MarTech Interview with Sean Creeley, CEO and Founder at Podsights

With both, podcasting and podcast advertising growing as a concept for marketing and sales teams, how should marketers measure and drive clearer cross-channel podcast advertising attribution? Sean Creeley, CEO and Founder at Podsights shares some thoughts:

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Tell us a little about yourself Sean… we’d love to hear about your role, a typical day at work? And also, the story behind Podsight!

Sure, I’m one of the founders at Podsights, technically the CEO, but that’s a pretentious title for a sixteen-person company. I’m technical, so I spend the majority of my day building the platform, and the rest is on recruiting. 

Podsights, like all good backstories, beings at a bar. Andy and I had been working on building ML traffic classifiers for better retargeting audiences. It was a bad idea, and no one wanted it. Lamenting to a friend at a bar, he suggested looking into podcast advertising as there was more greenfield space for ad tech solutions. 

Podsights started out pulling ads out of podcasts, then moving into reporting and now attribution. We are heading into planning which is where you will see the majority of upcoming announcements reside.

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How do you feel the podcasting market in B2B tech and podcast advertising space is set to shape up in the near-future?

Podcast ad tech solutions didn’t make sense a few years ago because the scale wasn’t there. If it’s a $100M ad market and ad tech can only take 1-5% of the spend, then it’s not a market where venture capital can play, and for these resource-intensive operations, you need investment to get off the ground. 

As we cross the billion-dollar mark and accelerating, there is more investment, leading to more innovative solutions in the market. M&A has also picked up, so the future is bright for podcasting ad tech. 

What according to you should first-time or new entrants to podcast advertising be keeping in mind as they come up with their podcast advertising plans?

Podcasting isn’t digital. You never dive into podcasting as your first growth channel; marketers are graduating from social looking to reach new audiences. Marketers are used to throwing small dollars at a few tests to see what works and then double down. 

With podcasting, the budget needs to be bigger than you think to test the medium. Please measure the results. All too often, we see marketers churn because they failed to track KPIs. We are obviously biased towards pixel-based attribution, but surveys and discount codes work in a pinch. 

Can you talk about some of the most successful and recent podcast advertising campaigns that you’ve come across of late?

Advertisers are cagy. We can’t share much, as the brands that are doing well don’t want us to give away their secrets. 

In general, when brand, content, and audience align, it’s magical. Podcasting shouldn’t be radio ads, so when a host knows a brand, the content is relevant to a brand’s audience, and some of that audience already listens: fireworks. 

Think life insurance and true crime or sports and gambling. 

Take us through Podsight’s latest features and new capabilities that have been introduced as well as upcoming capabilities users can look forward to?

I thought you would never ask! Podsights is the best place to measure the performance of your podcast advertising. We offer direct attribution, incremental lift, reach, frequency across campaigns and publishers. We are launching integrations with two leading audience segment providers to help brands understand who’s listening and converting.

Finally, we are becoming more interested in the planning side of podcasting. We want brands to find fit based on context and audience before they buy. 

A few takeaways for marketing leaders in 2021: top factors they should keep in mind as they plan for the rest of the year and top marketing tech best practices that they should be keeping in mind!

I’d leave everyone with one thing: Podcast advertising is measurable. Marketers still cite lack of metrics as the number one reason to avoid the medium and just not true. Attribution and reporting are on par with OTT attribution and are widely available throughout the ecosystem.

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