NerdBrand Podcast
The NerdBrand Podcast is at the intersection of nerd culture, branding, and advertising. Nerd culture is no longer an isolated subculture; it’s THE culture of the day and makes its way into our daily lives through the entertainment we seek and the technology we rely upon. Listen as we discuss our views on visual design, branding, and advertising for movies, comics and novels, video games, technology, and other nerdy passions.
NerdBrand Podcast
Podcast Advertising for 2024
Can you imagine cracking the code of podcast advertising and maximizing listener engagement? On this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast, we confront the digital labyrinth of podcast analytics, dissecting how varied listener habits complicate tracking. From passive listening to fragmented episode consumption, we navigate the challenging terrain of understanding podcast audience behavior. Join us as we unravel the mysteries of podcast data, contrasting it with more transparent platforms like YouTube, and explore how these insights can shape effective advertising strategies.
We also bring you an exciting roundup of the top 10 podcasts as of August 7, juxtaposed with the hottest picks from late 2023. From the chilling narratives of "Rotten Mango" to the hilarious banter in "SmartLess" with Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett, we highlight what makes these shows resonate with diverse audiences. Dive deep into the storytelling of "The Daily" by The New York Times and the polarizing perspectives of "The Ben Shapiro Show." Plus, we spotlight the ever-popular Joe Rogan Experience and the trendsetting true crime genres that captivate millions. Tune in for a comprehensive look at the trends shaping the podcasting world and how advertisers can leverage these insights for maximum impact.
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NerdBrand is a national branding and advertising agency based in Louisville, KY.
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All right, welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast. We're talking about podcast advertising. I have a lot of people that are. It's actually kind of funny because I've had somebody come up to me recently about this and we don't have a show that people may think you may listen to our show, but people listen to shows differently. They do passive listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's more in the background kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's in the background. Or they may listen to like five minutes then come back later if they're doing chores or whatever. Or they may listen if they're walking their dog, they'll listen through, or they'll listen through if they're commuting. But podcast advertising, you know, tracking listens and duration of listens is a very tricky, difficult thing. Yeah, I mean, there's really nothing out there that says definitively like YouTube, when you're on YouTube, you know all those numbers Right, because people are sitting staring at the screen.
Speaker 2:You know they're looking at it, they're visually watching it, they're putting energy into it. It's easier to track that than because podcasts listening, I mean you can always download the episodes.
Speaker 1:You don't listen to them till a year from now yeah, and you know, when you look at youtube and you're watching a video and you scrub through it, you can kind of see the wave where where the most popular views are. They kind of put that in there and and you know, with podcasting that depends on platform like spotify is not going to share data with apple.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you have to go to apple, then you have to go to spotify, then you have to go to here and some platforms will aggregate both, but it's still not very accurate yeah so yeah, but uh, let's talk about some numbers, um, and so you've got um on yours.
Speaker 2:Uh, pulled up, let and get back to my uh, should we start at the bottom and work away?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's do the top 10. And uh, these are the top 10 podcasts. Now Jacob's doing the um, the latest and greatest um as of um August. What? What is today?
Speaker 2:Seven August yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, recording at 7. So, as of this day, you're doing from 10 to 1. I'm going to do the top 10, but my numbers are coming from the last quarter of 2023, so we can kind of see what's changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what's number 10? So number 10, rotten Mango Hot mess? I've never heard of this. It's Stephanie, so I'm assuming it's S-O-O and Ramble.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:One name Rotten, but still little sweet.
Speaker 1:Rotten Mango is a true crime plus all things spooky podcast. How many true crime podcasts do you think we're going to come across on this thing?
Speaker 2:Well, considering my 11, uh is called to kill Tony. Yeah, that's squad TV. So that's my 11. So, uh, yeah, this is a good start for that.
Speaker 1:This is, yeah, we can tell this is going some. So, um, mine is called, uh, so mine is called Smart Less, and I got to look this up. The Smart Less podcast is with Jason Bateman, sean Hayes and Will Arnett and it connects and unites people from all walks of life and this is coming from their Apple channel, walks of Life. Learn about shared experiences through thoughtful dialogue and organic hilarity. Basically, a better structured and organized version of the NerdBrand podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds, but it's a comedy talk. Well, because it's a rest of development. So you got your Will Arnett and Jason Bateman, which I think they're both great actors. I have a lot of respect for them, so I can see that one actually. I'm actually kind of like yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that was number 10. And they were down from number six in the third quarter of last year, but in the fourth quarter they were number 10.
Speaker 2:Mine's not showing specific numbers besides just the ranking. That's fine. So my number nine is the Daily the new york times. Yeah, this is what news should sound like the biggest stories of our time, told by the best journalists in the world yeah, um, I've never listened to anything from the new york times or any other news outlet yeah, I never lived in new y, so never really cared about their time.
Speaker 1:That's what you did. There Got to go. All right, yeah, moving on before everybody's like all right, here we go. My number nine is the Ben Shapiro show. We all know who Ben Shapiro is because you know facts, don't care about your feelings. Which is the most hilarious quote come from his mouth. So yeah, yeah, yeah, he was number nine on mine. I think we know his is a political commentary, you know type show. So I think I'm gonna have to really dive into like what that one's about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a comedian show. Uh, pretty self-explanatory yeah yeah, depending on your political affiliation, I suppose yeah, yeah, that is true, yeah, uh, unless there's something that wants to get you riled up and you're against him.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you like to have that like free advice.
Speaker 2:If it's designed to get, if it gets you riled up, it's designed that way yes, exactly yes, it's, uh, it's trying to draw the caring out, caring out of you yeah, yeah, or the caring uh see, yeah, I know that's I should I'll stick to the. Where's the drum roll?
Speaker 1:I'll stick to the facilitating these things. Yeah, I'm not doing them. I'm not doing the sound effects. You know we have a free position open on the NerdBrand podcast. If you want to sit in front of the board and play with sound effects and run the sound, let us know. Happy to interview and talk with you. The pay is great. It is nothing, uh, and the benefits are uh.
Speaker 2:Jacob's dad jokes for an hour uh, yeah, I mean, uh don't, you don't have to pay taxes on it, you know.
Speaker 1:So that's true, yeah, I had to report that to the irs. I mean, what do you file that under? Yeah, it's you know.
Speaker 2:All right, all right my number eight is the weekly show with Jon Stewart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like Jon Stewart. Obviously this is a comedy show because it's Jon Stewart. These celebrity ones are pretty easy to pinpoint. Yeah, he does political commentary as well, but it's more of a parody type. But it kind of depends on the topic.
Speaker 2:But I can see why this and the daily and stuff like that are going to be higher up because of what year it is yeah, yeah, and stuff like that are going to be higher up because of what year it is. Yeah, yeah, because mine it's going to kind of really push more of that compared to more fun stuff or going on. Football hasn't fully started yet, so I'd imagine those podcasts aren't coming out yet until the preseason fully kicks off here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mine is in that spot as of into Q4. Last year was this past weekend with Theo Vaughn. It's the synopsis of this show. I love it because it basically is what happened this past weekend and sometimes what happened on other days.
Speaker 2:Way to be so like specific and not specific, yeah.
Speaker 1:As opposed to the, as opposed to the nerd brand podcast, which ours is. Nerd culture is no longer an isolated subculture. It's the culture of the day and makes its way into our daily lives through the entertainment we seek and the technology we rely upon. Listen as we discuss our views on visual design, branding and advertising for movies, comics and novels, and video games, technology and other nerdy passions uh podcast. Uh is a little bit of a nerdy passion yeah, and then this guy boils his down to like just two sentences things words, yeah, stuff.
Speaker 2:There you go. We're nerds, we keep it simple things words, stuff yeah got me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they were always like. Why are they always like so short and abrasive it's? We're not being that way, we just don't know how else to be. Yeah, yeah, what's next?
Speaker 2:on number seven Number seven Hysterical Wondery Wonder Wandering Pineapple Street Studios. Huh, yeah I don't know, hysterical investigates a mysterious illness that spreads among a group of high school girls in upstate New York. Okay, so this is like a show. It's like a story. Yeah, it's like they're reading a story. I feel like it's Dungeons and Dragons, but you're just listening to the playthrough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could see that. That would make sense. It's like you're just listening, so it's like watching. Like a twitch streamer play blue, like hey, I just want to watch these people play dnd. What they're gonna do, what are they doing?
Speaker 1:yeah, you know, it's the next uh yeah, at the end of q4 last year, uh, occupying that spot was, uh, this american life, which is a radio program, and uh, they choose a theme each week and it's life, true stories that unfold. They say that unfold like little movies for radio. So that was what was number seven last year and in Q3 they were fourth. So they went from fourth to seventh on the list. Ooh, yeah, I'll kick this one off. New Now, at the end of Q4, this is not.
Speaker 1:This shouldn't be a surprise if any of you are sports fans or Taylor Swift fans. Number six was New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelsey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they've been doing actually more podcasts. I saw that there is there even talking about the new kickoff for football and everything like that. So it's just the two brothers and they're just two brothers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but what's number six as?
Speaker 2:of this year. Number six is you probably think this story's about you by a large media R-L-A-R-J media. Yeah, r-l-a-r-j media. Yeah, you probably think this story is about you as an exploration of love, betrayal and far-reaching consequences of one man's deceit, told through the eyes of the woman whose lives were irrevocably changed by yeah, I think that's uh another um, that sounds like a uh think that's uh.
Speaker 2:Another, um, that sounds like a uh, very, uh grisham novel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does. That's what that. That's what that reminds me of right there. Yeah, now, what's number five?
Speaker 1:number five pod save america yep crooked media yeah, these guys, uh, these folks I've heard of them before but I've never listened to them um but yeah, it's politics um, by former obama aide, um. And then yeah, it's got john favreau, john lovett and pfeiffer tommy fetter. Uh, yeah, so basically news.
Speaker 2:So that's your number five as well.
Speaker 1:No, actually funny enough. Clinky dink is mine is Dateline NBC number five in the fourth quarter. It was the fourth quarter, so it's almost like it went from mainstream to non-mainstream, I guess in a matter of just months Wow. Which by the way, if you're paying for advertising, you can see how fast this changes, and so it's like how do you, what would be the strategy to advertise on a podcast unless you know, again, know your audience?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if the audience is going to listen to it, then yeah, they're going to know the ones they're going to want. Yeah, that's perfectly fine.
Speaker 1:That's who you want to hit yeah, if you're gonna throw spaghetti on the wall, well, this is. You know, this changes a lot. You can.
Speaker 2:You're gonna have like a roller coaster of metrics right, yeah, it's like yeah, you just got to be smart about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, figure out what's gonna make more sense speaking of smart, number four last year was stuff you should know.
Speaker 2:Oh well, there we go, uh you know you just I'm a little bit behind on that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, lsd, el Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered. That's under genre of society and culture. Wow, sounds interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the, that's society under genre of society and culture. Hmm, wow, sounds interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting, what was?
Speaker 2:number four this year for me it's uh. Number four is the LOL podcast LOL by Cash Maverick, kate Harper Guessing comedy. It doesn't even have a description, it just says new episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. Become a VIP subscriber. Oh, so I don't even know what that is about.
Speaker 1:All right, well, I'm not Googling it. I got enough to Google already on my hands.
Speaker 2:here it looks like it's probably just like little bits. It's probably commentary. Yeah, Commentary Just one liners. Well, number three. What's number three? Number three oh Mary, the Tucker Carlson show. Okay, Tucker Carlson network. If you need to know who that is and what kind of show that is going to be, then you were under a rock well, if you don't know, then you don't want to watch it, because you're not appealing to his audience at all yeah, yeah, um, yeah, everyone who knows him, watches him religiously yeah, my dad used to.
Speaker 1:Uh, number three last year was the daily and the the Daily's another New York Times podcast. So it's kind of funny how some of these just kind of laterally move.
Speaker 2:You know political ones for another one Mine's showing that the Tucker Carlson was actually just dropped down to three, so it was the top one or two podcasts recently, at least on Spotify. So maybe Spotify leaned more right.
Speaker 1:Um, that's always a question. That could be true or not, I don't know. We don't have Apple um top 10 in front of us, but number two last quarter was crime junkie, crime junkie, yeah. So yeah, another true crime one.
Speaker 2:I think Um, yeah, got another true crime, one, I think um, yeah, all right, so this one is just funny. Um, it's called call her daddy by alex cooper, the most listened to podcast by women. Alex cooper's call her daddy has been creating conversation since 2018. Cooper cuts through the yes with topics and guests asking burning questions you want answers to okay, sorry for that non-interested shrug of a comment I made there, but um okay, yeah, I mean, it's the number two, so you can't really say they're, they're not.
Speaker 2:No, I think and it's showing that it just jumped up to rank two recently so, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So they must do this daily, obviously, instead of like a month, month so, or quarter, quarterly I'm minus quarterly mine just have a little green.
Speaker 1:Yeah, red arrows well, obviously number one for both of us is joe rogan. Yep, and we all know joe rogan, everything from beekeepers to aliens, to who knows what. Um, so he's always had number one. Four million, something I don't remember. Either spotify gave him four million for it, or and then he took it back. Or four million listeners a week, I mean it's pretty wild. And uh, yeah, so the expectations of advertising on there. There was a local business, uh, clayton and croon was actually on their show. I don't know if they had an advertisement, but I do know that he has their products in his studios, uh, which is interesting yeah, they're a leather shop here in louisville yeah so good for them.
Speaker 2:It's actually some good stuff. Uh, emily actually got uh some glasses by them that had her initials on it. Really nice Whiskey glasses.
Speaker 1:Well, overall, the expected budget for 2024 is $4.02 billion in ads. That's pretty large. By 2027, that's going to go up another billion.
Speaker 2:So ads for podcasts is for?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so your average CPM is going to be anywhere 12 to $20 or $25 CPM. That's for 1,000 listens. That's something that you could have. A 15-second ad with 1,000 listeners or a 30, could cost you upwards of that 20, not $20 number, but that's for a thousand. So you're obviously going to purchase a lot more. So the math that it comes out, I mean you're going to spend as much money as you would on any other ad platform. I mean, honestly, google ads, geofencing that everybody's enamored by or Facebook, I mean they're all. The CPMs are all becoming a very flat range of fee. You know, yeah, and it's a range because it's audience-based, it's not a widget, right. It's a hard thing for others to understand, like, the audience in Tennessee is not Kentucky, just to be very broad with state by state. But then you have community by community, like people in Stthews are not like the people in j town, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, so people in portland aren't gonna watch the same stuff as e-town or buy the same stuff or yeah, and so you know you have.
Speaker 1:You have a drastic. You have to think about that. So that's why you're never going to get like a package or flat rate. People have for the last two years asked me for packages and I'm like we don't, we can't, it's disingenuous to sell it that way because it's not targeted, it's throwing spaghetti on the wall, it's a waste of money and then you're going to be angry in three months because nothing came of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, if you're going to spend essentially up to $4 billion in that year, you want to make sure it's going to the right place, right? You know how much of that 4 billion is actually hitting the market that they want. Yeah, I mean, I it just like we were saying, it just depends on your audience, what you're looking for, and maybe it's a safer bet for some people of not you know, jumping to like a more visual ad and just doing, hey, let's just get an audio ad, throw it in there, something to try out, get see what sticks on that side of it, because you don't even know your audience yeah, on the front end of every episode of our podcast right now is an ad for the nerd festival and you know that's gonna happen in november.
Speaker 1:Um, in november and we are currently still collecting sponsorships and vendors um spaces are going. Uh, this is going very fast, so that's good means we have less to think about and worry about on the day of putting the actual the event on yes um, but uh, yeah, we've got uh.
Speaker 1:You want to contact me or jacob to be a sponsor? Let us know uh. Reach out to jacob and I on nerdbrandagencycom or just hit us up on social media. We're not hard to find. We're not in witness protection or anything, so well they can go to the website yeah, the website is louisvillenerdfestivalcom. Uh, but you know, look, you go down to the sponsor area. You're going to find all kinds of folks have been already signed up for it and be at the hilton garden inn. They're very nice people.
Speaker 2:yeah, very nice very accommodating, yeah, so we will see everybody there november 2nd.
Speaker 1:We'll thank everybody for listening to this episode of the NerdBrand podcast. Be sure you go to your favorite listening tool app or whatever you would like to listen to. Some people listen to on our website. We have higher numbers of people listening to the podcast on our website than we do on any platform, right yeah.
Speaker 1:We have quite a few on Apple. We don't have as many on spotify, so that's nothing. That's yeah. So we didn't do that. It's not our fault, it's not our fault, but it kind of goes to show that our audience, they use ios a lot. So, jacob, whenever you want to catch up to the rest of us, get rid of that android hey, I guess I'm the token joy, I guess all right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whatever he'd be like, I'll be the guy that does it. Yeah, you're not taking a bullet, you're just eating one no, this bullet is good, alright he likes his flip phone. Everyone, alright, we'll see everybody next week on this episode of the NerdBrand podcast. We will be talking about some fun topics, so stay tuned, sign up, register, do all the things, and we'll see you next week.
