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Acquisition Channel Opportunities: Podcast ads, social media, shoppable livestreams

This week, I analyzed over 5,100 marketing and tech articles in search of news-as-opportunities for you to get more paying users. Here are the top 3 that I found:

1. Podcast ads are becoming more accessible to indie founders

The news: Last week, Spotify rolled out podcast ads to its self-serve platform called Spotify Ad Studio. This means you can place podcast ads without the assistance of an advertising or sales manager.

Clix Marketing wrote a blog post that goes into greater detail about this. Here are some of the highlights:

  • A $500 minimum commitment is required now. This is much less than the minimum commitment required by most podcast platforms.
  • You can target people based on their age, device, and location (US only, you can segment by specific zip codes or cities).

The opportunity: Spotify's ad business has been booming as a result of podcasts. When people spend money on ads on a platform, it usually means the platform is flourishing and catching peoples attention.

This minimum commitment and self-serve changes make podcast advertising more accessible to indie hackers like you and me, and it will become even more powerful as Spotify's targeting options improve.

2. Which social media platform is best for you? This analysis provides the answer

The analysis: Axios analyzed the top 50 most-followed accounts on each major platform (TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook).

Their conclusions are quite interesting.

There is (nearly) no overlap: Almost no account that was in the top 50 on one platform was also in the top 50 on the other. This hints at the fact that different platforms value different kinds of things and people. Here are some interesting discoveries:

  • Sports stars and actors shine on Facebook and Instagram
  • Musicians do better on YouTube and TikTok
  • Twitter is the only platform where politicians and business leads are in the top 50 most-followed accounts

The opportunity: This analysis concludes:

  • TikTok favors individual creators over heavily funded entertainment corporations.

  • YouTube is the opposite; the top accounts are larger music and entertainment companies.

  • Facebook gives brands a "edge" due to dynamics that encourage people to "like" a page. It doesn't matter if that page generates any content.

  • Instagram prefers people who "show off" their lifestyle, etc.

  • Twitter also favors celebrities, albeit on a smaller scale.
    Twitter also favors people known for their ideas (which is probably why politicians and business leaders are among the top 50 users).

Which of the above best describes you?

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3. Twitter and YouTube are getting serious about shoppable livestreams

Twitter: This week Twit4$ter announced that they will host their first-ever shoppable livestream with Walmart and Jason Derulo. Twitter also said they'll expand their "Shop Module" to more users, as well as introduce "Twitter Shopping Manager", a central hub for retailers.

YouTube will enroll some of their most popular creators to host shoppable livestreams during the holiday season. YouTube also stated that they intend to build a "next generation of live shopping experience," indicating that they're in this for the long haul.

The opportunity: 2021 was the year when everyone was trying to add Instagram Stories and TikTok-like feeds to their platform. As for 2022, I expect it will be the year when everyone will attempt to add shoppable livestreams.

My advice: Consider adding live content into your content marketing plan. As time goes by, big social media platforms will give more visibility to live content (Twitter already does this with Spaces and YouTube with livestreams), allowing you to reach a larger number of people organically.

The nice thing about live content is that it can be recorded and later repurposed as video/audio clips.

  1. 2

    Expected more overlap between the top users. Interesting piece.

    1. 2

      Me too. Curious if there will be a bigger overlap if they expand from "top 50" to "top 5000", for example.

  2. 2

    The podcast ads piece is interesting. Anyone here had any success with them?

    1. 2

      I couldn't find any example of IH prob. because they're managed/non-self-serve/expensive to begin with. There are bigger brands that have some ROI analyses: https://www.warc.com/newsandopinion/news/study-establishes-roi-of-podcast-ads/44097

      Hopefully with changes like the Spotify one more IHers will start testing out podcast ads so we could see more data.

  3. 2

    Can you use shoppable livestreams for SaaS?

    1. 1

      I guess they'll be optimized mostly for e-commerce.

    2. 1

      A SaaS is like any other product (an item + a price), so you could def use them. Just make sure to tell people they'll be charged recurrently.

  4. 1

    The podcasts ads are for freemium Spotify users, right? I think this may be an issue. Better would be to talk to the podcaster to include the ad in the podcast natively.

  5. 1

    I agree that YouTube shoppable livestreams, Twitter spaces are the steps of social media platforms toward live shopping content.
    And it's going to trend in 2022.
    Another opportunity for startup founders.
    Informative content.

  6. 1

    Great article, Darko. Thank you!

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