Standard Podcast Ads Deliver Double-Digit Brand Lift.

Standard pre-, mid- and post-roll podcast ads continue to deliver meaningful gains for advertisers, according to a new benchmark report from Signal Hill Insights that finds even traditional podcast commercials generate double-digit improvements in brand perception and purchase intent.

The firm’s 2026 Benchmark Report establishes industry benchmarks using aggregated brand lift data from 38,704 podcast listeners. The first report focuses on 24,922 consumers exposed to standard podcast ads, providing advertisers with new reference points for evaluating campaign performance.

Overall, the study found standard podcast ads increased brand rating by 11.4 percentage points and purchase intent by 11.6 points, while also boosting consideration by 8.8 points and familiarity by 2.6 points.

“Overall, these everyday podcast ads are quite effective in driving lifts across the funnel, though things are more pronounced in the mid-funnel,” Signal Hill President Paul Riismandel writes in a blog post accompanying the report. “The takeaway is that standard podcast ads are able to reinforce brand and product qualities that increase an audience’s favorability, moving them closer to purchase.”

The analysis aggregates brand lift metrics from podcast listeners and viewers surveyed in 2024 and 2025, allowing Signal Hill to go beyond averages and report metrics by industry vertical, ad length and integration type, as well as audio and video. “Our new benchmarking initiative represents a fresh approach to establishing reference points for the performance of podcast advertising,” Riismandel says.

Those deeper cuts reveal meaningful differences depending on the advertiser and the content. Among the strongest performers were consumer packaged goods brands. CPG advertisers generated purchase intent lift of 12.7 points overall — 1.1 points above the overall benchmark. Results were even stronger among women, where purchase intent climbed 15.7 points, or 4.1 points above the overall average. Consideration also rose to 10.3 points among female respondents vs. the overall benchmark of 8.8 points.

The findings also show standout performances from education and self-improvement podcasts. Advertisers sponsoring shows in that genre posted brand rating lift of 17.9 points, consideration lift of 15.0 points and purchase intent lift of 27.4 points — more than twice the overall benchmark for purchase intent and 15.8 points higher than the average across all podcast categories.

The report also offers one of its first large-scale comparisons between audio and video podcast advertising.

While video ads produced somewhat stronger results across brand rating, consideration and purchase intent, the differences were relatively modest. Both formats generated identical familiarity lift of 2.4 points, while purchase intent measured 12.5 points for video vs. 10.5 points for audio — a difference of just two points. The report concludes that audio and video podcasts are “very close” in mid-funnel performance.

“The most reasonable conclusion is that, on average, right now there is no notable difference in brand lift performance between standard podcast ads on audio or video,” Riismandel says.

The comparison also reflects how quickly video has become part of the podcast advertising landscape. In 2023, Signal Hill didn’t measure brand lift for any video podcasts. But in 2024, nearly a quarter (24%) included video. And the latest benchmark report now draws just over half of its performance data from video podcast campaigns.

“That’s a huge jump,” Riismandel writes, “reflecting the growth in the video podcast audience and advertisers’ increased interest in tapping the opportunity.”

Signal Hill says the current report is only the first installment in a broader benchmarking initiative. Future reports planned for later this year will examine additional audience demographics, advertiser categories, content genres and ad formats to provide more detailed reference points than traditional industry averages.

Download the report HERE.