Depending upon how familiar you are with podcast and digital advertising, you may or may not have heard of dynamic ad deployment. It's a concept you'll want to become familiar with. Historically, podcast advertising consisted mostly of what are often referred to as "baked in ads." This means the advertisement itself lives within the episode in perpetuity, as it was recorded and saved as part of the episode's audio file. The ad can't be removed without removing the entire episode. As time went on, technology afforded publishers and advertisers alike, a new way to deploy ads. Dynamic ad deployment uses technology to deploy ads at predetermined points in the show. These points are strategically selected on the backend, after the episode has been uploaded to the publisher's hosting provider. Why is this beneficial? From a publisher standpoint, this affords them the opportunity to deploy an ad for a particular amount of time or a particular number of impressions, before reselling that same space to a new advertiser. Podcasts with content considered 'evergreen' (i.e. without an expiration date on its appeal) could view this as a tremendous opportunity.
Dynamic ad deployment also prevents shows from airing an advertisement that have may have lost its appeal months, even years ago. Consider a podcast with evergreen content that's been publishing for three years. A new listener may come across the show and elect to start with episode one, rather than listen to the latest piece of content. If the show was publishing baked in advertisements at the time of publication, those ads will still be there when a new listener comes across the show years later. The advertiser may still be in operation, but any special offers mentioned have likely expired. That being said, many advertisers still prefer the baked in model for that very reason. A baked in spot lives forever, meaning the number of people contracted to hear your spot – often times the number of listens guaranteed within the first 30 days of an episode publishing -- will be greatly exceeded over time. Even if the offer and code eventually expire, that's a tremendous amount of added value for your brand or company – similar to how product placement within a classic movie continues to provide value for a brand years after that movie has left theaters (i.e. Pepsi in the Back to the Future trilogy or Subway in Happy Gilmore). As an advertiser, this is one of many things to consider when putting together your podcast ad campaign.