Podcast database Podchaser has launched a new Predictive Demographics tool, which uses AI to predict the age and gender of listeners for enhanced podcast advertising, its parent company Acast has announced.
The model analyses the language spoken within a podcast to predict the demographic of listeners across five million podcasts worldwide. The offering purposely does not use first-party data, as research from Nielsen’s Annual Marketing Report shows that more than half of brands report being average at best when it comes to using this information in campaigns, and struggle with complex regulations and siloed data collection practices.
“What this means in short is more comprehensive targeting for advertisers than ever before, and smart, deep demographic coverage for our database of more than five million podcasts,” said Podchaser CEO Bradley Davis. “We’re making it possible for advertisers to unlock value from podcasts through an audience-first approach and to ultimately discover podcasts with untapped advertising potential. This in turn helps more podcasters generate more revenue - a win for all.”
By gathering data on listeners’ age and gender, advertisers can meet their campaign goals by making sure that they are reaching the right target audience. Contextual targeting is an increasingly important concern for advertisers and a number of platforms have enhanced their solutions to meet that concern, including SXM Media, Libsyn, mowPod, and more.
Similar to Podchaser, podcast analytics and insights platform CoHost launched Advanced Audience Demographics in August, which provides brands and podcast agencies with more in-depth listener data, with metrics including audience age, gender, household income, interests and hobbies, family members, and social media consumption and habits.
The new offering from Acast is an expansion of Podchaser’s Collections+ feature, which it launched in June, an AI-powered solution which automatically collects podcasts into categorised content verticals which advertisers can then use for targeted, audience-level advertising buys. The data used to categorise the podcasts is pulled from a variety of different sources, including the hosting platform, Spotify and Apple charts and categories, IAB categories and Podchaser’s own first-party data, as well as surveys and transcripts.
Predictive Demographics are available to podcast hosts, publishers, ad platforms, and advertisers through the Podchaser Pro tier subscription which includes a number of exclusive features like reach data and analytics, AI-driven brand safety metrics, access to a podcast contact database, sponsor data, and more.
