Podcast Ad Spending To Rise 47% To $2.1B This Year


U.S. podcast ad revenue is estimated to grow 47% to $2.1 billion, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and consulting firm PwC.

It is projected that podcast ad revenue will tack on another 45% to $3.1 billion in 2023, and 37% more to $4.2 billion by 2024.

In 2021, financial services represented the biggest advertising category with a 15% share, while retail direct-to-consumer and art/entertainment/media were also at 11%, followed by CPG at 8%; retail (brick-and-mortar/ecommerce) at 6%; and pharma at 5% as well as Telco. Automotive came in at 4%.

Retail direct -to-consumer (D2C) had a lower share than in 2020 (19%), but volume increased.

Automated advertising messaging -- through dynamically inserted advertising -- continued to rise to now comprise 84% of all podcast advertising, with 16% of advertising edited into podcast content after the fact.

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Mid-roll messaging comprised the bulk of ad revenues in 2021 -- at a 64% share (compared to 76% in 2020).

Preroll is now at 32% (compared to 22% the year before), while post-roll was 4% (2% in 2020). Fifty-five percent of podcast ad messaging is between 16 and 30 seconds in length.

The research says 52% of podcast ads were direct-response, followed by 46% that were brand awareness and 3% that were branded content -- virtually the same levels as they were the two previous years.

The biggest content genre for podcast ad revenue is news programming, at 19%. Comedy is next at 13%, followed by society/culture; 12%; sports; 11%; true crime, 10%; and business 7%. Seventy percent of ad revenue comes from weekly or bi/weekly podcasts.

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