The pre-roll ad may soon be placed on the endangered list according to an analysis of news podcasts analyzed by the podcast advertising technology company Magellan AI. It found most news series are opting to jump right into content rather than risk losing listeners with an ad upfront.
“In our analysis of 10 popular news shows, pre-roll ads were clearly the minority,” says Magellan in a blog post detailing its findings. It found that half of the news podcasts it reviewed typically run two ad breaks, half of them run three ad breaks.
The review also found that the news podcasts with two ad spots typically had 1.3 ads in the first break with 1.1 ads in the second. For those shows with three breaks, the split showed slightly more ads in the middle break than in the first or third breaks.
“It’s clear that most ad breaks are only playing one advertiser,” says Magellan. It notes an Edison Research survey has raised yellow flags for podcasters that too many ads jammed into a break could be a turn-off for the biggest fans of the medium.
Magellan AI says it detected that every podcast on its list used dynamic ad insertion. There was also a mix of live-reads and pre-recorded ads.
Magellan’s analysis included The Daily (NYT), Up First (NPR),The NPR Politics Podcast (NPR), Today, Explained (Vox), Post Reports (Washington Post), What A Day (Crooked Media), On Point (NPR), Start Here (ABC Audio), The Gist (Slate) and The Intelligence (Economist).
See some specific show breakouts HERE.