• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 11, 2024

Most audio ad spots are still sold direct, but that will change in the coming year as more companies such as Basis Technologies, The Trade Desk, SoundCloud and others expand their programmatic platforms.   

Podcast ads are difficult to buy, according to SoundStack Chief Revenue Officer Rockie Thomas, who spoke at the 2024 asi International Radio & Audio Conference in Venice last week. 

Although brand suitability tools have brought many new advertisers to the medium, she called for an overhaul in terms of the way advertisers buy ads.

It puts digital audio platforms in an interesting position in 2025, especially after The Joe Rogan Experience demonstrated the extent of its followers — about 14.5 million followers just on Spotify. The list of brands that have advertised on his show is vast including Black Rifle Coffee Company, The Farmer's Dog, Simpli Safe, and ZipRecruiter.

Music streaming service SoundCloud this past week teamed up with PubMatic to allow advertisers across the globe to access video and display inventory across the audio streaming platform’s desktop and mobile apps -- although the media is nascent, especially outside the United States.

It is a nascent market at least for now, but that is expected to change. Early in May, the Internet Advertising Bureau released data estimating podcasts reach 135 million monthly listeners in the U.S. and nearly 100 million tuning in weekly.

Many listen to 8.3 weekly episodes on average -- about 6.5 hours. But the amount spent on ads for this platform pales in comparison. At the time of the report, only 9% of audio media consumption translated to ad revenue.

The IAB predicts podcast ad revenue will surpass $2 billion in 2024 and reach nearly $2.6 billion by 2026, attributing the growth to programmatic, new revenue from video and live events, and the growth of smaller categories. 

The increase in popularity and potential opportunity for advertisements led the Cognitive Sciences team at AnalyticsIQ to conduct a large, random, representative sample of the U.S. population to analyze behavior around podcasts and purchasing.

Some 46% of podcast listeners said they learned about a new brand or product, and an additional 23% made a purchase of that product based on an ad or sponsorship.

Emarketer data shows podcasts have become more popular and ad buys are on the rise. This year, U.S. podcast ad spend will reach $2.28 billion, per Emarketer's forecast -- up 15.9% compared with 2023.

The data released in October suggests the average U.S. podcast episode is 9.1% ads -- up from 6% a year ago -- according to Q2 2024 data from Magellan AI, a podcast analytics platform.

True crime at 17.2% has captures the largest average ad loads, putting it ahead of most ad-heavy genre, society and culture, for which ads take up 12.9% of the average episode.

Ads tend to make up a greater percentage of podcast episodes that are around 15 minutes, but the share of ads vs. content falls as the length of the podcast increases.

Consumers are not necessarily listening to those ads. Some 49% of U.S. adults say they skip podcast ads most or all the time, according to Nielsen.