Every week, over 100 million consumers tune in to their favorite podcasts. Some are casual listeners. Others avidly fill their queues with so many episodes and interviews that they’ll never work through them all. The growing number of online audio listeners represents a new consumer segment that businesses are increasingly targeting with their marketing messages. However, to date, there have been significant barriers to entry in the audio advertising space. Factors such as limited bandwidth, creative resources, and restrictive budgets have prevented smaller businesses from participating in the audio market.
AudioGO, a part of SiriusXM, has rewritten the script for advertising on podcasts and similar online audio channels. AudioGO’s innovative platform disrupts the market. It achieves this by making podcast advertising accessible to anyone, including those with small teams and limited marketing budgets.
In this article, we’ll explore how AudioGO democratizes digital audio advertising, making it easier than ever for small businesses, including niche and local enterprises, to amplify their message, reach their target audiences, and compete with larger brands.
Small Business Marketing Pressures and Opportunities in 2025
The rise of online listeners is staggering. In 2023, 75% of Americans 12 and older had listened to online audio content within the past month. Even more impressive is that 70% of these individuals had done so within the past week. For some context, monthly listeners were 8% in 2003.
People are tuning in to online audio more often and in greater numbers. The mass migration of tens of millions of listeners into the audio space has created a lucrative marketing opportunity. It helps businesses looking to reach consumers with their products and services.
The question is, how can they do so? Advertisements and sponsorships are obvious options, but how do those happen behind the scenes? Besides, while people are listening, is it a safe bet to assume they’ll pay attention to promotional content if you get an ad into a podcast?
To answer the second question first, you have to find the right crowd. They are likely to be hyper-tuned to what you have to say. Edison Research calls those who listen to podcasts voraciously (an average of 11.2 hours per week) Super Listeners. Half of those surveyed reported that podcast messaging is the best way for brands to connect with them. Even more of them said they pay closer attention to podcast advertisements. They claim to be more likely to patronize a brand if it advertises on a show they like.
People are flocking to audio as a preferred form of content. They are willing to accept advertisements as part of the audio experience. That means companies have a strong chance of reaching and resonating with target audiences through podcasts and similar online audio outlets.
Small Business Barriers in Audio Advertising
This still leaves the first question — and unfortunately, it’s a logistical, administrative, and financial conundrum that keeps many entrepreneurs up at night. So, how can small businesses effectively reach their target audiences with limited budgets and small teams?
Running a single 30-second podcast ad in 2024 averaged around $18 per thousand listeners. Sounds fine, right? At scale, however, this can become incredibly expensive, and scale has been the primary driver of this industry’s operations so far. Many traditional podcast advertising packages start with minimums of $5,000 per campaign. Some set the bar at $25,000 per quarter.
This is where AudioGO is shifting the tone and giving small businesses a voice in the audio advertising space.
AudioGO: Accessible Audio Advertising for Entrepreneurs
Firstly, AudioGO empowers small businesses to reach engaged listeners without the high costs or complexity of traditional ad buying. The all-in-one platform provides a robust self-service experience, enabling businesses of any size to create, target, and launch professional audio ads on major streaming services. From this platform, you can launch podcast ad campaigns across today’s top podcast players. This includes Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeartRadio, and gives you access to millions of engaged listeners.
Creating and distributing ads is essential to true accessibility in this key area of modern marketing. The process of audio advertising includes several steps. Some of these are hard to see until you’re in the middle of a campaign. They include:
- Firstly, identifying a target audience: There are millions of listeners tuning in, and understanding which of those are best for lead generation is critical. The first step in a successful campaign is understanding your target audience members and identifying the shows where they tend to tune in.
- Creating the ads themselves: This includes the ability to craft a compelling script, stick to the right amount of time (30 seconds? 60 seconds?), attract a listener’s attention, and weave a compelling call to action into the mix. You also need to consider factors such as brand voice and tone, copy, messaging, relevance, and more.
- Paying for and timing ads: Finding the right placements on shows that are willing to work with you takes a lot of legwork. You must also decide whether it’s worth paying for premiums, like a mid-roll ad placement.
- Finally, analyzing, understanding, and improving: You need to know if your audio ads are working, and if not, where to make adjustments. The ability to measure a campaign, observe the results, and synthesize them enough to create meaningful takeaways is essential to ongoing ad success.
AudioGO’s comprehensive approach and intuitive tools address all four of these areas:
- Targeting your audience: AudioGO has hundreds of audience parameters, including age, gender, location, device, and show topic. This precise audience targeting enables small businesses to build highly focused audiences, ensuring that every ad that plays has an optimal chance of generating a lead.
- Automating ad creation: The platform’s creative tools are designed to fill skill gaps. One of these is hiring creatives. Businesses can pay $10 for a studio recording of their ads made from a stable of real voice actors who work with AudioGO. They can also utilize a free, on-demand AI-generated ad creation tool to reduce costs further.
- Matching budget to campaign: AudioGO’s flexible budgeting feature enables small businesses to launch high-quality ad campaigns for as little as $250. This low threshold eliminates the barrier of ad package pricing and creates a level playing field for companies at every level.
- Analyzing and improving: Advanced reporting features provide real-time feedback in a user-friendly dashboard. This empowers non-analytical professionals to understand a campaign’s impact, identify who is listening, and make data-driven adjustments.
AudioGO: Small Business Advertising Made Simple
All in all, every aspect of AudioGO’s platform is designed with equity in mind. Its creators understand the inefficiencies and barriers that giant ad packages create. They also realize that this naturally keeps millions of small businesses on the outside looking in.
Finally, by streamlining ad creation and analysis, enabling precise targeting, and lowering minimum campaign spend, AudioGO has created an accessible, low-cost, high-value advertising option. Platforms like these provide small businesses with access to a cutting-edge area of consumer technology that shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Featured Image Credit: Photo by Austin Distel; Unsplash; Thanks!
Deanna Ritchie
Editor-in-Chief at Calendar. Former Editor-in-Chief and writer at Startup Grind. Freelance editor at Entrepreneur.com. Deanna loves to help build startups, and guide them to discover the business value of their online content and social media marketing.