Level Up Your Digital Audio Revenue

We see it all the time, publishers focusing on just one revenue stream when they could be leveraging multiple strategies to dramatically increase their earnings. If you’re not paying attention to your digital audio revenue, you’re leaving money on the table.

Our recent webinar with StreamGuys’ Head of Sales, Tim LaBelle, and Director of Advertising, Tyler Huggins, covered the four ways we help clients grow their audio advertising revenue. Here’s what we shared, plus the real numbers and strategies that are working for our publishers right now.

StreamGuys has been helping media companies with streaming technology and monetization since 2000. That’s 25 years of working with content producers of all sizes, from small podcasters to major broadcast networks. Our team brings 360 years of combined experience, and because we’re privately owned, we can focus on what actually works for our clients rather than what looks good in a quarterly report.

Direct Sales Strategies

Direct sales means you’re selling ad space directly to advertisers instead of going through networks or agencies. It’s where you’ll make the most money, but it requires the right approach for your audience size.

Run of Network: If you’re pulling less than 50,000 monthly total listening hours, run of network makes the most sense. This is one sponsor covering all your ad spots – think title sponsorship for a podcast or a single advertiser handling all your pre-rolls.

The challenge here is finding sponsors who can spend enough to make it worthwhile. You need advertisers with sufficient budget to cover your entire inventory, which gets harder as you grow. But for smaller operations, this can be incredibly lucrative because you’re offering exclusivity.

Share of Voice: Once you hit 50,000 to 300,000 monthly listening hours, share of voice starts making sense. Multiple sponsors split your inventory – maybe one gets 40%, another gets 30%, and a third gets 30%.

Yes, each sponsor gets less exclusivity, but you’re opening up more revenue opportunities. Tyler sees clients in this range actually earning more per sponsor than they expected because their growing audience makes the diluted exposure still valuable to advertisers.

CPM (Cost per Mille): At 300,000+ monthly hours for live streaming (or 50,000+ monthly downloads for podcasting), CPM sales become your best bet. This is where you can really optimize – different campaigns, different targeting, different sizes all running simultaneously.

One buyer wants men in Denver who play golf? Done. Another wants nationwide reach for a general audience? Also done. You can manage all of this on a single platform.

What should you charge? Tyler gets this question constantly. For live streaming, aim for $5-20 CPM, with most of our clients around $10. The key is charging more than you’d make from programmatic – if programmatic pays $4, you should be selling direct for at least $5.

Podcasting commands much higher rates. We see $15-30+ CPM regularly, with most clients in the $20-30 range. Again, always price above your programmatic floor.

Even if you’re doing run of network or share of voice, track what your equivalent CPM would be. This helps you understand if you should switch strategies as you grow.

Remnant Sales

Remnant sales is anything you don’t sell directly. There are three ways to approach this, and we recommend using all of them.

Programmatic Open Marketplace: This is the easiest but lowest-paying option. You put your unsold inventory on the open market and let advertisers bid. It requires virtually no work once it’s set up, but you’ll get the lowest CPMs because you’re just another publisher in a sea of options.

Private Marketplace Deals (PMP): These are special arrangements with specific buyers who want access to your inventory. Maybe they guarantee a certain spend level, or they get preferential rates, or they just want to ensure they can reach your audience when they need to.

This takes more work – you need to build relationships and do some business development – but the payoff is higher CPMs and better fill rates.

Second Seat Sales: This is having a third-party sales team do direct sales on your behalf. It’s the highest value remnant option because they’re essentially extending your direct sales capacity. You maintain creative control and can specify which advertisers you’ll accept.

Tyler recommends starting with programmatic if you have at least 200,000 impressions per month, or about 100,000 total listening hours for live streaming. For podcasting, you can start as low as 1,000-2,000 downloads per month.

For example, 3,000 podcast downloads with 4 ad spots per episode gives you 12,000 impressions. At a $10 CPM, that’s $120 per month. Not life-changing money, but it’s revenue from inventory that would otherwise go unsold.

Brand safety is always a concern with remnant sales. For programmatic, you control this through category filters – block tobacco, firearms, or whatever doesn’t fit your brand. You can also block specific advertisers or domains. For private marketplace and second seat deals, you typically have more direct input on what runs.

Want to test without going all-in? Start with a slice of your audience – maybe only out-of-market listeners, or only desktop users. See how it performs before expanding.

Audience Extension

Sometimes a client wants to spend more than your inventory can handle. That’s where audience extension comes in. You buy inventory from other publishers to fulfill the larger campaign.

Why would you do this? First, it lets you keep clients who outgrow your direct reach. Second, buyers prefer doing one deal instead of managing relationships with multiple smaller publishers. Third, it expands your effective footprint without building more content and audience.

When you work with us for audience extension, you tell us what you need – maybe women in specific markets who are interested in golf and earn over a certain amount. We check our publisher network, confirm we can deliver, set up a standard insertion order, and report back on delivery.

We also try to match content categories. If you’re a sports broadcaster, we’ll pair you with our sports publishers when possible. And unlike working with a DSP where you might not know where your ads run, we tell you exactly which publishers are involved.

Brand Safety is crucial for audience extension. We work closely with publishers to ensure creative briefs match content types. NPR-style underwriting doesn’t belong on commercial news broadcasts, and vice versa. We also verify that our publishers are real broadcast organizations with actual audiences.

Real Results from Real Clients

Let me share three examples of how this actually works in practice:

Monash Media came to us with Spanish language content and global audiences. We connected their ad servers to new networks and found buyers specifically interested in Spanish language inventory through private marketplace deals. Result: 20% growth in programmatic revenue.

Dick Broadcasting needed to monetize out-of-market listeners without affecting their Nielsen ratings. We set up dynamic ad insertion for out-of-market audiences while keeping in-market listeners on the simulcast for ratings purposes. Their programmatic revenue increased five times over their previous provider.

For a large enterprise client (we don’t share names for these), we provided comprehensive consulting on ad server settings, inventory management, and business strategy. Through optimizing everything from technology to partnerships, we grew their revenue by 40% – and they were already generating six figures annually.

StreamGuys Consulting: Solving Your Biggest Problems

Sometimes you need more than just technology – you need strategy. Our consulting starts with an honest assessment of where you are and where you could be. Maybe you’re already doing great and just need some fine-tuning. Maybe there are major opportunities you’re missing.

We handle everything from ad server configuration and troubleshooting to business analysis and partnership development. The goal is making sure every decision you make is backed by real data and aligned with what will actually grow your revenue.

Where to Start

Your next steps depend on where you are right now:

If you’re under 50,000 monthly TLH, focus on building direct sales relationships and consider run of network sponsorships. You can still set up programmatic for remnant inventory – even small amounts add up.

Between 50,000 and 300,000 TLH, share of voice becomes viable and you should definitely be running programmatic on unsold inventory. This is also where private marketplace deals start making sense.

Above 300,000 TLH, you have the scale for sophisticated CPM campaigns and should be thinking about audience extension opportunities for larger clients.

Regardless of size, always track your equivalent CPMs and benchmark against programmatic rates to make sure your pricing makes sense.

Let’s Talk

Audio advertising isn’t going anywhere, and the publishers who figure out how to optimize across multiple revenue streams are going to be the ones who thrive. Whether you’re just getting started or managing complex multi-platform campaigns, there are always opportunities to do better.

Want to dig into your specific situation? We’d rather have an honest conversation about what might work for you than try to sell you something that doesn’t fit. Get in touch via StreamGuys.com