[(0:00)] Voice-over: This week on The Sonic Truth, Veritonic's VP of Marketing, Kristin Charron, sits down with Katie Boline of HubSpot, as well as Marques Pfaff and Reggie Risseeuw of AdvertiseCast to discuss the role that audio plays in HubSpot's marketing strategy, and how insightful and actionable campaign performance data is playing a role in helping the inbound marketing sales and customer service powerhouse further optimize their audio efforts and reach their target audiences efficiently. We hope you enjoy this episode and welcome again to The Sonic Truth. [(0:33)] Kristin Charron: Welcome, everyone, to The Sonic truth. My name is Kristin Charron. I'm joined today by Katie Boline, Senior Marketing Manager, Brand Paid Media at HubSpot, Marques Pfaff, Director of Ad Operations for AdvertiseCast, and Reggie Risseeuw, Publisher Relations for AdvertiseCast. Welcome, everyone. [(0:53)] Marques Pfaff: Good to be here, Kristin. [(0:54)] Reggie Risseeuw: Nice to be here. [(0:55)] Katie Boline: Excited to be here. Thank you for having me. [(0:59)] Kristin: Thank you, guys, so much for being on. So, we wanted to bring you together today. We realized that AdvertiseCast and HubSpot are doing some really cool and interesting things in the audio space. So, we just wanted to, um, ask you guys a few questions and just learn a little bit more about what you're up to and the results you've been seeing to achieve your goals. [(1:18)] Katie: Yeah, I think audio is a huge part of our overall media strategy and media mix. This year, specifically, has been super exciting for HubSpot as it was our first-ever global brand campaign launched. In prior years, we haven't had such a global footprint, and this is really like the first time that we worked with the creative agency to produce assets for us across, you know, all the different media verticals. So, video, display, audio, all of that, so super exciting, and all of our assets are really focused around these pirates theme. It's based around like a fictional pirate business, and our assets feature, Kathryn Hahn, has a sort of the face of the campaign. She is our pirate CEO, and all of our assets really paint the picture of how HubSpot CRM can help businesses grow better. I don't know if at this point is, you know, when we want to play one of our ad spots or not. [(2:20)] Kristin: Yeah, that would be great. Let's go ahead and give it a listen. [Advertisement plays] Kathryn Hahn: I'm an actor, not a business leader. But if I were, I'd run the biggest pirate enterprise to ever sail the high seas. Oi! And then I get HubSpot as my CRM platform to connect all my ships across the globe because acquiring new customers doesn't come easy. But HubSpot makes it easy for teams to create a more personalized customer experience. And then I climbed to the top of the crow's nest and shout things like, "Batten down the customer reports," but again I'm not a pirate CEO. I'm a very serious actor. Connect your people, your customers, and your business at hubspot.com. [(2:54)] Katie: Specifically, podcasts have been such a huge driver of success for the brand advertising team here. Audio is a crucial part of the overall mix. And just thinking about like where our target audience consumes content throughout their day, podcasts are really one of those touch points throughout the day that they're kind of, you know, engaging frequently with whether that's when they're cooking dinner with their family or commuting to work. I think podcasts are something that our audience really uses to kind of, you know, learn more about things that they're interested in whether that's from, like, a business or personal perspective. So, yeah. And then, our recent campaign with AdvertiseCast, just looking at the results, drove above benchmark conversion rates and incremental lift based on the results that we received from the Veritonic study that we ran. And these were results across categories, like, awareness, intent, and favorability. And we're really happy working with the AdvertiseCast team to sort of determine the ideal, like a mix of shows and content alignment to reach our target audience. And then, you know, find ways that we can really ensure that we'd be driving the strongest campaign results possible. [(4:17)] Kristin: That's, that's awesome. And before we get into... because I want Marques and AdvertiseCast, I definitely want to learn a little bit more about the process from your side in terms of how you approach building out a campaign that you knew would be successful for HubSpot. But for Katie, how will the success of the study, that you just ran, impact HubSpot sales and marketing efforts moving forward in your approach to audio? [(4:44)] Katie: Yeah, I think, um, with sort of the results that we saw and comparing those with the feedback that we got from Veritonic, um, all categories were well above the lift norm. We drove over 20 percentage point lift across the categories that I mentioned that were surveyed—so, awareness, intent, and favorability. And taking that data sort of a step further and slicing and dicing it a bit more, we actually ran a test with AdvertiseCast where this was the first time that we tested our pre-recorded, uh, pre-produced assets that were, you know, made by our agent creative agency that we worked with versus testing those against our standard host-read ads. And what we saw with the performance was that the lift was actually stronger against the pre-recorded creatives versus host-reads. Um, so, I think just thinking through like creative moving forward and how we're going to sort of select different ad spots, I think, you know, trying to leverage those pre-recorded assets and testing those more. [(5:51)] Kristin: So, it's interesting that the customization and targetability options, if you will, of testing and optimizing pre-record are actually stronger than relying on the audience's connection to the host in terms of the host run. [(6:08)] Katie: Yeah, it was, it was super interesting to see and be able to test that, and it was really like the first test that we ran. So, we definitely want to continue testing or pre-recorded spots. [(6:20)] Kristin: That's awesome. And Marques, so, can you tell us a little bit about the process from your side in terms of building the campaign? [(6:29)] Marques: Yeah, absolutely, Kristin. Ah, in many ways, it was similar, the approach, that is, to what we would do for any client that would come to us at AdvertiseCast. Of course, there were some unique variables here to take into account. Most notably, the fact that we were using multiple creatives, both host-read copy as well as a variety of the pre-produced spots that Katie was discussing there. So, that was certainly unique to their campaign. But in getting started, it's really developing a relationship with any advertiser determining what their target audience looks like, the demographic makeup. What's the goal of the campaign? In this instance, awareness was, was really at the top of that list and making sure that folks were familiar with HubSpot. Ancillary goals, certainly, as I mentioned here already a few times, the multiple creatives came into play. And we utilized attribution pixels of a variety of them, uh, including, of course, Veritonic's services to, to track and measure, uh, a lot of that. But that's, that's really what it comes down to upfront. And then being that we've worked with a variety of clients from all, all sorts of different industries, and many of them that are adjacent to what HubSpot does, we were able to go back, look at the shows that have a track record of success, and knowing, of course, again the target audience that they were looking for. Building out a proposal that had a variety of options for them to choose from, and that's really... Like I said, the process that we would follow with anyone is to build out a large list, then, work with the advertiser to determine, "Hey, which of these do you think makes the most sense based on the show description, the audience demographics that were able to provide, any other information that we might be able to send their way?" And then, again, having that background in our world of knowing what has worked in the past is certainly valuable information and, and insight and putting these together. So, that's, that's really where we started, and then it was going about trying to determine how to parse out the pre-produced creative versus the host-read copy. Who was going to take on which version? There were some shows that we utilized both, meaning, both pre-produced and host-reads. But we wanted to ensure that we had a large enough sample size from all of those creatives to make some logical conclusions at the end of all of this. And that was really the nice thing about working with Katie in the HubSpot team here is that they're not new to this. They've gone through advertising campaigns in the past whether it be with podcasts or some other medium. But, but just having that communication and knowing, knowing that Katie understood what it was going to take to really get a true read on this. I think too often, maybe that's a little bit too strong, but, but more often than we'd like, you'll see some clients who want to run a test in the space and they don't necessarily have the budget for it to really make any logical conclusions at the end of it all. And I try to be as honest as I can be with, with those clients or those advertisers that would come to us and say, "Look, you're probably better off saving your budget for now until you can get to a point where you're going to have a little bit more to throw behind it and can actually take something away from this." And that's what was good from the... Like I said, at the very start with Katie and her team, there was enough budget there to build out an expansive list of shows and to test all of those creatives to a point where we felt like, "Yeah, this is something that they can, they can take and use for future podcast campaigns or future campaigns outside of podcasting whether, you know, there might be some relevance there as well." [(10:16)] Kristin: And in terms of the kind of taking a step back building out that list for your clients or HubSpot of the recommended shows, is there outside of looking at, you know, the show, the show name, description, whatever demographics you have about the listening audience? Is there any other, like, secret sauce that goes into a kind of narrowing that list, or is it more of a collaborative effort in terms of considering the goals, and who, you know, the client, in this case, HubSpot is really interested in reaching to help narrow it? [(10:47)] Marques: Well, I think both can be true. It's certainly a collaborative effort where we're working with Katie and making sure that she's comfortable with anything that we choose. As far as demographics go, especially when you get into that, that tech world or software as a service or I guess adjacent industries, a lot of times the audiences may not necessarily be one and the same, even though the subject matter is very similar. So, in this instance, I think we're looking for shows that, that have a lot of business decision-makers, quite frankly, folks that are in a position to make a call on whether or not HubSpot might be a good option for their internal team. And that's where you have to dig a little bit deeper into the demographics of some of these shows. And for us, it's, it's different with each show because AdvertiseCast, without getting too deep into what we do, but we work with a variety of independent podcasters, and so, each one of them has different means for obtaining some of that information. Some of them will utilize audience surveys and that's certainly a great way to go. So, we'll work with those shows to try to determine who has ultimately the most granular, when we can, and where we can get more granular the best fit to come back and match with HubSpot. And ultimately, like Katie was talking about earlier, really focus on that, those 4 key elements of awareness, favorability, intent to take action, and then what the creative impact would have on those people. [(12:18)] Kristin: Sure, that makes sense. And to take a step back in terms of overall audio attribution and best practice, you mentioned, the use of multiple attribution pixels by HubSpot. Reggie, can you tell us a bit more about why that is and how it's beneficial in general as opposed to using one or two for audio attribution? [(12:40)] Reggie: Well, in this case, I thought it was useful seeing this. All this was our first experience with Veritonic that it allowed us to compare pixel providers because you never know how the new pixel provider, how accurate will be compared to other ones. And then when you have multiple, you can kind of see if there's a trend, if 3 of them are showing this and one of them is not, you know, that may not be a pixel or provider you want to use in the future. You know, these other ones are more reliable. They're showing the same data. In this case, we used 4 different pixel providers, and each creative had its own pixel as well. So, we ended up, I think using the most pixels we've ever used for any campaign because there were so many. And what that did is, normally, we have one pixel for the entire campaign, maybe one for each show. This allowed us to see how each creative did. So, there was the traditional creative that they use for HubSpot and then the "Be a pirate creative." So, with this, with all these pixels, we could see how the more unique "Be a pirate creative" did with their traditional or with the host-read, and you could kind of compare to see how each one performed. If maybe, the, you could see that, maybe one didn't perform as well. Maybe that's a creative you want to take off the table for the next time around. This allowed us to see that data. One thing I found interesting as they pointed out is we had a host-read and we had pre-produced, and only a couple of shows we did host-read and pre-produced, most of them were either one or the other. The host-read still did slightly better on the ones that had both, but when you factor in the cost, a host-read normally is charging more than a pre-produced, I didn't see much of a fall-off there, or at least enough to say that Katie brought up that, you know, the rate of return on all this, for the pre-produced, was actually done or was actually pretty good. [(14:47)] Kristin: Do you think any of your experience, this is, you know, a bit outside of the scope? But generally speaking, from a celebrity voiceover versus just a voice talent, is there, are there any trends or, you know, specific performance metrics that you can share there? Is it better to use a celebrity versus a host versus just a voice-over artist? [(15:12)] Reggie: In general, when it comes to the podcast, I feel like the podcast host is who the listeners trust the most. I mean, a celebrity can be good, but when you're listening to a podcast, they kind of form a bond with the person. You start to feel like a part of the family at times. There is some trust there. A pre-produced can still do well. I mean, if you have a well-created pre-produced piece, it can still perform very well for you. [(15:40)] Marques: Yeah, I would echo what Reggie said there. I think, more often than not, the podcast host is going to be the most relevant voice to those audiences. However, there are always going to be... And programmatic campaigns are certainly a great example of this where you might be buying into a large swath of shows, you don't have the ability to go in and add each one of those host voices an ad spot, you're going to be using something pre-produced. In those instances, I certainly think, provided you can find the right quote-unquote celebrity voice to connect with that audience that you're after, it's certainly an option to consider and a way to go. Obviously, everything's going to be a balance against cost. How much would it be to involve a celebrity in voicing your creative relative to what you expect the return to be? But certainly, there can be value there if the right connection is made and that's probably the word, the buzzword we keep coming back to, is making that connection with the audience. That's what the host does and, theoretically, that's what the right celebrity voice could do in the right setting and scenario as well. Otherwise, I mean, when you just look at the creative as a whole and, and I say this with, with, with a great deal of honesty, the pre-produced creative that HubSpot brought to us was excellent, as good as anything that we have worked with or any clients that we've worked with who brought us pre-produced ads. So, clearly, a lot of thought and background knowledge on their part went into what they knew would connect with their target demo. And I think that certainly showed itself with the success rate that we had with the pre-produced. [(17:20)] Reggie: I know there was a little bit of concern when they first brought into creative how would a pirate do because it was unique, it was different. And so, it was nice to be able to get that, that granular data with the pixels to see that that one was just as successful as some of the other pre-produced spots out there were. So, it was interesting to see some of that data and it was nice to see, um... Like I said, the first time using Veritonic, to see how well that compared to some of the other pixels providers that we've used more in the past, it was nice to see that data as well and have a little more confidence in other pixel providers, new pixel providers that we're going, that we're working with. [(18:01)] Marques: And you ask yourself, "How do you stand out?" How do you, how do you cut through the proverbial noise? Even though in the world of podcasting, there's a better ratio than a lot of other mediums in terms of content to add time, you're still trying to stand out. And I think we all know that kind of an obvious statement when you're putting together this creative and that's really what I thought. This is just anecdotal Marques's opinion, but that's what I thought. The pirate creative really did—it made you sit up and take notice because it was so unique and different from anything else that you're hearing when listening to a podcast. [(18:38)] Kristin: And that's actually a great segue. Katie, without giving away any, you know, proprietary or, you know, secretive information in terms of your process and procedures, how is HubSpot's approach to audio, and thinking through the creative and what you might like to take to market different than some other advertising vehicles? [(19:01)] Katie: Now, that's a great question. I mean, we work with our creative agency, so, a lot of that is sort of, like, ideated by them. But I think a lot of what we do creatively is, like, very playful compared to other, like, B2B advertisers in the space. You know, I think these, like, this fantastical theme, you'll kind of see it continue onward as we develop our creative in, like, future years. So, yeah, I think, I think, you know, it's B2B, it can be a little dry, but I think with, you know, here at HubSpot, like, we're really trying to be, like, more creative and sort of, like, we were alluding to earlier like cut through the noise with our creative assets. The pirate, pirate assets... We were a little nervous about running because they were so different than, like, the standard Evergreen script. So, yeah, I think, you know, taking some risks but also, you know, being able to do sort of, like, what we've seen do well for like, B2B. A mix of both, I think, in the audio space makes a lot of sense. [(20:10)] Reggie: Uh, since I found it interesting, we allowed the shows to pick which of their pre-produced creative they wanted to air. And there were some shows that still felt, like, hesitated using the "Be a pirate." I ran campaigns for multiple shows that we host on different platforms, so, I was able to set up the campaign. That's where I was able to push the "Be a pirate." Made sure at least during one of the flights, one of those creatives was used, so that's where we're able to see some of that data. But even some of the hosts, I could tell, were hesitant like, "This is different. Do I want to use it? Do I want it to be a part of my show?" And when they did, as we saw, it converted just as well as the others. [(20:49)] Katie: Yeah, it was super interesting to see the performance there. Yeah, I definitely think, like, the Evergreen Creative makes a lot of sense from, like, a programmatic lens running those on something more scalable, but when it comes to, like, very contextually targeted shows, like, with any direct partners, I think, finding, like, those pockets of shows where it makes sense that the Pirate ad could, you know, contextually align or even, like, stand out a bit, uh, with those shows make a lot of sense too. So, yeah. [(21:25)] Kristin: And do you think the ability to continue to test creative moving forward will make you feel more comfortable generally speaking with taking a bit more of a risk with your audio creative, again, in the right setting and context? [(21:40)] Katie: Definitely. I think this year has been a lot of testing and learning even outside of audio for our team. There were a lot of firsts that happened. As I mentioned, like, this was our first global brand campaign, and we've really only had these assets in North America. We are present in other regions, uh, with our advertising, too, and some of these English, you know, speaking markets could potentially leverage these assets if they wanted to, if they, if those marketing teams thought it made sense, which I would be super interested in testing and seeing how these perform, given they did so well in North America. So, something else to kind of consider for testing, but yes, to answer your question, um, we're definitely just going to continue to test and learn where we can. [(22:29)] Kristin: And so, in closing, I have a question that I'm interested in hearing all of your perspectives on. But Marques, if you can kick us off, with the increased utility of, um, data points with the ability to research, test, and measure the performance of audio, how do you see audio as an advertising vehicle evolving over the next year? [(22:52)] Marques: Yeah, that can be a complex answer, Kristin. But certainly, there is a lot of, a lot of, there's a lot of evolution on the horizon undoubtedly. It feels like it's always sort of the case with this industry. In the last few years, it seems like we've moved at a faster pace than just about any other medium out there. And I think that's because we're still in the relative infancy of podcasting and determining what its utility, what its value can be to advertisers. I'll make a guess on a couple of points on that. I don't see host-reads or direct-response advertising going away anytime soon. They historically have been sort of the bread and butter in, in the podcasting space on the advertising side—the first, uh, uh, early adopters, if you will, of the space and coming to it. And then, as time has moved on, we've seen more and more brand campaigns come into play. And of course, that's what we, what we were looking for here with HubSpot—is more of an awareness campaign and making sure people knew that this was a terrific option for them, those that were in the position to do that. So, I think ultimately, you're going to see a lot more of what we did in this particular instance, where you are able to go out and produce a number of different creatives, hone in on a handful of shows that, that really drive conversions for you based off the pixel attribution data, and then whittle down your, your creative to what you find to be the most effective for each individual audience. And maybe that's different for Show A compared to Show C. And maybe that justifies having gone out in the first place in producing 4, 5, 6 different creatives. It's all going to be dependent upon who the advertiser is, what their budget looks like, and who they're they're after, but in some instances, there just may be a more complex dynamic at work and trying to determine how we, how do we best get after the, the target demo that's out there segmented as it may be across different shows in finding the most appropriate way to reach those folks? So, I definitely, I definitely see that being something that takes place more and then programmatic revenue dollars continue to grow in the podcast space as well. I think that's only going to continue as more and more branding clients, larger brands with sizable budgets recognized the value here because this is, this is where the audience is. And I can say this, Reggie and I both spent time in terrestrial radio and I still have a very soft spot in my heart for that, but it's been amazing as someone who grew up valuing audio as a medium albeit in radio form when I was younger. And now, seeing that make a resurgence here in podcasting because of, frankly, the way of life, the commutes that people are on the ability to listen to podcasts while they're engaged in other activities around the house. If you're a mom with a child, you can still be entertained or be informed on something while you're at home tending to your kids; or if you're at work, you can theoretically be listening to something at the same time, and I think we're just going to continue to see that trend grow because for as much as I find myself caught up thinking, "Well, everybody's familiar with podcasts at this point," I still am brought back down to earth at times when I'm out in, in talking to different people who aren't as familiar with the medium is as I guess I would have thought going in. So, I know there's room for, uh, for others to jump on board with this trend, and I only see it continuing to grow. [(26:41)] Kristin: Reggie, do you have anything to add? [(26:43)] Reggie: Yeah, I think one of the biggest trends I see is the desire to have some type of tracking. I mean, we went from, like, Marques has talked about terrestrial radio where maybe 10, 20, 30 thousand, whatever people are listening, to the beginning of the podcast, where you can actually track and say, "Hey, I have 10,000 people listening to my podcast," to now, you cannot just see how many people are listening to the podcast, you can see how many people listen to your podcast once your website purchase that product. I think that's the trend. And as we see, as more and more campaigns come in, pixel tracking is becoming more and more of a necessity that there have been campaigns that have been canceled because a podcast can't or won't track them. It's become one of those things that some advertisers... It's a requirement. We need to see this data. And it's one of those things that you can see now that maybe you are going to buy a 50,000-reach show before, but then you discovered through pixel tracking, that's 20,000 reaches, can you just as many conversions, you're not going to spend that extra money to buy that 50,000-reach. You'll buy that 20,000 reach show multiple times. So, it's one of those things where you can get such finite data. It, it's actually kind of impressive and scary to me at the same time how much data we can collect in a campaign, and I think that trend is only going to continue and potentially even get more data along the way. [(28:13)] Kristin: So, like... Katie, any thoughts on this? [(28:17)] Katie: Yeah, I think the audio space is just going to continue with upward momentum, right? I think, like, even since the pandemic, like, people have been listening to podcasts, like, more than ever, and audio, in general. I mean, music throughout the day. I know I'm playing music constantly throughout my day while I'm working. So, yeah, I think, you know, more brands, businesses, and companies are going to continue to invest their media dollars in the audio space because it makes a lot of sense. You know, a lot of people are engaging unlike the advertised cast team kind of alluded to earlier. You know, in the programmatic space as, like, a programmatic buyer on the brand side, I would really like to see things evolve in more of a self-serve way as we're trying to consolidate with the DSPs that were using, um, you know, how can brands, you know, take on, even more, buys rather than going direct, and things like that. So, I would like to see the space evolve in that way. Um, obviously, there are a lot of benefits going in a direct manner, um, but I would like to see, like, some more consolidation happen as a buyer in a more like self-serve way. And then, lastly, on the attribution piece, I think, you know, what Veritonic is doing, and, you know, what other attribution providers are doing is super powerful, but then looking at outside of just audio holistically at all the other media channels that were running, like, how do we paint that picture across all of our channels? You know, right now, it's, it's a little bit dispersed to me because we're using an attribution platform, specifically for audio. But then how do we tie that back against all of the other channels that were running and just look at it that way? So, yeah. Two big points for me would be programmatic and attribution. [(30:20)] Marques: W-well, into that last point, if I may, Kristin, with what Katie was talking about. We are seeing more and more podcasts decide to simulcast to YouTube so that there is a video component involved with that as well. And clearly, I think most of us, look at that and say, it can only be a good thing because it allows the consumer to just determine—"How do I want to consume this? Do I want it to be an audio-only vehicle that I'm listening to in the car, or if I'm someone that's sitting somewhere with my phone or on my computer, I can take it in via YouTube? To that point though, YouTube does not currently have an attribution tool associated with it. So, I will be interested to see if when that ever comes about. Just knowing that YouTube has certainly made a big push here of late to try to encourage more and more podcasters to bring their content onto that platform as well. So, that will be interesting. And I don't think I'm speaking out of turn with this, but we're always keeping an eye on the privacy laws in the US, and how that may or may not affect what we do from an attribution standpoint. Just something to always keep an eye on and, you know, either way, we'll always, we'll always be willing to go out and at least discuss with our shows the potential for, for attribution mechanisms to try to provide marketers and media buyers the most relevant data to make their decisions. [(31:46)] Kristin: Yeah, and [clears throat] Katie, to your point on the attribution front, you know, you're certainly not alone in that desire. I feel like you can't go. You'd be hard-pressed to find a conference today where somebody on stage doesn't mention the fact that, you know, the desire for some sort of standardization when it comes to attribution data across the board. And then, Marques, on the YouTube comment, I think that's a bit polarizing these days. It's like where is the line, where podcasts that have a video component or still considered podcasts, right? And will there be a blend of eventually of where, you know, podcasts are just, they have a video component, like, whatever go all the way in that direction or not, considering how people like to consume? So, that'll be interesting to watch and kind of see how that plays out. [(32:32)] Reggie: Yeah, I'm kind of curious what the attribution and YouTube as well if something will happen there and how it compares to a podcast. We've had multiple campaigns where a podcast is 70, 80% YouTube but only then 20% podcast, but they still want attribution. And I'm kind of curious how accurate the podcast attribution would be versus the video. So, if that ever becomes available, I'm curious to compare that data. [(33:00)] Katie: Right? [(33:01)] Kristin: Absolutely. Well, thank you all so much, Reggie, Marcus, and Katie. It was wonderful to have you on and to have this conversation. I hope to continue it again soon whether it's on a stage or another podcast. Um, but it was really wonderful to have you here today. I appreciate your time. [(33:17)] Reggie: Thank you for having us. [(33:17)] Marques: Thanks, Kristin. I appreciate it. [(33:19)] Katie: Thank you, Kristin. This is amazing. [(33:19)] Kristin: Thank you, guys. [(33:22)] Voice-over: If you're interested in learning more about audio attribution, visit veritonic.com or contact marketing at veritonic.com. [END]