Podcast Advertising with Stew Redwine

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I’m

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George G and the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful stir red wine stew. Are you ready to do this? I am so ready, George. Right. Let’s go. Sue is the VP of creative services with Oxford RO, they’re the leading privately owned audio ad agency, pairing disruptive brands with powerful media outlets and podcasts. Still excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work, why you do what you do? Absolutely. Currently personal life the big changes, my oldest child just started high school. So that’s quite the adjustment with that. With that change, I’m like, wow, the countdown clock has started. I’ve got four years left before she moves back in for another 18

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years.

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And I recently got a dog and may Maverick, some coincides with a Top Gun film. And getting underneath why I do what I do. Like you said, Thank you for the introduction at Oxford road. Like I like to say I’ve been around there since before the beginning as a contractor, and then full time for seven years. And when I think about it, you know, part of it is I’ve always made stuff, I’ve always been creative and life’s trajectory I don’t totally understand. But where I am now is I still get the opportunity to create for brands that advertise products and services I believe in would use myself. And in addition to that, for every action that is taken based on one of the advertisements that Oxford road places, we also donate to the Children’s Hospital here in Los Angeles, where cuddlers are provided to hold babies that didn’t have anybody to hold them.

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Very young babies. And if if if you know anything about human development, in those early months of zero to 20, basically pre verbal, if you’re not getting held enough, it’s that baked some stuff into the mind and our ability to process emotions. And so when it gets tougher my backs against the wall, it’s thinking about that impact over time, and the generational impact. That’s able to give me even more motivation than simply Hey, this is cool, I get a chance to get paid to make stuff. I’ve always liked making stuff. There’s also this probably incalculable long term impact.

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And I think that’s amazing. I’ve always joked that, and I know that folks in nonprofits joke about this as well, that folks that work for animal charities, and they can advertise puppies to raise money. That’s pretty easy. But if you’re if you’re trying to raise money for people that cuddle babies, that’s that seems like a slam dunk to you.

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Yeah, you’d think you would think?

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Yeah, sure. It’s not? Well, you know, it’s like I said, it’s it’s a privilege to be part of something where especially as there’s a trend in the workplace and with younger workers that they want to know what the purpose and values are.

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That we’re able to bring with Oxford road to the table to go hey, look, you can check you can expect inspect this. It’s solid all the way through. Here’s the direct impact

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of your work at Oxford rode into improving lives, not just for this generation, but for generations to come. Yeah, well, I think that that’s super powerful. And credit to you and Oxford road for, for for really leading with that, because I think that is so important. So in terms of I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about

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decentralization, and moving away from Legacy just required reimagining how we educate our kids where we work, how we receive news and information. And it strikes me that podcasting is this exciting new form of media. And there’s a bigger opportunity than maybe I had thought about before. What are your thoughts on on what I just that? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think about it, you know, when when radio advertising started

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in the early days of the 20th century, I think it was very early on like in 1922 1921, there was 10 licenses for radio stations. 10 DJs, could get behind microphones, and then you had to be geographically close to them, to be able to hear them. It was very small because it had to be because of the technology and then to maximize it and make it pay

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and merchandise it and everything. It made sense that it had to get that it had to be controlled from the top like AT and T was one of the they were doing telephones. They were charging people time for money to talk on the telephone, this massive company then goes, Hey, we can do the same thing over these radio airwaves.

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Like you’re saying decentralization networks, the Welcome to the age of the internet and digitization where now you you don’t need a license from the federal government to be talking to me right now. And

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the one of the first radio stations

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over in on the East Coast, I remember I was I was looking this up for another interview. But long story short, some of the very early broadcast 1000 sets were picking it up.

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So I’m like, okay, maybe there was a family? Well, back then it was a family of 12. But still, you know, how many people is that where you it’s limitless. So there isn’t a command and control from from on top, even though we are seeing it begin to sort of swing back that way. But you’re absolutely right in this space continues to grow. There are so many opportunities for podcasters to get out there. And the ability to build an audience is limitless. Yeah.

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How do you think about?

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I don’t know if this is something well as as a creative? How do you think about helping a brand, stand their own podcast up versus, and or get their message out via other people’s podcasts? Well, so it’s a couple of, you know, it’s how are we going to measure success? And how long do we have to get there? So

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I think if a brand is starting its own podcast, that’s a longer term play. I think it’s interesting, there was just some conversations that we’re having this week about that with the folks that did the Trader Joe’s podcast, which has been a fantastic success for our brand as a podcast. But like I said, that’s a long term play, that’s a long term consideration, where a lot of what we do is performance driven to go, I’m putting this much money into the machine for a six week media test, or an eight week media test. And I need to see that those advertisements convert on what other whatever metrics I’m looking at. But if we gave you copy, let’s say, you’re going to go to Tommy john.com/george, to get or Tommy john.com/lifeblood, for this special discount to go, okay, that this works. We want to keep doing that. The Tommy John, their own branded podcast, that’s a much longer term consideration. Got it? No, that makes a ton of sense. And so

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what, what is an appropriate expectation out of that, obviously, I’d love for to put my spot on on a massive podcast and get 1000s of new customers or clients or whatever. But how do you think about the build? Or is the expectation that it’s going to happen immediately?

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The expectation is absolutely, it’s going to happen immediately.

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Yeah, right, I just put this dollar in, and I get $3 back, right. Isn’t that right, man, you know,

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performance performances, performances performance. So gratefully, you know, Oxford Road, we’re in our ninth year,

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we’ve got hundreds of millions of dollars of performance data to be able to look at there’s that first

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length of time, number of drops,

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you know, a product that already has some recognition that the funnel is right, the product is right, that we from our performance data that we’re able to see like, hey, we know this is where folks are that would be interested in this, that there’s a connection with the host, especially early on with the initial tests, that again, like we say, you know that it’s a product they

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would use and believe in or are using, preferably,

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then you should see rather quickly.

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If it is if there it’s like Is this thing on? Is this thing on. But a critical piece of it when you’re initially going into the space and audio is that if you’re only testing for a specific amount of time, you need to make sure that you’re letting the listener know that I’m going to be measuring it within this amount of time so that they take action based on the advertisement within that window that you’re looking at even though attribution is somewhat changing with pixel based attribution. Still, it doesn’t hurt to go if we’re only doing this test are now in the end of the year. What can we do to compel them to take action not that we’re going to do that for all time, but so that we can know how many folks are out there, how many that we can activate within the space and then be thoughtful about what effect

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Are there investment will look like? Got it may seem like a really obvious question, but I really don’t know how much data that you can get from, from podcast listeners with all the different channels. Is there a way to how how granular can you get? So you can there’s a few different things that you can look at.

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Like I said recently, I mean, relatively recently with pixel based attribution, that’s helpful.

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But another piece of audio that is still

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important to this day and kind of can feel I think, a little bit antiquated, but it’s really not, is the how did you hear about a survey? That’s one? That’s incredibly helpful. Another is a specific attributable path? And then what you have to remember, is that both with the How did you hear about a survey and the specific attributable path like life blood.com/tommy, John, that there’s a certain percentage of people that will do exactly that. There’s another group of people, a large group of people that’ll just go to Tommy John, right, or search for Tommy, John. And so how do we make sure we catch those are what kind of multiplier can we use based on previous performance for an advertiser like this? To to give us an idea of how many of those people there would be? Because I mean, you know, how many people follow directions? Exactly as told for you? Exactly.

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Like, I don’t understand, we told them to go to this path, where are they? Right? It’s like the human, so.

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And they’re forgetful. So you know, you’ve got to use multiple forms of measurement. And then again, it helps out tremendously to be able to look back historically, like at Oxford road and the other places, but but to be able to have that historical data to be able to go okay,

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if we’re seeing these kinds of signals, then this is the sort of response we can expect. Got it. And as, as brands are trying to make decisions about what shows that they want to advertise on.

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That’s another thing that I’m curious about I, I really ought to know the answers these questions, but I don’t, when when you look at at

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Wait, wait, don’t tell me or the Joe Rogan podcast, that I can, you know, the guy’s got a million downloads or whatever, but down to demographic information.

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I mean, there’s a there’s a ton of information out there. And it’s really going to depend on the network and the show. I guess I’ll say, I said it once. I’ll say it again, performance, performance performance, you know, where, let’s see what’s worked there before. Sometimes the pricing of even like a really big show like that can make it

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not necessarily as attractive from a performance standpoint, where what you want to see is how well has this host been at being able to drive people to take action, if that’s the metric you’re using to measure? But it all depends on?

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You know, if it’s just like, kind of,

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can we just send it out into the ether and then know exactly. You know, who listened to it in Peoria, Illinois on a Tuesday at 5:15pm? I mean, depends possibly, what does that get you? It depends on what, how much does the network know, what do we know? And what kind of action have we seen, based on previous campaigns to go this is who’s listening to these different programs. But you know, it brings up a bigger point of going, maybe I have this narrow idea of who my audience is. Some of the work by Byron sharp that’s really guided a lot of marketing in the last few years, is that your brand needs to constantly be gaining new consumers, which are kind of like yeah, of course, but constantly gaining new buyers, and that the majority of the buyers of your brand are light buyers, or one time buyers very few. Right there’s some there’s some charts in his book, how brands grow like with cigarette buyers were actually the majority of cigarette buyers or people that buy one pack a year.

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Right? You’re like So is it the one time they go out and party? And like her like I don’t remember that. I need a cigarette to go with this.

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But the majority of your buyers are light buyers over time. So I’m saying all this to say to get back to the to your question of going okay, I’ve got all this targeting information. That’s good. That’s interesting. That’s who I think my customers are. This is maybe who I want my customers to be. But all

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All kinds of different folks may buy your product. And the real question in particularly in podcasting, where the connection is intimate and authentic, is how well the host is at activating their audience. Makes sense?

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And what do you think about what the future of the actual advertisement is going to look like is it going to be before the show during the show is that you want to probably ideally, we’d love to have the host really love the product and work it into the conversation, but maybe I’m wrong about that.

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You’re spot on about that. I think that’s been the nature of audio since since the early days, it’s it’s intentional. It’s, it’s intimate. I think you’re gonna see podcasting evolve into something very similar to radio, they already are very similar, but you’re gonna see spotlights go up. So right now you’ve got the pre roll, mid roll, and post roll, I think Don’t be shocked. If it begins to turn into something where there’s multiple breaks throughout throughout the spot, on average, the average podcast length right now is 37 minutes, you’re gonna see podcast links, kind of, it’s gonna, it’s been the Wild West. And as civilization comes in, we got to put in roads and the roads need to be set weds. And the railroad gauges can’t all be different. They can’t be one gauge in Arizona, and another in California, you know, so you’re gonna see it get consolidated. And I think for that premium spot for you to read the copy, and give your personal endorsement, you’re gonna see a price premium on that.

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And then across the board, it’s going to start feeling a lot more like ad breaks and radio.

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Does that sound good?

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You told me

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it’s interesting. It’s interesting. I guess it’s not bad.

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All to noodle on that a little bit. Stew?

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I think it’s, it’s,

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it’s market forces. I don’t think it is all bad. Because you know, more than anything, you want to save the librarian. So one thing that was happening with dynamic ad insertion, and this has all been very quick stuff. It’s like, oh, we’re just gonna have the robots do it. And we there’s been some people have bumped their heads on dynamic ad insertion, of course, it’ll get better just like self driving cars. But part of what that revealed is that

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this personal connection, shocker isn’t new to podcast. No, it’s 100 years old. It’s a piece of the way audio works because of the theater, the mind.

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That that the library, it’ll still be part of it. But I you know, it just makes sense that if we figure it out, we can cram that many ads into an hour of radio. How long can podcasts really hold out? Especially as you know, so it’s, I think it’s somewhat inevitable. But you know, what? Real real quick last thing on that whether it’s good or bad, I think the thing that would be

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bad, quote, unquote, would be the loss of imagination.

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In that the ads don’t like okay, podcast is different that with than radio in that it’s not a set clock that has to broadcast in time. So what we don’t want to lose is the imagination to go 62nd Spot 32nd Spot, there’s going to be this gravitational pull to make it grow up and look like grandpa. But it’s like, no, it doesn’t have to because the rules are different. So long way around answer your question is like do eight second ads, could you do four minute integrations, like it doesn’t necessarily have to come back down to earth, and look just like radio? Got it? I love it.

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Makes a lot of sense. Stew red wine. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? And what’s the best way for people to connect with created with with Oxford road. So Sue red wine.com To learn more about Sue red wine, and Oxford road.com for Oxford road, and they can sign up for our free newsletter that’s full of information about the podcast space as it continues to evolve. So Steve red wine.com and Oxford road.com. And who are your ideal clients?

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ideal clients? Oh, man.

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I would say at this point in time, it’s folks that have looked and sort of maximize their spend in digital channels are looking for new worlds to conquer so to speak.

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And know that they have performance budgets that they maybe they’ve wanted to test into the podcast space, but have decent levels of

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beyond where they want to if it’s a space that they want to do explore

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that they can do so with Oxford road. Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, just do your appreciation and share today’s show the friend also appreciates good ideas. Find Stu at Stu redwine.com. Just like it sounds as Te w r Ed w i n e.com. And then check out everything that they’re working on over at Oxford road at Oxford road.com. I’ll link those in the notes of the show. Thanks gets to thank you. And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best