Magellan has released its Podcast Advertising Benchmark Report for Q2 2025. This article concisely examines a portion of the report. We strongly recommend downloading the original, HERE.
After a five-page introduction to the company and its 23 pages of data, the report starts with the bottom line: Key findings.
In compiling the 18 pages of key results, Magellan analyzed podcast advertising data from thousands of popular podcasts in the U.S. — specifically, 94, 938 podcast episodes were under the microscope. Magellan notes this interesting detail: “To account for dynamic insertions, we sampled multiple copies of certain episodes.” The company uses a proprietary model to estimate advertising spend. (Magellan invites queries at this email.)
Reducing the graphic to info bullet points, we learn:
- Growth in both spending and number of advertisers
- Slight rise in ad load
- Top advertisers mostly unchanged
- Healthy advertiser appetite for sports podcasts
- Vigorous adoption of podcast marketing by the shaving industry.
Leaders
Following this theme of consistency, Magellan counts eight of the top ten advertisers as repeats from the previous (Q1) report:
Top Industries
Moving away from single-company spend, Magellan finds that financial services topped the industry list of podcast advertisers, placing spots in 671 podcasts at a cost of about 104 million dollars. Below, the top ten list for this measurement.
What Type of Ad?
While host-read ads get a lot of credit for authenticity and connection with listeners, Magellan’s study shows a different type — produced ads — making the bigger gain over five quarterly reports. Below, we see that host reads still dominate with nearly half of quarterly spend, but produced ads gaining much more, quarter-oever-quarter.
Much more in this Magellan benchmark, including new advertiser metrics, ad loads, ad time as a percentage of the show (it’s more or less seven percent), Q/Q spending change per ad type, how YouTube affects several metrics, ad lengths/positions, and more. So … GET IT HERE.