Here are some requirements and tips straight from our advertising operations team.
Technical requirements
Insert at least a half-second of silence at the end of each ad to transition easily into your ad once they’ve been stitched with the audio.
Produce your ads with the same specs as your episode audio. Below are some recommended specs— however, if following these standards mismatches your ads and your podcast audio, please ignore them.
- MP3 file
- 128 kbps
- 44.1 kHz
- Loudness between -16 and -19 LUFS
- Single channel (mono)
- File size smaller than 1MB.
Clearly name your ads with a consistent naming convention, like Sponsor_Podcast_Zone_ProductionDate.
Here are some examples:
Casper_ChalkTalk_PRE1_2019.02.15
Casper_ChalkTalk_PRE2_2019.02.15
Audible_ChalkTalk_MID1_2019.02.15
Audible_ChalkTalk_MID2_2019.02.15
Tips
Record multiple versions. You are welcome to record one version of each ad, but it should sound good being heard before or after another ad. To account for this, we recommend recording two different versions for each campaign. For example:
“Support for [show] comes from [sponsor]....”
“We’d also like to thank [sponsor] for their support…”
Consider adding music to your ads. This is truly optional, but it may help distinguish the segments for your listeners. We’ve had shows use one piece of music for all ads, a piece of music designated for each zone (pre-rolls, mid-rolls, post-rolls) or multiple pieces of music.