Podcasting ad spending jumped 7% in June among the top 15 spenders, according to Magellan AI’s monthly ranking of the industry’s biggest advertisers. It says they spent a combined $42.73 million. The increase came despite a month-to-month dip in spending by BetterHelp, although the online mental health provider easily remained the biggest spender in June. Magellan AI estimates it spent $7.2 million.
The big mover was Toyota, however. It boosted its podcast spending 47% to $4.8 million. That put it ahead of Amazon, which has been sitting in second on the Magellan ranker for several months. But Amazon cut its podcast ad spending 5% to just under $4 million. Next month’s report will reveal whether that was a strategic shift to heavy up on spending in July when its annual Prime Day sale-a-palooza is held.
Across the top 15 brands heard on podcasts last month, Magellan AI says two-thirds increased their investment in the medium month-to-month. They included some podcast stalwarts like SimpliSafe and Progressive, which points to the natural ebb and flow of an ad budget through the year rather than any broader spending shifts.
Among the top 15, the most-used genre was Sports, with two-thirds of the top brands putting most of their dollars into that show category. Other popular choices were Comedy and True Crime, each of which was used by two shows, while Society & Culture was used by one.
Magellan AI’s monthly ranking of brands that delivered the biggest increases in spending in the medium — its list of movers and shakers — was led by the AI-powered audio production company AudioStack, which spent nothing on podcasts in May but then spent nearly $1.8 million in June.
The streaming video service Roku ranked second among the so-called movers and shakers, having spent just shy of $1 million last month on podcasting, versus about $15,000 in the prior month. It was followed by Bank of America, which tripled its podcast ad spending month-to-month. Magellan AI says it spent $619,600 on ads in June.
Overall, Magallan AI says the movers and shakers spent an estimated $6.7 million on podcast ads during June.
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.
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