Podcast Ad Loads Hit New High, But Podscribe Says Advertisers Shouldn’t Panic.

Podcast ad loads climbed to their highest level yet in Podscribe’s quarterly report, but CEO Pete Birsinger thinks the industry may be worrying about the wrong thing. According to the company’s Q4 Podscribe Performance Benchmark (PPB) report, ad loads hit 10.9% in the third quarter, the highest level since tracking began. The increase represents a 10% year-over-year rise in ad load, meaning the average episode now dedicates nearly two percentage points more of its time to advertising than it did in Q3 2024. Yet Podscribe says rising ad density isn’t meaningfully depressing performance — and that other forces matter far more.

“While this may look alarming, there’s a lot more room to grow,” said Senior Director of Partnerships Camden Weber. In a webinar detailing the findings, he pointed out that in comparison to other media, podcast ad loads remain much lighter with nearly a third of television content dedicated to commercials. Radio also carries more ads. Weber said the prevalence of host-read ads is working in podcasting’s favor as the industry’s ad loads are expected to continue to climb higher.

“I don’t think this should be super-alarming, because there are views into performance that consistently show host reads are much more resilient when it comes to higher ad load versus producer reads,” Weber explained. “When there’s a clear-cut producer ad read, especially as we’re getting into higher ad load, listeners may be more prone to skipping through or fast forwarding to get back to their content.”

More than ad loads, Podscribe says the real story lurking inside the quarterly data isn’t clutter — it’s net-new reach. For the first time, the company analyzed whether reaching listeners who have never heard the advertiser before materially improves results.

The analysis shows more than seven in ten advertisers saw strong cost per acquisition (CPA) improvements with higher net new reach, defined as the percentage of listeners in a campaign who hear the ad for the very first time. Six in ten advertisers saw positive correlation between their ad conversion rate and the number of first-time listeners. Podscribe’s conclusion is reaching fresh listeners drives better performance, both per impression and dollar across advertisers.

“Net new reach actually results in higher performance generally, with it being more pronounced for the biggest spenders,” said CEO Pete Birsinger. For big spenders allocating over $400,000 per month to a campaign, he said the effect was “relatively significant,” with many top campaigns showing “performance definitely improved” as net-new reach rose. But the data shows even marketers spending less than $400,000 saw an improvement in their performance metrics.

That dynamic also helps explain why frequency-heavy impression buys continue to underperform episodic ones. Only 0.2% of episodic impressions hit a frequency of 15+, vs. 11.3% of impression-based buys. As Weber put it, heavy repetition can turn “persuasion” into “punishment” — especially for large brands blanketing the medium.

Podcast advertising performance varies sharply depending on the advertiser’s category, according to the latest PPB report. The retail sector is the clearest winner. Retail advertisers posted the highest purchase rate of any category with the ideal mix of high conversion rates and extreme cost efficiency scores. Media & Entertainment advertisers also delivered standout results — though for different reasons. They recorded the highest website visitor rate of any category, making it the strongest at driving initial engagement. Other categories saw more mixed outcomes. Telecom advertisers generated one of the best visitor rates, but struggled to convert those visitors, posting lower-than-average purchase rates.

Podscribe also examined which days performed the best for podcast advertisers, and it reports the majority saw their best results early and mid-week, with weekdays the best for purchase rates across most industries. Some noteworthy exceptions are food delivery and health-related industries, which it says tend to peak during the weekend.

“Whatever the audio creative is that’s being pushed through those pipes, it’s really important that you’re sort of thinking about, what is the listener doing in any of those given moments,” said Head of Partnerships Matt Drengler.

Meanwhile, programmatic buying is accelerating. Programmatic impressions jumped from 3% to 14% on a year-over-year basis. Weber said this reflects a “maturing,” and industry tools and targeting capabilities are making programmatic buying “much more approachable” for many brands.

Elsewhere in the PPB data, longer ad reads continue to win. Weber said ads 90 seconds and longer delivered the strongest visitor rates across both impression-based and episodic buys. “The longer the ad read, the more context, the more storytelling, the more engaging,” he said.

Download the latest PPB report HERE.