3 Reasons Why Your Podcast Advertising Isn’t Working (And How To Fix It)

Podcast ad spend continues to rise every year, reaching unprecedented heights of $1.8 billion in 2022. And it’s easy to see why: 140 million Americans listen to podcasts, podcast listeners trust and buy from podcast ads, and advertisers still haven’t reached 88% percent of podcast audience.

If you started advertising on podcasts because of stats like these, but your advertisements aren’t resulting in the ROI you hoped for – don’t fret! In this article we discuss 3 common reasons why your podcast advertisements aren’t working, and how to improve their performance.

3 Common Podcast Advertising Problems (And How to Solve Them)

1) Lack of Evangelist Influencers

Podcast advertisements work because audiences trust their favorite hosts. This has been the anecdotal wisdom for years, but recent data has shown it to be true – 75% of listeners say they value podcast influencers more than social media and traditional celebrities.

If you can correctly tap into that trust, your brand can easily sell to podcast audiences. After all, 28% of podcast listeners have bought something from a podcast ad.

So how do you best leverage this authentic trust between host and listener? You have to be picky about the podcasts you advertise on.

If a podcast host reads your ad, but doesn’t care about the product – the audience can tell. Even if the host is doing their best to be lively and enthusiastic during the ad read, their audience can tell that they are faking it to some extent. That might sound absurd, but listeners have learned the nuances of their favorite hosts’ speech patterns through dozens and dozens of close listening hours.

You need a host who truly understands and appreciates your product, so their endorsement is genuine. Finding these hosts requires more dedicated research than a regular podcast advertisement, but if you find the right host, the resulting sales will be well worth your time.

2) Unfocused Audience Targeting

As a podcast advertiser, you are often searching podcasts by genre, like “business”, because you assume the podcast’s genre and its audience is correlated. For example, advertisers assume. “Business” podcasts have an audience of business people. But it’s not always this simple.

For example, what if you’re an advertiser looking to reach podcast listeners who are interested in sustainability? Sure there are a few podcasts explicitly about sustainability, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What about the podcasts who quietly have a large audience interested in sustainability – Podcasts like “Good Life Project”, a health, happiness, and self-improvement podcast. You wouldn’t necessarily expect them to have an audience with a high interest in sustainability, but they do.

If you’re a sustainable brand looking to improve people’s lives, that would be a perfect podcast to advertise on, especially because none of your competitors in the sustainability space would be vying for the same podcast.

The lesson here: when you’re targeting podcasts to advertise on, you’re actually just looking for access to a specific audience. Your targeting should thus be audience-first, and content second.

Podchaser Pro, the world’s most comprehensive podcast database, makes audience-first targeting a breeze. Search 4 million podcasts with audience-first filters like “gender skew”, “listener age”, and more to pinpoint the exact audience you’d like to advertise to.

3) Poor Ad Copy

This may seem obvious, but if you’ve ever listened to a podcast you know that there are plenty of poorly written ads airing everyday. This is often from large brands who have come from other mediums and write their ads without any understanding of the podcasting ecosystem.

With that in mind, our number one tip to improve your ad copy is to invite the podcast host to personalize the script however they see fit. Podcasts thrive on authenticity of the host’s message, so your advertisement will stick out like a sore thumb without it.

Plus, the host understands the style of their show and their audience better than you ever will, so let them do the hard work. You’ll want to let the host know that the script is just a starting point. Let them know you trust them to put their spin on it. You can send them your guide document to provide the full context of the ad script and anything specific you want them to avoid when recording.

If you want to learn more about writing a great podcast ad script, check out our in-depth article.

Final Thoughts: Solve Your Problems and Advertise Easily with Podchaser Pro

If you’ve dipped your toe into advertising, or have been running campaigns for a while now – you know just how much work it can be to effectively advertise on podcasts. Without Podchaser Pro, finding accurate podcast data and contact info for just one show can take hours, or even be impossible.

But with Podchaser Pro, the process of finding, vetting, building hit lists, and contacting takes a matter of minutes. Plus you can monitor the industry with features like keyword alerts, airchecks, and transcripts.

Check out our Pro for advertisers page and read our 5 Steps to Streamline Podcast Planning