Facts don’t care about your feelings, and Ben Shapiro says an honest approach to the content is why he believes The Ben Shapiro Show is among the top-ranked podcasts, according to Podtrac. “I like to be upfront about my bias. I’m politically conservative,” he said at the IAB Podcast Upfront last week. “Because I obviously believe in a certain set of viewpoints, that means that my audience can actually trust me more to tell them the truth, not less. They don’t have to agree with me. But more importantly, they know that I’m not lying to them.”
That, Shapiro told the crowd of marketers and ad agencies, is not only why he believes brands should embrace advertising on The Daily Wire, but the growing crowd of conservative podcasts overall.
One advertiser that has been a longtime Daily Wire client is the insurance comparison service PolicyGenius. It started buying the network seven years ago and has increased its budget each year.
“It’s the most important space for us,” said VP Sky Opila, adding the first podcast they ever bought was Shapiro’s podcast as well as another show on the other side of the political spectrum. “We don’t pick sides, anywhere. We’re across all political views and spectrums. Because for us, the news consumer is the American consumer,” he said. “We have a product that is important to everybody — we all have loved ones that we care about.”
The Interactive Advertising Bureau reported last week that 12% of podcast ad revenue went to News podcasts in 2023, putting the genre behind only Comedy (17%) and Sports (13%). Yet current affairs can be a difficult sell. The New York Times said last week that its first-quarter podcast ad sales were down from a year ago, as CEO Meredith Kopit Leviensaid some marketers are avoiding news content.
But Opila said PolicyGenius has found that News podcast listeners are exactly what they need.
“They’re the type of people who come to us right away and want to start asking questions about life insurance, they want to know more, and they want to become very informed,” he said. That said, Opila said their embrace of podcasting is not happenstance. It goes through the same rigors of all other digital ad buys, using data to guide the investment. “That’s what’s enabled us to scale in the space,” he said. “It’s not just news and political work. We know what types of news and political shows work — those have been some of our biggest keys to success in general.”
Shapiro — who is said to have read more than 10,000 ads for clients since the company launched — also thinks the flexibility PolicyGenius has given him to play with the ad copy is also a factor, as he has brought more humor and creativity into the host-read ads. “The key is to get people listening,” he said.
Daily Wire has had its share of advertiser controversy, however. Harry’s Razors pulled its ads after some users complained on social media.
Shapiro said the best advice for advertisers looking to run ads in political podcasts is to remember that “the internet is not real life” and that social media often becomes a feedback loop.
“I understand why companies, including our own, use a lot of these social media as feedback loops to test the temperature of an audience on what was going on. But it’s not real,” Shapiro said. “Twitter is a place filled with bots and foolish people, and there is no reason why you should be led around by the nose. That’s not your audience, it actually is not. And that’s true in virtually all social media. Your audience are the people who are buying your product. If you see a decline in sales, that’s a reason to cut off advertising. Just because some schmuck calls your office three times from a phone number that you don’t recognize is probably not a great reason to start rethinking your entire advertising strategy.”
Good For Business And America
When The Daily Wire launched in 2015, Shapiro and cofounder Jeremy Boreing believed there was an untapped market for conservative content. They soon had an audience, but it was not always easy to bring marketers onboard.
“Let’s face it, a lot of advertisers were afraid to put their money behind views that they consider to be controversial, even if those views are held by roughly about half the country,” Shapiro said. But many of the advertisers that took a chance on their podcasts are still advertising with Daily Wire nearly a decade later, with some crediting it for building their businesses.
Christine Hoffman, Senior of Ad Revenue at The Daily Wire, said in the past year they have worked with Veritonic for brand lift studies that have shown their podcasts are able to drive web traffic at a rate ten-times the industry average. She said it is why brands like PolicyGenius, ExpressVPN, and Helix Mattresses have been key advertisers on their shows for the past eight years.
“On a downloads per podcast basis, we absolutely lead the way in terms of engagement,” Hoffman said. She said Daily Wire has more than 70 million downloads per month, and more than one million subscribers, with a third of their listeners earning more than $100,000 a year.
“As we navigate this election year, you might not always side with what I say or what The Daily Wire stands for. And that’s okay,” Shapiro told ad buyers. “I remain bullish the podcast industry will continue to be a platform for all viewpoints. In order for that to remain the case, I hope that you all consider sponsoring all the sides, not just the ones that you personally agree with, because there are audiences all across the political spectrum. It’s good for your business, and it’s very good for the country.”
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