In a healthy sign for a recovering ad market, podcasting’s biggest advertisers spent eight percent more in July than in June according to Magellan AI. It says the top 15 brands invested a combined $46.58 million in podcast ads last month. It was the best month-to-month increase among the biggest advertisers since March.
The online mental health brand BetterHelp remained the top advertiser, spending an estimated $9.2 million across 1,051 different podcasts tracked by Magellan AI.
Amazon remained the second-largest podcast advertiser, as its spending jumped 20% month-to-month to more than $7 million. That bump up in spending allowed Amazon to take the crown as the brand whose ads turned up on the biggest number of shows. The analysis shows Amazon ads ran on 1,346 different podcasts with Sports its most-used genre.
Third place HelloFresh grew its podcast budget even more. Magellan AI estimates it spent $5.5 million last month, a 40% jump from June. More money also meant more shows, and HelloFresh ran ads on a greater number of podcasts than first place BetterHelp. Magellan says it detected HelloFresh on 1,122 different shows with Comedy its most-used genre.
The big mover month-to-month in the top 15 was insurer State Farm, which increased its podcast spending 48% to $2.6 million. That put it in fourth place, up from No. 15 in June.
The biggest increase among advertisers tracked by Magellan AI during July came from Hewlett-Packard, which went from spending $1,200 in June to more than $800,000 in July. And while tech companies have long supported podcasts, the latest list of movers and shakers – the ranking of the brands that increased their spending the most on podcasting – also shows that consumer packaged goods companies are increasing their investments. Magellan says General Mills spending jumped to $248,000 last month versus just $313 spent in June.
The monthly list also includes five brands that went from spending nothing in June to spending six digits in podcasting in July. They include NOVEC Energy Solutions, SounderMind, Homeaglow, Aramco, and the National Grape Cooperative Association.
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, number of downloads for each episode, and estimated CPMs as reported in select media kits and estimated based on popularity.