Traditional radio still runs a heavier commercial load than most podcasts, according to a new study measuring ads inside 60,000-plus episodes. But a handful of the heaviest-loaded shows indicate that radio companies may be bringing AM/FM-level ad time to the medium.
The numbers come from ZeroAds, a company that sells a subscription service to strip ads from podcast episodes, drawn from more than 60,000 episodes it processed through July 8, 2026. The company acknowledges its own selection bias: users choose which shows to clean, skewing the sample toward talk-heavy US programming and shows listeners already find bothersome.
ZeroAds found a median ad load of 10.2% of episode runtime, or 4.3 minutes per episode, with an average of 5.4 minutes pulled up by a heavier tail. That compares to radio’s traditional commercial load of 12 to 20 minutes per hour, or 20% to 33% of airtime, according to a 2024 Oxford Road and Podscribe study previously reported by Radio Ink.
The heaviest shows in ZeroAds’ catalog close that gap considerably, and all of them run through iHeartMedia. Handel On The Law, the syndicated legal-advice show hosted by KFI’s Bill Handel and distributed via iHeartPodcasts, topped the list at 44% of runtime. Covino & Rich (36.7%), The Ben Maller Show (35.1%), The Jason Smith Show (33.2%) and The Dan Patrick Show (30.1%) are Fox Sports Radio programs, which iHeartMedia distributes through Premiere Networks.
Despite its own research, ZeroAds cautions against treating its numbers as an industry-wide benchmark. The company points to Magellan AI estimates putting average podcast ad load between 5% and 8% of runtime, below both ZeroAds’ own median and radio’s traditional commercial breaks.
