What is missing from podcast ad networks today?
I'm trying to understand the current state of podcast distribution, advertising, and how podcasters are making money today, since I think that it can be improved.
Advertising today seems to be that podcasters find advertisers based on the content of their entire show and do a deal with them where they pay you per number of views (correct me if I'm wrong).
With my idea, how it would work is that you as a podcaster make your podcast show like normal, and then submit it through our distribution network. We then analyze the main keywords in this specific episode (not the whole general show), and then programmatically insert the best matching ad from our network of advertisers into this episode, and we then submit your podcast to the usual apple podcasts, google podcasts, etc.
For podcasters like yourselves, would this be appealing to you to avoid having to find advertising deals yourself? This should also increase your ad revenue given that advertisers will want to pay more for this fine-grained advertising.
Are there also any other headaches you face right now with distribution, monetization, or anything else that you feel is slowing you down?
Ex. On one of your podcast episodes, you talk a lot about furniture. When you submit your recorded podcast into our service, we then analyze it, and insert ads into this episode that will probably be from furniture companies. A different episode about something else would have ads from different companies.
cc: @csallen who had some thoughts on this
I agree with @mijustin. He has a better perspective than I do, but back when I was monetizing my podcast, I found ad networks unhelpful. What worked was doing ad sales and outreach myself. It felt like there just weren't that many advertisers to go around.
Also, tbh I'm not sure I'd want random ads programmatically inserted into my show. I quite like having editorial control over what ads I run, and I think many advertisers like it when the host of the show reads their ads themselves. But again, sample size of one here. Not sure what other podcasters think.
The challenge in this space right now isn't the number of good podcasters who want advertisers (there are lots of those!)
The challenge is that there aren't enough advertisers. Sponsors can pick thousands of hungry shows (with big numbers).
The folks in this space who have tried creating podcast ad marketplaces (Anchor, Podcorn, Advertisecast) have run into these challenges.