Fourth quarter retail ad spending is in overdrive as Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just days away. For podcasters, there is an early indication the holiday season may wind up being merrier than a year ago. Magellan AI says gift industry ad spending increased 49% between September and October. Compared to last year, gift industry ad spending on podcasting was up 139% last month versus 2020. The jump was significant enough that Magellan cofounder Cameron Hendrix says gift industry ad spending last month was nearly on par with November 2020.
“If patterns that have happened in the past repeat themselves, we can expect November 2021 will have a big increase in dollars amount from advertisers in the gift industry, based on the fact that October spend was double what it was in the prior year and September spend was about triple what it was in the prior year,” said Hendrix last week during a webinar. Magellan says the gift industry increased its ad spending 143% between October and November last year. “We can expect a big outlay expected from these kinds of advertisers in the next couple of months,” Hendrix predicted.
Another big ad spending category during October was business services and software advertisers. Five of the top 15 movers and shakers – Magellan’s monthly list of advertisers increasing their spending the most – came from the business services category. Cisco was the biggest spender, with brands like Avast and CrowdStrike also marketing ransomware solutions.
“A lot of this increase is driven by a small number of advertisers – and overall the space is growing,” said Hendrix. “Industry spend grew by 11%, or around $2 million, from September to October.” Magellan says business services and software advertisers made up three-quarters of the overall industry spending increase last month.
Overall, Magellan estimates the top 15 podcast advertisers spent a combined $35.2 million during October. That compares to $32 million that the top 15 advertisers spent in the medium during September, or a one percent increase month-to-month as 11 of the 15 advertisers saw their ranking go up month-to-month.
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.