Skip ahead: How 'cutting-edge' advertising in podcasts is really just a repeat of old-timey radio
Casper. Squarespace. Rocket Mortgage. MailChimp.
Podcast addicts are all too familiar with these names. They represent a fraction of the companies riding the (radio) wave of sponsored content in podcasting — flooding your earbuds, and plugging their product.
As Under the Influence host Terry O'Reilly tells CBC's Podcast Playlist, the more subtle advertising strategies of sponsorship and branded content are proving effective, with companies reaching massive audiences and upping their street-cred — especially if they choose a hit show.
"When This American Life spawned Serial — which was that breakthrough podcast — they offered the chance to MailChimp to sponsor," O'Reilly told Podcast Playlist hosts Lindsay Michael and Matt Galloway.
"MailChimp jumped at it and they caught lightning in a bottle — of course — because Serial turned out to be this this huge podcast that really broke open the doors for podcasting."
Now, companies are not only financially supporting podcasts through advertising; they're also creating original content of their own, known as "branded podcasting."
General Electric is behind the hit tech-drama podcast LifeAfter, and Tinder and Gimlet Creative partnered up for the surprisingly uplifting dating podcast DTR, for example.
But according to O'Reilly, these marketing collaborations are nothing new for the audio world — just the opposite, in fact. He says podcasts' shifting advertising trends directly correlate to the marketing lifecycle of early radio.
Following that trajectory to its logical end, O'Reilly has predictions for what's next in podcast advertising, and the listening experience in turn.
Sponsorships and soap operas
When the first radio commercial aired in 1922, you couldn't advertise a product because it was "seen as crass and too intrusive," said O'Reilly.
Sponsorship was the first type of advertising to emerge, but it came with tight restrictions.
"What they did allow was for advertisers to sponsor programs in 'title-only,'" he explained.
Within a year, sponsorship had parlayed into a form of branded content. The first big entertainment show The Eveready Hour, which aired on WEAF Radio in New York in 1923, was named after a primary funder, Eveready Batteries.
"It was quite a pioneering show," said O'Reilly about the hour-long variety program, "because it was the first time that a farmer out in the country could hear a level of entertainment that had only been confined to city living before that."
It was the first noteworthy example of branded content on the radio.
Branded content has persisted in entertainment since The Eveready Hour. The term "soap opera" is actually named after a lineage of TV and radio dramas beginning in the 1930s that were sponsored by soap companies.
"The scripts are actually written by the advertising agencies, by soap companies," said O'Reilly.
And yet branded content is having a particularly good moment. In-part due to podcasting, O'Reilly says the marketing strategy is more popular than it has been in 25 years.
"You've got advertising agencies creating branded content departments, which is new, and you've got stand-alone companies sprouting up everywhere that are developing branded content for advertisers ... It's getting hotter and hotter."
The 'soft-sell' of branded content
But the obvious question remains : why spend so much money on professional-grade, high budget projects, only to have your company's name mentioned next to the credits?
Branded content, O'Reilly explained, can affect audiences in subliminal ways compared to traditional advertisements.
Filtered differently, the "soft-sell" of branded advertising pushes the values and products of its company by implication.
"The content of a GE show will be about the kind of work GE does," he said.
The subtlety of branded content and sponsorship marketing also allows companies to hedge against automatic repulsion to flashy advertising.
"If [the audience] knows it's an ad, their guard goes up. If they feel it's entertainment, their guard goes down. The more engaging the content, the lower the sell, the higher the engagement gets."
Audiences aren't completely immune to the presence of marketing in their favourite stories, even if it is just by-title like The Eveready Hour.
But O'Reilly says sponsorship and branded content marketing avoid some of their audience's resentment because they "offer something in return."
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"In [The Eveready Hour], advertising revenue was paying for the show. It was paying for the actors, paying for the singers, the entertainers — so people understood that bargain and were willing to listen to sponsored broadcasts and sponsorships. There's a to-and-fro going on there."
O'Reilly says podcasting does differentiate itself from old-timey radio in a couple of key ways. First, there is no time limit on podcasts, so advertisements can run for longer, and more often.
"Advertisers love that," he told Michael and Galloway.
Second, the podcast host is most often the one reading marketing copy, which lends a certain credibility to the advertisements.
"What the host is saying to his or her listeners is that, 'I wouldn't be here without the support of this advertiser,' and I think that that carries a lot of weight," he said.
Fast forward
But O'Reilly reminds us that the key element that make podcasts such a fruitful medium for advertising today is the very same characteristic that made it appealing in 1922 : intimacy.
"Television is one to millions. It's a very different listening experience," he said. "There's an intimacy to radio which is also an aspect of podcasting. It's one-on-one."
Following the trajectory of old-timey radio, O'Reilly says we are seeing the beginnings of less host-driven and sponsorship advertising, and multiple packaged ads in podcasting instead.
Going forward, he predicts we're "probably going to get a lot less host-written or host-voiced ads and going to get a lot more clutter inside a podcast."
That being said, there's always the skip button.
Check out the full conversation in this week's Podcast Playlist episode: Branded Podcasts with Terry O'Reilly