Tips for Working with Podcast Advertising Agencies

0:02
As your podcast starts to grow, you may be thinking about working with podcast advertising agencies to help you connect with brands. Working with agencies can definitely put you in front of those brands. But how does this impact your bottom line? And what are some other things you should consider before you sign on that dotted line. Today, we’re going to give you some great tips for working with podcast advertising agencies. Take it away, Mr. radio man. Podcast Your Business.

0:40
Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Podcast Your Business. I’m Sunny Gault. I’m a podcast coach and mentor. And I’ve been doing the whole podcasting thing for about 17 years. I am also the founder and CEO of a company called Independent Podcast Network. And you can check us out at https://independentpodcast.network, we produce a ton of free content, because we believe that if you want to podcast, it should be easy to get your show up and running. So I’ve got free courses. We have blog posts that come out every week, all of these podcast episodes are available. They’re free handouts, everything in Independent Podcast Network. But today, I am here to help you create amazing podcasts, specifically for those of you who are trying to incorporate this into your business. And we do this by mastering the five P’s of podcasting. Yeah, so the five P’s are prep, plan, produce, promote, and profit. And this is what I teach in those free courses that I was just telling you guys about available on the website. If you want to have a successful podcast, these are the five P’s that you have to consider. You need to know a little bit about all of these different areas. And when we do episodes for Podcast Your Business, we pick a topic and it always falls into one of these Ps. So Mr. radio man, which of the five P’s are we talking about today? Profit!

2:11
Alright, working with brands and running ads on your podcast? Well, it’s all about making a profit making some money, right? The question is, Are you or someone from your team going to be selling the ads and working on the ad campaigns? Or are you going to have some sort of ad agency represent you? Now just to give you a little bit of background about me, I have sold my own ads, I have also worked with both large and small agencies, ad agencies, and I have seen what happens, what can happen firsthand. Some of these lessons, honestly, I had to learn the hard way, which is why we’re doing today’s episode, because sometimes that’s not a fun lesson to learn. Sometimes you’ll lose money, sometimes you lose contacts, sometimes you just lose a little bit of face. None of it feels good. And I don’t want that to happen, you guys. There are definitely benefits to working with these companies. But you have to know what to expect. So here’s what we’re going to talk about today. First, we’re going to define what a podcast advertising agency is. Because if you google this, you’re going to get different definitions. This is a confusing thing about the podcasting space. It really shouldn’t be confusing, but it is. So we’re gonna break that down for you. So you know exactly what these groups do. We’re gonna talk about the pros and cons of working with these podcast advertising agencies, because as with any decision you make for your podcast or for your business, there’s going to be pros and cons. And what you have to figure out is, do the pros in your specific situation outweigh the cons? Next, we’re going to talk about what questions you should ask a podcast advertising agency, if you are considering working with them. Because there’s some key stuff that you really need to know and I don’t see this talked about in very many areas. So we’ll go over that this is my personal list. Okay. And then I’m going to share with you how our podcast network Independent Podcast Network, or IPN, how we work with podcast advertising agencies, because it may be that you get to the end of this episode, and you’re like, holy cow, that’s a lot. That’s a lot to either do on my own. That’s a lot for me to kind of figure out on my own. You know, I’m working on my podcast, but I’ve got my business and, you know, I’ve got other projects I’m working on. And if that’s the case, maybe partnering with someone like our podcast network is a good fit for you. So I’m going to let you know how that looks on our end. And if it’s a great fit, fantastic, and if you want to do it on your own, amazing as well. You’ve now got the tools to be able to do that. And we’ll get started on all this right after this quick break. So what exactly is a podcast advertising agency, because if you put those three words into any kind of search engine, you might get a little bit confused as I was when I was doing research for today’s episode, because it has the word advertising in there, you may find a lot of search results for agencies that are trying to promote your company or your podcast. And we talked about this two episodes ago, we have an episode called “paying platforms and people to promote your podcast”. And the companies that we talked about on that episode. That’s what they do, they are trying to help you grow your audience. That’s not what we’re talking about today. A podcast advertising agency truly is a company that matches advertisers with podcasts. And they help to make sure that they are a good fit. So the podcast is a good fit for the brand and vice versa. Okay. Now, there’s other things that are tied into that and other things that are part of that. So it may not just be about connecting you with advertisers, a lot of the times they are your main person that you’re going to Okay, so they are the middleman and and don’t view middleman necessarily as a bad thing. There are some things to look out for. But trust me, it can be very beneficial for you to be working with a company that really knows what they’re doing. Sometimes these agencies also help you one step further. And they may handle the entire campaign, meaning you record the ad. And they may if they have access to your podcast host platform, they may insert the ads for you if you’re doing dynamic ad insertion. Now, if you listen to podcast your business in the past, you know I am a big fan of dynamic ad insertion. So you can go back to any of the episodes that we’ve done there. I think it’s the best interest of the podcast, I think it’s in the best interest of the advertisers. So that’s what we work with. And we focus on helping podcasts with dynamic ad insertion. So some companies will actually do the whole campaign for you. So you’re just responsible for voicing the ad, you give it to them, they’ll set up the campaign and make sure it’s running when it’s supposed to be running, and all of that good stuff. Usually, these agencies are also coordinating with the brand on your behalf. And that includes any of the little back and forth, that usually happen. For example, maybe the brand gives you some bullet points and you voice the ad, but they’re not quite happy with how you read something. Or maybe you said something that’s kind of a faux paux, or they can’t say that legally, any of that back and forth that happens would typically go through this agency on your behalf. They usually handle invoicing as well. So after our campaign is done, they again being the single point of contact for that brand, or sometimes they’re working with other agencies, they would provide them with the stats, they would handle the invoicing, then they would usually get paid first. And then after they get paid, then they give you your cut. And that is usually how it works.

8:31
Okay. Let’s talk about some of the pros and cons that are involved with working with a podcast advertising agency because like I said, this can be very beneficial. But there are some pitfalls and things that could happen. And this is what you need to be aware of. So first, let’s talk about the good stuff. Let’s talk about the pros. The pros are if someone else is handling, finding advertisers for your show, in theory that allows you to not worry about that and just focus on your content, most podcasters that I talked to, that’s all they want to do. Yeah, they want to get paid to work on their show. But it’s like a an entirely separate job, which it really is, by the way to focus on advertising. And if you’re also running your own business, come on that is a lot of work. So this idea of you just being able to focus on your content, and have someone else focus on selling ads is a really big deal. A good podcast advertising agency has connections. So even if you or someone from your team is going to do this, you just having knowledge of your podcast and being excited about your podcast isn’t always enough. Because you need someone that has connections in this industry and yes, it is kind of a small group of people. Is it fair? Probably not. But, but that’s kind of how the whole industry is set up. And if you don’t have those connections, and if you aren’t working on this like a full time job, other people are right. There’s other ad agencies out there who are willing to work on this 24/7. Or at least during their work hours, right? It is their job to keep reminding brands and perhaps even other agencies about your podcast. So do you have those connections? A lot of times we don’t, because we’re working on all these other things. So don’t underestimate the power of someone who has podcast connections, super important. Sometimes larger companies that and brands that you may want to work with, because they have larger budgets to work with larger marketing budgets, sometimes they will only work with agencies, they will not go to podcasters directly. And the reason is, it’s easier for them to work with agencies that rep multiple podcasts, because from their perspective, they’re only dealing with the agency, they don’t have to reach out to you and your schedule and all that kind of stuff, they are reaching out to the agency and working directly with you. And that’s very appealing to them. So sometimes they just won’t go to the smaller podcasts. And then if that’s the case, and you’re not working with an agency, then you may never get in front of those larger advertisers. If that’s important to you, maybe it’s not, I will tell you from experience, the best ads and the best relationships that I have had with advertisers were not large companies. These were, I don’t know if I would call them mom and pop companies. Because you do have to have a little bit of a marketing budget in order to do this. Sometimes you work with really, really small businesses. And then it’s not usually a good fit what I have found, it’s not usually a good fit, because they are expecting a huge return on their investment, because every advertising dollar is so important. So what I have found is that more of the mid range companies, so maybe they just graduated from the mom and pop phase and have had some success with their companies. But they’re still small enough so that you can call up the owner or call up the head of marketing. And it’s you know, it’s really easy to, you know, set up the campaigns and talk about the campaigns and things like that. Honestly, those have been the best advertisers for the shows the parenting shows that I work on, those have been my favorite. But if you have it in your head that you want to work with a huge company, you know, a brand name company that everybody would know, if they heard the name, you’re probably going to have to work with multiple agencies, you will probably have an agency, they will have an agency that reps them. And that’s just kind of how it’s done. Also, on the pro side of the stuff, you’re going to have less paperwork and less invoicing, I view that as a pro. That is not my favorite thing to do just one more thing to add to the list, right. So if you are not all into you know, invoicing, because you may have to invoice multiple times for a campaign, you usually will have some sort of contract, even if it’s something really simple to go back and forth with the advertiser on. If that is not your bag, if you do not want to have to worry about that, then I do recommend going through an agency because the agency, you will have a contract with the agency, but then the agency will take care of all that other stuff for you. And then you receive a check. Okay, so that’s kind of nice, right?

13:40
There was also a buffer between you and the advertiser, there’s someone else involved, right, this agency is now involved, just in case you run into a situation where an advertiser refuses to pay. Let’s talk about this for a second, because this is a very real thing. Based on my personal experience, anytime I’ve worked with an agency, it may take them a long time to pay, especially the larger companies because there’s more agencies involved. And then, you know, the brand pays their agency, which pays this company and that company, and then it comes back to your agency. And then finally you get paid. It could take six months, seven months before and this is after a campaign is completed. For you to get that money from a large advertiser. I had a situation where it was my podcast, a advertising agency reached out to me on behalf of a brand that they represent and said our company, XYZ I’m not gonna mention their name, I would like to work with you. And because they reached out through our website, I was already you know, we had our own agency that we’re working with, but it was not an exclusive relationship. So any of There deals or campaigns that I came across. I if I wanted to handle the whole campaign and do everything, you know, the contracts and everything like that, I still had the opportunity to do that. And I thought, Okay, well, you know, things aren’t too crazy right now, I’ll go ahead and you know, I’ll do this campaign on her own, and I’ll keep more money. That was my thought process. But I was working with, again, their agency, the brands agency, I just didn’t have an agency on my end. And I will tell you, it was not the best experience. First of all, there was a lot of back and forth. This was a situation where it wasn’t just a podcast ad, but they were actually coming on our shows that they were going to be a guest on the show, we were also doing a blog post for them. And so there was some collaboration that needed to happen. There was also a bit of a language barrier. And it kind of just made for kind of awkward conversations. And the agency, their agency was doing the best that they possibly could. But honestly, I think they were just a difficult, difficult client, this brand was just a difficult client to work with. So we ended up doing everything we had a contract, we ended up doing everything that we said we were going to do. And that included running the ads for I can’t remember maybe three months on our various podcasts that included doing a podcast episode with them, as well as the blog post. And I did make a mistake. And I didn’t, I should have invoiced more often for the work completed, I got like a month behind invoicing or whatever. But long story short, they never paid us a cent, not one penny and we’re talking about over $2,000 in advertising. I was so frustrated. And I kept going back and forth with their agency saying what is going on. And apparently the brand cut off all ties with their agency as well. It was a nightmare. And obviously, from their agency’s point of view, it made them look bad, the brand looked horrible, I must have emailed the brand directly because I had direct emails because they were coming on our show and things like that. I must have emailed them like 10 different times, I threatened things with a better, you know Better Business Bureau. I did everything I possibly could, but in the end was going to take them to court like it was just not something that I even had time to worry about. And I know that if I had had a buffer someone on my end, another person who wasn’t going to get paid on our end, the whole situation would have turned out differently. Okay, so having an agency on your end, who is also not going to get paid. You know, it’s almost unheard of, I’ve never had a situation where an agency we have partnered with, you know, the brand didn’t pay. Like I said it may be late. But they’ve always paid.

18:07
One more pro that I wanted to mention, and this doesn’t always happen. But sometimes the podcast advertising agency you’re working with also has an account with a podcast hosting platform. And because it’s easier if all the shows that they’re representing is on the same platform. Sometimes they will give you podcast hosting included for free. So it is definitely something to look into. It’s not always offered, but I wanted to throw that in there as a possible Pro. Now let’s talk about some of the cons. Okay, these agencies usually only work with podcasts that have quite a bit of downloads, and they usually look at it as downloads per episode. I’m not sure why they don’t just look at monthly downloads, because a lot of them work with dynamic ads. But a lot of times they are asking for between 10,020 1000 downloads per episode, y’all that is a lot. I mean, I’ve been at this a long time. And I have never none of my shows have ever reached that number before. Sometimes the agencies that I’ve worked with, I’ve got in the they were a smaller agency in the beginning. And so I was able to work with them and you know, kind of finagle things. But a lot of times if you just do a search and you start calling up these, you know, advertising agencies, that’s what they’re going to tell you and they will not entertain any talks. If your show isn’t getting those numbers. That’s another reason by the way that that I started Independent Podcast Network, because I was like, That’s ridiculous. We need to be able to work with smaller shows and I’ll tell you more about that later. So that may be a deterrent. Right. Okay, but I just want to throw that out there. Maybe you can get in some way but a lot of times they want a lot of downloads. They also take a pretty hefty commission. Now the amount of money they take out is dependent on what they are doing for you. Are they just selling the ads? Are they also inserting the ads into your show? Like, what are you going to have them do, but I would say in general, it’s usually between 30% to 40%. Commission, there’s not usually any kind of retainer fees. So you don’t have to worry about just paying them even if they’re, you know, not going to get you anything. They don’t make money until you make money. But still 30% to 40% can be a lot, which is why when that one company came to me, I was like, Oh, I could do this. Doesn’t everybody want to save 30% to 40%. So know that they’re going to take a commission, a pretty big commission. There’s also sometimes a communication gap. Because anytime there’s a middleman, there is an opportunity for things to fall through the cracks. So one of the things that you’re probably going to want to ask the company and we’ll get into more of this later on, but something I just thought of is asking them what the process is, like, Do you have a project management system or something that you use, so that everybody knows what stage the campaign is at and what you know, what is expected from all of the parties, because sometimes things fall through the cracks. Sometimes, a message is passed along to your agency from the brand. And the agency may forget to tell you or maybe they told, they thought they told you and they actually told another podcast they represent. So just understand, if you’re not working directly with brands, there can be some misunderstandings, there’s also less of a bond with the brand, if you have a middleman. And that’s that can be kind of tough. If you are the type of person that wants to work with brands that you really care about and you want more of that relationship, you’re probably not going to get that with an advertising agency, that is probably something you or someone from your team is going to have to work really hard on. And it may take a while to get in front of the right person and to sell whatever it is that you’re going to sell for your show. But I have done that. Like I said, some of the best advertisers I’ve worked with have been the smaller shows, and it’s that more personal experience. I’ll give you an example. For our breastfeeding show, which is called the boob group. Every year, we would go to the ABC Kids Expo, which is usually in Vegas, they move it around sometimes. But it’s such an excellent opportunity to get in front of big brands and smaller brands to and this is where I found my first major sponsor, like, like I said, they weren’t necessarily a mom and pop, they were like a step above. But it was a set of sisters and they had their own breastfeeding apparel company, which was doing quite well. And they signed on I think I was working with them for over two years. And I think they signed either to actually maybe up to four different contracts with me, but they were each like six month contracts, something like that. But I mean, I made at least $40,000 I think in a couple years with one podcast, because it was such a good relationship. And it really was a relationship like they could reach out to me anytime they appeared on our podcast, they gave out some, you know, great content and information about breastfeeding apparel, you know, I would see them out at other conferences, and we would go out to dinner. I mean, it was a real advertising relationship. And I promise you, I have never seen that since ever since working with agencies, you’re just not going to have that experience. So that’s what you’re going for. First of all, those are harder to come by. But if that’s really what you want, maybe going with an agency isn’t the best thing for you at this time.

24:09
Okay, so went over some of the pros and cons. Now let’s talk about some questions you should ask a podcast average advertising agency, if you’re thinking about signing with them. Okay. The biggest question is what requirements do they have for the podcast they represent some of this information you may find on their website, the first thing you should look for is if they have a download requirement, which we already talked about. Sometimes it’s 10,000 or 20,000 downloads per episode. If it divides it up per episode and you’re using dynamic ad insertion. I recommend that you ask okay, monthly, how many downloads per month Do you require? But find out about the downloads? Find out if there’s any other requirements like do you have to actively be producing new content? What happened? If you need to go on a hiatus, or what happens if you do things in seasons, and you’re not exactly sure, when a new season is going to launch, but you stop people listening to the old season, so find out if they have any issues with that. Maybe they only work with certain genres, or maybe there are certain genres that they don’t want to work with. So certainly find that out as well. So those are some of the basic things, the basic requirements that they have, ask them about how they do their selling, do they sell based on CPMs? We’ve talked about this in previous episodes, CPM stands for cost per mille a Millay, meaning 1000. So what is the price that you’re going to get per 1000? downloads? And this does vary for the agencies that really focus on CPMs? It varies, I would say, usually, it’s between $20 to $35. And it depends, there’s a lot of different factors there, okay, including the genre of your content, because maybe there’s not a lot of content out there. And you can get, you know, a higher CPM, maybe they even go higher than 35. But those are standard numbers. And if they are using CPMs, do they just use that as a guide? Like do they look at your downloads per month, let’s say you get 20,000 downloads per month, do they multiply that times the CPM? And that’s what they’re planning to charge the advertiser. So is it kind of done in advance based on the downloads that you typically get per month, or is the amount of money calculated after a campaign is finished? There’s a big difference there. Because if you are promised a certain CPM, and they haven’t come up with a final price yet, so they’re waiting to see how many downloads you get, during the time of the campaign, that is actually a better way to do CPMs. Because podcasts are constantly fluctuating. And one month, you may have a lot of people listening. And the next month, I don’t know, maybe your audience is on vacation, or, you know, they’re spending time with their family or whatever, or it’s the holidays, and maybe no one is listening to your podcast around the holidays, whatever it is. So you may have promised an advertiser something based on what your show usually does. But then you find yourself not being able to meet the numbers that were promised. And then sometimes you have to do what they call a make good, which means you have to, they’re not going to lower the price or whatever they’re going to pay you but you have to continue to run the ad, or you have to do something, to get more people to listen, maybe it’s posting something on social media or whatever, you’ve got to do something to make up for that. And I always hate that kind of feeling. So I always think it’s better if you know, you agree on a CPM, if that’s the route you’re going to go, and then you know, you just charge based on whatever was earned during that time period. But we don’t see a lot of advertisers doing this. And the reason they don’t is it’s harder to budget. What happens if you had a banner month, you know, and usually your podcast gets 20,000. But this last month, you’ve got 100,000, then they’re on the hook for 100,000. So you know, it’s a little tricky. And maybe you could put a cap on it, maybe there’s some other things that you could do. But usually, this is kind of decided in advance. And then if you don’t meet those numbers, then you have to do some sort of make good if they’re not doing CPMs, which would be rare. But if they’re not doing that, then they’re probably selling some sort of package deal, or some sort of flat rate for things. And I don’t see that a lot with agencies, I see podcasters doing that more and more, because they know how much time it’s going to take to produce something. And they’re thinking about the time that they’ve got invest in this. So it really doesn’t matter. You know what a CPM is they’re not going to do something unless they get paid X amount of dollars. I see that with podcasters. I don’t usually see that with agencies.

29:05
Another question would be, do they just sell podcast ads? Or do they do other types of advertising as well? Because we are seeing advertisers wanting a more comprehensive approach to advertising. So they’re not just advertising on podcasts, usually podcasts get paired with YouTube quite a bit. So if you have the opportunity, or if you already have a YouTube audience, we are getting more and more requests now from brands that want to partner with podcasts that are also on YouTube. But this can also extend to social media, newsletters, maybe you’ve got some sort of online community group or something like that. It’s great to be able to package things together. So that’s another great question to ask an agency. Do you just sell podcast ads? Or are you willing to incorporate some of these other things so we can all make more money another really important question to ask which this is one of those things that I had to learn the hard way recently, you guys know how long I’ve been doing this, and I’m still learning, it’s still growing. Ask them if they have their own sales team. And are they also working with outside agencies on your behalf, I’m not talking about connecting with brands that have their own agencies, I’m saying, you have this podcast advertising team, right that’s supposed to be selling on your behalf. Sometimes there will be a nother team that is making the connection for your podcast team that you’ve hired that you’ve got the contract with. Now, the reason this is really important, a couple different reasons. First of all, like I said earlier, the more cooks that are in the kitchen, sometimes the more problems that you have, especially when it comes to getting paid for a campaign, because they all have to pay one another and you are probably the last to get paid. So if there are multiple agencies you have to go through even on your side, that could be a problem. But one of the biggest problems I see is that the more people that are on your site, in order to make a deal, the less money you’re going to make. Because the advertiser, the brand, is not going to pay an arm and a leg to each of these different groups, they have a budget in mind. And usually it’s comparable. And everyone else is taking a portion of your pie is how I see it. Because these people do not make any money unless you are producing good content. And I think I personally think that podcasters should get paid a lot of money to be able to do that. Not all these in between people. And let me do you a favor. And you know, you know this person, so I’ll give you X amount. And by the time that it gets to you, you’re not getting the $20 to $35. CPM, you’re getting $15 or less. So make sure you know who is actually doing the selling. Is it just their team? Are they working with other agencies, and also if you get to the point where they are finding campaigns for you, and they are quoting you CPMs like, Oh, if you do this campaign, it’s X amount of dollars, make sure that’s what you’re going to make, because I’ve also had it where they throw out numbers. And it is not what you’re going to make. It’s what you know, your whole side is going to make and sometimes you don’t know how many players there are. And by the time you get your money, like I said, it’s like $15 or less. You know, CPM. So know who’s involved. Also ask them and this is a big one to do they require exclusivity in order to work with them. I’ve done this both ways. I have worked with agencies that said, Yes, you have to be exclusive to us. And I’ve worked with agencies that have said no, you do not have to be exclusive with us, you can work with other agencies as well. Bottom line, whichever route you go, always make sure you meaning you are someone from your immediate team that’s part of your podcast, you can still sell your own ads, do not sign with anyone that tells you you cannot find advertisers yourself. Because I promise you at some point, if your show is successful, people will reach out directly to you. Like I gave the example earlier through our website, I have a section that says advertise, I get people reaching out to us. Now a lot of times I choose to pass that along to the agencies that we work with. But if I wanted to, for whatever reason, if I thought it was a good opportunity, I’m working with one right now. And it was a longer campaign. I’ve worked with them before, it just made sense for me to take that on. And I would feel horrible if I had to pass that along to an agency. So make sure you can still sell your own ads. I think right now based on the industry and where it stands. And you know, sometimes it’s hard to secure these kinds of deals, I think it’s best for you to be able to work with multiple agencies. That’s how I personally feel. However, I will say some of the largest agencies out there will not allow you to do that. Usually they allow you to still sell your own ads. But when it comes to third party companies, it’s them and that’s it. But the thing that they don’t do is give you any security with that. They do not guarantee that they are going to fill anything, which is why I think it’s important to keep your options open. But again, you just have to weigh the pros and cons and every situation is a little bit different.

34:52
So the last thing because I know I’ve been talking for a while now but I really wanted to go through and tell you how this works with my company independent Podcast Network. Because, as I mentioned earlier, this is why I started independent Podcast Network is I saw a need out there because I am very much an advocate for small to medium sized podcasts. I know how hard you guys work, I’ve been in that position before. And I know that there are far less opportunities for the smaller shows, because the ad agencies, everybody, the sponsors, they’re all going after the bigger shows. But that’s not necessarily the best answer. But the way the whole system is set up, is that you have to have a big show in order to be playing in this game. So what we have done it IPN, we work with media buyers, we work with ad agencies, we work with other podcast networks, I worked with independent sales reps, we have we do not have exclusivity at all, because I think it’s important to keep options open. We allow the podcasts that are part of our network to do their own selling as well. And we work with all of these different types of people to bring in ad campaigns. Because we want as many people as possible selling your podcast, that just makes sense. Again, this is a game of relationships. And you need to keep your options open. So we work with these companies on your behalf. Again, you can still work with other third party companies, you can do whatever you want. But we are also doing this on your behalf, we do require all the shows that we work with to do dynamic ad insertion. Like I said before, it is just the way to go. If you’re really serious about this, it is better for you it is better for the advertisers. And if you aren’t familiar with that, first of all, I have a whole course that teaches all about dynamic ad insertion. So you can go to our website and and check that out for yourself. But you have to have a podcast hosting platform that allows you to do dynamic ad insertion. So we meaning IPN, we provide you with a free account. Remember how I said sometimes podcast hosting is included? It is with us if we bring you on board, and we’re able to sell advertising for you. And we even go one step further. Because we know that a lot of people don’t have their episodes set up for dynamic ad insertion. So we do that process for you. It’s a process of going in and adding add markers to any episode you’ve released prior, we do and we have to pay for that out of our own pocket. But we do that for the shows that we really believe in. So we get you set up for dynamic ad insertion, you don’t have to pay a thing for the hosting. We also require that all shows run programmatic ads as well. So those are ads that if we are not able to find a campaign for you that a different type of ad goes in there. These are more generic type ads are still quality ads. But you know, those ads would fill the spot because we have to make money because we’re spending money on you. Right. So we do require that shows run programmatic ads. But then we are your single contact for all of these types of advertising requests, regardless of where it comes in. We work directly with those agencies with the networks on your behalf. And the only person you have to connect with is us is our team. you voice your own ads, you give them to us, we upload them to your account, we run the campaigns for you, we again make any kind of connection back and forth with the agency or with the networks and then they are paid for the campaign. We’re paid and then we pay you guys for the campaign. And that is how it works. So some of you listening to this, I know I gave you a ton of information today. Maybe some of you want to make a go for this. Maybe you want to reach out to these companies yourself, these podcasts advertising agencies, if that’s the case, go for it. Do your homework, do whatever is going to work for your show. But if you fall into the category of oh my goodness, I just want to produce, you know, my show, I want to create good content. Yes, I want to make money with my podcast. But I don’t want to, you know, this is not a second job for me, you know, I need someone else to do this on our behalf. Well, if your show is bringing in 5000 downloads or more per month across all of your episodes, so it’s a lot less than the 10,000 to 20,000 per episode. If your podcast is doing that, then please reach out to us because I think we can help you.

39:34
Alright guys, thanks so much for checking out today’s episode. I hope it was helpful for those of you that are kind of on the fence. Maybe you’re thinking about working with an agency. You’re like I don’t really know what to expect. And, you know, I still want to have control over my show. Hopefully I gave you some nuggets of information that will help you as you make this decision. And I do have a free handout for you guys. So if you guys are going to start to work with advertisers Then you knew you need to know how to write ads, right? And so I’ve got a free download for you. And it goes through the four different things that I consider when I’m writing podcast ads. I use it every time. I’m sitting down to write an ad, and I think it’s really going to help. So I will include the link in the episode description. And it’s all on our website. So we’ve got a ton of free resources. Again, the website is https://independentpodcast.network. We’ve got free blog posts that come out every week, new posts come out every week. All of these podcast episodes are available on our website. We’ve got videos, more free handouts, I’ve got whole courses that used to be behind a paywall, but I opened it up because I want all of you guys to be able to benefit from it. And I don’t think it should cost an arm and a leg to create a podcast. I don’t. I want you guys to get your voices out there. And so again, check out the website for more information. Until next week, remember… you should start a podcast!