How to Make Your Podcast Ad More Engaging: 7 Tips

The relationship between listeners and their favorite podcasts can’t be beat when it comes to trust and engagement. It’s why podcast ads drive results. In fact, nine in 10 listeners have taken any action after hearing a product or service advertised on a podcast.

But even if podcast ads are engaging your target audience more effectively than other media, you can’t rely on the medium or show hosts to carry all the weight. Memorable and engaging campaigns start with an optimized strategy and creative that stands out. 

The following tips are a surefire way to help advertisers increase their listener engagement and get results. 

Why Is Podcast Ad Engagement Important?

Before we talk tips, let’s talk about why ad engagement is so important in the first place. This metric refers to how much listeners pay attention to, interact with, and respond to podcast ads. Engagement can be measured in the following ways:

• Attention level and emotional connection while the ad plays

• Ad recall or the likelihood of remembering the brand or message

• Conversion rate or the probability of a listener taking action 

• The average listening time a listener spends on an episode 

• Completion rate of listeners who finish an episode 

• Listener drop-off points 

The Goal: Better Brand Awareness and Recall

Highly engaging podcast ads drive stronger brand recall and awareness. Every brand wants their ads to strike a chord with listeners—long after the ad or podcast episode has finished. Focusing on this metric offers insight into who your target audience is and builds long-term relationships with them. Did you know? Podcast ads can generate up to 4.4x higher lift in brand awareness compared to display ads.

The Goal: Building a Foundation of Trust and Credibility

When it comes to trust, podcasts already have a competitive edge over other channels, with  many listeners saying that the hosts feel more like a friend. Podcast listeners find their favorite shows 4.2x more trustworthy than traditional radio. What’s even more impressive is that the same study revealed that podcast listeners find their favorite shows 23x more trustworthy than social media.

The Goal: Podcast Ads that Motivate Consumers 

It always comes back to the bottom line. Podcast advertising is a full-funnel marketing strategy, and prioritizing ad engagement influences both upper- but lower-funnel metrics. We’ll let you in on some numbers: 90% of podcast listeners have taken any action after hearing a podcast ad.

7 Tips for Boosting Your Podcast Ad Engagement

Here are eight proven strategies to help your podcast ads connect with listeners and drive better results. 

1. Choose the Right Podcast

Your target audience isn’t a monolith. It’s a collection of diverse people who may have similar pain points that your brand can address, but the content and messaging that appeals to them may be quite different. And since 55% of Americans are now monthly podcast consumers —70M of which are monthly listeners on the SiriusXM Podcast Network —creators and publishers are pumping a wide variety of shows that advertisers can tap into to reach them. 

If you can find the topics, shows, and personalities your target audiences follow (and even idolize), you have a better chance of delivering a message they’re receptive to. For example, are your target listeners college-educated, affluent females? Find them on The Mel Robbins Podcast. Or are they football-loving Gen Zs and millennials? Find them on The Fantasy Footballers. And with most listeners listening to multiple shows, our network can help you reach them across content.

2. Invest in Host-Read or Announcer-Read Ads

Podcast ads drive significant engagement with listeners, and hosts have a major impact on listener consumption. In fact, listeners prefer it when hosts are authentic and value their transparency and honesty. Brands can lean into this connection by opting for host-read ads. When a listeners’ favorite host is delivering the message, with their personality shining through, listeners are more likely to pay attention. 

Host reads not available or not in the budget? Get similar results with announcer-read ads, which are read by voice actors. And you can run your announcer-read ads seamlessly across multiple shows for wider reach.

3. Pick the Best Ad Placement

Ad placement within a podcast episode significantly impacts effectiveness. Here are the key positions:

• Pre-roll ads: Kicking off the show, this ad type usually appears before the main content, capturing attentive listeners. Lasting between 15 and 30 seconds, pre-roll ads are perfect for brand awareness campaigns or beginners to podcast advertising. 

• Mid-roll ad: Lasting between 60 and 90 seconds, this ad type can see some of the highest engagement rates since listeners are already invested in the content or multi-tasking while listening—but it also comes with a higher price.

• Post-roll ads: With a duration of 15 to 30 seconds, this ad type reaches dedicated listeners who complete episodes in their entirety. They're effective for driving immediate action. They can also act as an audio interstitial when listeners are binging episodes back to back.

While there’s a time and place for each ad placement type, your campaign doesn’t have to be married to just one. Consider using multiple placements to maximize both reach and engagement.

4. Write a Compelling Script

Once you know which show your ad will be placed on, where in the episode it will appear, and who is reading your message (host, announcer, or voice actor), put pen to paper and write a script. Depending on the type of ad read you choose, you might leave some room for improvisation or you might want the reader to follow your messaging a bit more closely. From there, we recommend brands to keep it concise, start off strong, and tailor your messaging to your target audience. 

5. Leverage Dynamic Ad Insertion 

Could your ads use a boost in relevance? With dynamic ad insertion (DAI), a form of data-driven technology, you can do more than find your target audience. You can find them at the right time, place, and even weather forecast. 

Here’s how it works—brands can swap out dynamic ads in real time or target a specific audience to make ads feel more personal and relevant, like rock-loving listeners in California getting an ad for sun block on a sunny day. From there, insert your message at any point during a podcast and once your campaign ends, you can replace your ads with new versions. 

6. Have a Clear CTA

Even if your ad has all the bells and whistles, if it’s missing a CTA, your listeners won’t know what to do next. Fun fact: Almost three in four listeners say they’ve researched a product after hearing it advertised on a show. It’s probably because those ads told them exactly where to go and what to do.

After you create a clear CTA, consider using landing pages, promo codes, and pixels to better track your campaign performance.

7. Work With Studio Resonate

Studio Resonate, our in-house creative agency, helps brands develop authentic connections with their target audience. Our comprehensive approach combines industry expertise, award-winning experience, and data-driven insights to craft perfectly tailored messages.

Working with Studio Resonate means having access to teams that bring lived experience to your creative development.

Walk This Way for Better Podcast Advertising Solutions 

With 70M monthly listeners across the SiriusXM Podcast Network and unmatched expertise in podcast advertising, our audience is loyal and ad-receptive. And with podcast consumption at an all-time high, there's never been a better time to make your podcast advertising more engaging.

Ready to launch a highly engaging podcast campaign? Let's talk.

Learn More on Podcast Advertising