Dive Brief:

• The Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB) Tech Lab has released guidelines for measuring podcast advertising, according to a blog post.
• The IAB says that a "client-confirmed ad play" is the most accurate metric for ad plays during podcasts. Ads are considered “client confirmed” when ads prompt a tracking beacon from the client when played during a podcast. 
• The report is "the first attempt ... to describe common practices and provide a common set of metric definitions," according to the IAB. "With a consistent set of podcast advertising metrics, buyers and sellers can engage in a conversation about campaign strategy with confidence."

Dive Insight:

In terms of sheer numbers, podcasts don't compare well to other channels, but that belies their true value: Podcast audiences are often highly engaged around a particular topic, and advertisers find that podcast ads can be very effective at reaching them. Recent research from the IAB and Edison Research found that 65% of podcast listeners are more inclined to consider purchasing products and services that are advertised on podcasts. About 60% of consumers surveyed said they prefer to purchase from brands that advertise on their favorite podcasts.

“These results quantify for the medium what we've seen in much of our client work,” Tom Webster, Vice President of Strategy at Edison Research, said in a statement. “Podcast listeners not only don’t reject advertising in the medium, they are actually very receptive to the right message, delivered in the right environment."

The effectiveness of podcast ads has been hard to measure, however, with podcasts being a particular tricky channel to track. The IAB's new guidelines should go a long way toward helping marketers interested in leveraging the medium to get consistent metrics for measuring the success of their campaigns.