What is Dynamic Ad Insertion (and can Indie Podcasters Use it)?

One of my favorite podcasts, which has hundreds of thousands of downloads. Has been starting every episode like this recently. Let's take a break and thank our sponsor. Those are the first words I hear when I press play. On this particular podcast. And. If you are not aware of certain technologies in the podcast industry, you might be wondering. What are we taking a break from? We just got started. But if you know what dynamic ad insertion is, then you'll know that this is nothing more than a dynamic ad gone awry. And that one podcast I listened to is not the only podcast to suffer from this problem. And I am far from the only podcaster to notice this happen. Marco Arment tweeted recently, cheap, sloppy dynamic ad insertion, or Dai in podcasts. Continue to degrade the experience for listeners. And he points out that they blame the app. He is a podcast app developer. He makes the very popular overcast app, which if my stats are to be believed, most of you are listening on overcast. So thank you for listening. Um, but then Marco goes on to say, But Dai podcasters, what are you doing? You're throwing your audience away. These people will leave forever. And while there is, uh, there are numbers to suggest that that's not necessarily the case. What it does. Show is a lack of attention to detail. Because with the dynamic ad gone awry in the podcast, I listened to. It's one of a few options. Either. They. Oh, are running a mid roll ad at the pre-roll. Or. The advertiser decided they didn't want a mid roll ad. They wanted a pre-roll ad. And the hosts just never rerecorded the ad spot. And either way they're doing both their audience. And their advertiser, a disservice. Because it is distracting. But. Dynamic ad insertion is not all bad. And in today's episode, I want to tell What it is, how it works and how you as an independent podcaster can leverage it. Even if you don't sell ads on your podcast. Here on make money podcasting. Okay. So first let's get into what is dynamic ad insertion or D a I. Dai is a way for you to automatically insert ads or any audio clip into your already produced podcast episodes. Now, sometimes this is referred to, or possibly conflated with programmatic advertising. Brian Barletta has a fantastic piece over on sound profitable about programmatic advertising for podcasters and how to get started. I'll say a few pieces from this, I'm going to differentiate dynamic ad insertion a little bit from straight up programmatic advertising, because I think Dai, you can use for more than just ads, Uh, here's how Brian defines programmatic advertising. Uh, the ability for a publisher to gain full control and access to the operational and functional tools that programmatic advertising brings to the table for their own use. Essentially, they are getting access to a ad server. That sells inventory. And there are very few podcast hosts. He cites a simple cast. And Omni studio. Uh, as the only two hosting platforms where ad server is directly integrated. Uh, and then he goes on to talk about CPM, which we'll talk about in a minute, but I wanted to point this out because dynamic ad insertion, doesn't just have to be. Uh, advertising sold from an ad server. There's a few other ways to use it. And I should say that Dai is the exact opposite of Dai is a baked in ad. Right? And that's, if you look at how I built it, my other podcast. All of those ads are baked in ads. Either. I read them live on the show or more likely they are. Added during the edit, but not in a dynamic way, like they are added. And then the audio is exported and uploaded to my audio host. So if I wanted to change or remove those ads, I'd have to download the episode. Edit the episode. And then re upload it. With dynamic ad insertion. You don't have to worry about any of that You basically upload your audio. With either markers or gaps in the audio file. And then either the ad server you're using or your audio host. We'll automatically grab those spots. And then place audio. Into them. And then send them out to two apps. So you upload your episodes. And then you. Can upload an audio clip or use an audio clip provided by the advertiser you mark, whether that audio clip is a pre-roll post-roll or mid-roll And then your host does the rest and the big benefit of this. Is that if you only want to sell an ad for 30 days, or if you only want to run a promo for 30 days, You can, you can, after 30 days. Delete that. Dynamically inserted ad or replace it with another ad. So that's the big benefit. So. How can you use dynamic ad insertion? I'll probably talk about this again, when I talk about pricing sponsorships, but yes, sponsorship is one. And probably very, or the most common To use dynamic ad insertion. Let's say a brand comes to me and they want to run a promo only in October. For, uh, their black Friday sale say, or maybe November for their black Friday sale. Once the black Friday sale is over. If that's a big tin ad there forever, and it's not going to make any sense. But if they come to me in October and they say, Hey, run this ad for four weeks. How much do you charge for that? Then I can run that campaign. The problem with, with that as an indie podcaster. And a smaller podcaster. Is that I'm likely going to have to just straight up charge CPM, right? So a CPM is cost per milli, which means cost per thousand downloads. So let's say I have a, a podcast episode. Uh, that gets downloaded 5,000 times in the first 30 days. And my CPM is $20. I can charge a hundred dollars. For an ad spot, which sounds great if you're charging $0, but. For my show that gets about that many downloads in 30 days. I charged between 250 and $239. Per ad spot. So. You know, there's there's benefits. And the idea is that. After 30 days I can maybe sell. Another ad spot there, but there's a dramatic drop off after 30 days, at least for my show. Like this definitely doesn't make sense for my show. But it's not just for ads. This is really the point I'm getting at, right. So yes, you can sell ads. You can do limited campaigns. But if you are an indie podcaster, Here's what I recommend. You probably have a product or a service or a mailing list. And you can use dynamic ad insertion. To dynamically change your call to action, depending on what you want to promote. This is an idea I got from Sam Munoz. She was a guest on my, on my, how I built it episode. Uh, on an episode of how I built it. She most of the year on her podcast promotes her newsletter. Or tells people to join the waitlist for her cohort based course. But when the doors open for her cohort-based course, She changes her dynamic ad. To promote that the doors are open. And this happens across every episode. Which is great, right? Because maybe the doors are only open for two weeks. So now. Uh, if you're doing baked a baked in call to action three weeks before you give people a warning. One week before you tell them there's only one week And then. Though the week, the doors closed you say, Hey, if you're listening to this before a certain date, You know, there's still time to get But with a dynamic ad, every single episode in her catalog. Is updated to promote the cohort-based course. And the fact that the doors are open. So how do I apply this to, so my. Strategy to my podcasting strategy, to my call to actions. You heard it at the beginning of the show at the top of this show. You heard a call to action that has been dynamically inserted. So, I don't even know which one you heard. Cause I don't know when you're listening to this episode. But most of the time, it's going to be to join my newsletter probably with a lead magnet. For parts of the year, it's going to be, yes, the doors are open for a course I'm selling or for a new membership, or maybe I'm, I'm running a black Friday sale. And I want to promote the black Friday sale for a few weeks or during the time that that sale is happening. But most of the time, it's going to be my lead magnet. And that is a big, big benefit of dynamic ad insertion. For smaller podcasters. I'm not saying don't sell ads. Or don't do sponsorships. But. We'll talk about this on a future episode, there is a better way for you to price your sponsorship. If you are not getting tons and tons of downloads. So subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss that episode. But. I think that if you have, if you have a product to sell, or if you have a mailing list, dynamic ad insertion is best. So how do you, how do you get dynamic ad insertion? A lot of hosts are starting to offer this now. So I use Buzzsprout they offer it. I think it's great. They offer pre-roll or post-roll pre-roll is before the show post role is after the end of the show. So if you're going to do that, like kind of make sure You know, And in a weird way, right? Like let people know that to expect that it's coming. Uh, and then there's transistor.fm. They offer a bunch of a bunch of features, but pre post and mid roll are included for dynamic ad insert. I recently read that maybe blueberry and Libsyn also offer this, but I'm not a hundred percent. Sure on that. I couldn't find. Uh, the exact language at the time that I looked. Um, Each of these, like they have articles on dynamic ad insertion. But as far as I can tell. Um, You know, they list like podcast, monetization, subscriptions, and advertising. But they don't. Specifically mention dynamic ad insertion. So Jerry's out, but I know for sure that. Uh, Buzzsprout and transistor.fm offer those. So that's dynamic ad insertion to recap, dynamic ad insertion. Is the ability to add. Audio to an already produced podcast episode automatically. The way it works is you record those things separately. You mark. The episodes you want this audio to be attached to pre post or mid roll? Uh, and then you can choose when to end that campaign, but every episode in your feed gets updated. So from that moment on that moment, until you say stop any time somebody downloads that episode, they're going to get the dynamically inserted ad. Um, You can use it for advertising. I recommend using it to promote your own stuff. So your mailing list most of the time, and if you have a sale or the doors are open new a course or something like that. Uh, then change the dynamic ad across all of your episodes to promote that. And if you want to get started, I recommend Buzzsprout. I will link to. Uh, I'll have a link for them in the show notes for this episode. Which you can find in your podcast player over at make money. pod.com/ 2 0 9. Full disclosure. It will be an affiliate link. So I think, I think they, they like hooked me up with a $20 Amazon gift card every time someone signs up. So. Hooray. Um, so that is either Buzzsprout or transistor. I use Buzzsprout, I'm very happy with the way it works. If you want to hear what, what the dynamic ad is like, you can listen to the top of this show Um, But that's it for this episode. I want to thank you so much for listening. If you have any questions about dynamic ad insertion. Or any questions about podcasting at Feel free to email me, Joe, at podcast liftoff.com. Thanks so much for listening to make money. Podcasting presented by podcast left off. If you liked this episode, give it a rating and a review at apple podcasts. I really appreciate that specifically. Uh and until next time i'm joe casabona and i can't wait to see what you make