Solving Podcast Attribution With Fairing’s Post-Purchase Surveys

Fairing is a fundamental attribution solution and source of truth for thousands of DTC brands running hard-to-measure media — and right at the top of those media types, sits podcasts.

Solving podcast attribution is, habitually, the hurdle that holds most digital-oriented brands and agencies back from embracing the media type. But with such a magnificently-packaged opportunity of host-read “celebrity” testimonial, audience self-segmentation, and evergreen placement, it’s media you can’t afford to overlook.

It begs the question: if there are so many DTC brands seeing success with such a hard-to-measure medium, how do they find the missing link in their podcast ROI equations? Well, they use Fairing.

A Case Study In Solving Podcast Attribution

Let’s look at the proof in practice first. One of our clients, Adam McNeil went from having zero experience in podcast media to running up $500k in revenue on a tiny pod budget, which immediately justified a 25x increase in spend.

The whole growth process is fantastically documented here , but the TLDR is that Fairing’s post-purchase survey provided the ultimate safety net for podcast attribution, and to great effect: “we get about 40% of new customers responding to the survey. We use this to calibrate our judgements. We can see that virtually 29% of all new customers come through podcasts.”

It’s also worth noting, Adam saw so much success in his podcast experiments and processes that he later left the brand to head up marketing for a podcast agency. Suffice it to say, growth can happen fast in this space.

A Little Attribution Methodology Goes A Long Way

The client above used Fairing’s ground truth data to incorporate a lift modifier method: taking the consistently underreported attribution in coupon codes or UTM parameters and adding in the population of survey respondents, then removing the pre-campaign baseline (a standard method for reducing survey bias) to find the full attribution effect. Keep in mind, Fairing appends all these survey responses with transaction and traffic data at a 1:1 customer level.

Direct Converters , e.g. via URL or promo code redemption
‍**+ Indirect Converters** , e.g. survey respondents indicating a particular channel
− Pre-Campaign Baseline , e.g. channel responses received pre-campaign
‍**= Fully Attributed Audience**

If this method is unfamiliar to you, don’t worry: many of the most effective podcast ad agencies already use it religiously, and in fact another of our most prominent offline media partners penned a broader article on understanding the podcast attribution methodolog y they use for all their biggest advertisers — yes, the ones you’re always hearing when you listen in.

Read the full Podcast Attribution Methodology Guide from Right Side Up.

POV From A Podcast Advertising Leader

We previously sat down with Krystina Rubino , General Manager of Offline Media at Right Side Up, for a speed run on what makes podcast ads work and how to set yourself up for success. Lots of evergreen guidance packed into this 20-minute ep. Take a listen:

Turning Podcast Attribution Into New Channel Discovery

Last but not least: the hidden magic of post-purchase surveys is the freedom your customers have to tell you what you don’t kno w about emerging opportunities, through the “Other” response field. This is where you’ll often find organic mentions and earned exposure you wouldn’t have discovered on your own, opening up the chance for channel diversification and making inroads to new shows.

Of course, the optimal balance between previously unknown data and expected (structured) data is to have the right one in every situation: for this reason, we developed our Autocomplete feature to produce the best of both worlds. Customers who write in an “Other” response get the option to choose an existing response, keeping your survey data clean so you can properly separate attribution from exploration.

Fairing Pays For Itself, Through Dark Attribution Alone

Delivering reliable attribution to your door on a daily basis is just one of Fairing’s many use cases, and given how often dark conversions dismantle a marketing operator’s ability to run their side of the business, the value of that newfound attribution data alone is enough to see your Fairing plan pay for itself several times over.

Give our Dark Attribution ROI Calculator a try over on our Pricing page, and launch into a free 14-day trial to start getting a handle on offline attribution ASAP.