Walk down Los Angeles' Hollywood Boulevard past the Walk of Fame and you might spot billboard ads that aren't for the latest star-studded movie, but for a humbler form of media — the podcast.
Not just any podcast: it's one that is attracting the attention of major luxury advertisers such as Chanel and BMW, not known for running commercials in the format.
"The Daily," from The New York Times, is less than two years old and already has 5 million unique listeners a month. It's looking to step that up with a billboard, TV and online ad campaign running through September in Portland and Chicago, as well as in LA.
The ads show black-and-white images of news events, with a colored square superimposed over them to suggest the idea of bringing a story to life. The line "This moment deserves an explanation" features on all of them, the first words to come out of host Michael Barbaro's mouth when The Daily started two weeks into the Donald Trump administration.
Podcast popularity
Millions of Americans are listening to podcasts, and as audiences grow, so do advertising dollars, with "The Daily" reported to ask $290,000 per month for sponsorship.
Ad revenues for podcasts overall are set to double by 2020, with PwC and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) predicting that U.S. ad spend will go up from an estimated $314 million in 2017 to $659 million in 2020, with "baked-in" ads (that are read by the presenter) the most popular type.
Squarespace is an advertiser almost ubiquitous in podcasts and got into them in 2009. "You're in one advertising channel and you sort of just exhaust it and you start to think about what more we could be doing and how else we can reach people. And back then we started with tech podcasts," Squarespace founder and CEO Anthony Casalena told CNBC.
"It's content that's niche-focused, so you can't get (it) anywhere else. Hosts establish a relationship with their audience. You know there's a real kind of connection and feeling there," he said. Squarespace takes direction from the presenter. "We are pretty loose with how it's scripted. We want them to use their own voice... It's part of the script of the episode and so it's not like an ad unit."
Squarespace's most recent initiative is with podcasting company Gimlet. The two worked together to find "the next great podcast host" via Casting Call, a reality audio series hosted by Jonathan Goldstein that will document the companies' search across the U.S., airing this fall.