The Golden Age of Podcasting: An Advertising Revolution

Today, there is an estimated 2,751,157 podcasts and 123,236,633 episodes available in the whole world (Fang, 2022) and people are talking about a ‘Golden age of podcasting’. Podcast listeners tend to be young and highly educated and it is no surprise that marketeers have started to use podcast advertising to reach these audiences who may be difficult to reach through traditional media. One way to advertise in podcasts is through pre-recorded host read advertisement rolls which can be placed anywhere in an episode. This research aimed to find out where a roll should be placed in order to be most effective. To test effectiveness, the widely adopted hierarchy model of effects was used, where effects on cognitions, affections, and behaviors were tested. As there is little previous research on podcast advertising, hypotheses were drawn up based on previous literature on video streaming and advertisement placement. An online experiment was conducted using an independent measures design with four different groups, and participants were exposed to either a pre-, mid-, or post-roll or a control condition which heard no ad at all. Sampling methods included convenience and snowballing, and participants were recruited online through social media (N = 140). Findings partially support the hierarchy of effects model as there were significant relationships between cognitions and attitudes towards the advertisement, and affections and behaviors. However, cognitions had no significant effect on attitude towards the brand, which could be explained by the idea that attitudes towards the brand are formed through many different factors, and that it takes more than one advertisement to affect this. Furthermore, results show that placement of the advertisement has no significant effect on neither cognitions, affections nor behaviors of consumers. According to these findings, podcast makers should revise their advertisement pricings since mid-rolls tend to cost most and post-rolls least, according to what is thought to be most effective. On the other hand, marketeers can use findings of this research when negotiating about advertising prices.