Hot Brands, Hotter Ads: Podcast Ad Market Sizzles As Top 15 Spends $59 Million In July.

Podcast ad spending remains strong in July as a familiar pair of names moved back to the top of the ranking of which brands invested the most in the medium. Magellan AI says the online mental health service provider BetterHelp spent an estimated $6.3 million on podcast ads last month. The 22% month-to-month increase was enough to put it above all other brands.

Amazon’s Prime Days event led the retailer to boost its spending by 17% last month to an estimated $6.1 million, lifting it into second place.

Fellow online retailer Quince made its largest investment in podcast ads to date, rising to third place with just under $5 million in spending, according to Magellan estimates. With a female target, Quince was also noteworthy for the fact that it spent most of its money in the True Crime genre. Those shows have in the past faced some reluctance by ad buyers over brand safety concerns.

Magellan also reports that Washable Sofas had its first-ever top five appearance with nearly $5 million in spending, finishing just behind Quince. Toyota, which topped the monthly ranking in June, cut its spending by 22% to round out the top five with an estimated $4.4 million in spending.

Overall, Magellan says the top 15 podcast advertisers spent a combined $59.3 million during July, which was on par with what was spent in both May and June. That was despite six of the top 15 reducing their spending month-to-month in July. Two-thirds of the biggest July advertisers spent the biggest share of their dollars in Sports podcasts. A handful of others spent the most in the Comedy and True Crime genres.

Magellan AI’s monthly ranking of brands that deliver the largest increases in spending in the medium — its list of movers and shakers — is led by one of the oldest department store chains in America. JC Penney, which opened its doors in 1902, is embracing digital audio with nearly $900,000 in ad spending last month.

It was one of several familiar brand names also making the movers and shakers list. Magellan reports there were also sizable increases in spending from brands including Ray-Ban, which embraced the summer season with $830,000 of podcast ads, and chip and soft drink maker Pepsico, which spent $854,000.

Several other brands on the list — including Activision, Mott’s, World.org, and So Delicious Dairy Free — went from spending nothing in June to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars last month.

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, the number of downloads for each episode, and estimated CPMs as reported in select media kits and estimated based on popularity.