Heather Osgood: Podcast Advertising Playbook

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast, the show about podcast and broadcast starts now. Heather

Matt Cundill  0:12  
Osgood is the owner of true native media, which is where you can look if you want to monetize your podcast. But don't go there until you listen to this episode. There are so many ways you can monetize your show. And while truenative media works with brands and podcasts and advertising, she's here today to tell you about a few of the other unsung ways you can go about monetizing your show. She's the host of podcast advertising playbook. I've got the links to that show in the show notes of this episode. It's a great follow if you're constantly trying to crack the code of podcast monetization. I know I made it sound complicated by saying, crack the code. The truth is you might just be listening to the people who are making it sound complicated. I'm here today to tell you that Heather does not Heather Osgood joins me from Sarasota, Florida. So much has changed in the podcast advertising world since we last spoke on this show. But I'm looking at my questions, and the questions are still the same. Yeah, that makes sense. So how do you know when your podcast is ready to be monetized?

Heather Osgood  1:17  
Well, when you know your podcast is ready to be monetized. It depends a lot on the type of show that you have. So I always like to start with that if you're reaching a really like specific niche audience, then you can monetize it much sooner than if you've got just a general show, right? So if you've got a show where you're talking specifically to chiropractors you know, or doctors or lawyers or you know people who work in the C suite like those can be very desirable audiences, and those can be monetized more quickly. But in general, I would say the average podcast is going to reach a more broad audience, and they need to have a decent sized audience. So the question is always, what size is that like? When does that make sense? And I always tell people that if you're getting to 1000 downloads per episode and you want to monetize it yourself, that that's probably when I would start looking for advertisers. If you're looking for someone else to sell ads for you, then I think that it needs to be higher, probably in like the 5000 to 10,000 per episode number. So that's those are kind of my guidelines. Can

Matt Cundill  2:34  
we look at the guideline a little bit differently? Instead of saying you have to hit a certain number of downloads, can you do this for a certain amount of time or a certain number of episodes before making that decision to jump in that way? You know exactly what you're dealing with before you start approaching clients? Yeah, absolutely.

Heather Osgood  2:50  
And that is a really good point. It's, it's not like, Oh, I hit it once, and now I'm ready to go out and do it. Right? You need to have some track record right? Like, you need to have done this for a while. Now, the other side of the coin that I think is important for us to talk about is that the industry has changed a lot, and there are lots of different ways to monetize your podcast. Now, obviously I'm in the advertising space, so I'm looking at it purely from an advertising perspective, but I tell you, I have had conversations recently with hosts who are making, like, multiple 1000s of dollars per month on Patreon, right? And so when's the right time to ask your audience to support you? I would say day one, right? You know, it's like the minute that somebody wants to listen to you. Do they want to support you maybe. Why not ask? Right? So, I mean, there are lots of different ways to monetize your show. It could be listener support, it could be advertisers. It could be selling your own products that you've created that you know can be sold. And the other thing that, when we kind of just unpack advertising, the first piece that we have to look at that. I think everyone automatically goes to because it's the most common is the host red ad, which is, you know, what I sell, what I love. But you can also get programmatic ads in your show. And programmatic ads, you know, you could sign up for a hosting platform tomorrow and get programmatic ads now. Are you going to retire on that? Probably not. Are you going to cover your hosting fees? Probably right. So, you know, I mean, you could monetize like that. And one of the I think missed opportunities in podcasts is, I don't think we do enough affiliate partnerships. So if you're a smaller show, you can go out and you could sign up for affiliate programs tomorrow, you can start reading your own ads for companies and putting your promo code in there, and then, every time you make a sale from your show, you get a kickback, and that can be a really good way to start monetizing your show at a much sooner level than having somebody else go out and sell host red ads for. Are you

Matt Cundill  5:01  
Yeah. So for those who listen to this show, they might be familiar with it enough to know that we actually have three different tiers of ads that go into it. There's, you know, the programmatic ad, which is about an $8 $9 CPM that you know might be Verizon. If you're listening to the states, if you're in Canada, you'll hear, you know, could be a bell mobility ad that will pop in. We also have, like another host, like a red circle, and you may hear a host red ad for something like, say, Happy mammoth, just at random that comes through, or something like that that you might hear. And the most obvious one that anybody who listens to this show would know, and this is a very this is probably the best way to make money, and that's the deals that I do with people who, you know, like have broadcast toys. So in Canada, that would be in end logic, and in the States, it would be mega tracks, which provides music for podcasters. So those are three different tiers, but I always think that the best way and the most popular way, the way you're gonna make the most money and have the best relationships is if you wind up working one on one and making the deal directly with a client,

Heather Osgood  6:07  
I would agree with that wholeheartedly. So at truenative media, we're a representation agency. We work with right now about 200 different podcasts, and when I'm going to a buyer, I have to say, Hey, I've got these 20 shows that could be a really good fit for your product. And they have to look somewhat similar, right? Like, I can't say, oh, well, this one show is getting, you know, 10,000 downloads and it's $3,000 this show is getting 5000 downloads and it's $3,000 right? The buyer is going to say, what the heck? Like, you know, there should be some economy of scale here, or there should be some rhyme or reason to this pricing. And so I have to create that rhyme or reason, right? I have to go to the advertiser with a story about why this show is worth more than this show is. But when you're selling on your own, you know your unique audience, right? You know the person that is listening, and you know the value that you bring to your advertiser. Now, of course, a representation company, a good one, should also know the value of your show and can communicate that, but you can more easily find those really strong partnerships where we're stepping out of the CPM game and we're saying, hey, like you mentioned, those music companies that are specifically creating music for podcasters, those are going to be stronger because the people listening to the show are their exact target market. And so you could say, hey, it's going to be $1,000 an ad, and they'll be like, Well, gosh, I only need to get five customers. That sounds like a win. Let's do that, right? And that's going to be a totally different sell than when you enter into the broader ad sales arena. Then you're becoming, in some ways, a bit of a number, right? Because you're looking at your podcast in comparison to all of the other podcasts that that one buyer is looking at, as opposed to going out and forming a one on one relationship with the advertiser.

Matt Cundill  8:09  
So one of the things I do in this show is I pay attention to the number of people who will skip past my intro, and let's go right to the guest. And so if you did do that and you missed my little talk off the top of the show about what a CPM is, that is cost per meal. That is cost for 1000 so if we talk about a, let's say a $25 CPM, what we really mean is that's $25 for every 1000 impressions or downloads that is, you know, provided out of the podcast. And that leads to the question of, well, we talk a lot about a $25 CPM, but let's talk a little bit. What's the value of the host red? Like, how much extra value would you put into something that is host red?

Heather Osgood  8:48  
That is a really good question. So at true native media, we primarily sell host red ads. So I would say, like, 98% of the ads that we sell are going to be a host red, which means the host has gotten the product, they have, you know, created a specific ad for that product, and in some ways, they're endorsing or recommending the product. And right now, we're not necessarily seeing a premium price for host red, but it also depends on what you're comparing it to right. So, like you talked about programmatic ads. So anytime we're hearing those, you know, Verizon ads, or the progressive ads, or, you know, the pre produced ads that are coming from massive companies, nine times out of 10 those have been programmatically inserted, which means that the buyer, which is likely someone at a big agency in New York or Chicago has said like, hey, I need to buy X million impressions with this demographic in mind. And they go out and they place those buys. They don't know which podcast they're advertising on. They're not individually picking those shows. They're just doing a mass. Purchase of literal impressions, right? They want to get in front of a certain person, and so those do tend to be a lower CPM. So those are going to fall more in. I would say, like you had commented, I would say somewhere between like five and 10 is generally the range. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher. Depends on how much targeting they're doing, specifically with host reds, I would say that right now we're seeing those which I feel like have come down in price in the last year, which isn't what anyone wants to hear, but I would say we're seeing those probably more in the 25 to even $15 CPM. But those also come from direct response advertisers, which are the advertisers that are looking to say, well, if I run an ad on this podcast, how many specific conversions Am I getting from this ad? Read,

Matt Cundill  10:53  
for those who are thinking about doing some advertising and they're getting into it for the first time with a future client, how long should they really be thinking about doing an ad for? I always say 13 weeks would be a good start, if somebody was just a little bit trepidatious, but I know some people just want to go, let's just try it for a little bit. I said, No, you got to get a lot of frequency, because this is not radio. Radio. We can litter the airwaves with ads just about every 2030, minutes. But because it's podcasts, we want to have that frequency. We want the ad to play enough so that at least you know you give yourself a chance with your audience, so that people can react and convert to it. So is it 13 weeks and six months? Like, how long should a campaign be?

Heather Osgood  11:34  
So I think before we can answer that question, we have to have the conversation about baked in ads or dynamically inserted ads. And so just to kind of set the stage or define those terms, baked in embedded is sometimes people call them live, reads their ads that are going to be in one show. So when you're publishing that audio file, your ad is in that episode, and it's only in that episode, right? So if it's in episode 100 if I listen to episode 100 I'm gonna hear that ad read. If I listen to episode 99 or episode 101, I'm not gonna hear the ad read. That's how the industry got started, and there are still many shows that do baked in ADS. And as a side note, if you're getting started with advertising, I would highly recommend that you start with baked in or embedded ads. They just they perform better, typically for advertisers, because, let's face it, they're in there for a really long time, right? So that's part of the reason that they perform well, because you would have to literally go back and edit the audio file to take the ad out, whereas dynamic ad insertion is when you use the hosting company's technology to put ad insertion points within your podcast, and then the ads are injected into your show. And how those are purchased is on a certain number of impressions and a certain number of like, a certain time frame, right? So, like, let's say we had an advertiser that wanted to advertise from February 1 through February 28 how we do it? And you can, you can set it up in different ways, but how we do it is, we take a show and we mark all of their episodes with ad insertion points. And so you could listen to episode number one or today's episode, and you're gonna hear that ad, right? Because the ad is being inserted across the full catalog. The advantage of dynamic ad insertion is that you have more impressions to sell, right? Like when you are selling embedded, you have to look at the number of downloads you have on that one episode, like that is your audience size, whereas, when you're doing dynamic ad insertion, you have the ability to sell, you know, maybe as a listener, maybe I'm listening to four or five episodes a month of your show. Or, you know, if you're growing really quickly, maybe you find somebody who's going to listen to your back catalog up to get current to today, right? So that number is always going to be higher than your per episode number. So there's a lot of value in that. One of the things I always like to say, because there I feel like there's a lot of confusion, that when we talk about dynamic ad insertion, people automatically say, Oh, well, that's an announcer read ad, but it's doesn't have to be right, and most people are not doing their ads in line with the content, meaning most people that produce ads are recording the ads separately. They're recording the podcast separately, and then they're stitching it together, and they're publishing an episode with baked in ads, yes, but it's not like all of a sudden, you know, Matt, you and I are going to stop and talk about, sure, Mike's right now, right? Like that would be a true live read, which some some hosts do. So it's really important, like, if we're thinking about the longevity of a campaign and what's going to convert best, and how long a campaign should go, identifying how the ads are going to be served. Served to the audience is the first place to start. And I'll just take a pause there, because I know that that was a lot. And then we can kind of dig into maybe which channel, you know, should be advertised on for how long,

Matt Cundill  15:13  
yeah. So I guess, in that sense, if we're talking about just baked in, how long would we buy a baked in, you know, campaign for,

Heather Osgood  15:20  
yeah? So for baked in, we have seen the best results. And I would say, I've been doing this for nine years now. I see this repeated over and over. Is a pattern of, I would say, about six ads. So you can run two ads, take two weeks off, run two more ads, take two weeks off from two more ads. So having space between your baked in ADS is important. You don't want to run them all back to back, because you know somebody's gonna listen to your episode. You want to create awareness about the product, but then you want to give enough of a break that it's not like every single time they listen to the episode, they're going to hear it. So I would say typically, like a four to six ad test is very standard, and can show the advertiser A lot of what they're looking to get. If you have a brand that doesn't have a lot of brand recognition, that's also something to consider. So like if you're a brand new company, or if nine out of 10 people have never heard of your product, it's going to take a much longer time to see conversions. And in a case like that, I think doing like a 12 ad test would be more appropriate, because you have to establish some awareness of your product before people make a purchasing decision.

Matt Cundill  16:39  
Yeah. And on the other side, if we're talking about having the ad delivered in a programmatic sense, that's easier to do, right? That's more numbers than just getting the impressions in front of people. So it's easier said than done. And you if you want to buy the short month of February, that's fine, too,

Heather Osgood  16:55  
right? Exactly. But no, you're right. And the reality is, with dynamically inserted ads, you can create frequency much faster, right? And like to your point when you had initially asked with baked in ADS. You know, just because I always crack up when people think this, just because the episode drops today, and just because we think 10,000 people are gonna listen to this episode, not all 10,000 people are listening to the episode The day it drops, right? It's like, this is a 30 day process. This is a 45 day process, maybe a 60 day process, right? Like, it takes time for podcast episodes to be listened to. So it's not like, it's not event advertising, where it's like everybody's listening to it today, everybody's getting exposed today. It does take time

Matt Cundill  17:44  
another way for people who listen to this show to really think about dynamic audio insertion. In Canada, you're gonna hear at the midway point, one of my Canadian clients. And at the midway point, if you download it in the States, you'll hear another one. And that's sort of an opportunity for me to be paid twice for the same spot, it's kind of glorious.

Heather Osgood  18:06  
It is. And to your point, what's so important about it is that we have this ability to do this targeting. So as I mentioned, you know, with programmatic ads, when those buyers are buying on essentially a demographic basis. They don't want to reach people in Canada, or they don't want to be reach people in the US, right? Or they don't want to reach listeners that are maybe above a certain age. They don't want to reach people in certain different regions. I mean, you could say we only want to buy these, you know, specific markets, and there's so much power in that for the advertiser, but also for the podcaster and for the listener, right? Because I'm sure, as a Canadian, it's super fun to get ads for products that you can't buy.

Matt Cundill  18:51  
Are you talking about us, postage stamps or GEICO Insurance?

Heather Osgood  18:56  
Exactly. It's a total waste of money for people to advertise a product to someone who can't purchase it,

Matt Cundill  19:02  
yeah, and it's actually in benefit to the podcaster, because that can be resold as a cheaper programmatic piece. So if the advertiser is not interested in being in Cincinnati, let Budweiser run in Cincinnati or something else. Right? Exactly, exactly. So aside from the pricing point, which we talked a little bit about pricing, that was very, very helpful. But a lot of people are like, Well, how do I find the brands, and how do I connect to the people that I want to advertise on my show, and how do I reach out to them, and how do I become their best friend?

Heather Osgood  19:35  
So I would say that the best thing to do is to think about who is in your industry, right? So, everybody has some sort of an industry, or everybody has some sort of a target audience, right? So if you have a pickleball podcast, or if you have, you know, a podcast all about marketing, if you have a podcast that's about, you know, farming, whatever. The topic is look within your industry and see who is already advertising. That is the very best way to find advertisers. Go on social media and see who's advertising on social media, a lot of those are direct to consumer brands. Are terrific for podcasts and so really kind of just tune in to who you're seeing advertising. The other recommendation that I would have is, if you're going out and soliciting ad dollars, people do this all the time to me, they say, Well, I want Nike to advertise. I want Gatorade to advertise. I want Verizon to advertise. And those are the hardest companies to get to advertise. In our minds, we think, Oh, these are massive brands. They have lots of ad dollars. I'll go to them. Surely giving me $10,000 or $1,000 will be easy, because they have millions of dollars in in ad spend. But the reality is, is that they're the hardest, because nine times out of 10 they're working with a podcast advertising agency, which, you know, take it from me, is not super easy to get into an agency. Number two, they have very stringent selection processes about who they're going to choose and why they're going to choose that particular podcaster, right? And it's, it's going to take a really long time. Some of these big companies make their marketing plans a year in advance, right? And so you could call them today, maybe they would be interested, but they're not going to place ads with you for a year. So my recommendation, beyond looking at your industry, is trying to find those mid level companies, right? So you don't really want, like, a brand new startup company, because they probably don't have a ton of money unless you know they've raised funds. But if you could get, like, a good middle of the road, like just solid business, that could be a really good fit with the audience that you have for their product, those people are going to be the easiest to sell, because they want to create a relationship with you. Transcription

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  22:03  
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Matt Cundill  22:35  
slash apps. We talk so often about the competition in media. So is it a great day to start a podcast? Yes, it is. But I want to start a YouTube channel, but there's millions of videos going up every day. That's a lot of competition. And podcasting doesn't it doesn't get nearly as much advertising money as, let's say, like, you know, Facebook and YouTube and Instagram and that sort of thing. And Tom Webster said I could share the slide that I'm just about to pop up here on the on the screen here. I think you've probably seen it. This is the one that sort of shows that podcasting and platform usage, podcasting is incredibly powerful, yet we don't see all the lion's share of the ad money that comes in. So there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between, you know, advertisers and where they're throwing their money and where they're placing it, versus podcasting, which clearly has a lot of people engaged with it, and it seems and feels that we're struggling to get to $2 billion in the in the industry. So what are we not telling people about podcasting?

Heather Osgood  23:36  
The engagement rate in podcasting is extremely high. So if we were to take a look at this slide, we have all the social media. We have YouTube. And those are really short engagement periods, right? Like, I should have these numbers memorized, but I mean, the average person is spending seconds consuming social media content and minutes consuming YouTube content, whereas the average podcast listener is listening to 80% of an episode. And if you figure the average episode is about 30 to 40 minutes in length, that means that people are spending, let's say, on average, 20 minutes with your content, maybe 30 minutes with your content, which is head and shoulders above any of the other content types that are out there in terms of actual engagement. And I think that that isn't something that we talk about enough, that that relationship between the audience and the host, and the engagement that we have there is so powerful,

Matt Cundill  24:43  
yeah, and Tom Webster said I could steal it. And I said, Oh, Tom said I could steal this. Tom from sounds profitable. And I thought, Okay, well, this is great. I'll just ask Heather about it, and she can explain it to me even better. So thanks for doing that. Yeah, no problem. You have a lot of great tools on your website and stuff. A lot of people will come to me and ask for such as, What does a sales proposal sheet look like? So if I'm going to write something up and send it to a possible advertiser, what should really be on that sheet that is really going to be of interest to them? Because I find that a lot of people make these sales proposal sheets and talk about themselves more than they're talking about what the advertiser will receive and the value of advertising on the podcast,

Heather Osgood  25:27  
yeah, absolutely, yeah. We have created resources at truenative media.com for people in the industry, and I also have resources on Heather osgood.com actually even have a full course if you're interested in learning how to sell ads for yourself, how to put together a media kit, all of those things, we have a tool kit available too. So there are a lot of resources out there. And I think the advice I would give is, when you are putting together material for an advertiser, think about being in their shoes, and think about what's in it for them, as you said, yeah, they want to hear about you, but they're also really most interested in your audience, right? They want to know that who you are reaching in your podcast is the same target audience for the product that they're trying to sell, and so making that connection for them is really important. The other piece of advice that I would give is, I think that sometimes newbies go over and above, right? It's like when you're reaching out even on an initial email, keep it short and simple, right? I mean, people want to write these books and say, This is who I am, and this is my podcast, and this is why you should buy ads for me. And it's like, no, don't start there. Just ask, Are they somebody that you could talk to about podcast advertising? Start with that, right? It needs to be short and sweet, and your sales materials should be short and sweet as well, because if you make something that is too big. People aren't going to look at it. They're too busy. They don't have enough time to filter through it. And so, you know, really think when you're putting this material together, how can you make it as simple and to the point as possible?

Matt Cundill  27:15  
So you said something that triggered me in my mind there, and it was a part about over serving as a newbie, you're new. Hey, we're getting together. We're going to over serve you earlier, and then the client is going to become over refreshed, and that's going to make the renewal very difficult, right? Because you're going to have to go above and beyond that so and this is something I used to think about a lot in radio, when a salesperson would come to me and over serve and I said, I'm not here to try to say no, now I'm here to preserve the renewal for next year. So take me past somebody who's going to be trying to make that initial first sale, and that they need to know that they're in the game for the next sale after this. So what can they do to protect themselves against that? Aside from over serving

Heather Osgood  27:59  
I think that one of the most important aspects of the sale is to understand the other person's expectations and what they're hoping to get out of the campaign. And I feel like that gets missed a lot in sales period, is that we think we know what our customer wants, and so we give them what we think they want, instead of asking them what they want, right? So when you make a new connection, say, You know what would winning look like for you here? You know what would create a successful partnership? What would make you want to renew in the future? And so, you know, it's not about, hey, we want to just sell you an ad. It's about, how can we create a long term partnership with someone? Because ideally, that's what we want to do, right? We want to get somebody who wants to advertise with us all year long for multiple years. I just interviewed a gentleman who works at an advertising agency, and he said, You know what? We have podcasts that we've been advertising on their shows for four years straight. Right? If you ever listen to Todd from blueberry speak, he talks about how he's had a relationship with GoDaddy since the creation of time, right? It's been like 20 years or something. You want to know what winning looks like for your client, right? For your advertiser. And if you can start with that, that's the best place to start. But I do think to your point, right? If you give somebody the send them and the stars, you know at the very beginning, where are you going to go from there? And so, you know, there is that piece, but also it depends on how they're evaluating your show. And I would say one of the other benefits of selling on your own is you're less likely to be selling to a direct response advertiser. And getting back to kind of direct response advertisers, their brands that when they advertise with you, they want to know that they're going to get X number of conversions Right. Like I bought $500 worth of ads on that show, and so I. I better get $700 back, and if I don't, then I'm not advertising on his show again. And so if you can find brands where they're like, the partnership is important to me. You know, being able to get more name recognition is important to me, or being able to share maybe clips of your show with you know, other of my clients, or put it on my website right? Like, think about strategic ways that you can work together and getting that but I do think that there is a point to be made of meeting the client's expectations in the first round, so that they want to renew with you.

Matt Cundill  30:37  
So this will be the first time we're not going to have, like, a long winded brand safety conversation, because this is one that really comes from the podcaster side. And so we know that brands exercise brand safety before they make a commitment to jump on and advertise on the show. It seems fairly obvious, but is it really obvious to the podcaster? Do they have to look left and right over some of the past stuff and the past material that they've done in order to ensure that they're really ready to engage with a particular client. What should they maybe be looking for in past episodes so they might want to take out or avoid or clean up, or whether it's content or swearing or something, something, something.

Heather Osgood  31:14  
My opinion on brand safety is that a brand should know what they are getting into when they advertise on a podcast. So I'll give you an example. The other day, we were talking to a fairly well known rapper who has a podcast and was looking for representation. If I were to say, Hey, Matt, there's this rapper podcast, do you want to advertise on it, my guess is, is that you would automatically create in your mind an idea of what advertising on a rapper's podcast would sound like, right? Is it brand safe depends on what your brand is, right? If you're a THC company, if you're an alcohol company, if you're I mean, right, the list could go on and on and on, right? Like there are definitely brands that would be really happy to partner with a rapper podcast, because that's their audience, that's who they're trying to reach. And I like that example because it's pretty obvious, right? I think it's important that as hosts, that we're not necessarily policing ourselves or policing our content in order to create content for advertisers. The reason an advertiser is going to succeed on your show is because you're making really interesting, engaging content, believe it or not, or maybe it's easy to believe but right leaning, very political podcasts convert very well, and you can bet that when a gold company is advertising on a right leaning political podcast, they know what they're getting and they want what they're getting. So I don't personally think that it's about cleaning up your show or trying to make it presentable so that it's brand safe. I think it's about making sure that you're aligning with companies that are interested in the type of content and the type of audience that you have.

Matt Cundill  33:12  
Are you the podcast broker I am, and this is where you can sell your podcast to a brand or somebody else?

Heather Osgood  33:21  
Yeah, so I'll tell you about that. So I've been at truenative media now for nine years, podcast representation, and I have been a bit of an entrepreneur my entire life. So I don't know, probably four years into it, I had this bridal podcast that was literally the number one bridal podcast at the time come to me and say, my husband and I are getting a divorce. The last thing on the planet I want is to do a bridal podcast. And I was like, I could see that that sounds like, you know something, you might know what to do. And she's like, so I'm gonna stop doing it. And I said, What do you mean? You're gonna stop doing it. This show is making a ton of money. This is a business. You can't just walk away from the show. And she's like, Well, yeah, but who do I sell it to? And I was like, that's a really good question. Who do you sell it to? So that happened once, it happened twice. It happened several times, and then pretty soon I was like, You know what, Heather? Because I talked to myself, you know, like that a lot. I was like, we need to start the podcast broker. And what the podcast broker does is that we bring in podcasts that are interested in selling, and then we find companies that are interested in buying them, and I say companies, but we've sold to other individuals. So like recently, we had a therapist who had started a podcast, and as you know, difficult to grow an audience. And he's like, Hey, I would rather buy an established therapy show than spend the next four years growing an audience. And so he purchased it. We've had a lot of networks that are like, hey, I want, we want to build our IP instead of starting, you know, a whole bunch of new. Shows, let's go out and buy them. And I think one of the interesting pieces of it is that some of the hosts have stayed, some of the hosts have left. But what I find a lot, and I'm really curious what your take is on this, but I find a lot that hosts are very tired of working by themselves. And if somebody were to say, Hey, I'm gonna give you X number of dollars to buy the rights to your IP, and I'm gonna pay you, you know, money every month to continue on as the host. And that's all you have to do. A lot of hosts are interested in that. It's all of the other stuff that goes along with producing a show that a lot of people don't want.

Matt Cundill  35:38  
Yeah, so I might have two podcasts for you to take a look at. Well, I've created one podcast, of course. It's kind of like, this is the book I haven't written, but it's the podcast I haven't created. And I've actually created it for really only one or two specific brands that could possibly either get it so they could advertise on it. And I'm like, You know what? Somebody instead could just buy the whole thing and bankroll the whole thing, and it becomes a branded podcast under their wing,

Heather Osgood  36:04  
right then, actually, like, if you that's something that we haven't done a lot of, but that I'm really interested in. So, like, if you have, well, we did have, like, a barbecue podcast that came to us, and we've been really trying to sell kind of within the podcast ecosphere. But I'm like, Gosh, why don't we go to, you know, somebody like the green egg, or, you know, these bigger barbecue companies, they might want to buy it. It could become their own branded podcast. So if there's something that's in that vein, I'm really interested in that,

Matt Cundill  36:34  
yeah, I think it's a thing. Have you done a number of those deals so far we have? Yeah,

Heather Osgood  36:40  
it's cool. It's hard because no one's done it, right? So anytime, like, there have been huge acquisitions, right? Like wondery Getting purchased, or gimlet getting purchased, or, like, these massive production, you know, companies, but not like the one off sales, and so it's just, it's something new. So it's, it's harder because there's not a paved road ahead of us. Well, do you

Matt Cundill  37:01  
want to deal with like, 10 clients in the barbecue industry or just the one brand that's gonna buy the whole thing and bankroll it? So this is a thing. It's a thing. It's totally a thing. You know, podcasting is a journey. I gather you walk to Portugal, right? And you did the Camino trail?

Heather Osgood  37:19  
Yes, yes. Oh my gosh. I had so much fun doing that. I really want to do it again. So it's called the Camino de Santiago. And essentially, you it's a religious pilgrimage. You walk to the cathedral in Santiago, Spain. And there are several different routes through Europe that you can take. So the route we took was from Portugal to Spain, but now I'm looking at other routes, because it was just so much fun.

Matt Cundill  37:43  
Are you looking at the one from France? So the one from

Heather Osgood  37:47  
France is, like, it's called the Frances way, and it's the one that So Martin Sheen created the way, which, like, was a movie that kind of made the Camino more famous. And that's the primary route that most people take. But I'm really obsessed right now with the Del Norte, which goes, it does go also from France, but it goes essentially across the very top of Spain. So you start in a ruin Spain, and you walk all the way across along the coast, and then you dip down into Santiago. So yeah, I

Matt Cundill  38:20  
think there's also another route I saw just today that starts in Malaga and goes north. I'm not gonna be walking that sort of distance. I'll walk to the tapas bar. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  38:33  
and you speak Spanish? Yeah,

Matt Cundill  38:35  
I speak French. And then after about the third of you know Tinto, I'm fully Spanish. I can totally bust into it

Heather Osgood  38:43  
in 2020 my husband and I were actually planning to move to Spain for a year, like that was going to be our big adventure, and then COVID kind of spoiled it, and we decided to move to Florida instead. So

Matt Cundill  38:58  
actually, I'm working at buying a place in Malaga. So really, so you really like it there? Yeah, I really do. So a lot of it's just, what happens if I spend half my year there? And can it be done? Yeah? Yeah, that's great. Love it. The hard part, by the way, is just working with people on the West Coast, right? Because it's like 12 hours away. But I'm glad you're in Florida. I can talk to you within the same day. I

Heather Osgood  39:22  
know when we were planning it, I had a whole chart that I created. I was like, Okay, how many hours can I do West Coast calls, you know, and how many hours could I do east coast? Because that, I feel like, is the hardest thing. It's like, you're starting your day at the middle or end of your day, really. And I'm a morning person, so the idea of working until nine o'clock at night doesn't excite me.

Matt Cundill  39:43  
Heather, thanks so much for doing this. I really appreciate it for answering all of the podcast advertising questions again, thanks for having

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  39:51  
me on the sound off. Podcast is written and hosted by Matt Kendall, produced by Evan serminsky, edited by Taylor MacLean, Social. Media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.