More than a third of marketers will increase their brand marketing investments this year by Meaghan Yuen
According to new WARC data, the percentage of respondents who focus on growing brand over performance has increased 13% since 2022, with a projected 5% increase in 2024. To give some insight into this for the world of podcasting, we spoke with Cumulus Media Chief Insights Officer Pierre Bouvard: “WARC’s report that marketers will increase brand spend is huge news for podcasting. Brand building is “being known before you’re needed”. Brand campaigns create future demand. Dentsu’s recent attentiveness study with Lumen found audio ads outperform video for attention and brand recall. With over 50% of U.S. 18-49-year-olds listening to podcasts monthly, marketers looking to build their brands should look no further than podcasting and AM/FM Radio.” Bouvard recommends the key best practice for brands to adopt is using brand effect studies that can quantify awareness, consideration, brand favorability, and purchase intent over simple attribution studies that only take website traffic into account. [Source]
Meet Podcast X-Ray by Dan Misener
Bumper has released a new research tool for free in hopes of better empowering the wider podcast industry. The tool was originally developed by Misener as a way to quickly get up to speed on a podcast one is unfamiliar with. Details like language spoken, whether a podcast is episodic or serial, publishing trends, contact information, monetization, episode breakdowns, and technical details are all collected from the podcast’s feed to provide the show’s ‘x-ray’. An lightweight, free tool that’ll prove useful for many aspects of podcasting. [Source]
Toyota Signs Eli Manning and Brock Purdy as National Partners and Announces Plans for Super Bowl LVIII as The “Official Automotive Partner of the NFL”
As the headline says, Toyota Motor North America has signed the two quarterbacks to appear in Toyota advertisements nationwide on both digital and linear platforms. In addition to being the lead sponsor of the Super Bowl Experience at the NFL’s football theme park in the lead-up to the Big Game, Toyota will also be airing a 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl proper (which, as we learned yesterday, comes with a price tag that could buy 300 million 60 second host-read podcast ads). The automotive brand is also partnering with two football-related podcasts during the Super Bowl run-up, sponsoring a charity trivia game on Green Light with Chris Long and a football-inspired food challenge on The Dave Chang Show. [Source]
AI-powered podcast ad producer AudioStack raises £2.5m
London-based startup AudioStack has raised £2.5 million to continue developing AI-powered voice adtech (a hair over $3,150,000 USD). The system will allow users to build ad creative with a generative AI that can generate text-to-speech and add music to the end result. [Source]
