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Podcast To Cart
Podcast advertising is plagued by measurement challenges. For example, there’s nothing to click or optimize.
But marketers still like the channel for its intimacy and because podcasts are starting to pop in attribution reports.
Ecommerce retailer Uncommon Goods spent $2.8 million on podcast ads since August 2021 (with the holidays representing about half the total).
Podcasts help “drive high order values compared with other channels,” Christina Brinkman, a senior marketing analyst at Uncommon Goods, tells Marketing Brew.
Podcasting’s main strength is still the authenticity and direct communication of a host-read ad. Problem is, host-read ads don’t scale well programmatically.
Uncommon Goods previously used the same pixel-based attribution for podcasts as it did for other digital channels, but the results were unreliable. To help with attribution, many advertisers will offer special discounts for listeners, but people often don’t remember to use those promos.
Often, conversions that should be attributed to podcasts are credited to paid or organic search.
But podcasting does show up in attribution reporting when a brand incorporates post-purchase surveys. People tend to cite the host-read podcast ad in particular as the reason they purchased or why they know the brand.
Pay Up, Eh
New rules that are being promoted by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could force large consumer tech platforms – Google, Meta, Netflix and TikTok, notably – to pay a baseline minimum to Canadian artists and surface Canadian talent more consistently for users inside the country.
For a company like Google, that could cost roughly $750 million per year (or around $1 billion Canadian dollars), and Google isn’t having it.
The proposed law “would require YouTube to manipulate our systems and surface content according to the government’s priorities, rather than the interests of Canadian users and creators,” YouTube product chief Neal Mohan told The Wall Street Journal while in Canada to discuss the legislation.
This battle is reminiscent of Meta’s power play against the Australian government, which passed a law requiring digital giants to pay publishers for their news content. In response, Meta stopped surfacing domestic news in the country. Meta also recently threatened to block Canadian news content in reaction to similar (and separate) legislation.
Big Tech is working hard to stifle these laws before they reach a critical mass and other governments get inspired.
“I’m keen to see what the future developments in Canada will be,” Claudia Roth, Germany’s minister of state for culture, tells the Journal. “I believe that we can learn a lot from that.”
Custom Term, Not Customer
Tune in to enough retailer earnings reports and you’ll start to notice an amusing trend of companies using patronizing terms to refer to their customers as a way to reframe the relationship from merely transactional to something more intimate.
Dick’s Sporting Goods, for instance, calls its customers “athletes,” The New York Times reports. (For what it’s worth, Nike store employees are also internally called “athletes.”)
Some retailers, including Target and Lululemon, opt for “guests,” while Walmart defaults to a more exclusive vibe with “members.” (It does own Sam’s Club, after all.)
Sephora emphasizes the personal service aspect of store visits by referring to customers as “clients.” Sometimes the beauty retailer goes for “community,” another popular new option.
“It’s interesting that such companies seem increasingly embarrassed at the crude economic transaction – money in return for goods or services – that underpins their business,” Steven Poole, an expert on workplace jargon, tells the Times.
The purpose of all this euphemistic customer terminology, according to Poole, is “to exploit our emotions by pretending we are in some other kind of relationship with them.”
But Wait, There’s More!
Pinterest shuts down its paid creator program. [Insider]
Discord now has a subscription rev share option for creators. [The Verge]
Instagram is over. [The Atlantic]
Kids don’t want cash anymore – they want ‘Robux’ – and brands are taking note. [WSJ]
You’re Hired!
Nexstar Media names Michael Strober as chief revenue officer. [release]
