Podcasting is a growing part of the audio market and for Nielsen it is an expanding part of its measurement business. Its latest product is aimed at measuring the effectiveness of digitally inserted podcast ads in real time. Nielsen says Podcast Ad Effectiveness+ will track such metrics as brand lift and memorability in a live podcast setting. In doing so, it says PAE+ will allow advertisers to better maximize their strategy for future campaigns and help podcast publishers showcase the strength of their environment.
“As more brands and advertisers tap into the growing podcast space, it’s critical to understand not only the podcast audience, but how podcast ads actually resonate with those audiences, especially in a live environment where listeners are highly engaged,” said Nielsen in the announcement.
The new PAE+ solution will be able to track ads consumed by podcast fans whether they are listening on their phone or desktop. The result will be a detailed campaign analysis that evaluates lift across brand funnel and memorability metrics, including efficiency metrics such as awareness, recall, intent, and brand fit. It will also measure engagement metrics including content uniqueness, hosting, rating, and intent to seek similar content. Nielsen will also be able to put a podcast commercial up against its library of benchmarks that include more than 400 studies spanning more than 350 brands across the automotive, packaged goods, education, financial services, DTC retail, and technology industries.
While such analysis can be helpful to a marketer, Nielsen is billing PAE+ as more of an action-oriented tool that brands will be able to use to test how a podcast ad performs in a live setting and how a real campaign exposes the brand. And with insights available mid-campaign as well as after it wraps up, there will be the potential for a marketer to adjust which shows or podcast platforms they use before the last ad dollar is spent. Nielsen is also pitching PAE+ as a way for brands to measure podcast ad effectiveness across more niche or targeted audiences with reporting that can be cut by metrics as granular as a specific podcast, frequency of exposure, gender and age.
“The growth of podcasting has brought a massive opportunity for advertisers to reach highly engaged, niche audiences. While there’s been strides in capturing metrics like downloads, it’s been a challenge to understand the impact of ads on the platform,” said Nielsen VP Arica McKinnon. “PAE+ equips brands and publishers with the insights they need to make smarter decisions about their podcast marketing strategy to maximize the value delivered and ultimately increase sales opportunities,” she said in a statement.
PAE+ now sits alongside Nielsen’s Podcast Buying Power Service which launched in July 2019. It mines the roughly 30,000-person Scarborough database to connect specific types of listeners with particular advertisers and specific program-level insights.
In addition to results on specific programs, the Podcast Buying Power Service also offers data on hundreds of advertisers and more than 2,000 product categories such as insurance companies, automotive, quick-service restaurants, and home improvement retailers. It also features the same capabilities by genres and listening usage. For buyers, the twice-a-year reports offer a roadmap of the best podcast on which to place their ads.
More than a dozen podcast companies are currently subscribers to the Podcast Buying Power Service. IPG Mediabrands – the parent to media buying agencies like Magna, Universal McCann, and Initiative – became the first Madison Avenue client in January 2020. Nielsen then added Veritone One as a client last August. Two months ago, it added Ad Results Media, Active International, and Oxford Road to the roster.
Download Nielsen’s most recent Podcast Today report HERE.
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