No. 075 Why Podcast Advertising Works (and How to Get Started), with Glenn Rubenstein
Up until today, we’ve exhaustively covered the topic of podcast sponsorships and monetization. But each time we’ve covered it from only one perspective — the perspective we know as showrunners.
Today, we are talking to an absolute expert in podcast advertising.
In fact, our guest spent years selling podcast ads for TWiT. As the Director of Marketing, he ran strategy and implementation responsible for selling ad spots across 20+ podcasts with more than 70 million annual downloads and streams.
Our guest today is Glenn Rubenstein of Adopter Media, a full-service podcast advertising agency, and in this episode we discuss:
- Why podcast advertising works
- What you can do to make your ads more effective
- How to package and present your show to maximize advertising revenue
The Show Notes
- This episode is brought to you by Acuity Scheduling.
- Grab Glenn’s book today: Podcast Advertising Works: How to Turn Engaged Audiences into Loyal Customers
No. 075 Why Podcast Advertising Works (and How to Get Started), with Glenn Rubenstein
Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM.
Jerod Morris: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.
Welcome to The Showrunner, where we have one goal: teach you how to develop, launch, and run a remarkable show. Ready?
Welcome back to The Showrunner, the podcast for people dedicated to creating remarkable audio experiences for their audience. This is episode No. 75. I am your host, Jerod Morris, VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital, and I will be joined momentarily, as I always am, by my T-shirt-wearing co-host, Jonny Nastor, the host of Hack the Entrepreneur.
But first, this episode is brought to you by Acuity Scheduling. Acuity Scheduling makes scheduling meetings online easy. Clients can view your real-time availability, self-book appointments with you, fill out forms, and even pay you online. To learn more and get a 45-day free trial, visit AcuityScheduling.com/Showrunner.
Jonny, how are you doing today?
Jonny Nastor: I’m doing excellent, and I’m wearing a T-shirt. It all fits.
Jerod Morris: Big surprise. So hey, are you ready to talk about profitability, increasing the profitability of our podcast and teaching our listeners how they can do that as well?
Jonny Nastor: Yeah, I’m excited about it. I was just thinking about that as you read that excellent Acuity ad spot.
Jerod Morris: I am, too. We’ve spent a lot of time over the last 74 episodes discussing the fourth pillar of a remarkable podcast, which is profitability. While podcast profitability doesn’t always have to be direct in the form of money paid by sponsors for ads, generating revenue directly from your show certainly isn’t a bad thing when it’s done in a smart, savvy way.
You and I have tried to share some of our experiences doing that. Our guest today actually helps showrunners earn revenue directly from their show, and he’s here to lend his insight on how we can all improve the direct profitability of our shows.
Jonny Nastor: Yeah, this is going to be fun. Today’s guest is the founder of Adopter Media, a full-service podcast advertising agency. Prior to starting Adopter, he was selling podcast advertising at TWiT as the director of marketing. When the opportunity arose, though, to be part of the CEO’s recently formed in-house sales effort for podcast advertising, he ended up there and ended up directing marketing strategy for 20+ technology shows with more than 70 million annual downloads and streams.
Glenn Rubenstein: Hey, thanks for having me, guys.
Jonny Nastor: It’s great to have you, man. It’s great to have you. It’s fitting because the reason why I mentioned Acuity is because your company, Adopter Media, has been the company that we’ve worked with now at Rainmaker.FM to get Acuity on with the show. It seemed very fitting to have you on here.
Glenn Rubenstein: Yeah, well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it, and yes, full disclosure, I did work with Rainmaker.FM and Acuity Scheduling to place that ad.
Jonny Nastor: Right, but that’s not why you’re here. It’s just fitting, but I thought it was worth mentioning, too. All right, so what do you say? Should we just jump into talking about some podcast advertising?
Jerod Morris: Yes, let’s.
Jonny Nastor: Let’s do it.
All right, Glenn. Well, we’ve spent a ton of time in the past 75 episodes, and through The Showrunner Podcasting Course, talking about podcast sponsorships, but can we start simply with just, could you tell us why podcast advertising works?
Why Podcast Advertising Works
Glenn Rubenstein: Well, in short, it’s really about connections. It’s about the connection that you have as a podcaster with your audience. What you’re doing is essentially opening up that connection to brands, businesses, and services that you believe in and sharing those with your audience. When done properly — in a really honest, straightforward, and transparent manner where they are labeled as sponsors — what you’re doing is creating a powerful recommendation and endorsement for these products and services that will resonate with your audience.
Again, if you do that well, that’s going to be the most effective way for companies to advertise their products and services. They’re putting them in hands of people that are going to use them, have a personal experience, and give that endorsement — and in essence, becoming an ambassador for that brand.
What that boils down to, Jon, is that, if you’re talking about Acuity Scheduling and you’re talking about the service that you’ve been using, when you talk about that to your audience, to them, that should be more engaging than hearing a standard ‘pre-produced, prepackaged’ ad that they would hear on TV or radio. You’re doing something that’s honest. You’re doing something that’s meaningful. And again, your bond with your audience is really what you’re taking advantage of to make that connection on behalf of the product or service.
Jonny Nastor: Glenn, you mentioned products that you believe in. How important is it for a podcast host who’s going to do an ad to have actual experience with the brand and be able to make a personal recommendation from their experience?
Obviously, there are lots of different opportunities to do ad reads for a lot of different companies that you may get. How important is that for there to be some kind of personal experience there, as opposed to just reading copy that gets sent over?
What You Can Do to Make Your Ads More Effective
Glenn Rubenstein: Very, very important. I think what we’re finding more and more now that podcast advertising has just really blown up this year … it was estimated going into the year there was going to be over $60 million in podcast ad revenue.
I think when all is said and done, it’s probably going to be closer to $100 million for 2016. I think that with all this money that’s falling into the space right now, what you just said, there are a lot of podcasters that are simply like, “Hey, get me one sheet with some info, and I’ll just do the read and basically stick to what you want me to say about your product or service.”
I think offering that personal endorsement, that personal experience, is really the way that podcasters can rise above the fold and stand out to the crowd. What you’re doing, again, is treating it more like a piece of content even though it’s labeled as an ad. It’s going to fit with your show. It’s going to be in your voice, and it’s going to be communicated in a way that will resonate with your audience.
That personal experience, if small podcasters out there want to know how they can give themselves an edge in getting ads and compete with the larger networks, committing to that personal experience and the first-person account is definitely a huge way to stand out in the crowd.
Jonny Nastor: When you answered both of these questions, you’ve mentioned clearly labeling them as ads. Is this a disclaimer and necessary, or is this something that helps the whole sponsorship?
Why the Disclaimer on Ads Is Necessary
Glenn Rubenstein: Well, it helps in the sense that it’s transparent and honest, but as far as disclaimer, the Federal Trade Commission has been pretty clear about — whether it’s social media or any form of new media that we’re seeing that has already been infiltrated by advertising — in seeing that these things are clearly labeled as such, so the audience knows you’re being paid to talk about something.
I think that, again, the bond with the audience, I mentioned this in my book, is that it really is sacred, the connection you have with The Showrunner audience, people listening to this right now. You want to be honest with them and let them know that this is something you were paid to talk about, but that you also believe — so I think it’s twofold. One is that you’re giving a clear disclaimer that it’s a paid sponsorship, but two, it also is in your best interest to talk about your sponsor policies with your audience, talk about the fact that you only advertise products you believe in.
Not to tell tales out of the class here, but there have been a couple of podcasters in this medium who almost jokingly, but not so jokingly, will go on and on about, “Oh, hey, we’ll advertise anyone that gives us money to advertise, and we’ll advertise it.” These are some larger names in podcasting.
What’s funny is, if you look at what’s happened, if you were to follow these trajectories of these shows, they after a while have trouble getting ads because their audience doesn’t trust their credibility. So I think you want to be really clear with your audience about what your sponsor policy is, and then mention that.
Use that to your advantage to talk about how these companies that they you will take money from pass that test, that it’s something that you believe in, and are comfortable communicating to your audience. You’re comfortable endorsing it and putting your name behind that product.
Jonny Nastor: Glenn, you’re kind of leading into this next question that I want to ask because I think, if you are not transparent and if you take a really short-term, myopic view of podcast advertising, you could potentially really ruin your relationship with your audience and make yourself a much less fertile ground for advertisers to want to work with. Why does podcast advertising fail? When it does, what are some of the through-lines that you’ve seen when it doesn’t work?
Why Does Podcast Advertising Fail?
Glenn Rubenstein: Well, the biggest, most obvious ones are it’s just a bad fit for the show, a bad fit for the audience. I notoriously point to just some of the more interesting reads that I’ve heard over the years.
There’s one famous example — and this, again, isn’t throwing s*** at anyone — but I’ve heard people marketing infrastructure monitoring for IT, monitoring for your net apps and making sure that everything is running smoothly, and keeping that up and running — whether it’s your web server, whether it’s your applications, getting those first notifications. That’s an important product or service that we can all agree people in IT and software would need, that sort of infrastructure monitoring.
I heard an ad for this on the Stone Cold Steve Austin podcast. Now, nothing against Stone Cold Steve Austin, I’m a huge wrestling fan. I actually host a wrestling podcast in my spare time, but I could hear, when listening to Stone Cold do the ad, he had no clue what he was talking about. He was just going off a piece of paper and sort of doing a spiel. He was struggling to keep up and talking about all these different things in terms of malware alerts, JavaScript, and just all these terms that you could tell he didn’t really have a handle on what he was talking about.
So that’s number one — you want to make sure that you’re advertising on a podcast that makes sense for your product or service. Now, this can make sense in two different ways. One is the subject matter of the podcast, so we can probably agree that Stone Cold Steve Austin and his subject matter — talking to other people in professional wrestling and sports entertainment — is probably not a subject matter fit for IT.
But you could make an argument, and I would be curious if this is where someone got that idea, that, “Hey, maybe a lot of IT guys love wrestling.” It’s a heavy male audience. Software engineering is a heavy male profession. Maybe that was a good idea demographic-wise to do that ad. I’ll give them some credit there in saying that maybe the demographics of that ad made sense when placing it.
That being said, the other ways that campaigns can fail is, you can have a brand-new startup because … and let me tell you, I deal with this a lot. I have a lot of startups that are calling me, emailing us and my agency, saying, “Hey, we’re a brand-new company. We want to test podcast advertising, and we hear that it’s really the place to be right now.” These companies are so young that they really don’t have a proven business model.
If someone wants to advertise on your podcast or you want to advertise on a podcast, make sure that you’ve tested it out a bit first. You can be in those early stages, but you have to know what your pricing is worth, what’s going to really convert and compel an audience to sign up for your product or service. If you have a handle on that and you have a handle that your pricing will work, then you have a much higher likelihood of having podcast advertising work for you.
What you don’t want, and I’ve seen this fail before, someone will be like, “Hey, we’re still experimenting with the pricing. Podcast ads, we’re putting some money into this. Let’s test a more expensive pricing on this and see if it works, and then if it doesn’t work, it’s not that the podcast ads didn’t work. It’s just that your pricing was all wrong.” But there’s also some things that maybe are a little less obvious. I do talk about this in my book under the reason why some podcast ad campaigns fail.
The Less Obvious Reasons Podcast Ads Fail
Glenn Rubenstein: One, and we’ve see this trend a lot, if your company has some avant-garde way of spelling your name, this is an audio medium. You have to be able to break it out for people and let them know. Think about it. You’ll notice in the ad you did for Acuity — and, again, props to them, they’re a great company — the average person might not know how Acuity is spelled, which is why you start with the ‘A-C-U-I’ so that way people can understand that. You want to take that into account. If you’ve got this sort of funky name and people don’t know how to find just by hearing it, that’s going to be a problem.
Another one, and this is a huge, huge landmine. Look, any podcasters out there, if you have a sponsor, the number one thing you have to tell them when figuring out what the offer or incentive is going to be for your audience … we all know it’s the free trials, the percentage off, etcetera, etcetera. We hear them on every podcast ad. You have to make sure that whatever they’re offering your podcast is as good or better than other incentives they’re running through other channels. Podcast audiences are so smart. They’re so on top of things. They’re going to Google and make sure they’re getting the best ad.
If you’re listening to The Showrunner right now, you love this podcast, but you can’t tell me that, if you can’t get a better deal somewhere else using a different offer code, using a different coupon, you’re not going to go with that. That’s just sort of the basic human mentality in the 21st century of how we dictate which coupon or promo we use. We want the best deal.
That’s something that I see, oh my god, all the time — sponsors that want to mess around with that. They want to say, “Oh, hey, maybe we’re spending a little more on podcast. It’s going to cost us a little more per conversion. Let’s not give them the best offer.” Then they wonder why it doesn’t work.
Jerod Morris: Yeah. That’s great. I love all those tips. Actually, I want to see if you have any more tips like that here in just a second, but first I do want to take a quick break and tell you about Acuity Scheduling, the sponsor for this week’s episode of The Showrunner. Of all the ad reads I’ve done, I’m a little nervous about this one with Glenn here on the line with us.
But the truth is, you know how challenging the back-and-forth of booking appointments, meetings, and podcast guests can be. Jonny, when you started Hack the Entrepreneur, did you have scheduling software or were you going back and forth via email trying to schedule, what was it, three interviews a week?
Jonny Nastor: Yeah, to schedule three a week, and I didn’t have it for the first, I’m going to say, five. Then somebody brought it to my attention, and it was life-changing.
Jerod Morris: Yeah, how big of an impact did that make, not having to do the whole, “What time works for you?” thing again, and actually having some easy software that took into account your schedule, the person’s schedule, and made it real easy to book? How much time did that save you?
Jonny Nastor: Not so much that it even just saved me time, but it actually stopped from me just getting ignored. My emails used to just get ignored, and as soon as I added that — like, “Here’s the scheduling link” — I just started booking guests like nothing.
Jerod Morris: Wow, and that’s the thing. Software like Acuity Scheduling makes the entire process of scheduling appointments easy. With Acuity, in particular, it works with your existing Google Office 365, iCloud, or Outlook Calendar. Clients can view your availability and self-book appointments to complete onboarding forms and even submit payment, so you can get back to running your business.
Acuity helps you avoid no-shows with automatic text and email reminders. It’s just simple to use, and they offer phenomenal customer support. Go to AcuityScheduling.com/Showrunner to start booking all of your meetings with zero hassle right now, especially if you’re doing any type of interview show like Jonny is with Hack the Entrepreneur. It can be a lifesaver.
Paid plans start at just $10 a month, but Showrunner listeners can access a free 45-day trial of Acuity Scheduling stress-free schedule management. That’s a month and a half for free just by using AcuityScheduling.com/Showrunner when you sign up. We thank them for their support of The Showrunner.
Glenn, you kind of got into some of the tips for making podcast advertising work, from making sure that offer is good. Anything else? You mentioned it’s an audio medium, so especially companies that may have kind of a peculiar name, making sure that you get that spelling right. What other tips do you have for maybe using custom URLs, any other even just kind of minute small tips that sometimes people overlook?
Why You Must Think of Sponsor Ads as Part of Your Brand Identity
Glenn Rubenstein: Yeah, absolutely. You want to think about this as part of your brand identity as a podcaster. A show like The Showrunner, it’s pretty easy — your product offer code should be ‘showrunner.’ Your URL should be ‘/showrunner.’ But think about what your podcast is. Should it be an abbreviation? Do you want to go just in terms of the letters of the show? Do you want to go with the full name? Do you want to go with the host’s first name? How do you want to identify your podcast or your network, if you have a number of podcasts, so that way you’ve got consistency across the board?
You want to think about that. If you’re doing, let’s say, three ads in one show — for instance, with The Showrunner, you don’t want it to be ‘/showrunner’ for one sponsor, ‘/Jon’ for another, and ‘/Jerod’ for another. You want that consistency. That’s something that definitely podcasters should keep in mind.
Above and beyond that, and this is a big one as well, as a podcaster, you really want to vet your advertisers. If someone comes at you and says, “Hey, we want to give you a bunch of money to say nice things about our product or service, and advertise it to your audience,” most podcasters would think, “Oh my god, this is fantastic. This is great. Of course I love your product. You want to give me money. How am I not … I love you as a person.”
The thing you have to think about is, what is the track record of that product or service? If you bring a bad one to your audience, as I mentioned before, your audience isn’t going to trust you after that. If they sign up for something based on your testimonial and they have a bad experience, they’re not going to sign up for the next thing that you advertise.
Even taking it a step further, if it’s something that’s brand new — Acuity, they’ve been around for years –but let’s say that it’s a product or service that is only a couple months old. Your audience is probably going to Google that product or service before they go there, even with your recommendation, just to sort of see, “Hey, what do the other reviews say?”
If those reviews are bad, that’s not going to convert in a signup. You could give it the most glowing, praising, endorsement testimonial ever, but if they see red flags when they Google the company name … I mentioned this in the book. If the words ‘rip off’ are there when you Google that company, it’s not going to convert, man. No one’s going to sign up for that, or if there’s something deceptive about their marketing.
Famously, there are companies that advertise on podcasts specifically that want to sell you stuff for Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or Father’s Day. The prices that they quote sound great, and when you get to the end to check out, you see that the shipping is actually more than the flowers, strawberries, or whatever it is you’re ordering from them. That’s not going to convert, either.
So it’s important to test drive anything that you’re going to be advertising. Don’t just test drive in terms of the comp account that they give you or the free product that they give you. Go on the website. Sign up yourself. See how the experience is. Is this something you’re comfortable to tapping your audience into?
Jonny Nastor: Why are we, though, as showrunners, sort of pigeon-holed as, “It’s us and our endorsement.” Even though it very clearly has to be defined as a sponsorship, but a radio host who has just ad spots put into it, TV shows — like the worst Axe body spray thing can be put on, or people who create on YouTube, just whatever terrible ad gets run before them — you don’t relate that to the show. That’s just part of paying for the medium. Why do we not get that benefit?
Why Radio, TV, and YouTube Ads Are Different
Glenn Rubenstein: Well, because here’s the huge benefit that you’re getting instead, which is that podcast ads on a CPM basis — CPM, Latin mille, cost per thousand basis — you’re getting a much higher CPM than someone would pay to advertise on TV, radio, or even one of those YouTube pre-roll ads. The great news is that you’re not a large network.
Most cases, as a podcaster, you’re doing this yourself. Maybe you’re working with a broker like me. Maybe you’re working with a network that’s taking a small percentage of this, but you’re getting the vast majority of that much higher CPM.
That’s why it’s so important that you, as a podcaster, believe in what you’re selling, believe in who you’re representing, and do that extra layer of due diligence. I can tell you that, unless you had a huge podcast — we’re talking something in the hundreds of thousands or the millions of listeners per episode — it wouldn’t be as attractive as at TV, radio, or those YouTube pre-roll levels. The difference we’re talking about, just so people understand, in terms of radio, we’re talking about CPMs that are like under a dollar or in the dollar amount.
In terms of TV, when it all falls out, we’re talking about something roughly the same. In terms as those YouTube pre-roll ads, we’re talking about something that’s in, again, the low dollars. I think $4 was the last number that I heard mentioned. With podcasts, you should be able to command anywhere from $10 … there’s some podcasts that command as high as $100 CPM. So yeah, there’s a little bit more work and responsibility on your end — but also a lot more money to be had, given the size of the audience.
I think that’s where just a lot of podcasters are seeing huge opportunity right now. If they have an engaged following of how to convert their podcast into, if not a sole income, to convert it into a very nice side channel of income.
Jerod Morris: Yeah. Well, and I’m glad you made that point, Jonny. I’m glad that you asked that question. We talk all the time about how the reason why podcasting is so great, why everyone should do it, is because of the connection that you create with your audience. That’s what, as you said, advertisers are trying to tap into. That means that podcasters are going to be held to a little bit of a higher standard.
You can’t just take the good part of connection, but then dismiss it just because you’re going to be making money on this ad. It’s all got to be there for the audience, so I think that’s why we need to treat that with the extra responsibility that truly is there. Glad you asked that question, Jonny.
Jonny Nastor: Glenn, lots of people that are part of The Showrunner community are really just getting started with, they have their first show, and they don’t have a ton of downloads, therefore CPM. Jerod and I have talked a lot about treating your first sponsor or sponsors like partners, so like I did with Hack the Entrepreneur and FreshBooks. They were like my sole sponsor for a long time. I gave them a package deal, focusing less on the CPM because that was growing, but it was still quite small.
How would you, Glenn, as someone who’s negotiated sponsorship deals for both large and small and new and well-seasoned shows, what other metrics can a showrunner sell a sponsorship package on?
How to Package and Present Your Show to Maximize Advertising Revenue
Glenn Rubenstein: Well, you can include your social media. You can include your email list, obviously. You can even talk about … again, you kind of walk a fine line with this, and I really only recommend this if it’s a perfect fit. You can’t do this for anyone, but you could do a sponsored content episode. Advertisers seem to love those. A lot of more editorial-leaning outlets don’t want to go there. I completely understand and respect that, but if you see that there’s a really good fit. I’m just saying this completely off the top my head.
For instance, if there were a company that made audio software — and they did a mastering suite, and it was awesome for mastering podcasts — I could see where The Showrunner, if they wanted to sponsor it, it might not just be worth one sponsorship mention. But there might be an opportunity there to like, “Hey, let’s talk to an engineer from that company. Let’s talk about the importance of great sound quality and all these ways that our product or service makes this possible.” That’s just one example how you could do a sponsored content episode.
But I think what really is good — because right now it’s so competitive in the marketplace — if you have a smaller podcast, what you’re going to want to be looking for is what’s a success story. This is where it’s sort of a chicken or egg scenario in terms of what comes first. There are right now out there a lot of affiliate marketing opportunities where you can find someone that they might not give you money up front, but they will pay you per signup, or they’ll pay you based on the leads or business you generate for them. You could take something like that and do it as sort of a test.
Again, in that case, by the way, that is a true partnership because you’re only getting paid based on your success, but then you could take that story, go to other advertisers, and get them to pay you money up front based on how well you performed with that affiliate deal. I think that those success stories are going to become more and more important as this medium gets more crowded with more podcasters competing for those ad dollars.
Jonny Nastor: Yeah, I like that, the idea of the affiliate filling in for the full sponsor. Would you still suggest — like somebody who’s starting out and maybe doesn’t have sponsorship but wants to work into it — starting and putting in their pre-roll, mid-roll, as affiliates but calling them sponsorships or … ?
How to Creatively Use Affiliate Ads Where You Want to Later Have Sponsor Ads
Glenn Rubenstein: Yeah, because you have a vested business interest. You should disclose that.
Jonny Nastor: Yeah, so even if you don’t have actual sponsors, then you can just fill those with your affiliate spots. Then you have some metrics to start leading into the conversation of sponsorship with people because you can say how those have already worked out for you.
Glenn Rubenstein: Absolutely. And other things you could do … we know this, a lot of people involved in podcasts also have their side projects, which are sort of their day-job businesses. So if you’re doing a course that you’re selling, if you’re doing a book that you’re selling, even if you’re launching a campaign for like a T-shirt, something that’s tied into the podcast, and you’re promoting that through the podcast, those metrics also count.
Maybe you do a unique URL or unique offer code. That way, you’re kind of cobbling together this case study. Granted, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. But if you go to an advertiser and you want to say that, “Hey, we did a limited edition T-shirt on our show. We sold 500 of them within the first day that we put it on sale,” to me what that represents is you’re really proving how engaged your audience is.
Even though you were doing that for people to support the show, if you can get 500 people, hell, if you can get 100 people in a day to spend $20 on the T-shirt, I’m going to want to test a couple ads out on your podcast as a result of that. I’m going to be mentioning you to sponsors. To me, that’s engagement, and that proof of engagement absolutely is something that sponsors love.
Jonny Nastor: I love it. It’s great. This has been a lot of fun, Glenn. I thank you so much for sharing with Jerod and I and also the listener, but there’s this book you recently wrote, on Amazon, and I would love it if you could just specifically tell the listener about it.
Glenn’s Book on Podcast Advertising
Glenn Rubenstein: Yeah, so I wrote this book. It’s called Podcast Advertising Works: How to Turn Engaged Audiences into Loyal Customers. I wrote this book because I spent a lot of my time educating potential advertisers about podcasts and podcast advertising. You hear for years, “Oh, hey, you should write a book,” and after a while, you start to believe it, right? So I put this together.
I spent probably way too much time on it, but it’s only 70 pages. It’s a quick read, but what it will do is give you a history of podcasts, a history of podcast advertising, where the medium is at now, all the different terminology, and all the different styles of ads — talking, again, about why the ads work, how the ads work, why sometimes ads don’t work, and what you can do to make sure podcast ad campaigns are successful.
What’s cool about this book now, for The Showrunner audience, just to let you know, it is geared more towards advertisers and marketers that are looking at this medium, but I’ve had many people tell me that work in this business that anyone can read this book and know how to sell podcast ads.
So if you’re a podcaster out there and you want to know how to sell your podcast, I recommend picking up a copy of this book. Again, it’s on Amazon. All you do, read this, and you’ll put into context of why the medium works. You can start thinking about how to shape your story of how your podcast can be effective in this medium.
Jonny Nastor: Exactly. I had the pleasure of reading it over the weekend, and it’s a great book. Podcast Advertising Works: How to Turn Engaged Audiences into Loyal Customers by Mr. Glenn Rubenstein.
Glenn, thanks again so much for sharing with us. The book is, like you say, for advertisers, but who wants to go sit down at a sales table and try and make the pitch without knowing how the other person’s thinking and what it is they’re looking for in a sponsorship deal? That’s our job as showrunners — to bring that other side of it to the table. Definitely give the book a read. It’s a quick read, and there’s a lot of information there.
Glenn Rubenstein: Awesome. Thanks for having me, and people can find me and my agency, Adopter Media, online at Adopter.Media.
Jonny Nastor: I love it, and go to Showrunner.FM. Join The Showrunner email list. Get on our weekly newsletter, which includes announcements of the free public events that Jerod and I are going to be starting back up again, and also each week’s episode will be right there. Showrunner.FM