Jay is a Vice President and Consultant at Coleman Insights — this interview has been lightly edited for style and readability
Jay Nachlis: Pod Predictor is essentially A/B testing for podcasts. Before you go and and invest lots of time and energy and money into podcasts, we know that a lot of times, podcasts stories are wrestling with lots of different ideas. It’s not like one idea comes out of the chute and that’s what it’s going to be. There’s a lot of things that are thrown up against the wall, and brainstorming that happens - what title would be good and how should we pitch it? And that’s what Pod Predictor is all about. Before you launch it, test a couple of concepts against each other. We test it with 500 podcast consumers in the US, and then analyze the results in many different ways.
James Cridland: It makes sense, to throw a few ideas in front of people, particularly different types of people, different ethnicities, different ages, just to see what sticks, right?
JN: Exactly. We’re also looking at it against other podcast concepts - that works best when it’s fans of shows in the same category. If we’re testing comedy concepts, for example, it’s best if you do it with comedy fans that have more propensity to be interested in it. And then you’re looking at it overall, how do they test against each other? How do they rank against other concepts? But then also, as you point out, how does it rate by age, gender, ethnicity?
I think in part it’s strategic to know which concept is more appealing, but it’s also strategic from a marketing standpoint - so you know that fans of this particular concept are also fans of podcasts in a particular category - so maybe, as part of my strategy, I should go and look to be guests on podcasts in this category. And I should look to advertise in this particular category.
JC: Do you have any examples of some of the ideas that you have taken in front of audiences?
JN: There was a health and wellness show that was was about plastic surgery, and they had a couple of different names for the show to test. One of them was more specific to the client themselves, so the brand was about them. It was an interesting litmus test because we could test how well-known that brand was. Certainly nationwide, it wasn’t really that well-known, outside of a small circle of their of their current base. There was a concept that we tested against that, which was a little bit broader and it was more about what it was actually about, rather than actually named after their brand. They were able to discover that the other concept tested, tested better.
There was another one that we did for Podcast Radio that was an interesting one, where they were actually trying to determine the pitch of Podcast Radio and how it would appeal to radio listeners in the United States? That was a not a typical usage of pod predictor, but it was essentially the same kind of methodology, just done in a bit of a different way. And that’s really one of the beauties of Pod Predictor in almost every study we do, it can be customized and tweaked based on the strategic goals.
I think trailers is a great usage case too, is if you wanted to test different trailers, you can. And that’s really a lot of the stuff that we do at Coleman Insights. We’re brand and content people - we’ve been doing brand and content work for for media brands for 45 years. In the podcasting space, that’s really something that we’re trying to get podcasters to focus on - don’t just look at the numbers, but look at your brand, and how can you make content that isn’t just good, but content that is truly appealing to your target audience and is in sync with your brand’s expectations at the same time.
We wanted Pod Predictor to be something that even the independent creator that doesn’t necessarily have a big network behind them can utilize.
JC: I hadn’t considered that people who are making shows will probably include this sort of idea in their pitch to the client to basically say, “We will test this stuff before we make it for you.”
JN: Yeah. The biggest interest level by far has come from podcast agencies and editors - people that work with a lot of different podcasts. And that’s that’s their wheelhouse. They’re helping these podcasters right from start to to publication. And so as part of that, they’re looking at Pod Predictor and offering this as a service to their clients.
JC: I know Coleman Insights, as many people do, from the work that you do in terms of radio. How much is podcasting changing that? Are you doing a lot more podcasting stuff now?
JN: For podcasting, I think we’ve been out for about probably six or seven years now, and it’s been a nice progressive growth. The clients are across the board. For example, we had a hosting platform that was really interested in learning about their user persona when it was going through a process of redesigning the website and thinking about what the marketing messages are, and who that user is and how to reach them. We’ve done a study like that for a network, and for a branded podcast that was really trying to really understand who their target consumer was. And I think, in branded podcasts in particular, that’s a really interesting area. I sometimes worry about with branded podcasts that they do a podcast because they think they have to. The reality is, it should be treated with the same delicate care that they would any other campaign that they do. If you’re really going to invest in all your other marketing, why wouldn’t you do the same thing and understand the best strategic direction for your branded podcast?
JC: Are you talking at Evolutions in Chicago in a couple of weeks?
JN: I am. Actually we’ll be doing one of the keynote presentations, a follow up to a study that we debuted in 2020. That one was called the New Rules of Podcasting on YouTube. That particular event had just one session focused on video podcasting and it was ours!
Last time, the study was focused on understanding where video plays in the full funnel. This time we’re going to probe in a much deeper way for video podcasting, but we’re also doing it from the creator side, which is going to be an interesting angle. We want to not just see how consumer habits have changed over the last year and a half, but I also want to see how creators are wrestling with this. And because there’s so much for them to think about and whether or not it’s worthwhile and whether or not the investment of time and money is worth it, and where should I put it, and is it just a trend or is it here to stay? All these things.
JC: Jay, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
JN: Thank you James
There’s more of this interview in the Podnews Weekly Review.