December 2021: Top spenders, movers and shakers in podcast advertising
In addition to our monthly post, we review the previous month's creative, trends, and spend in our market update webinar. Register to join us!
Top spenders
Top movers and shakers
Pfizer-BioNTech
The FDA granted their full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Comirnaty, in August 2021. With that approval, Pfizer-BioNTech gained the ability to advertise the vaccine. Pfizer teamed up with Ogilvy for their global communication and advertising plan and also launched 2 TV ads with agency VMLY&R.
In podcast ads, Pfizer promoted their drugs Eucrisa and Ibrance in 2021 but Magellan AI first detected Comirnaty and the joint Pfizer-BioNTech branded ads in December of 2021.
The brand awareness ads were most concentrated in the sports genre and can be heard on Irish Breakdown and Jim Cornette’s Drive Through.
GiveWell
GiveWell is a nonprofit that assesses and recommends charities to their users in an effort to help donors’ dollars do the most good. GiveWell made our movers & shakers list with a 1213% increase in spend between November and December in 2021. In both 2020 and 2021, the nonprofit increased their spending in December and August but their investment in December 2021 was 3.7x higher than it was in December 2020.
The majority of GiveWell’s ads are in a mid-roll position and were detected as far back as 2017. In December, the ads were most commonly detected in the News, Business, Society & Culture genres. The direct-response ads featured a call to action to have donations matched by entering the podcast name at the time of donation. Hear the ads on Left, Right & Center and Smart Passive Income Online Business and Blogging Podcast.
KFC
KFC launched a new order ahead service in November of 2021 in an effort to decrease the time consumers typically spend waiting in a drive-thru line. We first detected the brand in October of 2018 but their investment in the channel has remained low. Prior to December 2021, their spend was highest in March 2021 when they promoted their new Crispy Chicken Sandwich.
The brand awareness ads were most highly concentrated in the TV & Film genre. The ads averaged :38 and were split between pre- and mid-roll ads. Hear the ads on The History of Literature and Bachelor Party.
Methodology
Magellan AI analyzes podcast advertising data from the top 3,000 podcasts in the U.S., as ranked by Apple Podcasts. For parts of this analysis, we relied on Magellan AI’s proprietary model to estimate advertising spend. Our model incorporates a number of factors, including:
- The number of ads and variation in ad load detected for a given episode
- Number of downloads for each episode
- CPM, as reported on select media kits and estimated based on popularity
From time to time we adjust our model based on new inputs and user input.
Magellan AI creates tools that help marketers at brands like SimpliSafe, Wix, and BetterHelp spend intelligently on podcast advertising. Podcast publishers like WNYC and Audioboom use Magellan to track advertisers spending money in the podcast space. Learn More.
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