As advertisers continue to prioritize sports podcasts, brands across all industries are diversifying their podcast ad spending to capture holiday season traffic. Magellan AI’s November podcast advertising rankings reflected a month of sizeable revenue.
BetterHelp claimed the month’s top spot, investing over $8.6 million. Amazon dropped to second place in November with $7.9 million, while T-Mobile maintained its presence in third, increasing its investment to $6.4 million from $5.9 million in October.
The rankings emphasize the dominance of sports podcasts as a key advertising target, with BetterHelp, Amazon, and T-Mobile all prioritizing the genre. Sports podcasts continued to capture the majority of top ad spenders, with major players like Capital One, SimpliSafe, and DraftKings also increasing their month-over-month investments.
While sports remains the leading genre, other categories are gaining traction. Quince led in the True Crime space, while Norton focused on News podcasts.
Bartesian topped Magellan AI’s Top Movers & Shakers list for November, with a month-over-month ad spend increase of over 20,000%. The brand, which makes premium cocktail machines, invested over $3.3 million after spending just $16,300 in October.
Etsy also made a significant leap, boosting its ad spend to $933,600 – up by 2,027% – as the holiday shopping season kicked into gear.
Retail brands, including Burlington Stores, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Sterling Jewelers, surged in spending, reflecting strong pre-holiday promotional pushes. Meanwhile, food and travel advertisers also ramped up their presence. Amplify Snack Brands and Skylight each posted percentage gains of over 42,000%.
Magellan AI’s analysis of podcast advertising for the top 3,000 US podcasts is based on a proprietary model that estimates ad spend using factors like ad frequency, episode downloads, CPMs, ad types, and podcast revenue estimates calibrated against network data and brand share-of-voice metrics.
The full list is available via Magellan AI.
