About this site
Who writes this, and why
We built the reference we wished we had when we started buying podcast ads: what cleared, what failed, and which numbers are sturdy enough to plan against.
Why this site exists
Most of what gets written about podcast advertising is either a sales page or a listicle that recycles the same three stats. Neither helps someone with a budget and a decision to make. We wanted one place that explains the mechanics plainly: what a CPM buys, why host reads work, how to price a test, and how to tell whether it paid off.
The whole guide is free to read, and none of it is gated. If it saves you from a bad first campaign, it did its job.
Who writes it
The people behind this site buy and sell podcast ads for a living. The rate ranges, the failure patterns, the negotiation levers, the verification habits: they come from doing the work across thousands of campaigns. Between them, the desks behind these pages have bought and sold more than a billion dollars of podcast advertising. That is also why the site says plainly when you do not need help, which formats are not worth your money, and where the industry's own numbers are softer than its decks admit.
One more thing about the names you'll see on these chapters: they're pen names. The writers use them so they can describe working deals, and the mistakes around them, without asking an employer's communications team to approve every sentence.
Editorial standards
- Market statistics are cited to primary sources, chiefly the IAB/PwC revenue studies and Edison Research's Infinite Dial, with publication dates shown.
- Rate ranges come from real buying, current rate cards and negotiated deals we track across the market, cross-checked against published benchmarks. They are planning numbers, and we say so.
- Pages carry their update date, and we revise when major industry reports publish each spring.
- Written from inside the industry, not above it. The people behind this site buy and sell podcast ads professionally, and companies get named here when a working buyer would name them. Read everything with that perspective in mind; it is the same perspective that makes the advice worth having.
- Corrections are welcome. If a number here is wrong or stale, tell us and we will fix it.
Contact
Questions, corrections, or a campaign you want to talk through: reach us at hello@podcastadvertising.com, or use the plan a campaign form and tell us what you are trying to do.