January 2021: Top spenders, movers, and shakers
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 & shakers
Spotlight
Carmax
Compared to other major industries like business services and direct-to-consumer products, the auto industry is a small player in podcast advertising. We’ve seen a few brands pop up over time: Mazda made our top 15 spenders in September 2020 and Hyundai was on our movers & shakers list in December 2020. In November 2020, Carvana made up 23% of spend in the auto industry and this month, Carmax’s million dollar investment made up 24% of the total spend in the industry. While Carmax has been running some small scale testing in the channel for some time, December 2020 was the first month they spent >$100k and they quickly increased their investment 10x to total $1.0mm.
Listen to ads from Carmax on Stuff Mom Never Told You and Unexplained Mysteries.
PetSmart
Pandemic pets became a popular trend with so many households staying home - about 12.6 million households welcomed a pandemic pet into their home between March and December, according to the American Pet Products Association. With podcast listener numbers growing, it made sense for PetSmart to bet big in podcast advertising.
Similar to the automotive industry, the pet industry is a small industry with a few big advertisers and PetSmart has established themselves as the breakaway leader. Magellan AI first detected ads for the brand in December 2020 on just 2 shows. In January, PetSmart ads appeared in 38 shows in January. The next biggest spender in the pet industry, PrettyLitter, has a long way to go if they want to catch up with their January spend estimated at $200k.
PetSmart, a brand awareness advertiser, spent $8.5mm in January 2021. Listen to ads from PetSmart on The Watch and In The Bubble: From the Front Lines.
Intuit
Intuit is gearing up for tax season! The 1442% increase in spend this month was primarily to promote their TurboTax brand and specifically, the TurboTax Live service. Intuit posted an impressive 70% growth in the adoption of the service and added millions of users to their platform in general. We’ll expect to see an even higher investment in the coming months.
This significant increase has been a trend for the brand over the past few years but this is the most they’ve spent in any January. Competitor H&R Block also makes a seasonal investment in podcast advertising but only spent an estimated $100k and appeared on only 8 shows in January.
Intuit, a brand awareness advertiser, spent $3.5mm in January 2021. Listen to ads from Intuit on First Take and Ear Biscuits.
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 ThredUP 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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