The Curious Case of Fountain.fm: A New Player for Podcast Advertising

If you're a podcaster looking to grow your audience, you're likely always on the hunt for new and innovative ways to get your show discovered. While stalwarts like Apple Podcasts and Spotify dominate the space, new players are emerging that offer unique opportunities for audience growth and engagement.

One such platform is Fountain.fm, which puts a fresh spin on podcast listening by rewarding both listeners and creators with cryptocurrency. As a podcaster focused on continual optimization and testing, I decided to run an experiment sponsoring our show on Fountain to see if it could be a viable new advertising channel.

In this post, I'll share the results of our $100 test sponsorship on Fountain and some key learnings that may help you evaluate if it's worth testing for your own podcast advertising efforts.

An Overview of Fountain.fm

For those unfamiliar, Fountain is a new podcast player app that rewards listeners with satoshis (sats), the smallest denomination of Bitcoin, for engaging with podcast content. It's currently the only platform enabling this type of value exchange between podcasters and listeners.

Some unique elements of Fountain include:

• Listeners earn sats for every minute they listen to podcasts
• Ability to clip and share short segments from shows and earn sats when others listen
• Social features like following friends and commenting
• Listeners can "boost" shows by sending sats and comments to creators
• Sponsorship opportunities for podcasters to get their shows featured and rewarded

Our $100 Test Sponsorship Campaign

To test out Fountain's advertising platform, we invested $100 to sponsor our podcast for discovery on the app. Here are the key details of our campaign:

• Fountain took a $20 cut, so our working budget was $80
• This equaled ~271,000 sats based on the exchange rate at the time
• We capped earnings per episode at 200 sats for listeners
• Campaign ran for 20 days before exhausting the full budget

So What Were the Results?

While our test budget was small, we were able to glean some solid insights from the experience:

• Total Impressions: 5,201
• Total Listens: 2,365
• Cost Per Impression: 52 sats ($0.02)
• Cost Per Listen: 115 sats ($0.03)

According to Fountain, the average cost per listen on their platform is around $0.08, so our campaign significantly outperformed that benchmark.

There was a 24 hour approval period before our budget started spending. Pacing was slow for the first 3 days before accelerating and peaking around days 4-5. It then maintained near peak performance for the remainder of the 15 day duration.

Key Takeaways

While our test was small, the results suggest Fountain may be a cost-effective emerging podcast advertising option, especially while competition is lower in these early days. Some key takeaways:

• CPMs are competitive, likely due to minimal advertiser saturation right now
• Strong listen through rates, indicating engaged audience base
• Unique value exchange and social dynamics could drive loyalty
• Get in early before more advertisers discover the platform

For podcasters looking to diversify their advertising mix, Fountain seems worth testing out, especially with smaller budgets to assess performance. As with any emerging ad platform, results may fluctuate over time. But the cryptocurrency twist provides enough of a unique angle that it's worth monitoring and optimizing if the returns look favorable.

Testing out new platforms like Fountain can reveal opportunities to get your show discovered by engaged listeners interested in supporting creators directly. While results will vary, being among the first to experiment with innovative emerging players in the space will give you a leg up on the competition.

Before you leave...

If you enjoyed learning about our experiments with Fountain.fm, you may be interested in checking out our podcast where we share data-driven growth tactics for podcasters. On Podcast Growth Tactics by Podder, we unpack strategies and insights to help you elevate your show.

In past episodes we’ve explored topics like crafting SEO-optimized show notes, building engaged email lists, and leveraging smartlinks and link-in-bio tools. Whether you're looking to improve your podcast website, understand analytics, or optimize social media, we dive into actionable tips to implement right away. Tune in here.

Get a dose of data-backed wisdom in each bite-sized 5-10 minute episode covering everything from ideation to amplification and beyond. You can find Podcast Growth Tactics by Podder on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or by clicking here.

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