert better. But again you put in the effort to get the return and then the last thing is you’re only featured on one podcast. So you’re only hitting one set of audience which could or could not be your target Audiences something that we’re seeing not only with audio go but everywhere is one using audio go you’ll have lower cpms and then we have a large inventory of premium podcasts. That allow you to kind of spread your message everywhere. But the second thing that we’re seeing and not just again with audio but all across is dynamically inserted ads and that’s where the ads will be placed or or delivered based on the audience. So your experience listening to that one podcast will be completely different than my experience listening to the same podcast because your hobby’s interest and status is completely different than mine and that makes spend more efficient converg rates higher because it’s just the ads are more relevant and they experience a lot better at end the day. And that’s something that we do at audiogo is allow you to dynamically insert the ad to those listeners regardless on what podcasts you’re listening to but target those ah listeners that would fit your target segment that you’re trying to go for.
Courtney
Which is huge and making sure that you’re delivering your your brand’s message to the right people. Yeah and again just goes to show that the beauty of a platform like audio goes the fact that you make it easy for anyone to create that advertisement Target it disseminate it and report on it. So.
Eric Yang
Totally totally totally.
Courtney
Full circle so this has been extremely educational. So thank you. I wanted to ask you Eric before we conclude is there anything that you would like to plug.
Eric Yang
Yeah, um I Just want all the the businesses that you guys work with or anybody who’s listening that when you’re thinking about Marketing. It is so hard to stand out these days and you know to be honest I think one of the best ways that I’ve seen not only because I work for the company but and work in the industry. But. You know audio is one of the best ways to stand out in the crowd and especially with advertising.. Let’s be honest, nobody likes ads at the end of day I work in ads and I don’t love ads. But at the end of the day if we can consume it you know better You know, consume it in a way that is is not abrasive is non-intrusive.
I Think it makes the whole ad experience a lot better and I think audio’s done a good job doing that you know audio goes specifically has moved the friction remove the friction that historically surrounded audio advertising making it super super super easy to get started I Want to stress that like it’s super super easy to get started and not just easy to get started like not.
Not only is our platform easy to get started. But I’m going to make it even easier for you guys to get started ah for the Ctm listeners for you guys. We will give a $200 free ad credit to get you guys started? Um, all you to do is create a account which is free totally free. You can even play around with all the features. And then all you to do is add the promo code Ctm Podcast all 1 word to redeem your free credit so easy. Not only is our platform easy. But now you’ve got that free credit to kind of move forward. You know, mitigate that risk to to try it out and and hopefully you’ll enjoy it as much as ah, a lot of our customers. Do.
Courtney
That’s fantastic. So like coupon code was ctm podcast and I can definitely attest to the fact that it is a super easy platform to use I have seen the demo took me about 5 minutes just to run through that and. You know, understand how easy it is to literally go through the order form and and create my ad place my ad you have made audio shiny and new again, it’s sexy again. It’s effective. So definitely encourage all of our listeners to use it. You know work it in your strategy. We all use it in our everyday life. So. It’s it’s gonna work so Eric thank you thank you for your time and and this is just been great. We’ve learned a lot. Thank you to our listeners too for listening in and your freer support as always keep in touch with us on Twitter at smart Ropod and be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcasts.