IAB Australia Audio Council has endorsed IAB US Podcast Ad Metrics guidelines.

IAB Australia’s Audio Council has announced that ist has endorsed the IAB US Podcast Ad Metrics Guidelines for the Australian market. The endorsement is hoped to provide support to Australian advertisers as this medium grows in use.

Data gathered by the Council shows nearly 40% of agencies have already experimented with podcast ads, and a further 30% intend to in the next 12 months.

The growing popularity of podcasts over the last year or two has increased the need for industry standards and guidelines. The goal of endorsed guidelines is to improve standards and increase buyer confidence by standardising how ads listeners hear are measured.

“Podcasting isn’t just a global phenomenon – it’s an Australian one with a growing number of podcasters and millions of downloads a month,”  says IAB CEO Vijay Solanki.

“Currently data and analytics is in its infancy but companies like Omny and oth4ere are helping to change that  and the growth of audio programmatic will make it easier to drive commercial value from podcasts,” says Solanki.

The guidelines break down podcast ads into two forms: integrated ads and dynamically inserted ads.

• Integrated ads are the more traditional form of podcast ads, often read by the podcast host or otherwise a static ad or jingle that is part of the content, i.e. ‘baked in’ to the audio file. Targeting is limited .
• Dynamically inserted ads utilise technology which allows ads to be targeted and dynamically inserted at the time of file request.

Two ad metric definitions are outlined representing the first step towards improved ad measurement in podcast advertising. They are ‘ad delivered’ and ‘client-confirmed ad play’.

• Ad delivered refers to ads delivered as determined by server logs that show all bytes of the ad file were sent or the bytes representing the portion of the podcast file containing the ad file was downloaded.
• Client-confirmed ad play counts an ad that was able to prompt a tracking beacon from the client when the file was played. Metrics like these should include information about how much of the ad was played using the markers: ad start, first quartile (25%), midpoint (50%), third quartile (75%) and complete (100%).

Client-confirmed ad play metrics represent the most accurate count for ad plays in a podcast, it requires a client-side tracking. Most major platforms used to download, store, and play podcast files either lack or prevent this technology needed for client-side tracking, including iOS Apple Podcast App and iTunes.

_

Image copyright: diego_cervo / 123RF Stock Photo