How to Maximize Your RAP Inventory

Earn more ad dollars with these tips!

The more inventory you have available on your show, the more opportunities you have to earn revenue! You can think of your inventory as the number of places in each episode where you have an Ad Block, whether that’s in the mid-roll, pre-roll, or post-roll. Follow these tips to maximize your inventory and potential advertising earnings.

1) Make sure you’re opted in to both Programmatic and Host-Read Ads

Programmatic Ads are a great way to earn additional revenue from your available inventory. As a reminder, we always insert Host-Read Ads first if you have them, so Programmatic Ads never take the place of Host-Read Ads. They’re simply supplemental and help provide you with an effortless revenue stream.

2) Make sure you have Insertion Points set up in every episode

Check that all of your episodes have Insertion Points set up for the Mid-Roll, Pre-Roll, and Post-Roll positions. Even your oldest episodes should have Insertion Points! Many podcast listeners go back and listen to previous episodes of their favorite shows. So, if you don’t have Insertion Points available in your full catalog of episodes, then you’re leaving potential ad revenue on the table! 

The easiest way to check which episodes are missing Insertion Points is to use the bulk editor tool on the Dynamic Insertions page. Simply scroll through the page to see which episodes are missing checkboxes, which correlate to Insertion Points:

You can see in the above example that this podcast is missing Mid-Roll Insertion Points.

And finally, don’t forget to move the Insertion Point to the most natural-sounding spot in your episode.

3) Make sure you have the Default Mid Roll Ad Block assigned to every mid-roll insertion point

Mid-Roll is by and large the most valuable position out of all of them. Brands purchasing both Host-Read and Programmatic Ads typically prefer this position. That’s why we highly recommend keeping a Mid-Roll Insertion Point in each of your episodes. Be sure to assign the Default Mid Roll Ad Block to each Mid-Roll Insertion Point, too!

For Pre-Roll and Post-Roll, make sure the Default Pre & Post Roll Ad Block is assigned to every available Insertion Point. The easiest way to check which Insertion Points don’t have an Ad Block assigned to them is to use the bulk editor tool on the Dynamic Insertions page. Simply scroll through the page to see which episodes are missing checkboxes, which correlate to Insertion Points.

4) Add additional Default Ad Blocks to increase your available inventory

You can always add additional Insertion Points to your episodes and assign either of the Default Ad Blocks to them if you want to increase your available inventory.

For example, say your episodes are over an hour long. You can add a second Mid-Roll Insertion Point and assign the Default Mid Roll Ad Block to that new spot. This would create two separate ad breaks and increase your available Mid-Roll inventory from 3 to 6.

Of course, you can always delete Insertion Points if you don’t want ads running in certain episodes. Though we don’t recommend deleting them as it limits your ability to monetize your show! Having Insertion Points in your Pre, Mid, and Post-Roll spots greatly increases your available ad inventory and makes you more attractive to brands.

5) If you have concurrent RAP campaigns, make sure you have at least that many inventory spots

Running multiple RAP campaigns at once? Congratulations! To ensure that all of your campaigns successfully run to completion, we always recommend that you have at least as many inventory spots in each episode as the number of campaigns you have running at once. 

For example, let’s say you are running 3 concurrent RAP campaigns. If you have the Default Mid Roll Ad Block assigned to each of your episodes, that means you have 3 Mid-Roll inventory spots in each download of your show, so you should be all set! However, if you have 4 concurrent RAP campaigns running, we recommend adding a 4th inventory spot to each of your episodes, to ensure that all 4 campaigns can run across your full catalog.

And most importantly, be sure to not remove any Insertion Points or Ad Blocks while you have campaigns running or coming up, as removing them limits your inventory and prevents your campaign from fully running.

We hope that you find these tips useful!