Streaming + Podcasts Deliver Incrementality for DoorDash

Individually, streaming audio and podcasts continue to grow both in consumer adoption and advertiser interest. But many brands may be wondering how to leverage the two platforms together in a cohesive campaign. Does adding podcasts to a streaming campaign drive incremental reach, or increase a campaign’s efficacy? We worked with DoorDash to put a campaign with both streaming and podcasts to the test on attribution metrics.

DoorDash was hoping to get consumers excited about new categories including retail and grocery, inspiring them to think of the brand beyond its restaurant product offerings. They were curious about whether leveraging multiple platforms within a digital audio campaign might impact incrementality.

Let’s Get Creative

The DoorDash team turned to our in-house creative experts, Studio Resonate, to design and produce ads that speak to the brand’s many verticals and daily use cases. The ads highlighted DoorDash’s offerings across restaurants, convenience stores, and grocery in a vibrant, authentic way that fit with the brand’s identity and built excitement for listeners.

Both ads had a strong consistent call-to-action (CTA), driving listeners to place an order, but each creative was uniquely designed for its own environment. The streaming audio creative included an upbeat music bed and featured playful and immersive sounds. Using 3D sound design, we introduced additional DoorDash capabilities with unexpected items being delivered in addition to the more familiar food items. The podcast creative had a similar concept but was stripped back to an announcer-style read with a relatable message and conversational tone.

Hear them for yourself!

Incremental Reach – The Opportunity

A broad targeting strategy helped to boost the impact of the campaign and reach as many listeners as possible, and our cross-platform solutions allowed DoorDash to maximize effectiveness in a cost-efficient manner. The SiriusXM Podcast Network makes it simple and easy to access the best podcast content around, regardless of where listeners are consuming their favorite shows. And the SiriusXM Streaming Network offers the best of streaming music and talk represented by our cornerstone properties, exclusive partner publishers, and a bespoke marketplace of audio publishers. Campaign budgets were split evenly between streaming and podcasts, giving both formats the chance to shine.

With SiriusXM Media’s ability to map user IDs to campaign impressions on- and off-platform, we are able to quantify the duplication between platforms and calculate the incremental reach that podcasts provide to a streaming campaign. We’ve measured nearly 2,000 campaigns in this way and consistently see that there is minimal overlap between streaming and podcast placements, resulting in strong incremental reach driven by podcasts.

How did this look for DoorDash? The SiriusXM Podcast Network provided an impressive +70% incremental reach to the streaming portion of the campaign.

This puts DoorDash within the top 2% of SiriusXM Media campaigns measured in terms of podcast incremental reach, far outpacing our overall median (+39%), as well as those for the tech and restaurant verticals (+39% and +34%, respectively).

Incremental Impact – The Results

Incremental reach means that more listeners were exposed to the DoorDash ads… but what did listeners do after hearing the ads? To measure the impact of this campaign on conversion metrics, we turned to a trusted measurement partner. Claritas is a third-party attribution company that can capture the impact of audio advertising on online conversion events. And thanks to their integration with Adjust, a mobile measurement partner (or MMP), we can determine the campaign’s influence on DoorDash app installs and in-app events like purchases for new and existing users, return visits, and subscription registrations.

The streaming and podcast campaign on SiriusXM Media was incredibly effective at driving actions for DoorDash overall, with millions of conversion events captured. Notably, 64% of all attributable actions were deemed to be incremental, meaning that a majority of the actions taken would not have occurred without exposure to the ads on SiriusXM Media.

Looking at individual actions and events, 82% of app installs driven by the campaign were incremental and 83% of first order completes were incremental. Both platforms individually drove strong incremental actions. While streaming placements were more cost-efficient, podcast placements were very effective at driving incremental events and provided an incremental audience that would not have heard or converted from the streaming ads.

Driving it Home

It’s clear that this campaign delivered for DoorDash… yes, pun intended. Adding podcasts to streaming audio helped them reach incremental listeners and inspire them to convert. What can other brands take away from this?

• Two is better than one: Leverage both platforms to take advantage of the strengths of each. Marry the cost efficiencies of streaming audio with the incremental reach and effectiveness of podcasts to maximize impact!

• Tailor your message to the medium: It’s a good best practice to employ creatives that work with their environment and fit with the content. Turn to the experts to help!

Campaign Credits

• Copywriter: Chanel Peek

• Lead Audio Producer: Aili Chu

• Visual Designer: Jeff Virgen

• Senior Designer-Developer: Manny Trevino

• Creative Director: Miya Kanzaki

• Project Managers: SaraBeth Wanzek and Laura Coronado