Brands in Podcasts

Chirag Desai -
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As discussed earlier, despite a drop in advertising revenue on podcasts during 2020, the year-on-year growth is still expected to be positive. Spotify kicked off the year with their Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI) offering, providing targeted advertising for podcasts on their platform, and closed out the year with the Megaphone acquisition. This brings podcasts hosted on Megaphone as well as its advertising marketplace into the Spotify fold.

During 2020, Podeo produced five shows for the organization responsible for the 2022 FIFA World Cup’s operations and delivery, showing an appetite towards mainstream organization and government support for the medium in the region.

Local listeners lean towards listening to ads on podcasts. A healthy 66% said that they don’t skip ads, some even said they use podcast ads to discover brands. Only 9% found them truly annoying, similar to trends from 2019. This holds true for branded content as well, with only 8% saying they wouldn’t want to listen to branded shows.

CASE STUDY: The Journey

Volkswagen Middle East launched The Journey, the region’s first multimedia campaign featuring podcasts during 2020. The brand wanted to let its cars take a back seat for the purpose of the series and focus on the featuring raw, unfiltered and captivating personal stories of UAE-based business owners.

Volkswagen’s dedicated social agency, Socialize, conceptualized and spearheaded the digital audio and video series that unravels behind-the-veil stories of entrepreneurs’ journeys to finding success in their fields. A complimentary podcast, featuring the full-length story in audio format, was produced by Amaeya Media. The campaign was part of a three-phase approach that saw the launch of social media teasers, video stories on YouTube, followed by the podcast.

The campaign was a hit for the brand, garnering millions of views on YouTube, climbing the Apple Podcast charts in multiple countries including Bahrain, India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Journey was also recognized as a Top 10 Integrated and Activation Campaigns in their Annual 2020 series by Campaign Middle East.

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