For the eighth consecutive month the online mental health service provider BetterHelp was podcasting’s biggest advertiser in April. Magellan AI says it spent an estimated $4.1 million, an eight percent increase in spending compared to March. BetterHelp spread its ad dollars across 520 podcasts last month, mostly in the Society & Culture genre.
The reopening of America also stirred ZipRecruiter to spend 13% more on podcasting in April with its $1.92 million of spending on 185 shows, making it the second-biggest advertiser on the medium.
Amazon’s spending on podcasts soared by 66% between March and April as the tech company placed ads on 324 podcasts last month. Magellan says it spent an estimated $1.83 million and rose from the eleventh-biggest podcast advertiser in March to third-biggest in April.
Rounding out the top five were GEICO, which increased its spending by five percent month-to-month, and HelloFresh, which boosted its podcast spending by 38%.
Magellan says Samsung tops the monthly list of movers and shakers – the brands that had the biggest month-to-month increase in their spending. Samsung did not spend anything on podcasts in March but in April it spent an estimated $1.42 million across 267 podcasts tracked by Magellan. The campaign promoted the suite of Galaxy products, including smartphones, a smartwatch, and earbuds.
“Samsung Galaxy ads in April were mostly mid-roll but 35% of the ads detected ran pre-roll,” says Magellan in a blog post. It said the brand awareness ads ran on podcasts including Something You Should Know and Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay.
Five of Magellan’s monthly movers and shakers went from spending nothing in March to investing in podcasting in April. In addition to Samsung, the list also includes Skylight Frame, which spent an estimated $255,000 last month, Dr. Pepper ($159,000), Roy Rogers Restaurant ($149,000), and Live By Advantia ($135,000).
Magellan analyzes podcast advertising data from the top 3,000 podcasts in the U.S., as ranked by Apple Podcasts. Magellan’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 on select media kits and estimated based on popularity.