’Tis the season for food delivery services

We compared advertisers in the Food, Beverage, and Pet category on the IAB’s Direct Brands To Watch list against Magellan’s database of more than 4,000 brands that have advertised on podcasts. Get the free report on the 24 brands running podcast ads.

The IAB recently released their annual list of the 250 Direct Brands To Watch. In this post, we analyze how the brands in the Food, Beverage, and Pet industry on the list are using podcasts to reach customers.

This is part of our Industry Report Series covering each category on the IAB’s 250 Direct Brands to Watch. Read the first report in the series — containing an overview of podcast advertising activity by DTC brands — here. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to continue publishing deep-dives on each category of brands from the IAB’s list.

52% of the direct-to-consumer Food, Beverage, and Pet brands featured on the IAB list have not tried podcast advertising as part of their marketing strategy.

How do Food, Beverage, and Pet brands compare to other IAB DTC Brands?

Compared to other direct-to-consumer brands on the IAB’s list, brands in this category advertised more around the holidays.

In June 2018, Food, Beverage, and Pet brands comprised 15% of the ads we picked up from brands on the IAB’s list. In October 2018, that number had risen to 54%. There were 11 brands that ran ads during the month of October. Half of the ads run were from Blue Apron (27%) and Thrive Market (23%). The other nine brands accounted for the other half of the ads.

Ads from the Food subcategory made up 81% of the ads from this industry, while the Beverage category made up 13% and the Pet category made up the last 5% of ads. From September to December we see an increase in the number of ads run by the food industry, which corresponds to the increase in the number of ads from this industry vertical compared to the other DTC categories. Two big contributors to this increase were Blue Apron and Thrive Market during those months.

Twenty-four brands have tried out podcast advertising at least once. Sixteen of those brands continue to advertise into 2019.

Food subscription boxes, like Blue Apron, Sun Basket and Green Chef were the first advertisers we picked up in September 2017, along with brands like Postmates, Thrive Market, BarkBox and NatureBox. Other brands like Ollie and Pre Brands started advertising in 2019.

Click here to get the full report on these 24 brands for free.

Our analysis answers questions like:

• What types of brands make up the Food, Beverage, and Pet vertical?
• How do Pet brands use podcasts to reach customers?
• What brands stopped advertising on podcasts in 2019?
• What kinds of podcasts are Food, Beverage, and Pet brands advertising on?
• What kind of ad copy are Food, Beverage, and Pet brands running?
• How many of these brands are buying two or more ads on the same episode?
• What type of call-to action are these brands using?
• Case Study: Blue Apron vs Green Chef

Magellan AI creates tools that help marketers at brands like SimpliSafe, Wix, and ThredUP spend intelligently on podcast advertising. Podcast publishers like WNYC and Gimlet Media use Magellan to track advertisers spending money in the podcast space.

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