Podcasts are the new black for advertisers having undergone a growth spurt in the last few years. According to podcasts analytics business, Chartable, 81% of podcast listeners pay attention to podcast ads whereas 63% say they sometimes or always ignore TV commercials,66% sometimes or always ignore digital ads, 61% sometimes or always ignore billboards and 59% sometimes or always ignore radio commercials.60% of podcast listeners have bought something from a podcast ad and 72% of people who have listened to a podcast for four or more years have made a purchase.
There are currently 700,000 podcasts in the world and 69% of the world’s population are now aware of them. Global monthly podcast listener figures are forecast to grow more than six-fold, from 287 million in 2016 to 1.85 billion in 2023, according to research company, Ovum.
Nova Entertainment’s first Podcasting Intelligence Report for Australia, revealed that podcasting had become the fastest-growing on-demand audio medium by June last year, with 3.5 million listeners aged 16-64. 1 in 4 people in that age bracket were already listening to podcasts. According to Podcast Insights, using Edison Research Infinite Dial 2019 and Nielsen data, 51% (144 million) of the US population has listened to a podcast and 50% of homes are podcast fans. Its percentage of podcasts listeners are only fifth in the world after South Korea (#1), Spain (#2), Sweden (#3) and Australia (#4).
Energy BBDO has made brilliant use of the podcast phenomenon to draw attention to a not so interesting household product, Drano. The three podcast episodes, Tales from the Drain, tap into the horror genre that’s running hot right now. Each podcast is a story about the gunk that clogs a drain turning into a monster. The spooky stories, which run from three to three and a half minutes each, are gripping and each culminates cleverly with the tagline, Drano. Unclog your life.
The podcasts are being hosted on their own website, enticingly introduced with the foreword, ”
What lurks down our drains is best left to our imaginations. But ignorance is bliss, and so we do not imagine. Instead, we procrastinate. We let our hair-creatures build and fester, their rotting bodies expanding until they claim ownership over our pipes. We act only when the smell has become so pungent, or the clog so distracting, we cannot bear it anymore. Of course, by then it is too late.
“These are the Tales From The Drain. Whether they are fiction or truth, we’ll leave to your discretion. But what you can know for sure is they should have left what was down there to us.”
They are also being promoted on Spotify, using paid ads targeted within horror content, and with OOH ads on bus shelters.
