2022 Podcast Advertising Report

The number of Americans who had listened to a podcast grew by nearly 50% since 2006, and their popularity does not seem to be slowing down. Along with established podcasts, many other forms of media, from TV to web video series, are joining the podcast industry through popular platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts as a way to grow their existing audience. 

We wanted to know not only what kinds of podcasts listeners are tuning into around the country, but also how they view the advertisements that come with them. We surveyed over 1,000 podcast listeners to find out more on who’s listening and what the best advertising methods were from the viewpoint of podcast listeners. Read on to find out just what they thought about ads on podcasts.

Highlights

• 3 out of 5 podcast listeners would like the ability to interact with the ads.
• The perfect ad is live-read by the host, related to the podcast’s content, and obviously identifiable as an ad.
• 3 out of 4 podcast listeners were happy with the purchase they had made from podcast ads.

The Podcast Boom

Over half of our respondents said they listen to podcasts regularly, a huge change from the fact that only 22% of Americans reported knowing what a podcast was in 2006. 

The main source of revenue for podcasts are advertisements, much like any media, but certain platforms, like Google Podcasts and Pandora, were less successful in delivering these ads without annoying listeners when compared to other platforms, such as Audible and Spotify. Even though YouTube was the most preferred platform on which to listen to podcasts, it was also flagged by respondents as being the most annoying when it came to advertisements. 

The podcast boom and its huge audience base present a massive opportunity for creators of all types of genres. We next asked our respondents which genres they were most interested in listening to.

While the news was the most popular genre for listeners we surveyed, there were nine genres, ranging from finance to fitness, which at least 30% reported as preferable listening. Podcast genre favorites varied among generations, with Gen Zers most preferring comedy, millennials favoring true crime, Gen Xers choosing politics, and baby boomers—who likely grew up listening to more radio news—preferring that genre most. 

Best Ad Strategies for Podcasts

Our study found that over 80% of podcast listeners did not believe advertisements negatively affected the overall quality of the podcast. They did, however, have some preferences over how best to integrate ads into their favorite shows.

Variety of ads was key, as over 55% were annoyed by hearing the same advertisement over and over again in the same podcast. More than half preferred fewer ad breaks throughout the podcast, which could be solved by concentrating ad reads in certain key areas. This could also help the flow of the episode, which was the No. 1 pet peeve reported by listeners. 

Three out of 5 listeners surveyed were not annoyed by ads at all, and despite over 80% wanting the option to skip ads, that didn’t necessarily mean they’d do so given the option. Those that did really want to avoid ads could use software to block them on platforms like Spotify, but these don’t work for in-episode ads. Podcasts that are thoughtful about the kinds of sponsors they choose and how they time their ads are likely to be the most well-received by the listening community. 

Delivery Is Key

The one aspect that podcasters have the most control over is how the ads are delivered and the style in which they are made. 

Over 70% of listeners preferred that ads were read live during recording rather than played as a pre-produced segment. After all, they are tuning in to hear the host, so they probably want to get this information from a source they know. Two-thirds preferred to have no question it was an ad when they were listening to it. 

Slightly under half of those we surveyed were looking for advertisements relevant to the topic of the podcast. And despite the pet peeves previously mentioned, the majority of listeners we surveyed were looking to interact with the advertisements in their favorite shows. As podcast ad revenues are expected to skyrocket to $2 billion by 2023, it’s more important than ever for podcasters to keep a finger on the pulse of what their audience is looking for if they hope to increase their share of this market. 

Podcast Ad Success

Our study uncovered new stats that podcast listeners were a receptive audience when it came to products advertised to them through their favorite programs

Over three-quarters of the listeners we surveyed had purchased or at least considered buying something promoted on one of their favorite shows. Choosing to tune into a program implies a certain level of trust already, and we found that the majority of listeners trusted these endorsements, which would explain why 45% of them actually ended up making a purchase. 

It’s no wonder why some companies are spending top dollar to reach these targeted audiences; the top ten podcast advertisers spent over a quarter-billion dollars last year alone. The platform Overcast was responsible for the highest sales among those we surveyed, with an average spend of $165, compared to an overall average of $133. It would seem many podcasts are heeding some of the sentiments about tailoring what they market to the specific audiences of their genres and topics, which helps explain why 3 out of 4 purchasers were pleased with what they’d bought. 

Enhancing Your Podcast

Audiences didn’t want just a random assortment of advertisements thrown at them without any thought or attention; they were looking for clear, concise, and relevant ads that could lead them to make a purchase that they’d find useful. Podcast listeners were willing to make purchases via a trusted source they had already come to know through their show. They were willing to listen to the ads if it meant the products being offered were worthwhile to hear about and delivered to them in a way that didn’t affect the product of the show itself. With plenty of money flowing into the podcast advertising space, there is certainly opportunity out there for success.

Methodology and Limitations

This study uses survey data from 1,002 podcast listeners in the U.S. Respondents ranged in age from 18 to 69 years old with an average age of 31. 53.9% of respondents identified as men, while 46.1% identified as women. 

About Voices

Voices is the No. 1 source for voice actors. With a talent pool of over 2 million voice actors across 160 countries, brands have entrusted Voices to help them find professionals to bring their projects to life.

Fair Use Statement

If you enjoyed reading the podcast ad stats and about these the views of listeners in the podcast space when it comes to advertising, please feel free to share this article for noncommercial use; just be sure to link back to the original article so that our contributors can receive credit for their work.

An impressive voice over demo will lead casting directors to hire you for voice over projects and help launch your voice acting career.

Almost every professional voice actor has a high-quality demo that shows off their strengths and works to establish their personal brand.

Here, we’ll explore how to produce your first voice over demo and, as a result, how to strengthen your chances of getting hired for the best voice over jobs.

In this chapter, we cover:

What a Voice Over Demo is

Why You Need Demos

How to Make a Demo

Ideal Duration of a Voice Over Demo

What is a Voice Over Demo?

A voice over demo is a short audio clip that best showcases your voice acting capabilities. It is essential to record a voice over demo in order to attract prospective clients who are seeking the exact same vocal qualities that you have. A voice over demo is like a business card, headshot, and resume all wrapped into one.

What is a Voice Reel?

A voice reel is the same thing as a voice over demo. The term reel comes from the original analog recordings that were stored on circular reels of magnetic tape. The phrase “voice reel” is an old term from when analog recording was the norm. It has nothing to do with Instagram Reels. Nowadays, voice-over demos are recorded on computer using software like ProTools, Adobe Audition or Audactiy and saved as a digital file, such as a WAV file, MP3 or M4A.

Why You Need a Voice Over Demo

The voice over industry is immensely competitive. In order to land the roles you want, it is crucial that you do all you can to stand out as a voice actor.

Nowadays, clients only have a matter of minutes to find a voice that meets their needs. Without a sample of your voice available online as an MP3 file or even a few voice acting sample files on some USBs to give to agencies, chances are you’ll be overlooked.

When searching for clients, consider this: the majority of clients make a decision as to whether they will hire you or not within the first 5-10 seconds of hearing your voice. Your demo is their first impression of you and what you can do for their organization.

A strong voice over demo will help you achieve exactly that. They are an essential marketing tool to help you stand out in a crowded industry. If you don’t have at least one voice over demo online and readily available for prospective clients to listen to, you’re very likely to lose out on valuable work.

However, you should never settle for creating just one demo.

The truth is, when you offer several samples of your work through a variety of voice acting demos, you achieve at least three things: your demos help set you apart from others, give clients a sound to remember you by, and demonstrate your versatility as a voice actor. In some cases, a demo can also serve as an audition for a job, although the majority of clients will include script excerpts into their voice over job postings that they will require applicants to read as part of their audition.

Your voice over demo should be hosted online, where it is easy to access. With a voice acting profile on Voices, you’ll also have the ability to upload numerous demos to your account and showcase the entire range of your vocal abilities. Whether you have the perfect voice for audiobook narration, character voices, the guy next door, or more, the possibilities are endless.

How to Make a Voice Over Demo

You can make your own voice over demo by recording yourself performing a read of a sample script.

Browse our selection of sample scripts and try recording your voice while you give them a read!

Ideal Duration of a Voice Over Demo

Your voice over demo can range between 30 seconds to 5 minutes, depending on the type of demo. However, the ideal length for a demo that features multiple spots is 60 to 90 seconds, so that the listener has ample time to appreciate your voice and what you can pull off. Anything shorter than 30 seconds runs the risk of not granting you enough time to fully demonstrate your vocal range.

In terms of understanding when demo length should vary, consider that commercial demos which showcase your skills when performing radio and television ads should last around one minute. However, an audiobook demo will likely be longer—up to four or five minutes—in order to demonstrate your ability to stay in character for extended passages in a story, or possibly to provide voices from different characters in a section of dialogue. It makes sense to settle on a shorter demo, however, if you’re not planning on recording a compilation of spots and instead want to give your listeners an example of what a full length 30-second commercial spot can sound like.

If you plan on uploading your demo to an online marketplace, you might want to keep it within the one minute margin, which equates to about 1 megabyte (MB). A 1MB file loads considerably fast and sounds crisp.

Your goal is to get as many people as possible to press play and listen to what you can do.

Sample Demo Structure

A standard demo that’s a minute in length should include about five spots, which are between five to fifteen seconds in length, give or take.

Here’s a blueprint for a standard 60-second demo:

Spot 1: 15 seconds

Spot 2: 15 seconds

Spot 3: 10 seconds

Spot 4: 10 seconds

Spot 5: 5 seconds

Be sure to leave a quick pause between tracks if you’re using multiple tracks. You can include as many tracks on a demo as you like, but be sure to send people only the tracks that they ask for. For instance, don’t send an audio publisher who works strictly with narrators a sample of your telephone prompts.

Tip: A demo isn’t simply a bunch of random spots mindlessly thrown together. Your voice over demo will reflect your level of professionalism, as well as the value that you have to offer your client should they hire you. Consider separating your demos by themes or by skill sets that you wish to show off. For instance, create a ‘commercial’ demo that is different from an ‘eLearning demo,’ which is different from a ‘French language demo.’

Working with Short Attention Spans

Why should most demos be 30 to 60 seconds long? Well, most people, including your prospective clients, have shorter attention spans now than they used to. These short attention spans are then further challenged by the fact that clients are skimming through numerous auditions in search of the right voice for their project. If your demo doesn’t grab your listener immediately, the opportunity is lost.

You want to instantly get your prospective client’s attention and keep it firmly in your grasp, while quickly showing all that you’re capable of doing. If you ramble on for a long time, your listener’s interest will fade. As a result, you lose out on being noticed and contacted for an audition.

The primary goal of a voice actor is to connect with the listener on a personal level so that the listener both cares about what’s being said while also remembering what was said.

You’re battling for space in the listeners’ minds. If you want to get even the slightest piece of a client’s attention—or ideally, their undivided attention—what you’re saying and how you’re saying it needs to be worth their while.

Producing Your First Voice Over Demo

While it’s likely your first demo will have multiple spots consisting of your strongest voice over skills, having a wide variety of bite-size demos to promote your voice, style, and expertise is the best way to market your voice over services.

Here’s how to approach production:

Breaking Up Your Voice Over Demo Into Bite-Size Pieces

When it comes to impressing a potential client, you often only get one opportunity to show off your skills. You have to be ready to prove your capabilities when prompted. You should always be ready with a selection of your strongest work compiled in bite-size demos, organized by genre or style of read.

Slicing your demo into smaller, more digestible pieces allows prospective clients to pick and choose what best applies to their needs.

Clients are always on the lookout for quick and simple solutions.

If you produce a number of shorter demos in a variety of styles, you stand a better chance of those demos being listened to. Promoting those demos online and describing them for search engines is one of the best ways to achieve your goal of being heard. If you specialize in a given area, like audiobook narration, you may find it best to have a specific demo for each genre (fantasy, sci-fi, young adult) that you read in.

Popular Voice Over Genres

If you step back and reflect on all the voice overs you hear in a day, you’ll realize that voice over is everywhere.

Considering the vastness of the multibillion dollar voice acting industry, you’ll likely find that your voice is more fitted for one area than another—something we alluded to above when we discussed versatility. But while you’re still getting to know what your voice can do, play the field. It’s not a bad idea to test out various categories of voice over work to practice. 

However, when you’re producing your first demo, you should zero in on the kind of voice acting you believe you’ll thrive in most, and on the vocal qualities that make your voice shine.

Here are the most popular genres to consider producing a demo for:

Note: These are referred to as Categories here at Voices, but you may see them called genres in the industry elsewhere.

1. Animation
2. Audiobooks
3. Business
4. Documentary
5. eLearning
6. Podcasts
7. Radio and TV

Animation

A yearning to voice zany, over-the-top cartoon characters is a major reason many people get into the industry in the first place. After all, who wouldn’t want to see their voice personified by an animated character? We’re happy to say that there is a large amount of work available in the field of animation.

Consider the broad range of entertainment where animated characters come into play: TV programs and animated films (both for children and adults), dubbed foreign language cartoons, video games, computer games, mobile apps, talking toys…the list goes on. Your ticket in this field likely won’t involve honing in on your best Dora the Explorer impression, but rather developing your own unique voice by mimicking and being inspired by the kinds of characters that speak to you from movies and television.

Working in animation really allows you to unleash your acting chops. To achieve the most vivid performance, you’ll want to use exaggerated facial expressions and arm movements to give your character a persona that is larger than life.

When you’re producing a demo to show off your skills voicing animated characters, try putting on a menacing video game villain voice, a cute cartoon character voice, or a wacky off-the-wall voice.

Audiobooks

Audiobooks have experienced a surge in popularity with the rise of audio-first preferences among the general population, resulting in a larger market for voices that specialize in narration: soothing, engaging voices that can be listened to for hours on end.

If narration is something you feel passionate about, try recording a number of excerpts from royalty-free novels that are in the public domain. Search for excerpts across different genres so that you can display your versatility and try performing an excerpt of dialogue between two characters to showcase your ability shifting between different characters in conversation with one another.

If you like reading dramatic monologues or fiction, for example, perform reads of that literary style and see how you sound. Record the genre of literature that you would normally read for pleasure, and you’ll yield the best performance for your demos.

Business

Voice over is highly sought after in the corporate world, and these bread-and-butter jobs can be a thrilling way to establish yourself locally and internationally. Every business requires some type of voice over, from telephone recording to employee training videos, eLearning modules, medical videos, explainer videos, corporate narration translation, and voice over welcoming visitors to company websites via video.

In order to source ideas for the types of voice over business demos, here are some starting points for you:

1. Visit the websites of the big brands you aspire to emulate, and watch their videos.
2. Reflect back on training videos that you’ve viewed at past jobs.
3. Listen closely to telephone systems on-hold messaging when making phone calls and channel the aspects you like into your Telephone demos.

Try to produce a handful of various business demos to showcase everything that you can bring to the table. Our recommendation would be to create a demo for a fun explainer video, another for telephone prompts, and an employee training video. A combo of these three shows that you can serve a variety of corporate needs, and proves you have what it takes to act as a company’s voice.

Documentary

Even if you’re the most casual fan of the Discovery or History Channel, you must be well-acquainted with the familiar, informative voice that details what is happening on screen.

If you’d really like to break into documentary narration, watch as many documentaries as you can, and attentively study the voices used. 

For your demo, record a number of excerpts that sound like they’re pulled from an actual documentary film. Try to cover everything from a scientific phenomenon, to a historic subject, to the life and times of a famous figure. If you happen to be using material from existing documentaries for your demo inspiration, be sure only to use the script as a framework, and change the names, places, and locations to steer clear of copyright infringement. 

eLearning

Like several other sectors that rely heavily on voice over, eLearning is an industry on the rise. The number of students who are completing either a portion or the entirety of their education online is at an all-time high. eLearning voice over needs to be engaging and upbeat while distilling information in a concise and instructive manner. eLearning can include everything from video and audio lectures, to interactive learning and educational games, to eLearning modules, medical videos, explainer videos, and more.

If you’re recording an eLearning voice over demo, let these eLearning sample scripts, which cover eLearning podcasts and employee on-boarding, lead the way.

Podcasts

Podcasts have become a dominant cultural form. They’re the primary medium through which so many people stay up to date with current events, get their storytelling and entertainment, and have their horizons broadened. And—thanks to the rise of podcast advertising—it’s also a medium that is exposing listeners to advertising.

Needless to say, polishing a voice that listeners find trustworthy, relaxed, or captivating is highly important in the world of podcasting.

You can write your own podcast script, or simply speak about something that you’re passionate about in a casual yet compelling manner. Podcast voices are meant to sound natural and off the cuff.

If you can think of a topic, there’s sure to be a podcast about it, so a major benefit to pursuing work in this industry is that you won’t be limited to a narrow area of interest.

Radio and TV

On cable TV there are approximately 10 full minutes of commercials per half hour program. Radio stations air close to the same amount of commercials per hour, usually spanning just under 12 minutes.

More than commercials, there are ‘sweepers’ needed in this field. Sweepers are also known as liners, bumpers, radio imaging, station imaging, stingers, IDs, promos, shotguns, and intros. Next time you’re watching TV or listening to the radio, practice imitating both the commercials and sweepers. In fact, if you’re pursuing a voice over career in radio imaging or commercials, it would be wise to create a voice over demo for radio commercials as well as one for sweepers. ‘Radio imaging’ is a commonly used term to describe any number of sweepers.

Your commercial demo should contain a variety of styles of delivery, such as conversational (chatting with a friend), hard sell (car commercials), and soft sell (e-commerce). Meanwhile, your sweepers should include a series of station ID promos that are upbeat and could work with a variety of stations, like easy listening, rock, and country.

Other Types of Voice Over Demos

There’s no limit to how you can apply voice over. There are countless avenues of work in voice over that you can pursue and record voice over demos to showcase your skills.

Here are some other fields that may be of interest to you (note that this is just a sampling and not an all-inclusive list!):

• Live announcement voice over
• Multilingual demo showcasing the different languages you speak
• Celebrity impressions (voice matching, soundalikes, dubbing)
• Emotion-oriented demos (showcasing your ability to read in different vocal styles)
• Tour guide for places of interest, local attractions, and museums
• Age-specific voice demos
• Movie trailers
• Jingles and musical work
• Digital video ads
• Voice assistants

Once again—and this cannot be stressed enough—avoid the prospect of copyright infringement by using fictitious movies, names, places, and so on.

Now that you’ve got a sense of what it takes to record a demo, as well as the kind of demo that will show off your range and make your voice shine, it’s time to talk about what it takes to actually record your voice.

Voices, the world’s leading marketplace for remote voice-over production and services, is extending its leadership in sonic branding with strong partnerships in programmatic advertising for the creation and delivery of booming digital audio advertising opportunities.

David Ciccarelli, founder and Chief Executive Officer at Voices, says, “Marketers have saturated the eyes and are moving on to the ears. Widespread screen fatigue and brands’ search for whitespace in the marketing landscape are two reasons why marketers are turning to sonic identities and delivery via audio ads.”

The digital audio advertising space is set to grow 23.5% in 2021, according to Statista. Audio ads enable brands to connect with targeted audiences and accelerate their sonic branding tactics. To leverage the extraordinary power of sonic branding, audio display ads have become a growing trend. 

“The narrative power of voices added to traditional display advertising creates moments of auditory humanity—and that is something we long for in a social distant and increasingly remote world,” Ciccarelli says.

Information recall, as well as engagement and click-through rates, improve with human voice, the market researchers at Voices analyzed.

Voices enables brands of any size to fulfill their audio advertising voice needs and create sonic signatures with over 500,000 voice actors speaking over 100 languages, including a wide variety of accents and dialects.

Voices recently partnered with programmatic advertising platform StackAdapt to help advertisers create audio advertising assets that can be used in their StackAdapt programmatic audio campaigns.

“Having great creative assets is critical to having a successful ad campaign, and partnering with Voices gives our clients a trusted platform to create world-class audio ads,” says Vitaly Pecherskiy, Co-founder and COO at StackAdapt. “And leveraging those audio ads on a platform like StackAdapt gives marketers an edge over the competition to reach their target audience in an impactful way—so needless to say, we are very excited to collaborate and explore the programmatic audio channel together.”

“The most popular distribution platforms for audio advertising have been natural voice-first channels such as YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, and podcasts. The new programmatic audio advertising platforms now amplify visual display ads with the power of voice—and with a high, measurable success rate,” concludes Ciccarelli. 

About Voices

Voices is the largest marketplace for audio and voice over products and services in the world, with over one million members. Since 2005, the biggest and most beloved brands have entrusted Voices to help them find their voice. Headquartered in London, Canada, Voices helps service clients and voice talent in over 160 countries.

More at voices.com

About StackAdapt

StackAdapt is a self-serve programmatic advertising platform used by the most exceptional digital marketers. This state-of-the-art platform is where some of the most progressive work in machine learning meets cutting-edge user experience. Ad buyers can plan, execute, and analyze data-driven digital advertising campaigns across all devices, inventory and publisher partners.

More at stackadapt.com

Overview

The Junkluggers is an environmentally-friendly alternative to conventional junk removal. The company hauls away items that people no longer want or need and strive to donate and recycle on behalf of these customers, offering a tax deductible receipt for anything donated.

To make their service known to potential new customers, Junkluggers undertook the initiative to create a Pandora radio ad that would highlight the company’s eco-friendly services and bring in new business. 

Before Voices

Before deciding to move forward with such a campaign that required voice-over audio, Junkluggers were doing it all in-house in a real startup, hold-it-together-with-duct-tape-and-glue-kind-of-way.

For example, Catherine Wernquest, Marketing Coordinator for the company, and her team needed to record a greeting for their call center message. The Junkluggers CEO, Josh Cohen, recorded the message with their Call Center Manager to his voicemail, then sent himself the file and uploaded it to the call system. “As one can imagine, the sound quality from a voicemail was far from ideal,” says Catherine. “Not to mention all the takes it took to finally end up with a usable, mediocre-at-best greeting.”

Catherine explains further that when they did other recordings themselves using employees for the voice-overs, everything sounded very stiff. The call center greeting is often the first thing a customer hears when calling the The Junkluggers’ number, so it was important that not only the voice sounded professional and inviting, but also that the quality of the greeting be crisp and clean. 

Solution

It was when The Junkluggers decided to do a Pandora radio ad that they realized they needed professional help with this project. They immediately signed up for an account with Voices.

Using Voices couldn’t have been easier for The Junkluggers. After they chose their voice artist, they received high-quality files the very next day. The Junkluggers gave the company’s assigned Voices account manager a few notes and then woke up to updated files in their inboxes the very next morning, a big improvement on what was being done before they came to Voices.

Top Outcomes

• Natural sounding talent for a short radio spot
• Incredible turnaround times from start to finish
• High quality audio files to stand apart
• No need to do any audio post-production in house

Behind every effective commercial that drives its listeners to make a purchase or engage with a brand, is a well-written voice over script.

An acceptable voice over script will tell the voice actor what to say, include a description of the sound effects and backing audio or ‘music bed’ that must be added during the editing process, and provide an overarching vision of your audio project.

You don’t need to be a seasoned dramatist or pro copywriter in order to pen a script that captures your audience’s attention and compels them to engage with your brand. You do, however, need to understand that commercial scripts constructed to sell products and services are different than your average radio play or movie script, even if they rely on some of the same storytelling tactics to influence their audience. So what does an effective commercial voice over script consist of?

Approaching Your Voice Over Script With the Creative Mind of a Storyteller

Writing an innovative commercial script requires you to approach your project from a creative angle. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to imagine the story of your brand or product along the same lines as a gripping Hollywood narrative, or the emotional impact of your favorite book.

Since the dawn of time, humans have communicated with one another through stories, and it is believed that more than half of our daily conversations revolve around personal stories and gossip. If your ad can tell a mesmerizing story, then it will linger in your listeners’ minds for longer than if you simply were to state your product’s details. Research has shown that stories release chemicals in our brains that make what we’ve learned resonate deeper and longer.

So where can you find inspiration for your story?

Storytelling inspiration can come from anywhere. You can find it in your everyday life, based purely on your own thoughts and observations of the world around you. You can also actively seek it out by reading, browsing the web, conducting research, and meeting new people.

Writing a compelling character may be your voice over script’s starting point. If you have invented a new character with a distinct voice, then you can use that as a guiding light for the kind of story you want to tell. You may also decide to derive inspiration from common character roles written for voice talent, the most popular of which include: the Real Person, the Narrator, the Announcer, the Company Spokesperson, and the Educational Voice.

Determining Your Commercial’s Sales Pitch

Having a grasp on the central roles that voice talent commonly embody is only half of the story when it comes to creating an effective script. It is just as important to understand the range of styles of sales pitches that are employed in commercial advertising contexts.

Getting the ‘sell’ right is absolutely key, and can mean the difference between alienating your customer and connecting with them in a meaningful way that will encourage them to engage with your brand and buy your product.

Here is a description of the three types of sells, commonly used in commercial scripts:

Hard Sell

A hard sell is delivered with a sense of urgency. Using persuasive language, a hard sell demands both the listener’s undivided attention and their business, but whether they get it is another story. Hard selling is an aggressive technique that has the potential to intimidate listeners and can prove effective depending on the product or service being advertised.

Ultimately, you want to capture your audience with dynamic messaging, but you want to be careful not to harm the prospect of future sales.

Medium Sell

A medium sell explicitly encourages a listener’s business while taking a less assertive approach than the hard sell. It certainly prompts the listener to buy, but remains casual enough to avoid coercing the listener into any extreme course of action.

This style of sales pitch ultimately draws on the best of both worlds of the soft sell and hard sell.

Soft Sell

A soft sell hits its audience from an even more subtle angle than the medium sell. Although the soft sell is still suggestive, it doesn’t attempt to provoke the consumer or descend into a power play.

Soft selling practices are generally characterized by the way they are focused on cultivating a loyal customer base. While this type of sell may appear to involve a greater investment in time, it often results in creating long-term clients who place faith in the company and continue to come back for more.

A soft sell interacts with its audience just like a friend would, and may involve elements of storytelling and content that inspires.

Deciding the Appropriate Length for Your Commercial Script

There has been an ongoing debate surrounding the most effective approaches to the way your brand name is referenced in a commercial. For instance, is it better to cut to the chase and have your brand name be the first word listeners hear in your ad, or is it more effective to tell your story and express your message first, to leave your brand name as the finale? By the same token, does a brand name stick with an audience more, depending on the number of times it is spoken, or is it more effective to take a subtler approach and mention the brand just once?

Pandora Radio’s Insights Lab and Studio conducted an investigation into this very debate by creating an artificial brand, running a series of radio ads, and surveying listeners about the effectiveness of the ads they received.

Pandora Radio found that mentioning a brand name within the first three seconds of an ad generates more ad recall than by mentioning the name within the last few seconds.

Incidentally, they didn’t find that constantly name-dropping your brand makes much of a difference to the listener. As long as the amount of times your brand is mentioned remains consistent with your messaging and overall tone of that campaign, then it shouldn’t make a significant difference whether it is mentioned one or five times.

Along with finding that opening your commercial with a mention of your brand name is the most effective ad recall strategy, Pandora also discovered that ads that put listeners in a positive mood were seen to perform better. For example, having an upbeat, poppy music bed is more appealing to listeners than using no music bed at all. Don’t be afraid to go for good vibes.

On that same note, keep your music bed authentic to your brand. Through their study, Pandora learned tailoring your ad’s music bed so that it reflects on the listener’s favorite genre actually reduces ad recall.

For example, Pandora found that placing a country music backing track on an ad played for country music fans didn’t result in a better performance than its original pop version.

So, if you’ve decided to use a musical genre for your commercial, make sure that the music is consistent with your brand and your message for the best results.

Additional Tips to Follow While Writing Your Commercial Script

Write in a conversational voice

Your ad’s script should roll easily off the tongue and be easily understood. Avoid corporate jargon or overly formal language that you wouldn’t hear in everyday conversation, out in public.

Write for the spoken word. The finished product of your voice over script isn’t intended to be read like a book, but be heard by listeners via spoken delivery. This is why it’s important to take a step back as you’re writing and read the commercial script aloud. Something that reads well on the page won’t necessarily sound great spoken aloud. Does your script sound natural, or is it a mouthful?

White space is your friend. Try not to write in run-on sentences and expansive, never-ending paragraphs. Split up the copy into multiple paragraphs in order to be sure your script is straightforward to read. This will aid enormously when the voice actor is following it as they record the script.

Write for your target audience

Defining your target audience is an integral step in the creative process behind creating an effective voice over script.

By identifying the main traits of your ideal consumer (age, location, income, values, lifestyle, and emotional sensibilities), then you’ll be able to modify your script to write in a way that appeals to that audience (whether that involves the way your voice actor speaks or the content of your script as a whole).

Having your target audience in mind when you write your commercial script involves the psychological theory of ‘mirroring’: both our verbal and nonverbal communication will naturally adapt to those around us.

Your vocal direction should match the tone of your script

If the artistic direction you provide suggests that the voice should sound articulate, calm, and professional, then your copy should reflect that by being comprised of short sentences, and easy-to-read paragraphs, as opposed to a script littered with exclamation points and run-on sentences.

Get your message across as concisely as possible

It’s best to open your ad with the name of your brand, followed by a line or two that succinctly communicates what you’re selling and your brand’s specific message.

Here’s a solid model for a basic 30-second commercial script:

• 00-05 seconds: Capture the listener’s attention and mention your brand’s name (It takes your brain about 2 seconds to realize you’re listening to an ad).
• 05-15 seconds: Tell your story.
• 15-30 seconds: Provide snappy additional information to flesh out your product and/or promotion.

For example, here’s how this format plays out in this 30-second radio promo script for a fictional business called Benny’s Adventure Park, located in Boise:“Come on Boise! Let’s go to Benny’s!”“Benny’s Adventure Park is offering free lunch to our first five hundred and fifty-five visitors this Saturday. Hot dogs or hamburgers, chips and a soda, all included to celebrate our fifty-fifth anniversary!”“Day passes are just fifteen dollars and family passes are only thirty-five dollars!”“Benny’s Adventure Park. Boise’s place to play since 1964.”

Test Your Commercial Script and Remain Flexible

At the end of the day, it is important to test different approaches on both sample audiences and within members of your team to see what actually works on listeners. What proves most effective for one brand or campaign may not be transferable to the other.

Remember that your script can be a living, breathing entity, and that, depending on who you cast or if you receive an audition that unexpectedly wows you and you end up living a different voice than you previously envisioned, your voice over script can and likely will change as your project works its way to fruition.

To get inspired, you can browse our catalogue of sample commercial voice over scripts!