Tired of guessing which podcasts are worth your ad budget? Learn vetting processes and targeting strategies that help brands spend smarter
42% of weekly podcast listeners in the US use YouTube most. That figure, from Signal Hill Insights’ Fall 2025 Download surveying 66,000 podcast consumers, makes YouTube not the second-largest podcast platform or the fastest-growing one. It makes YouTube the largest. Spotify sits at 14%. Apple Podcasts at 12%. That gap changes the calculation for any … Read more
In late 2025, viewers streamed more than 700 million hours of podcast content on YouTube through their televisions in a single month. That figure nearly doubled the prior year. Video podcasting is no longer a side format that a few shows experiment with. It is where the audience is moving, and brands are following the … Read more
A podcast media kit is a sales document. The number on the front page is the one the show wants you to remember. It is almost never the number your campaign will actually reach. Reading past that front page separates a sponsorship that pays back from a line item you quietly write off. The shift … Read more
Podcast sponsorship is no longer a channel DTC brands test cautiously as an experiment. Enough of them have run it at scale, and enough performance data now exists, to treat it as a core part of a DTC marketing plan rather than a gamble. This guide is a practical walkthrough of how to run it … Read more
Most podcast ads fail not because the product is wrong for the audience, but because the copy is. A large share of podcast advertisements follow a structure so predictable that listeners can identify the opening of an ad within the first few words and mentally check out before it delivers any message at all. A … Read more
Podcast ads rarely work because a brand picked the “right” genre. They work because the host can make the product feel authentic to the people already listening. Some of the best podcast advertising examples come from placements that look mismatched on paper, yet outperform safer choices because the audience fit, delivery style, and host credibility … Read more
According to IAB and PwC data, U.S. podcast advertising revenue reached $2.9 billion in 2025, growing 17.6% year-over-year. This growth directly influences podcast ad rates by driving both rising inventory volume and accelerating competition for premium ad placements. More inventory gives you more options, and more options create room to negotiate. This guide is written … Read more
Podcast advertising cost in 2026 operates across a wide range. The CPM model is standard across the industry, but the inputs that shape it are not. Genre, audience size, ad format, placement position, buying method, and seasonality all pull rates in different directions, often at the same time. This guide breaks down verified CPM benchmarks … Read more
Programmatic audio ads and host-read podcast ads draw on different listener dynamics and serve different roles in a media plan. Neither format makes the other obsolete, but placing the wrong one against the wrong campaign objective costs performance on one end and budget efficiency on the other. 1. How Each Format Works at the Technical … Read more