Two Podcasts Walk Back into a Bar
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Last March we posted our first blog post about how seven beer brands were using podcast advertising to reach new customers. Today we look back at those advertisers to see how their activity on podcasts has changed in the past year.
When we started tracking ads on podcasts in 2017, we were only tracking the top 200 podcasts. Since then, we’ve grown the number of podcasts we track by more than 10x — to over 2,000 podcasts per week. To keep the comparison below fair, we’ve only analyzed advertising activity by beer brands on the top 200 podcasts. If you’d like to see all the beer brands advertising on the top 2,000 podcasts, contact us.
What beer brands are advertising on podcasts?
In Q4 of 2017, there were seven beer brands advertising on podcasts — Blue Moon, Bud Light, Budwiser, Lagunitas, Miller Lite, Stella Artois, and Yuengling.
We looked at these brands again in 2018 and found four of those brands still advertising — Bud Light, Lagunitas, Miller Lite and Stella Artois.
When we expanded our search, we found six other brands that began advertising on podcasts in 2018. Those brands were Beau’s Lug-Tug Lagered Ale, Heineken, New Belgium Brewing Company, Samuel Adams, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, and Tiger Beer.
Looking at 2019 only three brands are still active on the top 200 podcasts — Bud Light, Sierra Nevada and Samuel Adams.
How many ads did the original 7 breweries run in 2018?
The number of ads for the original seven beer brands has significantly decreased from 2017 to 2018. In 2017, we picked up144 ads over 4 months. Looking at all of 2018, we see 131 ads. These beer brands ran more ads in Q4 2017 than all of 2018.
What kinds of shows are beer brands buying?
In 2017, beer brands were advertising on five different iTunes Categories. These categories were Comedy, Sports & Recreation, Society & Culture, News & Politics and Technology. 85% of the ads run were in Comedy and Sports & Recreation iTunes categories.
In 2018, beer brands expanded into more iTunes categories. We saw a big shift from Comedy to Society & Culture, plus we saw ads run in four new categories — Business, Arts, Music, and Science & Medicine. The only category that we did not pick up advertisers on in 2018 compared to 2017 was Technology. 88% of the ads run were in the Society & Culture and Sports & Recreation iTunes categories.
When are beer brands advertising?
Although the beer brands from our first blog post decreased podcast activity over time, we still see increases during football season due to new beer advertisers we picked up in 2018.
We pick up more ads in September through December than any other part of the year. This is true for the beer brands that began advertising in 2017 and the brands that began advertising in 2018.
Interestingly, we only found only 4.5% of ads mentioned the word “football” or “sports”, even though majority of the ads were run during football season.
Are beer brands going through a dry spell?
Beer brands haven’t stopped advertising, but instead are moving more downstream (i.e. podcasts in the 400 - 2,000 range) Expanding our data to include the top 2,000, we found 16 beer brands advertising on podcasts in 2018. In 2019, we picked up six brands advertising on podcasts. Three brands were only picked up in the top 2,000 — Budweiser, Michelob Ultra, and Miller Lite.
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. Learn More.
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