Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and how the tech are you. I recently got a note from my editor that my rushed intro is starting to slurn together to the point where it's completely incomprehensible, so I'm working to reverse that. You can thank TORII. She's the reason why uh I I have I have been curbed of my chaotic behavior. Anyway, Twitter user Ryan Barrier sent me a message that read quote, Hey, Jonathan, I'd love to hear about how podcast advertising works. Early on in your show, I remember hearing the same ad for years. Toyota Camera not currently a sponsor of this episode. That's just metorializing. Then it seems they became more dynamic. Now even old episodes have current ads. Thanks end quote. Well, thank you, Ryan Barrier. And yes, our podcasts have ads that stay current. Even if you were to go back and download a very old episode of tech Stuff, you would hear current ads in the ad breaks. And as you say, the ads are dynamic, we call them dynamic ads are really dynamic ad insertions. But let's start off with the different kinds of ads that you can encounter with podcasts, because it's good to know how advertisers think, how content creators think, and the frankly difficult path of balancing commerce and art, or in the case of tech stuff, commerce and the technology podcast made by a twit. Now, this stuff is not going to relate to ads initially. I'm going to give a little bit more background, but it is important to understand to kind of get a grasp on the evolution of podcasting and then the subsequent incorporation of ads. Now, in the old old days, most podcasts were not really monetized, at least not through advertising. It was a brand new medium, and so typically a podcast came out of either someone's hobby, so it was being done just for fun zies, with no expectation that it was going to generate revenue. In fact, more than likely it was costing the person who was making the podcast money, or it was going to be used as an extension of some other media companies output. There were a few exceptions. A couple of podcasts set up subscription models pretty early on, so they were kind of like an audio magazine. Listeners could pay to download episodes month to month. So there were some early versions of podcasts that were supported directly by listeners, and obviously that model still exists today. There are subscription based podcasts out there that are behind a paywall in other words, but ads really would come a bit later for podcasts. So even though there were some early paywall podcasting, there weren't a whole lot of podcasts that contain ads early early on. Let me give you an example of a podcast that was used for brand extension. Uh, there was a podcast I used to listen to. It no longer exists. I mean you can find old episodes, I imagine, but it's no longer produced. And this was way back in like the mid two thousand's, before I was ever a podcaster myself. It was called buzz out Loud and it came from c Net. Tom Merritt and Molly Wood were the the anchors of that show, with other hosts and producers also contributing. The Buzz out Loud show covered tech news and was part of a c net brand, but it wasn't necessarily a revenue generating show on its own, at least not most of the time. Rather, it was helping you know, introduced the brand of c net to new audiences, and the hope was that these audiences would then find their way to c net dot com, where traffic was monetized through various means like web page ads and whatnot, you know, all the regular web advertising strategies. Maybe that visitor would then become a regular at c net, which means they would also be a regular source of revenue, or rather, their traffic would be a regular source of revenue. It all gets a bit wibbly wobbly when we talk about this stuff. Really, whenever you talk about advertising, there's there's a level of kind of vague uncertainty in the mix. When I started podcasting, which was back in the summer of two thousand eight, it was much the same for us over at what was then how stuff Works dot Com. To be clear, how stuff Works dot Com still exists, but my part in How Stuff Works split off several years ago and we haven't had any real contact since then. But back in two thousand and eight, I was a writer for how stuff Works dot com and I focused primarily on tech articles. Big surprise there, and our buss a guy named Conal Burne who has actually been our boss on and off a few times over the years. It kind of feels like we would go our separate ways and then come back and then do it again. Um. He decided in two thousand and eight that podcasting would be a good way to extend brand awareness of how stuff Works dot com. Uh. The first of those podcasts, technically the first, I believe was brain Stuff, which was Marshall brains podcast. He was the founder of how stuff Works dot com, and then later on that podcast would pass to other hands. But the first big one to come out that really was the flagship was Stuff You Should Know Now. It was important to try and extend the brand of how stuff Works dot com because most of the traffic coming into the website was from web searches, primarily Google. So, in other words, most people who are going to how stuff Works dot com, we're not going there just to browse articles. Most visitors were not fans of the site who just wanted to learn about all sorts of stuff, from tech to history to culture to food. By the way, how stupp works dot Com still a fantastic website with amazing, well written, researched articles, and I highly recommend checking it out if you're of a curious nature and you want to just learn stuff. But now most of the people coming to the website had a specific question that they wanted to answer, like how does a steam engine work, for example, and they used a search engine, our site would pop up and they would come into the site to get their answer from one of these well written, well researched articles, and then once they got their answer, they would bounce. Well, while we loved all the traffic coming into the site through search, there was no denying that it sure would be nice to have folks stick around a bit more and brows and become regular visitors. Also, this is a good time to mention that search engines change over time. Right. The Google search algorithm has changed many times over the years, and whenever there's a change in the algorithm, there's a change in page rankings, which means you might at one point have been the dominant player in search results for various topics, and then once there's a change in the algorithm, maybe your results appeared lower down on the page or or worst case scenario, off of page one. Because hardly anyone goes beyond page one of search results. Hardly anyone goes below the fold. So not being highly ranked in SIR could be a death sentence if you were depending heavily upon traffic coming from search engines. So again a strong incentive to find a way to bring people over to the website beyond just searching for a specific answer. Right. So, the podcasts, while not initially monetize herble directly themselves, we're seeing almost like an advertising tool for the website. In fact, when we first launched the podcasts, we had a rule every episode needed to relate to a specific article on the website, and we would refer listeners to go and read those articles in the hopes that they actually would go check those articles out and then maybe branch out from there and explore the site. We were trying to make How Stuff Works a destination site. UH that had limited success as far as I'm aware. I mean I wasn't and analytics, so I couldn't really see what, if any effect this had. However, we did not too long after that mandate dropped the requirements so that different podcasts could actually do UH topics that were not directly related to an article on the site, And we dropped it immediately over at tech Stuff because a lot of the articles that were on the site that we're relating to technology, Obviously they would get out of date very quickly because technology evolved so fast, and so we would have an article of and the examples in an article might be really kind of embarrassing in in retrospect, Like if you're doing an article or a podcast about CPUs and the article is talking about pentium processors, that's kind of embarrassing because those are dinosaurs. Right. So anyway, we switched over, and you know, it also turned out that it's it's a difficult cell to convince someone who's listening to a podcast to then go to a specific U r L right, because it all depends on how they're listening. If they're jogging and they're listening on headphones, they're not going to stop and pull out their phone and navigate to the website. If they're driving, I sure as heck hope they aren't going to stop, uh paying attention to the road and then try and navigate to this website to read an article while they're driving. So yeah, it was tough to use podcasts in this way. And honestly, there could have been the chance for podcasts at how Stuff works to just go away because the limited return on investment, But we stuck with it and we grew, and that would end up paying off because eventually, not immediately, but over time, podcasting would become a relevant way of generating revenue all on its own thanks to advertising. Okay, now, before we get into that, it's time to have an example. We're going to actually take an ad break right now. We'll be right back. Okay. So podcasts when they start off aren't really monetized beyond being behind a paywall in some rare instances, but let's skip ahead. Gradually, some brands, particularly of smaller companies, started seeing the possibility of reaching customers through podcasts, and that opened up some opportunities on all sides. One opportunity was to have an ad baked into a podcast. Another opportunity was to pay for a fully sponsored and possibly themed episode. That second option is more expensive, and it also means that a single advertiser pretty much has domain over the whole episode, so in other words, you won't hear ads from other brands appear in that episode. But let's talk about baked in ads or burned in ads, depending upon whom you're talking to. Now, back in the old days, there really wasn't any sophisticated content management system for podcasts. So the way it worked was you would record your audio, maybe you edit it, you might add in some music and some other stuff, maybe other effects. Then you would publish this finished audio file on a publication platform. That platform would then push the podcasts RSS feed to the various podcatching services out there, most notably iTunes. Back in the day, iTunes was the dominant source for podcasts. In fact that we call them podcasts because of the iPod. So Apple, while it had not invented either the MP three player or the podcast, was kind of the the nexus of all things podcast in the early days. Now to this day, iTunes is still a really important piece of the puzzle. Interestingly, a lot of the tech stuff listeners out there are getting this show through other podcatching services because I can see that a ton of y'all are listening on Android devices, which is, you know, awesome, and I also listen on an Android device. So yeah, we're kind of an outlier because a lot of podcasts still get the majority of their traffic through iTunes. All right, So originally most of the companies that would actually purchase advertising on podcasts were these smaller companies that could not necessarily afford a big national campaign on you know, traditional media like TV and radio, but podcasts also have national or global reach, and podcasts were not nearly as expensive to use for advertising. Heck, there were podcasts out there that had no idea what ad rates to charge or what metrics to use in order to guide negotiations. It was really messy and chaotic. Now it would all more or less get worked out over time, but in those early days it was It was just confusing because no one really had any way of of quantifying what add time on a podcast was worth. Anyway, a baked in AD is one that's recorded right inside of a show itself. It is part of the audio file. So you might be talking about like a transponder one moment. Then you might say in the podcast, before we go any further, let's talk about our sponsor blah blah blah, and then you might transition right into an AD, and it's all part of the same recording session. It's all part of the same file. And most of the ads back in those days were what we would call direct response advertising. Now, this is a kind of ad that asks the listener to take some sort of immediate action, such as purchasing a product or service, and there's typically a code associated with whichever podcast has the ad in it. And when you hear me in an ad say something like use promo code stuff or something like that, that is a direct response ad. The ads efficacy is largely measured by how many folks actually went to the trouble of going to the site and using that promo code. Now, in the old days, you'd hear a lot of the same companies advertising across different shows, like Casper Mattresses and Meanis and Dollar Shave Club and stitch Fix. These are all great companies. By the way, I actually really liked working with all of these brands. They were great, and it was it was kind of a rising tide lifts all ships because I really believed in the products. So listeners, if they were using the the code, we're getting products that I believed in. They were getting a discount, so that was the benefit to the listeners, and the brands were getting broader reach across and more customers, so everybody was winning. So it was kind of like a a bootstrap approach to business, you know. These were companies that again probably would have had trouble accessing traditional media on a national level, and here they were being able to tap into something that was having an incredible impact. Like the podcasting experience is a very intimate one. It has this relationship between host and listener, and especially a host red ad can have a huge impact on listeners, particularly the host is being sincere about it. So yeah, it was this kind of magical com nation right now. Podcasting was growing in popularity in general. I mean you kept on seeing news about podcasting his back or the podcasting renaissance, and you would have people who have been podcasting that whole time saying, don't call to come back, I've been here for years. Shout out the Scott Johnson um and some podcasts were doing really, really well, right Some would go on to be like the superstars of the medium. Like, you know, I'm not a fan of his his beliefs or his delivery, but there's no denying Joe Rogan hit the stratosphere as far as podcasting is concerned, and he launched that show I think in two thousand nine. So this was that's an example of a show the win to the stratosphere. Here at at I Heart and actually previously at How Stuff Works. Our big flagship show was Stuff you Should Know. I'll mention them again in a little bit. So this opened up the opportunity to do sponsored and themed episodes because the shows were getting to a point where if you were an advertiser, and you are an advertising client maybe who had the money, then getting a sponsored show could be really attractive because of the reach of these podcasts. But this is where things get really tricky, um because this is where you've got increased overlap between advertising and editorial content, and that can produce like advertorial content is one of the phrases for it. It's one I hate, but it is what it's often used to describe a show that is supposed to combine the promotion of a sponsor with the content itself. Now, ideally, a themed podcast, a themed sponsored podcast should appeal to regular listeners, even if it was themed to promote whatever sponsor was sponsoring the episode. If it is done poorly, then the episode is going to come across as a very long advertisement for the respective sponsor. And ain't no one out there who loves that. Apart from advertising executives, who seem to think it's a win, even though that kind of content almost never performs well once it's released. Now, there are ways to do a themed sponsored episode well, but that approach is delicate and needs a really good level of understanding between the content creators, the advertising reps, and the sponsor itself in order to make it happen. And frankly, it always surprises me when I encounter folks pushing to make a show more explicitly an ad for a company or its products and services or whatever, because I maintain audiences are really smart. I mean, we all know how to spot and add. We've been encountering ads our entire lives, so of course we know an ad right away. And if we suspect someone is trying to pass off and add as quote unquote real content, we get irritated about it because we feel like the content creator doesn't respect our intelligence. Right It's like the content creator is trying to pass off this advertisement as if it is otherwise content and they would have created anyway, And the disingenuous nature of that offends a lot of people, including me. I mean, I I'm likely to bounce off a video or a podcast if I sense that it's not a genuine piece of work and is instead an add masquerading as an episode. Now, all that being said, some of the best episodes of some podcasts have come from sponsored and themed episodes. It can be done. It just takes a real collaborative effort of all the parties involved and an understanding on the part of the sponsor and the ad reps that pushing their narrative too hard is going to have the opposite effect that they want. Now, let's move on to dynamic ad insertion, which actually I guess I'll get to after we take this break for a couple more ads. Okay, dynamic ad insertion. As podcasting grew in popularity, you had companies that were creating more sophisticated tools for publishing and hosting podcasts, Like there was an industry there, so there was an incentive to innovate in the space. And one tool, one that was already in use on the Worldwide Web, was dynamic ad insertion, and it does exactly what it says on the ten. Dynamic ad insertion is the practice of inserting ads at the time someone encounters the content. So when someone downloads a podcast or when they stream an episode, that's when the AD gets inserted. So instead of having a baked in AD that was recorded at the time that the podcast itself was recorded, the dynamic ad insertion tool plops a current AD into the ad breaks. That means, if you download an episode today and someone you know downloads the same episode a year later, the two of you are going to encounter different ads at the time that you listen to the show when you hit those AD breaks. And the way this works from our side is pretty simple. We create AD breaks in our show now some folks like yours. Truly, We do that as we record, so you've heard it in this episode. I just keep an eye on the time, and when I hit certain time lines, I will pause to throw in an AD break. We have UH standards in our our company about how many AD breaks go into a show based upon how long the episode is. So if my episode is going to be longer than say twenty minutes, I know that I need to put an AD break in every ten minutes or so. If it's gonna be like five minutes, I can go to like fifteen minutes or so. It again depends upon the length of the episode, and I'm not going to give all the details about it, because one those change over time, so I can't guarantee that by the time you listen to this it will be the same. And too, it really doesn't matter. So I pause my episode, I'll throw in an ad break, and then my super editor Torii can, while editing, chop the episode there and insert a little digital marker, and that digital marker essentially tells our publication platform here is where you can put a mid role ad. Mid role is just a type of ad that appears in the middle of a show. You also have pre role obviously that happens before a show starts, and post roll those are ads that play after a show ends. Then I just picked back up and carry on until I hit the next benchmark, and then I insert a new ad break throw and Torii chops the show there when she's editing and puts in another digital marker. Now that little digital marker that TRY adds in is really the secret sauce, and we typically have parameters set for what our ads can be in our various positions, So mid role ads tend to be sixty seconds long each. Now once in a while we might have a longer ad depending upon the specific AD deal. Like you could have a two minute AD instead of a sixty second AD, but then that would essentially take up two slots in your AD break, Right, So each AD break allows a certain number of ads per break, or really a certain amount of AD time per break. Now, why would you want to use dynamic ads in the first place. Well, to understand that, it's helpful understand a little bit about AD deals themselves. Typically, an AD deal is made to either last a specific amount of time or more frequently, in order to reach a specific number of impressions. Now, impressions means the number of times that particular AD was downloaded or streamed. So let's say we strike a deal with I don't know, the ACME corporation from the old Warner Brothers cartoons, and we're trying to sell anvils. So our deal is to hit one thousand impressions with this hypothetical AD deal. So ACNE pays us whatever our AD rate is to reach that impression limit, and we get to work on delivering those impressions by getting people to download a hundred thousand episodes or stream a hundred thousand episodes that have or or you know, instances that have that AD in them. Now, if you have a baked in AD where you've actually recorded it within the body of the podcast and it's not something that can be easily chopped out, that podcast ad is limited, right. I mean, it's true that episodes typically see the highest number of downloads on the first week of publication. After that, things trail off really really fast. It is rare for you to see a spike in an old episode unless something really relevant to that episode happened in the news. But there is a long tail there. People do go back and search back catalogs, and they do download and stream old, old episodes of podcasts. And if an ad has been baked into a podcast, well, technically that podcast is still delivering impressions even after the ad deal has concluded. And advertisers love that because you know, they paid for a hundred thousand impressions. But if it's a baked an ad, they're going to keep getting impressions on that ad beyond that one thousand deal because the ad was baked in. So anyone downloading that episode years later is going to hear that old ad and maybe you know, the promo code is not gonna matter anymore, but the ad might still drive people to go to that that particular company. So it's like everything you've got above the one impressions you got for free, or if you want, you can think of it as the price per impression continues to decrease over time. But dynamic ad insertion means that number one, podcasts can more nimbly switch from serving one ad to a different ad as various ad deals conclude, and two they can rely on the back catalog to contribute to the number of impressions agreed upon with the current advertiser. So in other words, by swapping out the ads, you can meet the obligations faster, and then you can sell that da da da brand new ads. It's a more lucrative way to do business. Right, So if if only my newest episodes were able to hold the latest ads, it would take longer for me to meet my obligation to the advertiser. But because it goes through the entire back catalog and people are always downloading old episodes, then those ads are getting served more frequently because of the long tail, So I meet that obligation faster, and then I can conclude one ad deal and go to a new one. When I say I, I really mean my sales team. I don't do any of that work, thank goodness, because I would be terrible at it anyway. This also means that folks listening are going to hear relevant ads, even if they're diving into the back catalog. They're not going to hear an ad for some company that stopped existing like seven years ago. Now, there are some different ways of doing this. One way would be to a mass prerecorded ads that can run across an entire network. We call these run off network ads. So these would be ads where the company I Heart in this case, would have agreed that it would deliver a certain number of impressions per ad, but it doesn't really matter which shows that ad appears on. So theoretically my Heart could put that ad on every show on the network and push it out there to meet that impression requirement immediately. It's a lot like the ads that you would encounter on radio or on television that they aren't made specifically for one podcast like one show, and they may or may not be read by a podcast host at all. It might be produced by some ad company, and no one that you know of was related to the production of that ad. That's one way to do it here at I Heart. Yeah, we do have run of network ads. We have some of those, and those might run on certain shows, but not all of them. But we still largely depend upon host red advertising, so we still have hosts reading our ads. Like you know, the ads you encounter on tech Stuff more often than not, those are ads that I'm doing. It's just that now those ads that were recording are going effectively into a database of ads, and the dynamic Ad Insertion tool can pull from and PLoP those ads into our respective shows, all the episodes of our respective shows. In fact, so if I do a read for a specific company, that spot can now appear on every episode of tech Stuff I have ever published. Now, it doesn't physically insert the ad into every episode at that time, It just happens whenever anyone downloads or streams the episode, that's when the ad gets inserted. Otherwise, you can think of the ad breaks in these undownloaded episodes as kind of being ready to go to pop in whatever relevant ads should go in that space at that time. This is great for me because it means that I am delivering the most relevant ads at any given moment, and that those then cycle off the show once the ad deal has concluded and new relevant ads can appear, and I don't have to worry about people listening to stuff that doesn't exist anymore or that has a promo code that has long since stopped working. And host red ads tend to be more valuable than generic prerecorded spots. When I say generic, I mean an ad that's been recorded for any show, not for a specific show, right Like, you could hear that same ad on whatever podcast you downloaded. It doesn't relate to the show you just listened to. Now it feels weird for me to talk about this because you know it's it's how the sausage is made. But this is info that's readily available if you want to look for it. It's not like I'm giving away trade secrets. There are articles dedicated to this kind of stuff, including articles that quote my boss Conal Burne, the guy I talked about earlier talking about the value of host read advertising, because you know that has a real connection to it to listeners. Also, Connal refers to baked in ads as burned in ads, so he's one of the people who says burned in rather than baked in, and he talks about how those have really big limitations. I think one reason that our host read ads are seen to have a lot more value than you know, preprogrammed ads is here at iHeart, hosts have a ton of authority when it comes to choosing what ads can run on their respective shows and which ones can't. So hosts have the chance to review and accept or reject ads and sponsors. Times out of a hundred, it all works really well. Right the host says, yeah, I'm fine with that, or I would rather not do that, and that's it. Once in a blue moon, you might get a little pushback. Happened to me recently. If a particular ad deal is seen as really crucial for the company, then it might prompt a deeper discussion rather than just a thumbs up or thumbs down, so that we can get to the bottom of where is their resistance and is there a good reason for it or is there a way to present this that doesn't have that resistance. So there's a lot of room for negotiation, and ultimately someone can still say no. Uh, maybe they compromise, or maybe they just said listen, this is a hard no for me. I just can't do it and we move on. So here's the thing we all understand. Podcasting cannot continue without generating revenue. Everyone working on the shows has to eat and pay rent and you know all that kind of stuff, and you can't do that just for free. So there is a business. That is why you have to balance the commerce part. It has to happen or else podcasts don't happen. So this is really just figuring out the right fit per show, and the right fit for one show is not the same as the fit for the next show. It's again why I'm glad that my Heart does things the way they do because they cater to the individual show as opposed to having a cookie cutter approach that all shows have to follow. So as an example, most of the time, you are not going to hear me advertise for any kind of alcohol on this show. I once did and add for mixers. I want to say it was one of the rare occasions where I allowed an alcohol related ad to play on this show. Now, it's not that I'm strictly anti alcohol. I mean I do not drink, that's true, but it's that I know there are a lot of younger folks listening to the podcast, and I just don't want to advertise alcohol to younger listeners. That's not who I am. I don't want to do that. It's the same with tobacco based products or tobacco substitutes. I don't want to do that either. There have been a few times where I have allowed an add through that later on I regretted, but those cases were almost always my own fault for not looking into a company or product thoroughly enough before I gave the thumbs up, and then later on it was brought to my attention, Hey, that thing you advertised, it's not on the up and up. It's kind of shady, and I felt awful about it. And again that was my fault because it didn't do enough. It wasn't I didn't do the due diligence, and uh, I try very hard now to do it. Occasionally, you know, I might slip up, but I try anyway. My point is that this level of review and approval means that the ads that do appear on our shows have typically passed at least some level of scrutiny from the hosts themselves. If it's not a run of network ad, that's definitely the case. Even with run of network ads, we're given the chance to say what out ofgories we absolutely do not want running on our show and which ones we're okay with, So we even have a little bit of control when it comes to that, and this scrutiny is a reflection of our respect for our listeners. I like to think that that's what makes the ads on our shows more valuable. It's because we hosts care about y'all, and y'all know that we You know, we care about you, And hopefully the ads you listen when you do listen and you don't just skip the ad break, are ones that are potentially helpful for you. You You maybe you find a new product or service that you didn't even know you needed. That's when it all works perfectly. And I keep saying, it doesn't do anyone any good to serve up bad junkie ads to folks who only get angry about them. That just hurts everyone down the line. It doesn't do anyone any good. So I always want to make sure that ads I do are adding value both to the advertiser and the sponsor and to the listener and to the show. Like that's that's my goal. It's hard to do and it doesn't always work, but that's the goal anyway. That's the secret sauce behind dynamic ad insertion. It's a strategy that tons of podcasts are using these days. For the ones that still use host red ads, it can be a really useful tool. Now, if you go strictly programmatic with this approach, where you're just using these prerecorded ads that have nothing to do with the shows themselves, you really risk losing some of the special touch that podcasts have with their audiences. So there is a line to walk. If you can do what I Heeart does and use dynamic ad insertion that largely depends upon host red ads for those specific shows, that's that's the golden touch, but it requires a scale that's difficult to achieve. My Heart has been around for ages and has an enormous podcast network, so it's a little easier for us to do it then for a smaller network. Also, there are still a lot of podcasts out there that use some form of baked in ads. For example, My Brother, My Brother and Me, which is an incredibly popular comedy podcast, has an ad break that they call the Money Zone, and those ads are all baked in. I think, like I don't think they used dynamic ad insertion in the Money Zone at all. Um. I definitely know that the old Money Zone ad breaks are baked in because I did a deep dive into the back catalog when I was trying to catch up on the show, and some of their classic comedy bits are actually contained in the ad break itself. So if you skip the ad break, you miss some of their best stuff that just happens organically as they're riffing on their ads, which means if they had gone with dynamic ad insertion, those comedy bits would eventually get swapped out over time and you would lose some pretty amazing material in the process. Now, I wish I could provide you with my favorite example of a Money Zone bit, but it contains language that's inappropriate for tech stuff, so uh, it's uh, it's it's a little a little more raunchy than what tech stuff typically is. It is a very funny bit. It's the ballad of a fictional character who has a uh, somewhat juvenile name. That's all I'll say. But it was a very very funny bit, and again it was in the Money Zone. So if they had done dynamic ad insertion, then eventually that whole section would get pulled and swapped out for something else and you would lose a classic bit of content. So there are tradeoffs here. Um. It all depends on the style of ad presentation. And in the case of my brother, my brother and me, it's actually part of the comedy show. So you know, your mileage may vary. Alright. That is the wrap up on how the sausage is made as far as dynamic ad insertion. Hope you learned something. I hope you have a deeper appreciation for the way that podcasts generate revenue. Um, if they're not like direct support, you know, like a Patreon style or paywall style, then this is this is something that we have to deal with in order to bring you content and do also fulfill our obligations on behalf of the sponsors who support us. Uh. It's again a delicate ecosystem, but when treated properly, it works. If you have suggestions for future topics on tech Stuff, please reach out to me. One way to do that is to download the I Heart Radio app, which is free to download, free to use. You can navigate over to tech Stuff. There's a little microphone icon that you can click on and leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length, Or you can pop on over to Twitter and send me a message. There the handle that we use as text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again, Release soon. Y text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and how the tech are you. I recently got a note from my editor that my rushed intro is starting to slurn together to the point where it's completely incomprehensible, so I'm working to reverse that. You can thank TORII. She's the reason why uh I I have I have been curbed of my chaotic behavior. Anyway, Twitter user Ryan Barrier sent me a message that read quote, Hey, Jonathan, I'd love to hear about how podcast advertising works. Early on in your show, I remember hearing the same ad for years. Toyota Camera not currently a sponsor of this episode. That's just metorializing. Then it seems they became more dynamic. Now even old episodes have current ads. Thanks end quote. Well, thank you, Ryan Barrier. And yes, our podcasts have ads that stay current. Even if you were to go back and download a very old episode of tech Stuff, you would hear current ads in the ad breaks. And as you say, the ads are dynamic, we call them dynamic ads are really dynamic ad insertions. But let's start off with the different kinds of ads that you can encounter with podcasts, because it's good to know how advertisers think, how content creators think, and the frankly difficult path of balancing commerce and art, or in the case of tech stuff, commerce and the technology podcast made by a twit. Now, this stuff is not going to relate to ads initially. I'm going to give a little bit more background, but it is important to understand to kind of get a grasp on the evolution of podcasting and then the subsequent incorporation of ads. Now, in the old old days, most podcasts were not really monetized, at least not through advertising. It was a brand new medium, and so typically a podcast came out of either someone's hobby, so it was being done just for fun zies, with no expectation that it was going to generate revenue. In fact, more than likely it was costing the person who was making the podcast money, or it was going to be used as an extension of some other media companies output. There were a few exceptions. A couple of podcasts set up subscription models pretty early on, so they were kind of like an audio magazine. Listeners could pay to download episodes month to month. So there were some early versions of podcasts that were supported directly by listeners, and obviously that model still exists today. There are subscription based podcasts out there that are behind a paywall in other words, but ads really would come a bit later for podcasts. So even though there were some early paywall podcasting, there weren't a whole lot of podcasts that contain ads early early on. Let me give you an example of a podcast that was used for brand extension. Uh, there was a podcast I used to listen to. It no longer exists. I mean you can find old episodes, I imagine, but it's no longer produced. And this was way back in like the mid two thousand's, before I was ever a podcaster myself. It was called buzz out Loud and it came from c Net. Tom Merritt and Molly Wood were the the anchors of that show, with other hosts and producers also contributing. The Buzz out Loud show covered tech news and was part of a c net brand, but it wasn't necessarily a revenue generating show on its own, at least not most of the time. Rather, it was helping you know, introduced the brand of c net to new audiences, and the hope was that these audiences would then find their way to c net dot com, where traffic was monetized through various means like web page ads and whatnot, you know, all the regular web advertising strategies. Maybe that visitor would then become a regular at c net, which means they would also be a regular source of revenue, or rather, their traffic would be a regular source of revenue. It all gets a bit wibbly wobbly when we talk about this stuff. Really, whenever you talk about advertising, there's there's a level of kind of vague uncertainty in the mix. When I started podcasting, which was back in the summer of two thousand eight, it was much the same for us over at what was then how stuff Works dot Com. To be clear, how stuff Works dot Com still exists, but my part in How Stuff Works split off several years ago and we haven't had any real contact since then. But back in two thousand and eight, I was a writer for how stuff Works dot com and I focused primarily on tech articles. Big surprise there, and our buss a guy named Conal Burne who has actually been our boss on and off a few times over the years. It kind of feels like we would go our separate ways and then come back and then do it again. Um. He decided in two thousand and eight that podcasting would be a good way to extend brand awareness of how stuff Works dot com. Uh. The first of those podcasts, technically the first, I believe was brain Stuff, which was Marshall brains podcast. He was the founder of how stuff Works dot com, and then later on that podcast would pass to other hands. But the first big one to come out that really was the flagship was Stuff You Should Know Now. It was important to try and extend the brand of how stuff Works dot com because most of the traffic coming into the website was from web searches, primarily Google. So, in other words, most people who are going to how stuff Works dot com, we're not going there just to browse articles. Most visitors were not fans of the site who just wanted to learn about all sorts of stuff, from tech to history to culture to food. By the way, how stupp works dot Com still a fantastic website with amazing, well written, researched articles, and I highly recommend checking it out if you're of a curious nature and you want to just learn stuff. But now most of the people coming to the website had a specific question that they wanted to answer, like how does a steam engine work, for example, and they used a search engine, our site would pop up and they would come into the site to get their answer from one of these well written, well researched articles, and then once they got their answer, they would bounce. Well, while we loved all the traffic coming into the site through search, there was no denying that it sure would be nice to have folks stick around a bit more and brows and become regular visitors. Also, this is a good time to mention that search engines change over time. Right. The Google search algorithm has changed many times over the years, and whenever there's a change in the algorithm, there's a change in page rankings, which means you might at one point have been the dominant player in search results for various topics, and then once there's a change in the algorithm, maybe your results appeared lower down on the page or or worst case scenario, off of page one. Because hardly anyone goes beyond page one of search results. Hardly anyone goes below the fold. So not being highly ranked in SIR could be a death sentence if you were depending heavily upon traffic coming from search engines. So again a strong incentive to find a way to bring people over to the website beyond just searching for a specific answer. Right. So, the podcasts, while not initially monetize herble directly themselves, we're seeing almost like an advertising tool for the website. In fact, when we first launched the podcasts, we had a rule every episode needed to relate to a specific article on the website, and we would refer listeners to go and read those articles in the hopes that they actually would go check those articles out and then maybe branch out from there and explore the site. We were trying to make How Stuff Works a destination site. UH that had limited success as far as I'm aware. I mean I wasn't and analytics, so I couldn't really see what, if any effect this had. However, we did not too long after that mandate dropped the requirements so that different podcasts could actually do UH topics that were not directly related to an article on the site, And we dropped it immediately over at tech Stuff because a lot of the articles that were on the site that we're relating to technology, Obviously they would get out of date very quickly because technology evolved so fast, and so we would have an article of and the examples in an article might be really kind of embarrassing in in retrospect, Like if you're doing an article or a podcast about CPUs and the article is talking about pentium processors, that's kind of embarrassing because those are dinosaurs. Right. So anyway, we switched over, and you know, it also turned out that it's it's a difficult cell to convince someone who's listening to a podcast to then go to a specific U r L right, because it all depends on how they're listening. If they're jogging and they're listening on headphones, they're not going to stop and pull out their phone and navigate to the website. If they're driving, I sure as heck hope they aren't going to stop, uh paying attention to the road and then try and navigate to this website to read an article while they're driving. So yeah, it was tough to use podcasts in this way. And honestly, there could have been the chance for podcasts at how Stuff works to just go away because the limited return on investment, But we stuck with it and we grew, and that would end up paying off because eventually, not immediately, but over time, podcasting would become a relevant way of generating revenue all on its own thanks to advertising. Okay, now, before we get into that, it's time to have an example. We're going to actually take an ad break right now. We'll be right back. Okay. So podcasts when they start off aren't really monetized beyond being behind a paywall in some rare instances, but let's skip ahead. Gradually, some brands, particularly of smaller companies, started seeing the possibility of reaching customers through podcasts, and that opened up some opportunities on all sides. One opportunity was to have an ad baked into a podcast. Another opportunity was to pay for a fully sponsored and possibly themed episode. That second option is more expensive, and it also means that a single advertiser pretty much has domain over the whole episode, so in other words, you won't hear ads from other brands appear in that episode. But let's talk about baked in ads or burned in ads, depending upon whom you're talking to. Now, back in the old days, there really wasn't any sophisticated content management system for podcasts. So the way it worked was you would record your audio, maybe you edit it, you might add in some music and some other stuff, maybe other effects. Then you would publish this finished audio file on a publication platform. That platform would then push the podcasts RSS feed to the various podcatching services out there, most notably iTunes. Back in the day, iTunes was the dominant source for podcasts. In fact that we call them podcasts because of the iPod. So Apple, while it had not invented either the MP three player or the podcast, was kind of the the nexus of all things podcast in the early days. Now to this day, iTunes is still a really important piece of the puzzle. Interestingly, a lot of the tech stuff listeners out there are getting this show through other podcatching services because I can see that a ton of y'all are listening on Android devices, which is, you know, awesome, and I also listen on an Android device. So yeah, we're kind of an outlier because a lot of podcasts still get the majority of their traffic through iTunes. All right, So originally most of the companies that would actually purchase advertising on podcasts were these smaller companies that could not necessarily afford a big national campaign on you know, traditional media like TV and radio, but podcasts also have national or global reach, and podcasts were not nearly as expensive to use for advertising. Heck, there were podcasts out there that had no idea what ad rates to charge or what metrics to use in order to guide negotiations. It was really messy and chaotic. Now it would all more or less get worked out over time, but in those early days it was It was just confusing because no one really had any way of of quantifying what add time on a podcast was worth. Anyway, a baked in AD is one that's recorded right inside of a show itself. It is part of the audio file. So you might be talking about like a transponder one moment. Then you might say in the podcast, before we go any further, let's talk about our sponsor blah blah blah, and then you might transition right into an AD, and it's all part of the same recording session. It's all part of the same file. And most of the ads back in those days were what we would call direct response advertising. Now, this is a kind of ad that asks the listener to take some sort of immediate action, such as purchasing a product or service, and there's typically a code associated with whichever podcast has the ad in it. And when you hear me in an ad say something like use promo code stuff or something like that, that is a direct response ad. The ads efficacy is largely measured by how many folks actually went to the trouble of going to the site and using that promo code. Now, in the old days, you'd hear a lot of the same companies advertising across different shows, like Casper Mattresses and Meanis and Dollar Shave Club and stitch Fix. These are all great companies. By the way, I actually really liked working with all of these brands. They were great, and it was it was kind of a rising tide lifts all ships because I really believed in the products. So listeners, if they were using the the code, we're getting products that I believed in. They were getting a discount, so that was the benefit to the listeners, and the brands were getting broader reach across and more customers, so everybody was winning. So it was kind of like a a bootstrap approach to business, you know. These were companies that again probably would have had trouble accessing traditional media on a national level, and here they were being able to tap into something that was having an incredible impact. Like the podcasting experience is a very intimate one. It has this relationship between host and listener, and especially a host red ad can have a huge impact on listeners, particularly the host is being sincere about it. So yeah, it was this kind of magical com nation right now. Podcasting was growing in popularity in general. I mean you kept on seeing news about podcasting his back or the podcasting renaissance, and you would have people who have been podcasting that whole time saying, don't call to come back, I've been here for years. Shout out the Scott Johnson um and some podcasts were doing really, really well, right Some would go on to be like the superstars of the medium. Like, you know, I'm not a fan of his his beliefs or his delivery, but there's no denying Joe Rogan hit the stratosphere as far as podcasting is concerned, and he launched that show I think in two thousand nine. So this was that's an example of a show the win to the stratosphere. Here at at I Heart and actually previously at How Stuff Works. Our big flagship show was Stuff you Should Know. I'll mention them again in a little bit. So this opened up the opportunity to do sponsored and themed episodes because the shows were getting to a point where if you were an advertiser, and you are an advertising client maybe who had the money, then getting a sponsored show could be really attractive because of the reach of these podcasts. But this is where things get really tricky, um because this is where you've got increased overlap between advertising and editorial content, and that can produce like advertorial content is one of the phrases for it. It's one I hate, but it is what it's often used to describe a show that is supposed to combine the promotion of a sponsor with the content itself. Now, ideally, a themed podcast, a themed sponsored podcast should appeal to regular listeners, even if it was themed to promote whatever sponsor was sponsoring the episode. If it is done poorly, then the episode is going to come across as a very long advertisement for the respective sponsor. And ain't no one out there who loves that. Apart from advertising executives, who seem to think it's a win, even though that kind of content almost never performs well once it's released. Now, there are ways to do a themed sponsored episode well, but that approach is delicate and needs a really good level of understanding between the content creators, the advertising reps, and the sponsor itself in order to make it happen. And frankly, it always surprises me when I encounter folks pushing to make a show more explicitly an ad for a company or its products and services or whatever, because I maintain audiences are really smart. I mean, we all know how to spot and add. We've been encountering ads our entire lives, so of course we know an ad right away. And if we suspect someone is trying to pass off and add as quote unquote real content, we get irritated about it because we feel like the content creator doesn't respect our intelligence. Right It's like the content creator is trying to pass off this advertisement as if it is otherwise content and they would have created anyway, And the disingenuous nature of that offends a lot of people, including me. I mean, I I'm likely to bounce off a video or a podcast if I sense that it's not a genuine piece of work and is instead an add masquerading as an episode. Now, all that being said, some of the best episodes of some podcasts have come from sponsored and themed episodes. It can be done. It just takes a real collaborative effort of all the parties involved and an understanding on the part of the sponsor and the ad reps that pushing their narrative too hard is going to have the opposite effect that they want. Now, let's move on to dynamic ad insertion, which actually I guess I'll get to after we take this break for a couple more ads. Okay, dynamic ad insertion. As podcasting grew in popularity, you had companies that were creating more sophisticated tools for publishing and hosting podcasts, Like there was an industry there, so there was an incentive to innovate in the space. And one tool, one that was already in use on the Worldwide Web, was dynamic ad insertion, and it does exactly what it says on the ten. Dynamic ad insertion is the practice of inserting ads at the time someone encounters the content. So when someone downloads a podcast or when they stream an episode, that's when the AD gets inserted. So instead of having a baked in AD that was recorded at the time that the podcast itself was recorded, the dynamic ad insertion tool plops a current AD into the ad breaks. That means, if you download an episode today and someone you know downloads the same episode a year later, the two of you are going to encounter different ads at the time that you listen to the show when you hit those AD breaks. And the way this works from our side is pretty simple. We create AD breaks in our show now some folks like yours. Truly, We do that as we record, so you've heard it in this episode. I just keep an eye on the time, and when I hit certain time lines, I will pause to throw in an AD break. We have UH standards in our our company about how many AD breaks go into a show based upon how long the episode is. So if my episode is going to be longer than say twenty minutes, I know that I need to put an AD break in every ten minutes or so. If it's gonna be like five minutes, I can go to like fifteen minutes or so. It again depends upon the length of the episode, and I'm not going to give all the details about it, because one those change over time, so I can't guarantee that by the time you listen to this it will be the same. And too, it really doesn't matter. So I pause my episode, I'll throw in an ad break, and then my super editor Torii can, while editing, chop the episode there and insert a little digital marker, and that digital marker essentially tells our publication platform here is where you can put a mid role ad. Mid role is just a type of ad that appears in the middle of a show. You also have pre role obviously that happens before a show starts, and post roll those are ads that play after a show ends. Then I just picked back up and carry on until I hit the next benchmark, and then I insert a new ad break throw and Torii chops the show there when she's editing and puts in another digital marker. Now that little digital marker that TRY adds in is really the secret sauce, and we typically have parameters set for what our ads can be in our various positions, So mid role ads tend to be sixty seconds long each. Now once in a while we might have a longer ad depending upon the specific AD deal. Like you could have a two minute AD instead of a sixty second AD, but then that would essentially take up two slots in your AD break, Right, So each AD break allows a certain number of ads per break, or really a certain amount of AD time per break. Now, why would you want to use dynamic ads in the first place. Well, to understand that, it's helpful understand a little bit about AD deals themselves. Typically, an AD deal is made to either last a specific amount of time or more frequently, in order to reach a specific number of impressions. Now, impressions means the number of times that particular AD was downloaded or streamed. So let's say we strike a deal with I don't know, the ACME corporation from the old Warner Brothers cartoons, and we're trying to sell anvils. So our deal is to hit one thousand impressions with this hypothetical AD deal. So ACNE pays us whatever our AD rate is to reach that impression limit, and we get to work on delivering those impressions by getting people to download a hundred thousand episodes or stream a hundred thousand episodes that have or or you know, instances that have that AD in them. Now, if you have a baked in AD where you've actually recorded it within the body of the podcast and it's not something that can be easily chopped out, that podcast ad is limited, right. I mean, it's true that episodes typically see the highest number of downloads on the first week of publication. After that, things trail off really really fast. It is rare for you to see a spike in an old episode unless something really relevant to that episode happened in the news. But there is a long tail there. People do go back and search back catalogs, and they do download and stream old, old episodes of podcasts. And if an ad has been baked into a podcast, well, technically that podcast is still delivering impressions even after the ad deal has concluded. And advertisers love that because you know, they paid for a hundred thousand impressions. But if it's a baked an ad, they're going to keep getting impressions on that ad beyond that one thousand deal because the ad was baked in. So anyone downloading that episode years later is going to hear that old ad and maybe you know, the promo code is not gonna matter anymore, but the ad might still drive people to go to that that particular company. So it's like everything you've got above the one impressions you got for free, or if you want, you can think of it as the price per impression continues to decrease over time. But dynamic ad insertion means that number one, podcasts can more nimbly switch from serving one ad to a different ad as various ad deals conclude, and two they can rely on the back catalog to contribute to the number of impressions agreed upon with the current advertiser. So in other words, by swapping out the ads, you can meet the obligations faster, and then you can sell that da da da brand new ads. It's a more lucrative way to do business. Right, So if if only my newest episodes were able to hold the latest ads, it would take longer for me to meet my obligation to the advertiser. But because it goes through the entire back catalog and people are always downloading old episodes, then those ads are getting served more frequently because of the long tail, So I meet that obligation faster, and then I can conclude one ad deal and go to a new one. When I say I, I really mean my sales team. I don't do any of that work, thank goodness, because I would be terrible at it anyway. This also means that folks listening are going to hear relevant ads, even if they're diving into the back catalog. They're not going to hear an ad for some company that stopped existing like seven years ago. Now, there are some different ways of doing this. One way would be to a mass prerecorded ads that can run across an entire network. We call these run off network ads. So these would be ads where the company I Heart in this case, would have agreed that it would deliver a certain number of impressions per ad, but it doesn't really matter which shows that ad appears on. So theoretically my Heart could put that ad on every show on the network and push it out there to meet that impression requirement immediately. It's a lot like the ads that you would encounter on radio or on television that they aren't made specifically for one podcast like one show, and they may or may not be read by a podcast host at all. It might be produced by some ad company, and no one that you know of was related to the production of that ad. That's one way to do it here at I Heart. Yeah, we do have run of network ads. We have some of those, and those might run on certain shows, but not all of them. But we still largely depend upon host red advertising, so we still have hosts reading our ads. Like you know, the ads you encounter on tech Stuff more often than not, those are ads that I'm doing. It's just that now those ads that were recording are going effectively into a database of ads, and the dynamic Ad Insertion tool can pull from and PLoP those ads into our respective shows, all the episodes of our respective shows. In fact, so if I do a read for a specific company, that spot can now appear on every episode of tech Stuff I have ever published. Now, it doesn't physically insert the ad into every episode at that time, It just happens whenever anyone downloads or streams the episode, that's when the ad gets inserted. Otherwise, you can think of the ad breaks in these undownloaded episodes as kind of being ready to go to pop in whatever relevant ads should go in that space at that time. This is great for me because it means that I am delivering the most relevant ads at any given moment, and that those then cycle off the show once the ad deal has concluded and new relevant ads can appear, and I don't have to worry about people listening to stuff that doesn't exist anymore or that has a promo code that has long since stopped working. And host red ads tend to be more valuable than generic prerecorded spots. When I say generic, I mean an ad that's been recorded for any show, not for a specific show, right Like, you could hear that same ad on whatever podcast you downloaded. It doesn't relate to the show you just listened to. Now it feels weird for me to talk about this because you know it's it's how the sausage is made. But this is info that's readily available if you want to look for it. It's not like I'm giving away trade secrets. There are articles dedicated to this kind of stuff, including articles that quote my boss Conal Burne, the guy I talked about earlier talking about the value of host read advertising, because you know that has a real connection to it to listeners. Also, Connal refers to baked in ads as burned in ads, so he's one of the people who says burned in rather than baked in, and he talks about how those have really big limitations. I think one reason that our host read ads are seen to have a lot more value than you know, preprogrammed ads is here at iHeart, hosts have a ton of authority when it comes to choosing what ads can run on their respective shows and which ones can't. So hosts have the chance to review and accept or reject ads and sponsors. Times out of a hundred, it all works really well. Right the host says, yeah, I'm fine with that, or I would rather not do that, and that's it. Once in a blue moon, you might get a little pushback. Happened to me recently. If a particular ad deal is seen as really crucial for the company, then it might prompt a deeper discussion rather than just a thumbs up or thumbs down, so that we can get to the bottom of where is their resistance and is there a good reason for it or is there a way to present this that doesn't have that resistance. So there's a lot of room for negotiation, and ultimately someone can still say no. Uh, maybe they compromise, or maybe they just said listen, this is a hard no for me. I just can't do it and we move on. So here's the thing we all understand. Podcasting cannot continue without generating revenue. Everyone working on the shows has to eat and pay rent and you know all that kind of stuff, and you can't do that just for free. So there is a business. That is why you have to balance the commerce part. It has to happen or else podcasts don't happen. So this is really just figuring out the right fit per show, and the right fit for one show is not the same as the fit for the next show. It's again why I'm glad that my Heart does things the way they do because they cater to the individual show as opposed to having a cookie cutter approach that all shows have to follow. So as an example, most of the time, you are not going to hear me advertise for any kind of alcohol on this show. I once did and add for mixers. I want to say it was one of the rare occasions where I allowed an alcohol related ad to play on this show. Now, it's not that I'm strictly anti alcohol. I mean I do not drink, that's true, but it's that I know there are a lot of younger folks listening to the podcast, and I just don't want to advertise alcohol to younger listeners. That's not who I am. I don't want to do that. It's the same with tobacco based products or tobacco substitutes. I don't want to do that either. There have been a few times where I have allowed an add through that later on I regretted, but those cases were almost always my own fault for not looking into a company or product thoroughly enough before I gave the thumbs up, and then later on it was brought to my attention, Hey, that thing you advertised, it's not on the up and up. It's kind of shady, and I felt awful about it. And again that was my fault because it didn't do enough. It wasn't I didn't do the due diligence, and uh, I try very hard now to do it. Occasionally, you know, I might slip up, but I try anyway. My point is that this level of review and approval means that the ads that do appear on our shows have typically passed at least some level of scrutiny from the hosts themselves. If it's not a run of network ad, that's definitely the case. Even with run of network ads, we're given the chance to say what out ofgories we absolutely do not want running on our show and which ones we're okay with, So we even have a little bit of control when it comes to that, and this scrutiny is a reflection of our respect for our listeners. I like to think that that's what makes the ads on our shows more valuable. It's because we hosts care about y'all, and y'all know that we You know, we care about you, And hopefully the ads you listen when you do listen and you don't just skip the ad break, are ones that are potentially helpful for you. You You maybe you find a new product or service that you didn't even know you needed. That's when it all works perfectly. And I keep saying, it doesn't do anyone any good to serve up bad junkie ads to folks who only get angry about them. That just hurts everyone down the line. It doesn't do anyone any good. So I always want to make sure that ads I do are adding value both to the advertiser and the sponsor and to the listener and to the show. Like that's that's my goal. It's hard to do and it doesn't always work, but that's the goal anyway. That's the secret sauce behind dynamic ad insertion. It's a strategy that tons of podcasts are using these days. For the ones that still use host red ads, it can be a really useful tool. Now, if you go strictly programmatic with this approach, where you're just using these prerecorded ads that have nothing to do with the shows themselves, you really risk losing some of the special touch that podcasts have with their audiences. So there is a line to walk. If you can do what I Heeart does and use dynamic ad insertion that largely depends upon host red ads for those specific shows, that's that's the golden touch, but it requires a scale that's difficult to achieve. My Heart has been around for ages and has an enormous podcast network, so it's a little easier for us to do it then for a smaller network. Also, there are still a lot of podcasts out there that use some form of baked in ads. For example, My Brother, My Brother and Me, which is an incredibly popular comedy podcast, has an ad break that they call the Money Zone, and those ads are all baked in. I think, like I don't think they used dynamic ad insertion in the Money Zone at all. Um. I definitely know that the old Money Zone ad breaks are baked in because I did a deep dive into the back catalog when I was trying to catch up on the show, and some of their classic comedy bits are actually contained in the ad break itself. So if you skip the ad break, you miss some of their best stuff that just happens organically as they're riffing on their ads, which means if they had gone with dynamic ad insertion, those comedy bits would eventually get swapped out over time and you would lose some pretty amazing material in the process. Now, I wish I could provide you with my favorite example of a Money Zone bit, but it contains language that's inappropriate for tech stuff, so uh, it's uh, it's it's a little a little more raunchy than what tech stuff typically is. It is a very funny bit. It's the ballad of a fictional character who has a uh, somewhat juvenile name. That's all I'll say. But it was a very very funny bit, and again it was in the Money Zone. So if they had done dynamic ad insertion, then eventually that whole section would get pulled and swapped out for something else and you would lose a classic bit of content. So there are tradeoffs here. Um. It all depends on the style of ad presentation. And in the case of my brother, my brother and me, it's actually part of the comedy show. So you know, your mileage may vary. Alright. That is the wrap up on how the sausage is made as far as dynamic ad insertion. Hope you learned something. I hope you have a deeper appreciation for the way that podcasts generate revenue. Um, if they're not like direct support, you know, like a Patreon style or paywall style, then this is this is something that we have to deal with in order to bring you content and do also fulfill our obligations on behalf of the sponsors who support us. Uh. It's again a delicate ecosystem, but when treated properly, it works. If you have suggestions for future topics on tech Stuff, please reach out to me. One way to do that is to download the I Heart Radio app, which is free to download, free to use. You can navigate over to tech Stuff. There's a little microphone icon that you can click on and leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length, Or you can pop on over to Twitter and send me a message. There the handle that we use as text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again, Release soon. Y text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.