Once you read and understand this article, you’ll know more about podcast advertising than ~80% of the industry.

There are two ways to buy podcast ads and two ways to insert them.

Podcast Ad Buy Types

The two buy types are episodic buys (by episode) and impression buys (by impression).

Buying episodically means that an ad will run for n episodes. For example, 8Sleep can ask Joe Rogan to run an ad for 5 episodes.

Buying an impression buy means your ad will run until it achieves n downloads. For example, 8Sleep can ask Joe Rogan to run an ad until 1 million people have heard it.

Then there’s embedded and dynamic ad insertion.

Embedded Ads

Podcast editors burn an embedded ad into the podcast’s MP3 file, making it hard to remove or change.

Old episodes that say “order before December 4th, 2016 and we’ll guarantee delivery before Christmas” are embedded ads.

Dynamic Ads

In contrast, dynamic ads change easily.

A podcast editor marks the audio file with a start and end point for ads, and then uploads the file to the podcast host.

When someone taps “play” on the episode, the podcast host inserts a dynamic ad into the audio file sent back. The ad heard can vary based on location, time of day, etc.

The two types of buys and insertions form a matrix.

One quadrant seems nonsensical: embedded ads bought impressionistically.

It is impractical to remove embedded ads - you’d have to re-edit the episode. And leaving the ad in would give it unlimited impressions.

So let’s fill in that quadrant.

Baked-in, faked-in

Faked-in ads are dynamic ads bought episodically.

Baked-in ads are embedded ads bought episodically.

Dynamic ads bought by impression have many names:

• DAI (short for dynamic ad insertion)

• impression buy

• run-of-network

• back-catalogue ads

There are episodic buys and impression buys.

The two insertion types are dynamic and embedded.

This forms a 2x2 matrix which has 3 types of ads: baked-in, faked-in, and impression buys. 

Congrats, you know more about podcast ads than 80% of the podcasting industry.

Baked-in Ads Are NOT Always Host-Read

Many incorrectly think that baked-in ads are always host read.

If the host reads an ad, it is called a host-read advertisement. If the producer reads it, it’s called a … producer-read advertisement.

You can have a baked-in ad that is producer-read when a producer sends the ad’s audio to the podcast editor to insert into the mp3 file.