Spotify and global ad agency Omnicom Media Group, announced a deal in which Omnicom will spend $20 million on podcast ads in the second half of 2020.
James Cridland analyses the deal:
$20m sounds like a lot of money for the next six months, but it’s a drop in the ocean when compared to Omnicom’s $35bn annual spend. Indeed, US radio makes around $20bn from advertising every year.
However, this represents a shift for Omnicom, who previously bought podcasts as individual shows. Now, they’re purchasing more in bulk, which lowers their administrative costs as well as gaining more analytics from Spotify’s player.
Spotify’s podcasts are streamed, not downloaded, which offers considerable benefits to advertisers.
Creative could include different messages based on time (“Come into McDonalds for breakfast!”), accurate location (“There are five branches here in downtown!”), or even weather (“Cool off with an iced coffee caramel frappe sugar-coma-ccino!”).
Spotify also knows, using the music I listen to or my Facebook connection, how old I am: and offers significant targeting unavailable on other podcast platforms.
Spotify tells us: “The deal also includes the development of joint research and best practices across targeting, reporting, and measurement capabilities, and custom audio solutions produced by Spotify’s in-house Creative Solutions team.”
It’s worth highlighting this portion of their announcement: this is a very clear sign that Spotify wants to own the podcast advertising market.
With that estimated to hit $1bn soon, it could make the cost of Joe Rogan seem small in comparison.
The Omnicom/Spotify deal comes as Sirius XM moves closer to acquiring podcasting network Stitcher for about $300 million, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
About The Author
James Cridland, the radio futurologist, is a conference speaker, writer and consultant. He runs the media information website media.info and helps organise the yearly Next Radio conference.
He also publishes podnews.net, a daily briefing on podcasting and on-demand, and writes a weekly international radio trends newsletter, at james.crid.land.
Subscribe to the radioinfo daily flash briefing podcast on these platforms: Acast, Apple iTunes Podcasts, Podtail, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, or wherever you get your podcasts.
