If a podcast is established and sustains repeat business from many of the same advertisers, you can conclude that the audience numbers and CPM rates are acceptable metrics to the market in determining its pricing.
I’ve yet to work with a single company that didn’t primarily look at their return on investment (ROI) to determine the success of a campaign. For different companies, ROI can mean different things. For a product, it’s profit vs. spend. For a service, it’s the number of signups they get multiplied by the projected customer lifetime value vs. what they spent on ad placement. For a branding campaign, it can be sales, website traffic, social media activity, or a variety of other indicators.
I’ve found the following questions to be the most consistent means of determining whether an advertiser is doing well on a particular podcast: has that advertiser been on multiple episodes within the same month? Have they repeatedly advertised over a quarter? Have they been sponsoring the show for six months or longer?
More than any other metric, an advertiser’s repeat business demonstrates sustained ROI .
Regardless of your company or target audience, I know that if you keep coming back and buying more advertising on a specific podcast, it’s performing for you.