The best principles of advertising brands always come from anecdotes and tested past experiences. Podcast ads are a new form of advertisement which necessitates that the assumptions and observations of the past be tested and verified again. Tests were conducted to define the optimum length of podcast advertisements.

In the test, it was seen that 15-second ads known as pre-rolls show similar performance as the 60 seconds ad known as mid-rolls. They both performed equally well.

In a particular test, 575 podcast listeners were selected to listen to “Oprah’s Super Soul Conversation” or “Hidden Brain” which had an announcer-read ad of 15-seconds, 30-seconds and 60-seconds. Another group of 189 podcast listeners was selected to listen to the same but without any ads. The studies revealed that almost 46% of them were able to recall the brand that was advertised- Xfinity xFi. However, the 15 seconds, 30seconds and 60 seconds ad performed equally well.

The length of the advertisements always depends on your objective. The longer the ad the better the listeners understood the details. While the 30-second ad was able to make the listeners remember 9 points, the 60 seconds gave them 12 points to remember and that too with details. While the 15-second ads work equally well as a 60-second ad, the latter one made the listeners more informative and wanting to know more about the brands.

The objective of your advertising should help you decide its length. The ads with shorter length help to make the listeners aware of the brand. The listeners exposed to the 15 seconds ad easily recall the brand name. The 60-second ads help to influence the listeners more as they recall the uses of the brand and its specific features. They move the listeners to action, make them eager to know more about it and even convert them.