Click here to view a 12-minute video of the key takeaways.

Click here to view or download the slides.

This week, as hundreds of agencies and advertisers gather in New York City for the tenth IAB Podcast Upfront, building brands is on the minds of B2B and performance advertisers, two groups of marketers who typically obsess only over the lower funnel. 

A recent Digiday headline stated, “Why Performance Marketers are Shifting Their Priorities to Build the Brand.”

Another headline blared, “Why B2B Marketers are Advertising More Like Consumer Brands to Break Through a Crowded Marketplace.”

Even podcasts, once the domain of direct response marketers, are shifting to brand. Last year, the annual IAB/PwC podcast ad revenue report revealed that brand advertisers represent the majority of podcast ad spend.

The number of commissioned Nielsen brand lift studies surges

A sure sign of brand marketers leaning into podcasts is the increase in brand lift studies conducted by Nielsen.

Since 2017, Nielsen has conducted an astonishing 1,300+ podcast brand lift studies. “Podcast brand lift studies provide advertisers valuable insights into how their ads are driving the metrics that matter most to their brand,” said Arica McKinnon, VP of Commercial Strategy & Insights at Nielsen. “The proliferation of podcast brand lift studies Nielsen has conducted for various brands in recent years demonstrates the effectiveness of podcast advertising for long-term brand building.”

Recently, Nielsen released a series of norms and key insights on their database of podcast brand effect work.

Podcasts drive consistent growth in awareness, likelihood to seek information, purchase intent, and recommendation

A brand effect study compares those exposed and those unexposed to podcast advertising. Across the 1,300+ podcast studies, the difference in brand equity represents “lift” in key measures such as awareness (+11 points), likelihood to seek information (+8 points), purchase intent (+7 points), and brand recommendation (+6%).

Nielsen: Alcoholic beverages, personal care, and technology brands generate the greatest awareness lift with podcast advertising

Travel brands and alcoholic beverages generate the greatest lift in purchase intent

Travel brands also show the greatest lift in affinity, likelihood to seek information, and recommendation intent.

Positive podcast content evaluation and host appeal generate strong advertising effectiveness

Across the 1,300+ studies, Nielsen reports the terms with the greatest association with podcast content are interesting, entertaining, credible, authentic, creative, appealing, and fun. Few listeners associate negative terms with podcast content.

The strongest associations with podcast hosts are likeable, credible, relatable, fun, and an expert. There are very few negative perceptions linked to podcast hosts.

The exceptionally positive podcast host and content associations create a powerful context for advertising. The terms most linked with podcast ads are interesting, believable, natural, authentic, innovative, funny, and unexpected. Very few associate podcast advertising with negative perceptions.

Nielsen: Two-thirds say podcasts fit the advertised brand and provide positive host ratings

Podcasting is the perfect platform to build a brand as its 18-34 reach is now as big as TV

It wasn’t that long ago that marketers dismissed podcasts for lacking scale. No longer.

Among 18-34s, podcast weekly reach (48%) from Edison’s 2024 Infinite Dial is nearly as large as TV (50%). The biggest player in 18-34 weekly reach is AM/FM radio at 77%. (AM/FM radio and TV data are sourced from Nielsen’s Comparable Metrics for Q3 2023.)

Podcast reach now has scale: Monthly reach is in the low 60s and weekly reach is in the mid/upper 40s

The chart below will provide media planners with a handy guide to weekly and monthly podcast reach among major buying demographics from the just released 2024 Infinite Dial from Edison.

Brand building is main driver of long-term sales and profit

Digiday cites Polly Wong, president of Belardi Wong marketing agency, who says, “If you only focus on bottom-funnel marketing for a couple of years, eventually it backfires on you.” She added, “So what’s happened is that everybody’s kind of woken up in the last couple of months, said, ‘Wow, we’ve been so focused on optimizing our marketing dollars and we’ve spent all of our money on bottom-funnel marketing, and now our customer file is shrinking.’”

Digiday reports, “Marketers over-emphasized performance marketing … Recently, the focus has shifted back to brand building and awareness marketing tactics, striking a better balance between performance and brand marketing to stand out from competitors. Essentially, advertisers need to boost brand awareness and strengthen relationships with shoppers, according to Nik Sharma, CEO at Sharma Brands, a branding strategy agency.”

“That’s exactly why the brand stuff is getting more money,” Sharma said. “Because the challenge now is: How do you become interesting to buy? And you can’t do that by just running Facebook ads.”

Key findings – Nielsen’s just released podcast brand lift study reveals:

• Positive podcast content evaluation and host appeal generate strong advertising effectiveness
• Nielsen reports the terms with the greatest association with podcast content are interesting, entertaining, credible, authentic, creative, and fun. Few listeners associate negative terms with podcast content.
• The strongest associations with podcast hosts are likeable, credible, relatable, fun, and expert.
• The terms most linked with podcast ads are interesting, believable, natural, authentic, innovative, funny, and unexpected. Very few associate podcast advertising with negative perceptions.
• Across 1,300+ studies Nielsen reports podcasts drive consistent growth in awareness (+11 points), likelihood to seek information (+8 points), purchase intent (+7 points), and recommendation (+6 points).
• 1,300+ Nielsen podcast brand lift studies generate robust norms and benchmarks across a wide variety of product categories.

Click here to view a 12-minute video of the key takeaways.

Pierre Bouvard is Chief Insights Officer of the Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group®.