Don't miss our awards deadlines

Panoply and Veritonic partner to find which podcast ads work for listeners

Panoply is finding what ads work best with Veritonic's help

Panoply Media and audio analytics company Veritonic have partnered to develop pretested podcast creatives by leveraging the Veritonic's machine listening technology.

The goal of the partnership, Veritonic's first with a podcast-exclusive platform, is to find what resonates best with listeners across demographics and advertising verticals.

Panoply has conducted an initial test, which showed that announcer-read ads boost purchase intent by 61% compared to host-read ads. Listeners also say that announcer-read ads are more authentic, innovative, and modern.

Next, Panoply and Veritonic will dig deeper into what works and what doesn't.

"A podcast ad is very different than a streaming audio or radio ad," Ken Lagana, head of sales and marketing at Panoply, told The Drum. "[In] streaming audio and radio, you're kind of fighting for a listener's attention, and so you have to be more disruptive... In podcasting, you already have this very intensely focused listener, so that creative experience needs to be more organic, more natural, and less disruptive."

Lagana said a key part of the partnership is the ability to pretest ads before a campaign goes live across Panoply's Megaphone Targeted Marketplace by A/B testing sound design elements like voice, script, keywords, tone, and music.

Panoply will leverage scaled, data-informed targeting to inform its Creative Solutions team that works with brands and agencies to develop creatives based on demographics and psychographics to deliver contextual ads.

"That layer of demographic and psychographic targeting really makes a difference. We thought that would be the case because that's what media's been built on, and that's where the media landscape is going across all platforms. It's just been a challenge in this space to get anywhere near there, and so what we're doing is really a game-changer," said Lagana.

Lagana added that he believes Panoply is well positioned as the medium grows.

Spotify, another Veritonic partner, recently acquired Gimlet Media and Anchor to build out its podcast business. Lagana said that Panoply differentiates itself for advertisers because it's exclusively a podcast network.
