Despite a sizable increase in spending by what has become podcasting’s traditionally biggest advertiser, Magellan AI reports the top 15 advertisers in the medium spent a combined 10% less during April than in March. It estimates the top 15 spent a combined $43.586 million last month, or roughly $5 million less than what the biggest advertisers spent in the prior month.
The drop from March to April is not a new phenomenon for podcasting, but on a year-to-year basis the story is much more positive for the industry. Magellan AI says the top 15 advertisers spent 23% more this April compared to a year ago.
The top advertiser remained the same in April as a month earlier, led by Teledoc Health, the parent of the online mental health company BetterHelp. It increased its podcast ad spending by 20% month-to-month as Magellan AI estimates it spent $10.1 million on podcast ads. BetterHelp ads ran on 988 different shows with Comedy among the brand’s most-used genre.
The top five advertisers were the same in April as in March, with Amazon remaining in second place despite cutting its spending by 18% month-to-month. HelloFresh held third place, as it cut its spending by nine percent. The sports betting company Flutter Entertainment was still at No. 4 during April despite a 27% reduction in its spending versus March. And Progressive insurance ranked fifth as its budget was trimmed 17% versus the prior month.
McDonald’s, whose $1.4 million was good for a 12th place finish, ran the biggest number of ads of any of the top 15 advertisers. Magellan AI says it ran 1,307 ads on podcasts last month.
Across the top 15, the Sports genre was the most-used by 11 of the top 15 advertisers according to Magellan AI’s estimates. Three other advertisers spent most of their money in the Comedy genre, with one – Toyota – putting the biggest share of its dollars in the Society & Culture category.
Automaker Toyota leads Magellan AI’s monthly movers and shakers list – a tally of the brands that increased their podcast spending the most during the month. It says Toyota spent more than $1.5 million on podcast ads last month, which was 691% more than what it spent during March. The online car-buying website Carvana ranked third on the list as it had a nearly five-fold increase in its podcast spending, which Magellan AI estimates totaled $943,000.
Google had one of the biggest increases month-to-month. It spent more than $1 million last month on podcast ads compared to $78,000 in March.
Overall, Magellan AI’s movers and shakers list shows just how wide of an appeal podcasting is having to many national brands, with names like KFC, Airbnb, Panasonic, MailChimp, and GlaxoSmithKlein giving the industry healthy increases in their media budgets last month.
Magellan 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, number of downloads for each episode, and estimated CPMs as reported in select media kits and estimated based on popularity.
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