September 2021: Top spenders, movers and shakers in podcast advertising
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Top spenders
Top movers & shakers
FanDuel
The official NFL season kicked off September 9th and along with it, sports-focused advertisers. The fantasy sports industry as a whole increased spend by 121% ($3.4mm) from August to September in 2021 and FanDuel increased their spend by 468% in the same time period. Looking at the same time last year, FanDuel spent 7x more in September 2021 compared to September 2020.
The brand has consistently run ads in podcasts since we first detected them in 2018 and increased their investment for both college basketball season and NFL football season. Earlier this year, their increased spend for March basketball landed them on our March movers & shakers list.
96% of FanDuel’s ads ran in a midroll position with an average length of :54. Their placements were concentrated in the sports genre, and dominated by host-read ads. Hear their direct response ads on 3 and Out with John Middlekauff and Star Wars Theory.
DirecTV
DirecTV is another advertiser taking advantage of football season hype. In 2020 and now again in 2021, DirecTV wasn’t detected in podcast ads until August and in 2020, disappeared by mid-October. In September this year, the ads were promoting DirecTV STREAM whereas last year, the ads promoted cable packages including NFL Sunday Ticket. While there is less focus on sports in this year’s ad copy, most of DirecTV’s ads ran in the Sports genre.
DirecTV’s ads included scripted and pre-produced ads primarily in a mid-roll position. Hear their brand awareness ads on PTI and Jalen and Jacoby.
Novo
Novo was founded in 2018 and quickly gained traction - the banking app has already reached over $1 billion in transactions. Magellan AI first detected Novo on podcasts in August 2021, on just 4 shows but that quickly grew to 16 in September. Along with the increased number of shows, Novo increased their spend by 11x between August and September.
To reach the small business audience, Novo concentrated their ads in the Business, Tech, and News genres with mostly host-read ads. The mid-roll ads had a long run time, averaging 2:19. Hear their direct response ads on TechStuff and On Brand with Donny Deutsch.
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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