As companies like Spotify and SiriusXM make high-dollar deals for the highest-profile podcasts, research from Sounds Profitable and Digiday is shedding light on the evolving landscape of podcast advertising, especially with the rise of generative artificial intelligence.
Digiday referenced the latest earnings call from iHeartMedia where CEO Bob Pittman called podcasts the company’s “growth engine,” discussing how their sales teams were now experimenting with AI tools and targeting specific audiences by way of dynamic ad insertion. Acast also added a data-driven self-serve ad platform in 2023.
Despite the push towards making innovative podcast advertising methods available and easy to understand, Digiday and Sounds Profitable found that 52% of brands and agencies have yet to explore podcast advertising. This hesitance is attributed to the current lack of sophisticated ad campaign implementation tools, such as programmatic buying and ad targeting.
In the streaming ad market, competition is expected to drive innovation. Ad buyers emphasize the need for streaming platforms to offer more creative ad formats while ensuring viewer experience isn’t compromised by repetitive or overwhelming ad loads.
