September Shines As Podcast Ads See Big Seasonal Jump.

It wasn’t just listener downloads that increased in September, so did ad spending. According to Magellan AI, the top 15 brands allocated an estimated $71 million on podcast ads in September, marking a 30% increase from the previous month. The surge also made it one of the strongest months of the year for podcast ad spending. 

Magellan also reported a new number one advertiser as Washable Sofas jumped to first place with an estimated $7.4 million in podcast ad spending last month, a 23% increase month-to-month.  That is the first time Washable Sofas was the industry’s top spender.

The sports betting site FanDuel also jumped back into the top 15 as a combination of the NFL return and baseball playoffs led it to spend an estimated $6.6 million on podcast ads last month.  That was not only a big jump from August, but it is also nearly double what FanDuel spent in February during the Super Bowl betting frenzy. 

Rival DraftKings also boosted its spending, with Magellan estimating it put $5.1 million in podcast ads last month. That was more than double the $2.2 million it spent in August.

Soaring budgets meant that the online mental health brand BetterHelp — which has frequently sat at the top — slid back to third place last month, despite increasing its spending on podcasts ads by 2% compared to August.

Toyota increased its spending by nearly a third, rising 31% from August to an estimated $5.5 million. And the parking app ParkWhiz made its debut in the ranker with an estimated $5.2 million in ads, to round out the top five.

Magellan says among the top 15, all but three brands spent more last month. It also reports a dozen advertisers invested the most in Sports podcasts, with two others putting the most into Comedy podcasts, and one female-skewing brand — online fashion retailer Quince — spent the most on TV & Film series.

Magellan AI’s monthly ranking of brands that deliver the largest increases in spending in the medium — its list of movers and shakers — is led by ParkWhiz, which spent nothing on podcasting a month earlier. But the list of big brands that made significant increase in their investment is mainly dominated by some of the biggest names. They include tech giant Google, which Magellan estimates spent $3.9 million last month on podcast ads. Other well-known brands that increased spending included Wells Fargo ($2 million), Procter & Gamble ($1.2 million), IBM ($927,000), and Dell ($833,000), among others.

Overall, Magellan says the 15 brands that made big moves in September spent a combined $20.1 million.

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, the number of downloads for each episode, and estimated CPMs as reported in select media kits and estimated based on popularity.