Use Dynamic Content for Timely CTAs
There is an episode of Friends where Chandler is reading the newspaper and learns about a tree lighting that's happening in New York City. He gets excited that he has something to do with his new girlfriend, Kathy before he learns that the newspaper is two weeks old. This of course leads to a ton of disappointment before the next story beat kicks in and we move on.
But calls to action in your podcast can feel very similar, right? You might be promoting something when you record an episode, but if someone finds that episode six months later, then they are going to miss out potentially on whatever you are promoting or maybe you've moved on and you have a new freebie. And that's why today, I want to talk to you about DAI or Dynamic Ad Insertion as a way to keep your calls to action fresh and relevant.
Welcome to Podcast Workflows where you get daily tips to improve your process, grow your show, and maybe even make some money. Each week, I also do a daily dive into the process of the world's most successful podcasters and reveal their tools, processes, and systems to help you simplify the production of your own show and reclaim hours in your day. You can improve your own podcast production process by seeing how the pros do it. I'm your host, Joe Casabona. And today we're going to talk about Dynamic Ad Insertion.
Dynamic Ad Insertion or DAI is a way for you to automatically insert ads or any audio clip aimed at your already produced podcast episodes. There are several services that allow this. I've used BuzzSprout. I currently use Transistor, but it's a feature that you can make sure your host offers. And that makes it super easy for you to do with any of your podcast episodes.
So the way it works is this. You upload your episodes and then you upload the audio clip you want to dynamically insert. You mark whether it's a pre-roll, post-roll, or mid-roll audio clip that you want to insert. And then based on the service, you might also be able to set an expiration date, manually turn it on or off, and a few other things.
This allows you to promote things that are more timely than just a generic call to action or an event that's going to get outdated once the event happens. There are two ways that I've used this before.
One is selling a limited-run ad campaign. So a 30 day mid roll on specific episodes. On that same day, I also used it to sell back catalog episodes where I knew I didn't have a full slate of sponsors. But the other way that I do it, especially for this show, which I don't have advertisers on, is dynamically changing my call to action depending on the time of year. I got this idea from my guest on my other show, Sam Munoz.
Most of the year I'm promoting my newsletter, the podcast workflows newsletter. But when the doors open on a cohort-based course or I'm doing a special for a member, a webinar, or some other time-based thing, I'm going to promote that instead without having to re-edit every episode.
So that's what DAI or Dynamic Ad Insertion is. You should definitely make sure your host allows for it because it could really help you keep your content fresh and relevant by not having stale calls to action in there.
What do you think can you see Dynamic Ad Insertion being relevant and useful for your podcast? Let me know by emailing me @jcasabona.
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Thanks so much for listening. And until next time. I can't wait to see what you make.
