Transcripts
Podcast advertising has much greater recall than other forms of ads.
Evo Terra:But how many times have you forgotten the URL, a coupon code, or even
Evo Terra:the name of an advertiser when you were ready to take action?
Evo Terra:Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
Evo Terra:Podcast advertising is hard on all sides of the equation if I'm honest.
Evo Terra:It's hard to efficiently buy, it's hard to efficiently place, and it's hard for
Evo Terra:the ad buyers to integrate podcasting ads with the rest of their ad buys.
Evo Terra:And, yeah, okay, okay, sure, I recognize that a billion dollars
Evo Terra:or so is already being spent on podcast advertising just in the U.S..
Evo Terra:So the hurdles aren't insurmountable.
Evo Terra:But still, they could be made better.
Evo Terra:Especially for brand advertisers who've invested quite a lot to build
Evo Terra:up their brand equity - brand equity that they can't often leverage in
Evo Terra:podcast ads, whether they're live read, or programmatically inserted.
Evo Terra:One company, Vocalize Inc., is trying to change that.
Evo Terra:Vocalize Inc.
Evo Terra:is the Branded Benefits Sponsor this month, and I recently sat down with CEO
Evo Terra:CJ Silva and asked him what Vocalize is doing to make podcasting better.
CJ Silva:So there is an inherent flaw in podcast advertising
CJ Silva:as it stands right now.
CJ Silva:The call to action, the way that listeners connect to brands and the
CJ Silva:talent on the podcast is hard to remember.
CJ Silva:It's usually a URL.
CJ Silva:It's a string of letters - .com, .org - followed by, typically, an offer
CJ Silva:code, something that people forget right away after they hear it, right?
CJ Silva:They want to get back to listening to the content.
CJ Silva:So the ads aren't foremost on their mind.
CJ Silva:What's important to them is really the podcast, right?
CJ Silva:The content.
CJ Silva:So what Vocalize does is makes it easy for people to remember how to
CJ Silva:connect with the brands or the talent.
CJ Silva:What we do is we allow the brand or the talent to create a unique phrase, and
CJ Silva:when that phrase is spoken into Siri or Google Assistant, it will take that
CJ Silva:listener directly to the website that the brand or the talent wants them to go to.
CJ Silva:So, for example, let's use Nike.
CJ Silva:Nike has a world famous motto in "Just do it."
CJ Silva:So instead of providing the listener a call to action of go to
CJ Silva:www.nike.com/podcastshowname, they can just simply Vocalize "Just do it."
CJ Silva:So, the listener can then just into Siri, say, "Hey, Siri, Vocalize."
CJ Silva:Siri will ask for a phrase, and all they have to do is say, "Just do it."
CJ Silva:Safari's going to open automatically to the website
CJ Silva:that Nike wants them to land on.
CJ Silva:And Nike can actually set a different website based on the
CJ Silva:state where the user's located.
CJ Silva:So they may have a different landing page they want for people in Florida because
CJ Silva:it's warm weather versus somebody who's still in the colder weather in Maine.
CJ Silva:So they can use the same campaign and still deliver a user to
CJ Silva:a more targeted experience.
CJ Silva:Additionally, you're getting the listener to speak something about
CJ Silva:your branding, which is really unique and it's something memorable.
CJ Silva:It's simple for people to remember.
Evo Terra:So it sounds like Vocalize is mostly an ad tech play.
Evo Terra:Do you agree with that summation?
CJ Silva:Absolutely.
CJ Silva:The origin of the company was really listening to a podcast, I heard an ad
CJ Silva:for a company called Boll & Branch.
CJ Silva:I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, sheet company.
CJ Silva:Kind of great messaging where they say three former U.S.
CJ Silva:presidents sleep on their sheets and it was something that resonated with me.
CJ Silva:But like most podcast listeners, I didn't remember the name of the company.
CJ Silva:I didn't remember the website they announced three times during the ad,
CJ Silva:using up valuable time in that ad read.
CJ Silva:And a few weeks later I was looking for sheets, believe it or not, and
CJ Silva:I was like, oh, you know what, there was that company I heard, couldn't
CJ Silva:remember the name, but I remembered they said presidents use their sheets.
CJ Silva:So, did what most listeners do, opened up Google, typed
CJ Silva:presidents and sheets, nothing.
CJ Silva:Nothing came back about Boll & Branch, which I was really surprised.
CJ Silva:I was like, wow, I was like, I wonder how much they spent for that ad
CJ Silva:in order for me to see every other competitor that they have out there.
CJ Silva:So the minimum ad spend on that platform was about $10,000.
CJ Silva:I was like, what a waste.
CJ Silva:They just spent ten grand to send me to see every other competitor
CJ Silva:except for their product.
CJ Silva:And, you know, that's when I was like, it would've been a lot cooler if they
CJ Silva:just told me to grab my phone and say, "Sleep like a president" into Siri.
CJ Silva:And I would have remembered that.
CJ Silva:I would have remembered that two weeks later, but I wouldn't remember the name
CJ Silva:of their website, the name of the company, and especially not the offer code.
Evo Terra:Does this work out of the box?
Evo Terra:Does a brand need to do anything other than register
Evo Terra:their Vocalize phrase with you?
Evo Terra:And it just works?
CJ Silva:So, yeah that's all they have to do.
CJ Silva:So we have a marketplace on the backend.
CJ Silva:It's similar to registering a domain name.
CJ Silva:In this case, you would register your phrase and then set the
CJ Silva:destination URL, and that's it.
CJ Silva:The end user right now needs to have either our app or an
CJ Silva:app that has our SDK installed.
CJ Silva:So we're actively looking for SDK partners such as podcast players
CJ Silva:that are looking to provide a better experience for their listeners,
CJ Silva:something different against all the other podcast players that are out there.
Evo Terra:It sounds to me like you're really looking at this more
Evo Terra:as a play for brand advertisers than direct response advertisers, yeah?
CJ Silva:Correct.
CJ Silva:But there is some benefit to direct response, right?
CJ Silva:Because now the websites you can be delivered to don't have to
CJ Silva:be published websites, right?
CJ Silva:They can be deep links, something that's not searchable.
CJ Silva:So now you have the exclusivity factor.
CJ Silva:So if you're a podcaster, the only way that somebody can access this
CJ Silva:content is to speak this phrase.
CJ Silva:So there's no way they could go to Google and search for it or find it.
CJ Silva:It's not going to be something memorable for somebody other than copying and
CJ Silva:pasting it, sending it via email.
CJ Silva:So we've created speakeasies on the internet, right?
CJ Silva:So now somebody can say this unique phrase and get into somewhere unique and
CJ Silva:get that exclusive content that there would be no other way for them to get.
Evo Terra:Yeah, so it's like click-based advertising where you can put a click
Evo Terra:for a deep link, but really we've tried that in podcasting, it just simply
Evo Terra:doesn't work for a lot of reasons.
Evo Terra:But one thing we can universally do is say something aloud.
Evo Terra:Vocalize is doing something that's, well, unique in this space, but there are lots
Evo Terra:of other options where brands are trying to place ads and track the efficacy of
Evo Terra:their ads and get their name out there.
Evo Terra:What is it you think that Vocalize offers that's better
Evo Terra:than the existing standards today?
CJ Silva:A lot of the tracking that's being done in podcasting
CJ Silva:is based off of IP tracking.
CJ Silva:Right?
CJ Silva:So we know that a podcast was delivered to this IP address
CJ Silva:or this household or this area.
CJ Silva:And then we look to see conversions based off of that
CJ Silva:within a certain amount of time.
CJ Silva:Now we can see direct correlation.
CJ Silva:We can see how many times those phrases were actually said.
CJ Silva:We know when those phrases, where they're said, where
CJ Silva:they're coming from on what day.
CJ Silva:So the attribution could be much higher.
CJ Silva:With the implementation of the tracking pixel, we can get really granular so
CJ Silva:now we know exactly the conversion where it came from, from the point at
CJ Silva:which the user spoke that phrase all the way to the desired effect for that ad.
CJ Silva:The hurdle we have is education, right?
CJ Silva:Because it is changing consumer behavior.
CJ Silva:We've all accepted URLs as the way the internet works.
CJ Silva:And honestly, they suck.
CJ Silva:I mean, they're really, guys like me invented it years ago
CJ Silva:and it just became the norm.
CJ Silva:And they created domain names, which are our pseudo language because IP
CJ Silva:addresses were way too cumbersome.
CJ Silva:I mean, there's a reason Google is a multi-billion dollar company, right?
CJ Silva:Because it's not easy to remove URLS.
CJ Silva:Right?
CJ Silva:We all remember jingles from when we were little kids, the DOUBLEMINT Gum.
CJ Silva:We all sing them, honestly, they just, they stick.
CJ Silva:So if you can use that same capability within humans, something that's
CJ Silva:easy to remember, it's something that they'll go back to at any time.
Evo Terra:What's next for Vocalize?
CJ Silva:So we're in talks with some major companies
CJ Silva:as far as deploying our SDK.
CJ Silva:I can't mention their names, but this would Vocalize-enable upwards of thirty
CJ Silva:million daily average users instantly by them adding our SDK into their app
CJ Silva:a lot of people have installed already.
CJ Silva:We're also building out our development teams so we can fully
CJ Silva:execute some of the roadmap I mentioned with the tracking pixels.
CJ Silva:But we're looking to also expand our exhaust data capabilities.
CJ Silva:So being able to find out how many people said certain phrases on certain
CJ Silva:times, and then potentially export that in a much more unique way.
CJ Silva:Right now we can do it in a CSV file, just some raw data that they can pop up.
CJ Silva:But we want to make that a little bit more user-friendly as well.
CJ Silva:So that's really, we're focusing on our SDK work.
CJ Silva:The focus is we're not going to get fifty million people to
CJ Silva:download our Vocalize app, right?
CJ Silva:Not going to happen.
CJ Silva:But to focus on our SDK partners and we're making really good progress there, as
CJ Silva:well as building out our development team.
CJ Silva:We're really excited with what's upcoming in the next few months.
Evo Terra:If podcasters are interested in this, what should they do right now?
CJ Silva:They reach out to me.
CJ Silva:You can purchase your phrase on Vocalizemysite.com.
CJ Silva:If you have the app, you can just Vocalize "best website ever," if
CJ Silva:you want to get right to our site.
CJ Silva:Or you can email me, you can just email cj@Vocalizemysite.com and that's
CJ Silva:Vocalize with a 'Z' for those Anglicised listeners that may use an 'S' in there.
CJ Silva:It's real simple.
CJ Silva:It takes about five minutes to set up a phrase and it works instantly.
CJ Silva:Even if you change the URL destination, it updates instantly.
CJ Silva:It's not like a domain name where it takes about twenty-four hours to hit
CJ Silva:and propagate across the internet.
CJ Silva:It's immediate.
Evo Terra:Special thanks to CJ for coming on the show to explain how
Evo Terra:Vocalize is making podcasting better.
Evo Terra:This conversation sparked a few ideas for me.
Evo Terra:Like, how do we make our podcasts more attractive to brand-based advertisers?
Evo Terra:What does a world where voice assistants are much more universal
Evo Terra:look like for podcasters?
Evo Terra:And what can we podcasters do to make our own content more memorable?
Evo Terra:Those are topics I'll be exploring the rest of this week.
Evo Terra:But for now, I shall be back directly with yet another Podcast Pontifications.
Evo Terra:Cheers!
Sheila Dee:Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra.
Sheila Dee:He's on a mission to make podcasting better.
Sheila Dee:Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes
Sheila Dee:section of your podcast listening app.
Sheila Dee:A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at
Sheila Dee:podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected
Sheila Dee:transcript, both created by Allie Press.
Sheila Dee:Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.
