Podcast listeners are a desirable group of consumers who spend a lot of their time with audio. According to the latest Westwood One 2021 Audioscape findings, podcast listeners are also highly attentive, warranting high CPMs for the medium.

Attentiveness is gaining traction as a metric for understanding campaign effectiveness

A new and vital focus in media today is attentiveness. One of the ways to gauge the impact of an ad is to look at how well the ad holds the attention of consumers.

In her new book The Attention Economy and How Media Works, Karen Nelson-Field, Founder and CEO of Amplified Intelligence, explains how “the ad industry’s current planning and buying model—for the most part falling into either performance or brand buckets—is inhibiting its ability to capture attention,” according to Campaign Asia-Pacific. Her work reinforces the idea that “a new currency is required, one that actually measures attention.”

Jonathan Beguely, Senior Client Partner at Oracle Advertising, says, “Attention signals align more closely with understanding campaign effectiveness and getting a deeper understanding of the impact that each impression is having.”

“In the last 25 years, many new ways of reaching audiences have arisen,” says Marc Guldimann, Founder and CEO of Adelaide, a firm that “helps advertisers understand the quality of the media they are buying through the lens of attention metrics.” Guldimann continues, “The quality and the value of all these different ways has increased exponentially in complexity, but the data used by advertisers to figure out how much they are willing to pay has not kept pace.”

Of all media, podcasts are number one for attentiveness

Podcast advertising works so well because listeners concentrate so intently to the content. CUMULUS MEDIA and Signal Hill Insights’ Podcast Download – Spring 2021 Report, cited in the Westwood One 2021 Audioscape, reveals that of all media, podcast content generates the greatest degree of consumer concentration.

Respondents were asked to evaluate all forms of media on a scale from one to five where one indicated “not concentrating a lot” and five was “concentrating a lot.” 81% of respondents rated podcasts a four or a five on the concentration scale.

High CPMs are warranted: Podcasts are number one for consumer content value

When asked to rate media content on a scale where one means “little value” and 5 represents “significant value,” podcasts generated the highest value scores (four or five on the one to five scale). For both concentration and content value, podcasts far outperform social media.

Podcasts satisfy two need states: Learning and entertainment

In two separate studies, CUMULUS MEDIA and Signal Hill Insights’ Podcast Download and one conducted by the IAB, data shows that podcasts are one of the few media options where the content satisfies two distinct need states – learning and entertainment.

Learning requires leaning in and being attentive. Learning does not take place in the background. No wonder ads in the learning context of podcasts generate such amazing impact for advertisers.

For effective ads, context matters. Podcast ads are placed in content that generates high consumer value with exceptional levels of concentration.

Pierre Bouvard is Chief Insights Officer at CUMULUS MEDIA | Westwood One.

Contact the Insights team at CorpMarketing@westwoodone.com.