How Marketers Are Putting Emerging Tools to Best Use

October 11, 2023

Panelists talk podcasts, AI during Promax’s Festival of Virtual Content on Wednesday.

Smart marketers are finding value, rather than threat, in emerging technology, and panelists at Promax's ongoing Festival of Virtual Content on Wednesday offered some suggestions on how best to use such tools as podcasting and generative AI.

Podcasting is a maturing medium, having gotten its start in 2004, but it's still an area that feels new to many. Podcasting is growing fast around the world, said Tom Billington, managing director of London-based audio-focused creative studio Granny Meets Wolf. In 2023, podcasting is expected to generate 207 million Euros in revenue in Europe, up from 19 million Euros in 2019, Billington said.

“Podcasting is increasingly becoming a new audience for brands to connect with,” Billington said.

There are several ways brands can do this through podcasting – through traditional pre-recorded ads, through more personalized host-recorded ads and through branded podcasts, such as Waitrose & Partners' “Dish” podcast. In the podcast, hosts DJ Nick Grimshaw and Michelin-star chef Angela Hartnett bring on celebrity guests to discuss food, cooking and recipes. Those recipes can be found on Waitrose' website, where users can fill their online carts with ingredients.

One big advantage of podcasts, Billington said, is that they can be used to reach younger audiences, with 37 the average age of a podcast listener, compared to 58 for a traditional TV watcher.

“These listeners also tend to be more engaged than typical media audiences,” said Mike Newman, vice president, UK content and partnerships at London-based podcast platform Audioboom. “These are some of the most engaged media consumers around with retention levels of 70 to 80%,” meaning that 70 to 80% of people who start listening to an episode stick with it all the way through to the end.

In addition, 65% of listeners say they pay more attention to podcast advertising than they do to other forms of advertising, giving podcast ads a 60% better return-on-investment than ads in any other media, Newman said. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau's latest report on advertising spending, podcast advertising generated 76 million pounds in the UK in 2022, up 32% from 2021, Newman also noted.

“Even though it has been a very challenging 2023 across the whole of the ad market, we're still expected to report increased growth in 2023,” Newman said.

One downside of podcasts has been the inability for publishers to get much data on listener behavior, since they can't be tracked once a podcast is downloaded. But tracking and tools are improving every year – particularly when people stream podcasts instead of downloading them.

“We're getting more and more attribution data as well as insight and technology advancements every quarter and year within the podcast market. That will only get better as we grow and develop as an industry,” Newman said.

Much more recently, artificial intelligence (AI) has been the industry's big buzz phrase, especially as writers and actors struck in Hollywood with AI a huge sticking point in the negotiations between them and the studios.

Martin Gent, owner and founder of UK-based Buska Video, recognizes the fear that many creatives have around AI, and he's working to show people how AI can be a useful tool instead of a perceived threat to their livelihoods. Although what could be threatening, Gent notes, is not knowing how to use these new technologies.

“AI can supercharge the skills that you already have,” Gent said. To that end, he offers a week-long course for creatives called The Gen AI Survival Guide for Creatives (if you're interested in taking this course, tell Gent Promax sent you and get a 10% discount).

Gent quickly walked attendees through some online AI tools they could check out, including Midjourney for creating static images and Pika Labs for turning those images into (very) short videos. Runway Academy says it can create just about anything, while Eleven Labs offers generative voice AI.

Kaiber can generate music videos that are reactive to the audio, while Suno Chirp Bot – available in interactive chat platform Discord – generates music, speech and sound effects.

Finally, perhaps the most well-known tool in this space, ChatGPT, should be treated more as a “brainstorming partner than a machine that will spit out scripts that are fully formed,” Gent said. Google also offers a similar technology, Bard, that is popping up in users of Google's Workspace suite, including Docs, Sheets and Mail.

“Things move on so quickly – they might even have changed a little by the time you've watched this,” Gent said. “But one of the best quotes I've heard about AI comes from Tim Hwang [former global public policy lead for artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google], who said ‘the best things you can do in AI right now are ask questions, tinker and don't trust anyone who sounds too confident.'”