January 2022: 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 & Shakers
Wix
Wix’s 1087% increase in spend landed them on both our top spenders and top movers & shakers lists for January. Magellan AI first detected the brand in April 2018 but detected a big increase in both the volume of ads and spend in November 2021 and January 2022. In January, Wix spent 30% more in a single month than they had for the entirety of 2021.
Wix targeted business podcasts like The School of Greatness, Side Hustle School, BiggerPockets Money Podcast, and How To Money with brand awareness ad copy that highlighted their full suite of features. The ads are primarily placed in a mid-roll position and average 65 seconds.
Lexus
Lexus’ 46x increase in spend between December 2021 and January 2022 included ads promoting four of their models but the biggest proportion of spend was on the 2022 Lexus NX. The updated Lexus NX arrived at dealerships in the fall of 2021 but wasn't mentioned in podcast ads until January 2022.
When the updated Lexus IS was released in fall of 2020, spend was highest in January and February 2021 - time will tell if the NX promotions follow the trend.
Hear the brand awareness ads in Millennial Investing and The Clark Howard Podcast. The majority of the ads are host-read ads in a mid-roll position averaging just over 1 minute in length.
Slack
Historically, January has been Slack’s highest spend month for the past 3 years and while we don't know what the future holds, the 29x increase in spend between December and January may be a good indication that the rest of the year will look similar. January 2022 was Slack’s highest spending month ever, a 36% increase over January 2021.
The higher spend also came with some new ad copy: in January 2021, Slack ran mostly 30 second produced ads with the tagline “Slack, where work happens.” In January 2022, the ads were still averaging 31 seconds but have shifted to scripted host-read ads that feature the tag line “where the future works.”
The brand awareness ads are primarily placed in a mid-roll position on podcasts in the Society & Culture genre. Hear the ads on TechStuff and Hidden Brain.
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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