Anchor Sponsorships is the Adsense for podcasts
Anchor last week launched Anchor Sponsorships for iOS, Android, and iPad. Anchor Sponsorships connects podcasters with brands that want to sponsor them, guides them through easy creation of custom ads, and facilitates payments when their podcast is heard.
Anchor Sponsorships is open to all podcasters and sponsors of all sizes, regardless of how many plays a show gets, or the size of a marketing budget.
Anchor is streamlining the entire process of podcast advertising. Anchor Sponsorships gets podcasters paid by matching them with sponsors and helping them easily create custom advertisements for their shows.
According to Anchor, money is pouring into podcasting, mostly through advertising. Podcast ad spend in the U.S. has been steadily increasing year over year, and is expected to double to nearly $700M by 2020. But there’s still a huge disconnect between the majority of podcasters and what’s happening at the top of the market: nearly all of that money is going to only the top ~1% of podcasts due to a highly fragmented market and lack of innovation in the space. It often takes around 50,000 downloads per episode before a podcaster can catch meaningful attention from potential sponsors. Once they do, it’s a manual, inefficient process to broker a deal and get ads published.
Podcasters get paid as soon as the ads are heard by listeners. Rates are based on a CPM (cost per mille, or cost per thousand impressions) set by the sponsor, competitive with podcast advertising standards.
Anchor takes 30% share of the revenue
Anchor count any and all plays, whether people are listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor, or anywhere else. Anchor takes a 30% share of transactions facilitated through the platform, a similar model of Google Adsense, that is taking a 32% share of display ads.
At any time, Podcasters can cash out the total balance directly to any bank account or debit card through the payment partners and the standard for online payments, Stripe. Stripe takes a $0.25 fee on withdrawal transactions.
How do Anchor Sponsorships work?
Any U.S.-based podcaster can opt to turn on Sponsorships. Once it's done, the platform will get to work finding a sponsor match based on factors like subject matter, audience size, location, and more.
The podcaster will be notified there is a sponsor match, and always have the choice to opt into that sponsorship or decline and wait for a new match if the podcaster feels it’s not the right fit.
Once the podcaster accepts the sponsor match, publishing an ad takes a few minutes and is built directly into Anchor’s easy creation tools. Podcaster can either record through Anchor’s website or mobile apps, or import a pre-recorded version — so anyone can take advantage of Sponsorships, whether or not you use Anchor’s recording tools.
The podcaster chooses exactly where ads will fit into their episodes. Whenever they publish a new sponsored message, Anchor automatically updates all episodes that have ad slots, across everywhere the podcast is heard (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all other major platforms) via Anchor’s dynamic ad insertion technology. Campaign timeframes are set by the sponsor, and Anchor will start looking for a new sponsor as soon as one campaign ends.
The ads of Anchor Sponsorships
Sponsors submit script guidelines so Podcasters know the exact message to communicate, delivered in your own voice.