NEW YORK (March 13, 2017) – Today, Slate Group Studios, in partnership with Prudential Financial Inc. (NYSE: PRU), is releasing results from its brand study that assessed the impact of a branded content program entitled Wealth Wits. The results offer valuable, statistically significant evidence of podcast advertising’s effectiveness. In short, the study found that podcast units were more than twice as successful than banner ads in driving statistically significant lifts in Brand Awareness (+14pp) and Ad Recall (+21pp).

“While our brand study shows that Wealth Wits was a tremendous success overall, we’re truly elated that our results offer some much-needed data on podcast ad effectiveness,” said Jim Lehnhoff, Vice President, Slate Group Studios. “At Slate, we’ve long understood the value of podcast advertising, but the data to back this up is often elusive. Because of our custom methodology, the industry at large now has some hard numbers to point to, which we hope will help entice even more advertisers to invest in this creative and highly effective medium.”

In addition to finding that podcast units were more than twice as successful than banner ads in driving statistically significant lifts in Brand Awareness and Ad Recall, the units’ display creative also led to statistically significant lifts of 7pp in Favorability and 8pp in Consideration.

Slate Group Studios created a custom methodology in order to understand and assess the overall impact of the Wealth Wits campaign on Prudential’s brand favorability. GFK Research measured results. Nearly 20% of survey respondents were very or somewhat likely to recommend Prudential to their friends and family.

One aspect of the Wealth Wits campaign was a branded podcast created in partnership with Prudential, hosted by journalist, comedian, and author Faith Salie, intended to help people of all walks of life think about their retirement and plan for the future. The program offered a customized content experience powered by the listener’s own financial behavior. Listeners first took a self-assessment quiz that ultimately served up a personalized podcast built just for them.

For the study, control survey responses were collected prior to campaign launch to ensure no exposure to branded podcast. Exposed survey respondents were collected via a host-read at the end of the podcast to ensure exposure to branded content. The survey was hosted at an easy-to-remember vanity URL.

For more on Wealth Wits and to receive your own customized podcast experience, please visit: http://www.slate.com/features/wealthwits/