Programmatic Audio: The B2B Growth Channel You’re Overlooking | Brandon Lutz

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV, the web series and podcast for agencies, marketers, media buyers, and business owners. I'm David McBee. Today, we welcome Brandon Lutz back to the show. Brandon is a B2B marketer and offline media expert who has worked with top B2B brands like Miro, Indeed, and Amazon, where he's helped them scale their traditional click-based marketing into programmatic and offline channels across the US and Europe. Brandon, welcome back to Simpli.fi TV. Hey, it's glad to be here. Brandon Lutz: Thanks for having me back. We had a good conversation the last time, so I'm glad to be able to continue it. David McBee: So in our last interview, we discussed the pros and cons of programmatic kind of broadly. Why should B2B brands consider programmatic audio as a part of their marketing mix in 2025? Brandon Lutz: Yeah, so it's really topical for my work recently. I've had a lot of conversations both within my own company that I work with, but also as an advisor to B2B brands who are looking to expand out. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why audio advertising in the B2B space works. I think, one, just from a broad demographic standpoint, people that listen to podcasts tend to skew larger household income, typically are more based geographically, sort of in the right places for tech, and also higher education. So I think just like broadly, if we didn't do any targeting, it makes a lot of sense. And the growth of listenership in podcasts globally just keeps increasing year over year in addition to advertising spend. But also we're seeing that there's a lot of opportunity for ways for brands to reach, sometimes broad, but also quite specific target audiences. And when you're in B2B and you're dealing with a very typically more narrow target audience set than your traditional CPG or sort of B2C brands, I think it can be a powerful tool both for branding, but also for acquisition for businesses there. David McBee: So let's talk about that. How does audio compare to other digital formats in the terms of brand awareness and or performance? Brandon Lutz: Yeah, so I like to start from sort of bottom of funnel and move out. So the last time we talked, a lot of the conversation, for example, around paid search was, it's the moment when someone knows they have a problem already or they know the brand already. That's a very narrow set of buyers. In any given time, maybe only 5% of your target audience is actively in market. So how do you make sure that you're reaching the other 95% of people that either are not familiar with the brand or don't even know necessarily that there's a solution to the problems that they're having? So I see the tactic good for both top of funnel expansion, getting your brand and awareness out into market. But also there are ways to use, in particular, programmatic audio to drive bottom of funnel activity. And so I work in between both. It's just a matter of what the goals are for the company and their willingness to invest. But yeah, that's my starting point, I'd say. David McBee: Well, I think a lot of these advertisers want to measure the impact of their campaigns. So how do you do that with audio? Brandon Lutz: Yeah, so if I'm thinking about it from a B2B standpoint, the first thing I hold in my mind is that you're typically, what I've experienced in my own work is that the investment interest is not as ready to sort of go all in on a very, very broad advertising channel, and maybe not even necessarily with brand awareness first. So if I'm thinking about it from B2B, I might approach the situation and say, okay, I want to use programmatic audio as a means to drive more user acquisition. And I'll combine that with geo-experimentation, which programmatic audio, any programmatic platform really can do this, right? To design these experiments in a way where you can measure that to statistical significance. I think the other benefit to programmatic audio is that you just have more time, space, also maybe just a more interesting brand challenge where in a display environment, or I'll use display, right? It's a very limited set of physical space you can use to articulate a message, right? It's very hard to go beyond either a direct response conversion or just a pure awareness, do I remember the name aspect of it? I think also when you go to the more like online video side, you're developing long form content. There is a lot more higher production costs that goes into making recordings, making the cuts, making the edits. But audio sort of sits in this interesting area where you can design high quality advertising that people are receptive to. It's not as expensive as designing sort of online video content, but the branding can be effective in terms of being memorable, interesting, and able to actually influence activity from your target audience. David McBee: So you're saying that it has a way of telling the story like video, but for a lot less production time, energy cost? Brandon Lutz: Yeah, I think that it's a really interesting brand challenge, especially if you're working with tools, you know, maybe SaaS or maybe not, right, where you're always hoping to show the product. And I think that that's sometimes a like a trap for brands. Oh, if I can't show the product, then I can't market this thing correctly. But it's actually a very interesting brand challenge and experiment to say, how do I explain something when I don't have the medium of a visual to go buy it? Right. And you can even approach probably several salespeople in your organization when they're going to maybe events or or maybe informal areas and you ask, what does your product do? And you're put in a very similar situation. You have to explain this thing in a way where you don't have the visuals to go with it. Right. And so I think it's a really interesting brand challenge. And, you know, from a research perspective, there's a lot of studies out there that show that effective audio advertising can be as effective, if not more able to influence recall than visuals themselves. And I think that is a consequence of, again, how effective your branding is in audio. But also, if I think about podcast advertising and why I think it's actually quite good for any brand, is that when you're relying on video or display assets, it's largely you require someone's active attention to do these things. Right. Someone has to be actively looking at your ad on YouTube or watching their connected TV or being on their phone. But what's nice about podcast advertising is that it can be active or passive. Right. So you can be actively listening to it when your attention is not focused on anything. Right. You're on a commute. You're sitting in the train. But also people listen to podcasts while they walk their dog, clean their house, when they do their laundry. Like it's it allows you a lot more access to people's free time. And I think video and display advertising can be quite restrictive in that way. David McBee: Totally fair. All right. Well, let's talk about how advertisers often buy their inventory directly from the source like Spotify. And I think you said something about a DSP approach being, you know, maybe a better bet. Brandon Lutz: Yeah. So, you know, there's always the option to go directly with a platform. You know, you mentioned Spotify as an example. And so, you know, a benefit to that is that you're having access to Spotify's inventory, especially when you're starting at a new channel. You might not be necessarily at the stage where you need to make those optimizations at the platform level. What I like about going on a DSP is that the focus is making sure that you have the audience, regardless of where they listen to a podcast. Right. So some people do listen to Spotify. Some people do listen on Apple. Some people do listen on YouTube. Right. In fact, like 75 percent, I think, is the last figure I saw of podcast listenership is between all three of those platforms. Right. So where I don't necessarily think you should start off on just one platform is that you're just restricting your ability to reach as many people as possible. And it might not matter to you or your target audience what platform they listen to. And I think also what's nice about a DSP is that I think targeting opportunities, whether it's first party, whether it's using third party, I think you just, again, have more access in your ability to select different criteria on how you want to target against. Right. And a lot of my work, this is essential. Right. I know, for example, and I've been on our early stages of experimenting with podcast advertising programmatically. If I do no targeting, I will see some sort of statistically significant uplift in my audience. But using a DSP that you're comfortable with, that you understand the targeting options, whether it's age or demographic, whether it's third party, you know, job titles or years of experience, geography. This is actually where a lot of the power comes with programmatic and DSPs for measurements, which is what I'm focused on and efficiency. And again, I usually have seen that there is a pretty even distribution of people listening to podcasts in my target audience across multiple platforms. So I don't necessarily care at this point in time to go all in on one versus keeping it with the DSP generally. David McBee: Yeah, it's pretty classic argument. Do you target inventory or do you target an audience? So I totally I'm on board with that. All right. Let's talk about let's talk about the investment from a cost per thousand perspective. Why is programmatic audio a better investment than traditional sponsorships? Brandon Lutz: Yeah. So off the bat, podcast sponsorships or host endorsements, they typically command a higher CPM than programmatic. Right. And it can vary depending on how niche the show is. I've seen CPMs as low as twenty-five dollars. I've seen CPMs as high as one hundred fifty. Right. So it's really up to the creator to determine how much they want to sell advertising space. And it's up to the media planners to determine, is that worth the investment? But obviously, the higher the CPM you go, the more limited in the reach you have for a particular audience. A lot of my focus is maximizing reach with the relevant target audience. And so where programmatic comes in is that not only do I have more control over the messaging because I'm creating the message, I'm uploading it into the DSP. But from a reach perspective, because a CPM that I work with on a DSP might be anywhere from twelve to fifteen dollars, that makes a substantial difference in how much more that media dollars last for me. Right. And, you know, there's some instances where that's more so the focus. Right. Feeling comfortable with the targeting and then maximizing the amount you can have with your dollars. And you're just going to come into that, you know, when you're considering both options. But it's more cost effective. I'm not going to say it's cheaper because that maybe has a negative connotation. You just have more bang for your buck and your dollars can go further than with the sponsorship. David McBee: Bang for your buck. Classic. All right, Brandon, this was great. I really appreciate you being here. What is the best way for people to get in touch with you? Brandon Lutz: Yeah, so I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So if you ever have a question or you want to discuss any of the things we chatted about today, you can reach me at my LinkedIn. So I think my LinkedIn is like linkedin.com/in/LutzBrandon. But happy to continue the conversation. It's been great to talk to you and share some of these experiences today. Yeah. David McBee: And it's always great to have you. Thank you so much for being here today. Brandon Lutz: Yeah, for sure. Thank you. David McBee: And thank you all for watching Simpli.fi TV. Be sure to hit that follow button on Apple, Spotify or YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss that one episode with the golden nugget of information you've been searching for. And if you found value in this episode, please rate, review and share Simpli.fi TV so that we can grow our audience and reach more people. I'm David McBee. Be awesome. And we'll see you next time.