August can be a transitionary month for some brands as they gear up for the final months of the year, when consumer spending ramps up. That was reflected in podcast ad spending last month. Eleven of the top 15 podcast ad spenders grew investments month-to-month, and Magellan AI says the group overall spent $26.59 million. But that was less than the $47.8 million spent by the top 15 in July.
Online mental health brand BetterHelp remained the top spender, despite being one of the handful of advertisers that pulled back in August. Magellan AI says it spent $6.5 million on podcast ads, which was 14% less than in the prior month.
But second-place Amazon showed no sign of pulling back after it ramped up spending in July to support its annual Prime Day sales event. Amazon podcast ad spending rose 2% last month to $5.8 million.
The back-to-school marketing effort also brought more dollars from third-place T-Mobile. It increased spending 3% month-to-month, investing $5.1 million in podcast ads last month.
Across the top 15, Magellan AI says nine of the advertisers spent the biggest share of their dollars on Sports podcasts. News was tops for three others, while two spent their biggest share of dollars on Comedy shows. And one advertiser — fashion retailer Quince — put most of its ad dollars into shows in the Society & Culture category.
Magellan AI’s monthly ranking of brands that delivered the biggest increases in spending in the medium — its list of movers and shakers — is dominated by direct-to-consumer brands for July. The online E.D. treatment brand Ro leads the list, as it increased spending four-fold last month to $714,800. Fellow online drug seller Hims & Hers ranked No. 4 as it too quadrupled its spending month-to-month to $485,700.
Other DTC brands that turned up on the movers and shakers ranking include Roku, with $569,700 in spending last month on podcast ads; Peloton, which spent $435,600; and Home Chief, which spent $383,100.
Overall, Magellan AI says the movers and shakers spent an estimated $4.1 million on podcast ads in August. That comes in under the $7.2 million spent by movers and shakers during July.
Magellan AI analyzes podcast advertising data from the top 3,000 podcasts in the U.S., as ranked by Apple Podcasts. Magellan AI’s proprietary model is used to estimate advertising spend. It includes factors such as the number of ads and variation in ad load detected for a given episode, number of downloads for each episode, and estimated CPMs as reported.
Comments