This month, Rob Twells speaks with Pat Butkus, SVP of Marketing & Growth at Acast, the world’s largest independent podcast company. They explore why podcasting continues to outperform expectations in a landscape dominated by video and how it’s still an untapped opportunity for a lot of brands.
The conversation covers how 63% of listeners say they trust their podcast host – and how that level of trust leads to real, measurable action. Pat shares how brands of all sizes are leveraging podcasting to drive both brand awareness and performance, and why audio is one of the most underused tools in the modern marketing mix.
We also discuss the role of AI, some of the tools and strategies Pat's team uses day-to-day, and the marketing habits he’s ready to leave behind for good.
If you’re thinking about adding podcasts to your marketing strategy, you'll want to listen to this one first.
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Some of the resources mentioned in the podcast, as well as some of our own.
Disclaimer: These resources shared are based solely on the experiences of the podcast guest. This is not a sponsored segment or an endorsement.
Room 301 is a monthly marketing podcast brought to you by The Digital Maze, a specialist full service digital marketing agency based in Derby. We discuss ongoing marketing themes, topics and news in the digital marketing industry to help marketing managers (and business leaders) stay ahead of the curve.
Rob Twells (00:01)
Pat. In a world flooded with video and visual content, why do you believe that audio still cuts through deeper than anything else?
Pat Butkus (00:11)
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. think over the past few years, we've seen really significant growth within the podcasting space in a way that has actually grown the medium to be mass reach in the same conversation as linear TV, terrestrial radio. ⁓
Some figures top of my head in terms of reach in the U.S., about 65 % of general population, 18 plus, has listened to a podcast.
Um, 115 million are weekly podcast listeners. know this is UK, uh, podcasts that have a lot of listeners in the UK. I've think 70 % of 18 plus population have listened to a podcast and 40 million are weekly podcast listeners. So you can see that reach has, has grown massively. this reach is, is really meaningful as well. Cause if you think about how people consume podcasts and maybe your listeners are
are at home right now in headphones and listening to this alone. that's, they would be, you know, well represented by about 90 % of podcast listeners who are consuming the medium in that way. And that means that there's really deep engagement that people have with their favorite podcasts and their favorite podcast hosts like yourself. So 63 % of our listeners surveyed have
said that they trust their podcast host. 59 % say that they feel like a friend. And that in turn leads to being a really action-oriented medium as well. So 88 % have taken some sort of action after hearing a podcast ad. And I think this really speaks to the power of the medium and the power of audio.
And especially podcasts because it's a really, really leaned in intimate environment. People are generally not multitasking in any way that requires a lot of mental capacity. might be ⁓ folding laundry or doing dishes or commuting, but you're really not, you know, working on spreadsheets or anything that requires a lot of, ⁓ you know, high mental focus while you're listening to a podcast.
And that has led it to being a really effective channel from a media standpoint. And that has led more and more investment to come in. And so as there's more investment, creators are able to earn more of, you know, their living from the podcast channel. And that has brought in more and more creators. So it's kind of ⁓ a ⁓ virtuous cycle that has led to the channel's growth.
Rob Twells (03:08)
That's awesome. And the stat you just mentioned there about taking action is really quite interesting. Do you see podcasting form a bigger part of a marketing mix for even smaller businesses going forward?
Pat Butkus (03:22)
Yeah, I mean, we're seeing both sizable growth at both segments. So from, you know, more and more blue chip brands are investing in the medium because it is now more of a mass reach play for them because there is the scale there finally that they can impact their KPIs at the top of the funnel. We're seeing increased allocation from
you know, the Fortune 500 type companies, but then at the way at the other end of the spectrum, we're seeing more and more demand from smaller and medium sized companies as well who are testing the channel for the very first time. So, you know, it's a really unique channel that ⁓
It is effective across the entire marketing funnel. In fact, the industry was really built on the backs of performance advertisers. You know, some of the, um, you know, more recognizable ones like MailChimp in the old serial podcasts, you know, they were direct response clients.
⁓ And that's still in some markets, the majority of ad spend is for performance advertisers. But there are a lot of marketers who look at podcasting and audio as much more of an upper to mid funnel channel. And it's unique in that it can accomplish both.
Rob Twells (05:00)
That's really interesting. mean, to be fair, we see it as sort of upper to mid, mid-funnel type content, but actually, ⁓ yeah, call to action in podcasts can be very useful content. And I've seen myself personally, I've made a lot of action off the podcasts that I listen to and probably parted with quite a lot of money as well. So yeah, probably need to do more of that. ⁓
Pat Butkus (05:21)
And you're not alone.
mean, 60 % of people have said that they've made a purchase as a result of hearing a podcast ad. And that's on the traditional host-read sponsorship, the endorsement of a brand from a podcast host like yourself. And at the other end, there are targeted ads which would run in one of the ad slots. ⁓
there is a misnomer that exists that ⁓ reporting an attribution is difficult within the channel. And that's why a lot of marketers think of it as a more of an upper mid funnel play because they don't think that they can really accurately track at the bottom of the funnel. But what we have to educate clients is that the same level of
post impression attribution exists within podcasting that you're used to within, you know, meta and Google campaigns where you can pixel your website and see of the users who listen to an ad, how many of them went on to visit and complete a conversion event that you set. So there is some education work that still needs to be done, but we're fighting the good fight to ⁓ help hopefully get that out there that you can ⁓
impact both awareness and consideration all the way down to purchases at efficient return on ad spend via podcast advertising.
Rob Twells (06:50)
Nice. Yeah, I totally agree. Do you feel podcasting has hit its peak or do think it's still going up in terms of popularity?
Pat Butkus (06:59)
It's still going up. mean, we're seeing, you know, in the U S as an example, 6 million new podcasts listeners per year. still, ⁓ one in three people have not yet listened to a podcast. And so there is still a ton of growth on the listenership side. ⁓
And from a brand investment side, I mean, we've still barely scratched the surface. There's, ⁓ you know, and often talked about within the industry. ⁓
⁓ under investment story, which relative to the share of ⁓ listenership and engagement that the channel receives, the relative share of media spend does not nearly equate. And so I think that in time that is going to catch up, especially as there's more and more ⁓ capabilities on the targeting and attribution and brand safety and suitability side that have really
really come a long way, especially in the last few years. And brands are starting to catch up, both big and small, as I've mentioned.
Rob Twells (08:14)
Excellent. And do you think agencies such as ours need to be offering services around it? Do you see that growing in popularity as well?
Pat Butkus (08:24)
Yeah, absolutely. think for agencies, you know, if you're not already leveraging podcasts, this is something that is very interesting to clients. And there is a lot of value that you can provide as an agency to help educate clients on the capabilities that exist within podcast advertising. As I was mentioning before, you know, some of the unique targeting and attribution capabilities that clients don't know. I mean, we're generally hearing that
A lot of marketers on the client side are
getting questions ⁓ internally. What is our podcast strategy? know, are we going to test the channel? But they don't really know where to begin. So as ⁓ you know, as a representative from the agency, you can help provide that guidance. And it's it's valuable for you to have yet another channel that you know, you guys can be experts in and can help ⁓ drive clients KPIs, because that's really at
at the end of the day what they care about. we've seen, have data, of course I am a little biased, but we have data that podcasting as a channel and not even a cast aside as the highest return on ad spend channel. And when you can show that to a client, can. ⁓
the effectiveness of the campaign and ⁓ then you are providing value to them. The other thing that I'll share is that it's not solely about stealing share from the other channels. Of course... ⁓
know, search and meta and more of the upper funnel traditional channels have their place. But what we're seeing because of the incremental reach of podcasting is that it's rising tide equation where when you're supplementing your media mix with podcast advertising, you're seeing more efficiency lower funnel and you're seeing ⁓ improved consideration at the top of the funnel.
Rob Twells (10:29)
Excellent. And if you haven't listened to this podcast before, we tend to ask three core questions. Now, you're a busy guy looking for a very, very well-known reputable company. What are the sorts of tools you're using to stand up your workload, manage teams, get on top of work, et cetera? What are the sorts of tools you're using at the moment? bonus, if it's an AI tool as well, it's very popular at the moment.
Pat Butkus (10:56)
Yeah, I mean, I feel like this is not a very ⁓ creative or unique answer, but chat GPT 4.0 is my LLM of choice. ⁓ I've tried the others, but I feel like ⁓ my chat GPT just knows me because I literally use it from everything from parenting advice. ⁓ We were just talking about the challenges of raising a toddler. ⁓
to my day-to-day job as well. this is really anything from brainstorming growth experiments, building content marketing outlines, or even just going from blank page to having something there to iterate on, ⁓ to interpreting data. ⁓
One of the newer use cases that we have for it, excuse me, is feeding it our user personas to do creative testing and gathering feedback in a really crafty and quick turn fashion. ⁓ And another example is the ⁓ somewhat meta but...
I actually had ChatGPT build out a GEO strategy for us to consider. So that's generative engine optimization, because we're seeing ⁓ from our lead sources a higher volume of leads ⁓ being referred from ChatGPT and other LLMs. ⁓ So we went right to the source and asked ChatGPT, how should we think about this?
help to supercharge our efforts there. ⁓ So that's on AI side of things. A newer tool that ⁓ we just on board with, which I'm pretty excited about, is ⁓ called Warmly, which is a web analytics and audience building tool that allows us to view the companies and actually the individuals who are visiting our website and then build outreach flows to them.
And so as I mentioned before, podcasting has grown significantly and because of this, we're experiencing really high demand. Obviously a lot of part of that is the work that we've done to build up our brand recognition and equity. But we're also, the channel is having its moment right now. So.
Our go-to-market priority has been really focused on activating this demand and prioritizing the highest value leads that are coming in. And so this tool allows us to not only build more robust retargeting audiences, but it also informs us which companies or industries we're seeing that intent from. And so we can then tailor landing pages, blog posts, acquisition campaigns to go after them.
So example of this is universities. We're seeing a lot of individuals from universities visiting the site, ⁓ exploring, reading through our blog content on podcast advertising. So we were able to build out a retargeting audience, go off channel ⁓ to retarget them. But we were also able to build out a custom web experience specifically for that target audience's use case and how.
they would leverage podcasting as a channel to drive their goals, which are unique from a brand advertiser or performance advertiser.
Rob Twells (14:41)
That's awesome. I've heard of tools. We use one here actually called Lead Forensics, which allows us to track the companies which visit our website, but I've never seen or heard of any tools that allow you to go as far as the individual. We typically have to try and find or guess who the individual might be. Okay, maybe it's somebody in marketing. Let's have a look at LinkedIn and try and connect the dots that way. So that's really interesting.
Pat Butkus (15:04)
Yeah, it's only a certain percentage where you get the specific individuals, but still it's really useful for us, especially at the bottom of the funnel as well. So we can build out engagement flows with them where we are reaching out individually, ⁓ offering to set up time with them. It all connects to our CRM, which is Salesforce, feeds back into our overall
Rob Twells (15:06)
Yeah.
Pat Butkus (15:34)
marketing analytics dashboard. So it's been really good. It's still early days, so we'll see how impactful it is. ⁓ But so far, so good.
Rob Twells (15:44)
Cool. So just moving back to the AI topic from a moment ago, how do you see that having an impact on podcast and audio, if at all?
Pat Butkus (15:55)
Yeah, I think ⁓ similar to all industries, it's going to be transformative within podcasting from an advertising perspective. ⁓
AI has made a number of advancements within podcast advertising from targeting down to attribution. on the targeting standpoint, many years ago, at this point, we've released conversational targeting, which allows advertisers to...
get extremely hyper-contextually relevant and insert their messages within the conversations that are taking place and not necessarily need to target at ⁓ the category level.
all the way down to brand suitability. So applying ⁓ LLMs to ⁓ comb through the millions of rows of data points of episode transcripts and provide brand suitability ⁓ scores that brands can then use to
choose the right shows and episodes according to their specific brand requirements. And then down to attribution, as I mentioned before, know, leveraging AI to use predictive models to show the performance of the campaign. But at Acast, we just recently released a really cool new feature which addresses a problem that
existing industry, which is there's a lot of newer ⁓ advertisers in the podcast space. ⁓
They generally feel that podcasts should work for them, but there's just a plethora of shows to choose from. So what are the right shows for my specific target audience? And we've built out a tool that's powered by ⁓ AI and ChatGPT's 4.0 model ⁓ to ⁓ provide the contextually relevant and audience-based ⁓
relevant shows for their specific target audience, which is really cool because it packages up these recommendations in a really data-driven rationale.
And ⁓ they can use that to feel more confident that if you're going to invest in this channel for the first time, you're going to be investing in the right show. And we've seen early days, we only released this two weeks ago at this point, but we're seeing improved performance on those campaigns as well, which is ultimately the goal of what this is about and how we can grow the industry.
Rob Twells (18:55)
That's really cool. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting time. Podcasts, any form of marketing, particularly the AI wave at the moment, obviously for me as an agency, it's obviously stormy waters, sort of navigating that, taking out clients on that journey as well. So yeah, super interesting to hear from you, how you feel it might impact audio. ⁓ The next segment of our podcast is all about failures.
big believer in learning through failures. So, Pat, any failures that spring to mind for you? ⁓ Bonus points if they're funny.
Pat Butkus (19:33)
If they're funny, yeah. So I'll give you a regular day-to-day failure and then I'll try to think of a funny one. But the day-to-day side, having worked in growth for as many years as I have now, you're used to failing pretty regularly. ⁓ The goal is to have a high volume, high velocity of tests and have slightly more wins than failures. But...
when you're working in growth and performance marketing and you're running so many tests, you are going to naturally have a lot of failures. ⁓ So an example of one, again, ⁓ at Acost, we have a self-serve advertising platform where brands of any shape and size can... ⁓
⁓ harness the power of podcast advertising in a product led experience. ⁓ And so one ⁓ thing to keep in mind is there's the targeted ads component and then there's the host read sponsorship component. But an optimal campaign that we've seen leverages both of those. And so we...
We tried to run a test where we would have one unified experience that would provide a recommendation that would go towards a combination campaign. But the end of the user journey is quite different in an ads campaign versus sponsorship campaign, where in a sponsorship, you're working directly with a podcaster. It might take weeks to coordinate on the scripts and the feedback and getting the campaign up and running.
Whereas on a NAS campaign you can get up and running the same day if you have your audio creative ready to go So by trying to combine those two ⁓ You know, we were introducing more friction to one part of the process and so that you know was a learning experience for us that You know, these actually are two separate journeys and should be treated as such ⁓ Then on the ⁓ funny story I guess I
I'd have to go way back to my early days at ESPN. I started my career in marketing there actually as a social media coordinator. And this was back in the early days of Twitter, especially brands being on Twitter. So we were one of the first networks to put live tweets on air. And it was my job to select the best responses from
a poll that we were doing. And I remember ⁓ selecting ⁓ a individual whose name should not be put on live television or a Disney owns network. ⁓
Rob Twells (22:18)
Yeah. ⁓
Pat Butkus (22:21)
And ⁓ it was quickly pulled off, but I thought when they went to break that that was my final day at ⁓ ESPN and within marketing and I would have to find a new career path. But luckily, ⁓ didn't go viral. It was before the viral moments took off. kept saying that. yeah.
Rob Twells (22:42)
Yeah, yeah. If it was today, you'd be all over TikTok, Twitter, the rest
of the world. Just on your point about running lots of different campaigns and experiments, what percentage of your overall marketing budget or marketing mix would you say is allocated to experimentation and intentionally failing, I suppose?
Pat Butkus (23:07)
Yeah, so we experiment across the entire funnel from, you know, from landing page copy to... ⁓
Acquisition campaign creative audience testing and things that nature from from an allocation perspective We're about 20 % on on test channels which you know would love to Increase with time but you know in the in the in the world of we need to prove Effective return on ad spend of course you you want to invest in the channels that are performing
as well, but we are looking at tests from really everything we do.
Rob Twells (23:56)
Cool, yeah, it's really interesting to know how ⁓ a business with potentially a larger budget would handle that. Because I think every ⁓ marketer should have in reserve some experimental budget. And obviously we work with quite a few small clients, well, you just can't afford that simply, but I think it's crucial to learn and understand, particularly in this time of change at the moment where lots of new channels are popping up left, right and center. ⁓
Lots of new channels, new opportunities. If you don't have the time to experiment, then I think you're going to probably struggle in the next two, three, four, five years potentially. So yeah, really interested to know that 20 % appears to be a good benchmark. ⁓
Pat Butkus (24:31)
you
Rob Twells (24:36)
What are you putting in room 301? So for anybody listening that doesn't know what room 301 is, it's effectively a made up room. We pretend it's real. But we've dumped everything in there that our guests don't want to see in marketing ever again. What grinds their gears? What's a pet peeve of theirs when it comes to marketing? Pat, you've been in the game a long, time.
I've seen your sort of history and where you've worked, you've worked with some very big players that I imagine our listeners would have heard of. So I imagine you've seen it all. So what is it that annoys you? What bugs you?
Pat Butkus (25:09)
Yeah, I don't know that I've seen it all just yet, what I'm putting in room 301 ⁓ is the notion that you don't need to be really, really close to the customers and the data. So as marketers grow in their career, especially at larger organizations, some of the companies that I've been at, it's easier to get further and further away from ⁓
the customers themselves and from the hard metrics.
And I've always given advice to newer marketers on the team that know your customers better than anyone in the room, know the data better than anyone else, and your voice is always going to be valuable. And really recently I realized that this isn't just good advice for new starters. It's even better for, for leaders and executives alike. ⁓ I've really had to push myself to
get really close to the customers. I've set it as a personal goal to join customer calls and demos at least once a week. And I still like to get my hands dirty in the data. And I think that being really close to the details allows me to be a better strategic leader. And it's just a good idea for anybody within marketing, no matter your role from the CMO.
⁓ down. It's really good advice to just get close to the customer feedback and their needs, the pain points that you're solving for as a marketer, and then have a very firm grasp on the data. Don't rely on your data analytics person or your manager. Try to ⁓ review it, review your dashboards yourself.
really deeply understand it because that is going to help you be much more strategic at the end of the day.
Rob Twells (27:19)
I totally agree. I'm saying, you know, there was definitely a trend happening where, you know, marketers felt they could just look at data and that was that. But actually you have to speak to the customer to understand what their pain points are. And one of the things I'm trying to encourage here is, yes, we need to know our customer, but actually as a marketing agency, ourselves, we need to understand that customer's customer as well. we can...
be most effective for our customer. I that makes sense. So we have to speak to their customer as well and understand what their pain points are and make sure we're building products and putting campaign in place that appeal to our customers' customers. So ⁓ yeah, no, I totally agree firmly in room 301. Now, Pat, tell the listeners more about you, more about Acast, where we can find out more.
Pat Butkus (28:05)
Yeah, so I'm the SVP of marketing growth at Acast. If you haven't heard of us, we're the world's largest independent podcast company. So we represent over 140,000 shows all over the world. We help ⁓ host, distribute, and monetize these podcasts audiences ⁓ to advertisers looking to reach those really deeply engaged audiences. ⁓
We have grown significantly ⁓ all over the world. We have a really big presence in the UK. ⁓ Some of the household name ⁓ shows from large independents to ⁓ some of the largest publishers like The Economist and The Financial Times. So.
We're ⁓ in an exciting phase in our journey now. We're over 10 years old, but we're still seeing really, really significant growth from a listenership and advertiser perspective and a creator perspective. So it's really a fun time to work in growth in a high growth industry. ⁓ And that a company is as great as a cast where we are building really unique
capabilities ⁓ in the space. So yeah, check us out if you haven't already. If you're a marketer or agency rep, can go to advertise.ecast.com and sign up to our ad platform and you can see for yourself ⁓ some of the shows and tools that are available.
Rob Twells (29:51)
No, appreciate that. I'm sure anybody listening who's considering starting a podcast or haven't yet listened to a podcast, I don't know who these people are, but I'm sure there are still some people that exist that don't listen to podcasts. I'm sure you've convinced them to take that step now to move into it. So yeah, I appreciate your time, Pad. Thank you for jumping on. Thank you. ⁓
Yeah, for taking the time. mean, such a renowned company. It's an honor to have you on the podcast and hear your perspective of audio and podcasting and how that's going to play in what I think is a bigger part of the marketing mix going forward. thank you. And for everybody listening, thank you again. We will see you again soon.
Pat Butkus (30:31)
Thank you, Rob.
Originally the Founder of leading Digital Agency in Derby, Frogspark (with Liam Nelson) and now the leader of The Digital Maze – our WordPress/Woocommerce & Performance Marketing business founded off the back of acquisitions of Boom Online & Evolve Trader. Rob specialises in high-level strategy relating to eCommerce, SEO, PPC, CRO, digital strategy and Web Design. With over 14+ years in the Digital Agency leadership, Rob has been involved with hundreds of marketing projects and campaigns with some of the best known brands.
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