Two-thirds of the top podcast ad spenders in June were not running ads in May, according to Magellan AI. The data it has released helps further illustrate that some marketers who moved to the sidelines during the early weeks of the COVID-19 lockdowns have returned to spending, while other brands are discovering the medium for the first time.
There is also a similar year-over-year growth story. Magellan says in a blog post that two-thirds of the top spenders were not spending on podcasting in June 2019. It also points out that none of the consumer packaged goods advertisers listed — such as Procter & Gamble’s Bounty paper towels and Chinet paper plates — were active in podcasting a year ago. There is one downside to the numbers though, as just one advertiser — Samsung — spent more than a million dollars last month.
Magellan AI determined its findings on podcast advertising data from the top three-thousand podcasts in the U.S., as ranked by Apple Podcasts. It then applied Magellan AI’s proprietary model to estimate advertising spend in terms of dollars.
John Goforth, Head of Sales and Business Development at Magellan, said the growth of “traditional” brands in podcasting seems to reflect the ease in which it is easy to swap in ad copy changes during the pandemic. He also said there are signs that advertising is picking up after the initial COVID hit. One such metric is the number of new advertisers detected in the medium. “There were 10% more new advertisers (725) in June than we found in May (662). And both numbers are on track to be beaten by July,” he said.
In another positive sign, Chartable said it tracked 825 million downloads during June, compared to 600 million in March. That has CEO Dave Zohrob more optimistic about the second half of the year. “I was really pessimistic in March, and I was wrong,” he told Digiday. “There’s still a lot of excitement among media buyers around this stuff.” Zohrob said sports podcasts continue to lag, but he chalks that up to the fact that there have mostly been no games to talk about.