The campaign was measured during the fourth quarter of 2022, which coincided with the show’s first season—a second season premiered in May 2023. The campaign was the first iHeartMedia campaign that measured in-depth purchase behavior metrics, said Kaminsky.

Americans will spend about 23 minutes a day listening to podcasts in 2023, according to Insider Intelligence. Americans only spend around 3.5 times more minutes a day on social networks, yet social networks command 34 times more ad spend. Podcasting will attract $2 billion of U.S. ad spend this year, compared to $68 billion for social networks, according to Insider Intelligence data. In this discrepancy lies an opportunity for savvy advertisers.

“You’re asking a buyer to do something net new, and it could fail on them,” said Bryan Barletta, partner at podcast industry resource Sounds Profitable. “There’s not enough of these case studies to [justify] the risk, but having the opportunity to do that means you succeed before the space becomes too crowded.”

Attribution isn’t new but investment is low

Affinity was able to attribute the impact of podcasts by linking listener information with transaction data using user agents and IP addresses.

Barletta said the attribution technology is itself not new but is infrequently used because of the lack of brand investment in the space. He noted that iHeartMedia’s offering, which gives brands that spend over a certain threshold access to its Ruby content studio to create podcasts, is rare among media companies and powerful. This media buy and branded content effort can complement one another.

“The ad does double the work. It drives people to the podcast. You have multiple attribution points,” Barletta said. “It’s a model I’d love to see more [media companies] explore.”