Using Dynamic Content in Your Podcast

If you are in podcasting, advertising and monetization are a huge part of keeping those creative ventures afloat. You often hear hosts call out sponsors on their shows or do ad reads on their midrolls. However, many also supplement that with programmatic ads, using Dynamic Insertion technology.

Dynamic insertion is great because it allows you to not just fill ad spots programmatically from a marketplace but run pre-recorded host-read ads for a certain period of time, location, or some other attribute. That way, those ads aren’t living forever on your show, and they are always current. Crazy, right?

This leads me to the latest edition of ‘Sounds Profitable’ where Byran Barletta explained how he used the technology to change the way his new podcast (by the same name) is presented to listeners. And serving up content (as well as ads) to listeners in a unique way and one that can be changed and swapped out, keeping content fresh and evergreen.

To give you an idea of how he has it set within the context of the show, here you go:

• Cold open
• DI House Ad (self-promo of the newsletter and current deep dives)
• DI House Ad (ever-changing sponsorships)
• Main Content
• Intermission — Mid rolls with pre-recorded ad ‘wrappers’ that play depending on if an ad is actually going to run. Bryan had this to say about why he chose to do this:

Skipping the awkward “We’ll be right back… and we’re back!” experience when no ad is served is fantastic on its own, but think about the value that will add for announcer-read ads. If the host can tee up the ad in an entertaining way before the announcer-read ad plays, some of the host’s appeal might rub off on the ad.

Brilliant.

He then completes the show with a dynamically inserted sign-off. What’s neat about that is the sign-off can be tailored to the user. For instance, he’s using, “Thank you for listening to this episode of Sounds Profitable on [Podcast App],” with different variations recorded for each major podcast apps, and a catch-all phrase that can be used for times when that can’t be determined.

When I listened to his podcast, I heard seven pieces of dynamically inserted material altogether, but only two were obvious ads in the midroll position. Some things need to be done to smooth the transition between each dynamically inserted piece — like removing the high hat sound, which makes it obvious when pieces don’t blend perfectly (something I know he’s working on buffing out).

Anyway, this certainly opens up the possibilities of this technology to provide a more valuable and customized listening experience to the user and not just serve up ads (when and where available).

At Amaze Media Labs, we have begun working on implementing this same technique. If you want to get more detail of what Bryan is doing, I encourage you to subscribe to his newsletter and throw him a few bucks so he can keep Sounds Profitable going.

If you’re a brand interested in getting your own podcast started, contact hello@amazemedialabs.com.