On May 31, 2022, Acast unveiled the launch of a new feature. The world’s largest independent podcast platform, best known for hosting WTF with Marc Maron and Anna Faris is Unqualified, now offers conversational targeting to allow advertisers to broadcast their advertising campaigns at the best time, within a podcast episode.
Conversational targeting: a new opportunity for advertisers
Acast presents conversational targeting as a small revolution for advertisers. It is thanks to an advanced technology of “speech-to-text”combined with artificial intelligence and natural language processing that the host is capable of analyze the topics of the podcasts present in its catalog. This analysis then makes it possible to classify the episodes according to the IAB (v2) classification. With this new feature, advertisers’ advertising campaigns are automatically integrated into the episodes most relevant to the brand’s message. To fully understand the interest of such a solution, it is necessary to analyze the solutions offered by the market.
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Today, most platforms only offer targeting by theme or by podcast. However, as each episode is classified in the same way, the existing tools do not make the difference according to the subject covered in each of the contents. This new feature allows us to go even further by refining the relevance in the distribution of advertisements. According to Acast, “advertisers can dramatically expand their reach and will be able to appear on podcasts spanning categories as diverse as sports, beauty or politics at the same time, with episode topics aligned with their campaign”.
A way to better capture the attention of podcast listeners
In its press release, Acast takes a very telling example: “a meal delivery service will now be able to target diverse and varied episodes, when podcasters are discussing what they eat or their love for cooking, even if it is a podcast from a any other kind”. Smart targeting which could encourage new advertisers to launch in podcast advertising. Such a feature is undoubtedly a way for brands to better capture the attention of listeners. Acast is also working on adding new features including the ability to target by keywords or trends.
At first, this feature is only available for Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish podcasts. In a second time, the technology will be extended to Swedish and Norwegian podcasts. According to Chris Wistow, VP of Advertising Product at Acast “It’s our responsibility, both to our podcasters and to their communities, to help the advertisers we work with engage in the most relevant conversations, and conversational targeting allows us to do that”.