Smart ad locations is a feature available to eligible podcasts that currently have streaming-powered tools enabled. Smart ad locations help you save time and expand your monetization potential by automatically inserting mid-roll ad locations into episodes with no existing mid-roll locations, increasing your overall number of monetizable ad impressions in a matter of hours. The smart ad locations technology is able to automatically identify natural breaks in your content to insert ad locations with minimized interruptions to your listeners. Publishers will have the ability to configure the frequency of the new ad locations placed and will be able to review and adjust the ads through the ad location tab.
How to use smart ad locations
Select eligible shows
Navigate to your podcast library and use the checkboxes to select the podcasts you’d like to use smart ad locations and then select smart ad locations in the action toolbar. To help you identify the shows with the highest opportunity, there will be a column entitled “Episodes without mid-rolls” that will show you the number of episodes whose duration is greater than 20 minutes that have no existing mid-rolls. Once selected, smart ad locations will run for all episodes in the show that meet this criteria
Note: you will only be able to select shows with streaming-powered tools enabled to run smart ad locations. We also recommend that you avoid shows that have baked-in ads in order to minimize inaccurate placement of midrolls.Choose how frequently you’d like ads to be inserted
In the next tab, you can decide how frequently you’d like the ad locations to be inserted. The default recommendation will be to place ads at a minimum of 20 minutes apart, or roughly 2 mid-rolls per hour. If you’d like to place fewer ad locations, you can select a minimum of 30 minutes apart, or roughly 1 mid-roll per hour. If you’d like to increase monetization potential, you can select a maximum of 15 minutes apart, or roughly 3 mid-rolls per hour.Review your selections
Once you’ve approved your shows and set your frequency, you will be able to review a summary of the shows selected and the number of episodes which smart ad locations will be applied to. Use the back button if you’d like to make any changes. Click apply once you’ve reviewed all of your selections. Please note you will not be able to approve specific ad placements at this stage.Wait for smart ad locations to be inserted
Once you’ve clicked apply you will get a confirmation email with the same summary of updates. Within the podcast library, you will also see that the shows you selected during the process will now have a status of “Processing”. It can take up to 24 hours to process your submitted smart ad location episodes.Completion and review
Once the process is complete, you will receive an email notifying you that your episodes have been fully processed and ad locations have been inserted into all selected shows. You will also be able to see in your podcast library a stamp confirming that your selected shows have smart ad locations applied and the number of episodes without mid-rolls count will have decreased.Optional: Adjust ad breaks
If you’d like to adjust the placement of any smart ad location, you may open any individual episodes and view or adjust the new ad locations through the “manage ad locations” tab, just as you would for a manually placed location.