The online mental health service provider BetterHelp was podcasting’s biggest advertiser during July. It was the eleventh consecutive month that the brand has topped Magellan AI’s list of the biggest spenders in the medium. It estimates BetterHelp spent $6.32 million during July. That was a four percent decrease from its June spending. BetterHelp spread its ad dollars across 717 podcasts.
Magellan says the second-biggest July spender – NBCUniversal – was on the most shows, however. Its ads appeared on 990 podcasts according to Magellan. NBCU spent $3.78 million last month, a 48% increase month-to-month. The Society & Culture category received the biggest share of both BetterHelp and NBCU’s podcast ad budgets.
ZipRecruiter remained in third place with an estimated $2.33 million in podcast ad spending during July. That was an increase of two percent from a month earlier.
Hello Fresh held in fourth place with an estimated $2.280 million in podcast ad spending last month, a 19% jump month-to-month according to Magellan.
Hewlett-Packard, which in June was the 11th-largest podcast advertiser, jumped into the top five in July with an estimated $2.2 million in spending. That was a 51% increase month-to-month.
The cleaning supply maker Jelmar, whose brands include the CLR and Tarn-X branded cleaning products, topped Magellan’s monthly ranking of movers and shakers. After spending nothing on podcasts during June, it estimates Jelmar spent $634,000 last month.
The second biggest move came from the National Corn Growers Association, which bumped up its podcast ad spending by 574% to $559,000.
Magellan says it also detected a potential shift in how one brand is using podcasting. Skylight Frames has previously advertised during the big gift-giving times, having most recently turned up on the monthly movers and shakers list in April as it marketed a Mother’s Day promotion. But it just turned up again in July with an estimated $171,000 in spending versus just $2,000 a month earlier. “This mid-summer increase follows a broader trend of increased spend in the home goods category,” says Magellan in a blog post. Many of the ads followed a staying in touch theme, and sharing photos with family, with midroll ads on shows like Red Collar and Dumb People Town featuring a coupon code.
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 in select media kits and estimated based on popularity.
Magellan will have a webinar detailing the monthly report on Tuesday, Aug. 24. Find details and sign up HERE.