Podcast Multiplier Calculator

How to use this multiplier calculator

The main inputs for the calculation of a multiplier are typically metrics that a brand marketer or podcast agency already has at their fingertips. They are:

• The total number of HDYHAU survey respondents
• The number of respondents who chose “Podcast”
• The total number of customers acquired during the campaign
• The total number of direct acquisitions—customers who used the podcast coupon code or vanity URL

We've also added a section to input your total campaign spend. This enables us to determine your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) both with and without the use of a multiplier. It helps to illustrate the application of the multiplier value across various other metrics.

Why podcast advertisers should use a multiplier

Assessing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns is essential for both brands and the agencies typically spearheading these efforts. Traditional click-based tracking methods often fail to provide a comprehensive view of a campaign's impact, **especially** in podcast advertising. This challenge is compounded by the evolving landscape of privacy regulations and restrictions on browser tracking, making accurate measurement increasingly difficult.

Podcasts offer an effective channel for brands to scale product awareness. However, the critical moment of conversion—whether it occurs on the brand's website or in an app—is often disconnected from the initial podcast engagement. To bridge this gap and correctly attribute sales to podcast-driven efforts, brands have adopted the strategy of using vanity URLs and promo codes. These tools can be specifically linked to a particular podcast or even an individual host-read advertisement, enabling a clearer understanding of the podcast's impact on the purchase journey.

The issue with using vanity URLs and coupon codes lies in the added friction they introduce. Requiring customers to remember and manually enter these URLs or codes can complicate the purchase process, resulting in lower usage rates that may not accurately reflect the podcast's influence on brand discovery. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these methods is diminished when brands concurrently offer similar discounts directly on their site, rendering the special codes unnecessary. We see this constantly, in Fairing customer data!

This is where the concept of the ‘multiplier’ becomes invaluable. By sampling the customers that converted during the podcast campaign, and extrapolating that to the full set of customers, brands gain two important metrics:

• First, they are able to estimate how many customers, in a world with perfect tracking, actually came from their podcast campaign.
• Second, they now have a multiplier value, which allows the marketer to know the relevative difference in tracking they're able to see when using discount codes and vanity URLs vs self-reported survey attribution.

This multiplier can then be applied to other metrics, such as CAC. If you have a podcast multiplier of 3X, and a CAC for the campaign of $30, you now can infer that the true CAC of customers converted through the podcast campaign was closer to $10, or $30 divided by 3x.

How a multiplier is calculated

In short, you survey the set of customers gained in a campaign, extrapolate that to 100%, and then divide the direct conversions by that extrapolated amount. The multiplier answers the question “how many more conversions did I get, than what my coupon code suggests?”.

In numbers, it looks something like this:

The critical role of HDYHAU data

HDYHAU surveys are a cornerstone for capturing comprehensive campaign data. These surveys provide a window into the customer's journey, revealing how various channels, including influencer marketing, podcasts, and platforms like TikTok, contribute to your overall growth strategy. They help demystify the indirect paths customers take before converting, offering a clearer picture of your campaign's reach and effectiveness.

By surveying a large sample of your customer set, you’re able to accurately predict the amount that truly was influenced by a podcast ad, instead of relying on high-friction actions like coupon codes or vanity URLs to determine the ROI on your campaign.

Practical applications outside of podcasts

Outside of the world of podcast advertising, the multiplier has also been used to calculate the true reach of influencer marketing campaigns, Out of Home (OOH) advertising, or even direct mailers. Brands have also started to use multipliers as a gut check on ad platforms (like Meta) that have had the accuracy of their attribution data curbed by the introduction of iOS privacy changes and other privacy-focused legislation.

The formula is exactly the same—you’re using the multiplier as a benchmark to understand the true impact of your offline and hard-to-measure campaigns by simply asking your customers “How did you hear about us?”.