The Fundamental Game Marketers’ Guide to Podcast Advertising
Over the last 5 years, Podcasts have emerged as a popular entertainment medium. Due to their versatile format that allows their consumption even whilst multitasking, Podcasts have quickly gained momentum as a source of information, education, and entertainment for audiences.
Naturally, advertisers have followed suit, with a 22% YoY increase in ad spend over 2024 and a surge in ad load from 6.44% to 7.19%.1
But despite their potential, Podcasts have seen slower adoption as a user acquisition and marketing channel for game marketing, although this has been improving. The cautious approach is understandable, seeing as the channel is still largely unconventional and the knowledge around best practices within the gaming industry is sparse.
However, as a channel with a large, engaged audience with significant disposable income and a uniquely effective influence on purchasing behaviour, it’s one that shouldn’t be overlooked for Game Marketing.
Our Chief Growth Officer, Sara Guerola, shared some key Insights and strategies for success with Podcast Advertising at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2025, drawing on her years of experience testing and iterating with the channel whilst it was still in its nascency.
Here’s a breakdown of the key insights and strategies for Podcast Marketing success Sara shared in her session.
What is the potential of Podcast Advertising for Games?
As an entertainment medium, Podcasts have become an increasingly popular source for audiences to turn to for discussions around their hobbies, sports, areas of interest, favourite TV shows / movies / books / games / sports, and so on.
Amidst growing mistrust in traditional media outlets, Podcasts have also become a key source for audiences to consume news and informational content. This is also indicative of the high trust audiences play in this medium and Podcast hosts – positioning them as highly influential media personalities today.
This means podcasts are a trustworthy source of information and entertainment – a prime media real estate for advertisers.
Podcast ads also tend to see better receptivity and acceptance compared to other digital mediums – with Podcast listeners displaying the highest willingness to learn about brands advertised, and these ads least likely to be considered ‘annoying’ compared to channels like YouTube and Streaming TV.2
Compared to other newer mediums like TikTok, Podcast listeners also tend to be older, and more likely to be employed and educated, and with an above average household income than the population average. This is a significant sign that these audiences have more purchasing power.
In fact, a core segment within Podcast’s growing listenership is GenZ, whose increasing disposable income and combined influence over trends is a key consideration for marketers looking to integrate a long-term outlook to their marketing mixes. And this core segment is displaying high propensity to take action upon hearing Podcast ads – 61% visited a product’s website after hearing a Podcast ad. This is yet again another area where Podcast ads tend to outperform other channels.
These factors all establish Podcasts as a growing channel with promising potential for advertisers to reach valuable customers in effective ways that grab attention and drive action.
This is what has driven the increased investment in Podcast advertising over the last few years – including a 3.6 QoQ increase in spend from the Gaming Industry – with the industry also being the fastest growing segment on the platform in Q2 in 2024.3
Why use Podcasts for Game Marketing?
Whilst Podcasts cannot entirely substitute traditional UA channels, they can play a critical role in fleshing out a more comprehensive, and ultimately sustainable marketing mix.
Podcasts lie in a sweet spot where they bridge the gaps between performance channels (TikTok, Google, Facebook, In-app ads) and engagement channels (Influencer Marketing, Twitch, Youtube Gaming, Reddit).
Whilst they have the ability to drive immediate user acquisition, they also have significant branding benefits. The authenticity and trust offered by podcast ads, particularly host-read ones, is incomparable to other platforms.
Podcast ads have been shown to drive higher brand awareness, consideration, favourability, and action compared to traditional brand awareness mediums like TV and Radio. Further, compared to emerging digital channels like YouTube and CTV (Connected TV), Podcast listeners have been shown to score higher than the average adult (in the US) on most lower and mid funnel brand measures.4
In an age where changing privacy regulations and rapidly increasing CPIs have made it increasingly important to diversify the user acquisition mix, Podcasts are a brilliant go-between for delivering on both, branding and performance impact in a distinctive and memorable way.
How to Set Up Successful Podcast Campaigns for Gaming?
Setting up successful podcast campaigns starts with a clear definition of goals. Whether you’re looking to drive user acquisition or brand awareness will determine what budgets you need to assign and what KPIs you should be monitoring.
When it comes to assigning budgets, when you’re working towards user-acquisition goals, you need to ensure you’re assigning sufficient amounts to actually move the needle.
Once you’ve secured a sufficient budget, we need to ensure we’re being strategic with the allocation and ad placements. When it comes to targeting, Podcasts allow us to target users at a listener level based on geo and demographics – which offers a higher level of granularity compared to platforms like CTV for instance, which are more on a household level.
The audience profiles and demographics will greatly inform the content verticals and subsequently, the shows chosen. Within the chosen shows as well, ad-placement needs to be strategic – and typically, mid-roll (placed in the middle of the show) and pre-roll (placed before the show) tend to perform better and reach audiences when they are most attentive and engaged.
The next step in the set up is optimising the Podcast ad creatives. The creative itself has several components that can impact ad performance – including ad length, tone of voice, talking points, voice type (host-read or studio produced), call to actions, and so on. Different verticals and audience segments may also respond better to slightly differing creatives, and different KPIs may also have a different correlation with specific creative elements. This ultimately reinforces the importance of defining comprehensive goals at the outset and emphasises how creative elements need to be well thought out.
The final area where the set-up needs to be optimised is tracking and attribution. Podcast advertising most typically relies on probabilistic means like pixels and IP device matching. This is something that needs to be flagged to internal data teams from the outset to avoid challenges and questions later on.
Ensuring you or your partners have access to comprehensive tracking and analytics tools is must – as only when you have a comprehensive overview and granular insight into different KPIs including ROAS, ARPU, CPI, CVR. One such popular tool on the market is Spotify Analytics, but there are plenty of similar tools which offer pixel tracking data and comprehensive dashboards.
The performance and reliability of probabilistic data can be enhanced further with the help of deterministic means like discount and coupon codes, and in case of video podcasts – QR codes.
Speaking of video-based podcasts, these Simulcasts, as they’re called, can serve as a bridge for those familiar with Influencer Marketing but still sceptical to dive headfirst into a fully audio format. This blend of the audio-video format is a good means to understand the potential of Podcast hosts as influencers and listeners as valuable audiences, and help make the transition to testing pure audio a more considered decision.
When it comes to attribution windows, it’s important to remember that Podcast ads have a longer shelf life – as often, listeners may download an episode and only get around to listening to it (and consequently, taking action on an ad), 10 days later, for instance. This is why best practice suggests 30 day attribution windows work best for Podcast ads.
Optimising Podcast ads for Game Marketing performance
Once you’ve established solid foundations with your Podcast marketing set up, optimisation comes down to being strategic with your investments, placement, and creatives. Which means there’s one key thing that will help unlock that optimisation – data.
Access to qualitative and quantitative data is really what underscores how effective your optimisations will be.
Optimising the targeting strategy comes down to analysing your audience data and isolating which geos, demographics, and verticals work best. In your very first campaign, these optimisations will likely be based on competitor insights and general industry patterns, but naturally, the more you test, the more tailored and specific the data will get to your specific game, and consequently, the more tailored your optimisations can get too.
When analysing this vertical data, it’s important to get granular and examine the results against each KPI. This extends to the next area of optimisation – which is the ad format and creatives too. It’s important to really dissect every element of the creative set-up and see which elements impact the key KPIs by vertical.
For instance, the charts below from a Casual Mobile Game show how different ad elements impact CVR and ARPU.
Our data showed the best set up for maximising ARPU for this game involved: Gameplay, Personal Experience, Host Read, Male voice, Lighthearted TOV, 90s ad length, No music.
On the other hand, the best set up for maximising CVR involved: Relating to the Podcast, Friendly, Host Read, Female voice, Informative/Casual TOV, 80-90s ad length, No/Yes music.
This helps understand how creatives may differ based on verticals and which specific permutations and combinations are uniquely effective for achieving specific goals for your particular game. This granular level of data and analysis offers a clear path forward for iterations and testing to ultimately find the optimal set up.
Podcasts for Game Marketing: The Formula for Success
Ultimately, Podcasts offer a lot of potential for Game Marketing, serving as a unique bridge between performance and branding. And as a growing medium, with emerging tech, the tools and data we have at our disposal to further optimise campaigns and maximise the opportunities will only get better.
Promoting Games using Podcasts comes down to ensuring tailored media plans founded on considered and strategic choices with respect to targeting, ad-placement, ad formats, and creatives.
We’re in a highly competitive era for mobile gaming. Games that have traditionally only relied on pure performance channels of old, ultimately see a shorter life span. With the optimal set up, Podcasts present an opportunity to bring a dynamic new element to the user acquisition mix, and drive long-tail benefits that drive profitable growth and survival for games in the long term.
If you have any questions about Podcast Marketing for games, drop Sara a message on LinkedIn.
If you’re keen to explore Podcast advertising for your game, book a free consultation with Sara here.
Watch Sara’s session at PGC London 2025 here :