Actionable Insights From $250M in Profitable Podcast Advertising Spend
Krystina Rubino, GM of the Offline Practice at Right Side Up , shares expert advice on how to maximize your podcast advertising ROI, trends to watch for in the audio space, and practical tips for building a successful podcast advertising strategy.
There are 135 million podcast consumers in the US this year alone, up significantly from 2023. This meteoric rise of podcast advertising has been one of the most impressive trends in recent years. This corner of the market surpassed $2B in revenue this year and is on track to reach $2.6B by 2026.
So why isn’t podcast advertising in your marketing mix yet?
Podcast advertising has a unique effectiveness in reaching highly engaged, niche audiences. A large portion of these listeners—61.6% of which are Millennials and Gen Z—tune in regularly, making podcasting a powerful tool for advertisers targeting younger demographics.?
But that’s not all: The podcast industry has also expanded beyond traditional ads, with strategies like live podcasting and subscription models offering additional (and very lucrative) revenue streams.
Need to know more? Krystina Rubino , GM of Right Side Up ’s Offline Practice, has built one of the world’s largest performance advertising podcast practices by managing over $250 million in profitable media investment for her clients. In a recent AMA on LinkedIn, Krystina shared her wealth of knowledge on podcast and audio advertising while answering questions from marketers eager to cash in on the podcast marketing gold rush.?
This recap will cover key takeaways from Krystina’s insights and provide actionable strategies you can incorporate into your 2025 growth plans.
Perfecting the Practice of Podcast Advertising: Insights from $250M in Profitable Investment
Q: How do you balance brand awareness and direct response goals in a podcast campaign??
A: Podcasting is one of the most trusted mediums. Much like television—but at a lower cost—it can potentially and favorably impact metrics.
For the best results in podcast advertising, Krystina recommends investing in host-read ads (where the host of the podcast personally endorses the product), buying ads on an episode-by-episode basis or through well-timed ad flights, and managing the frequency of ads to avoid overexposure.
These strategies help boost brand awareness and trust, creating a ripple effect across other marketing channels. As advertisers scale their efforts, they need to track key growth metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV), ensuring that even large campaigns stay focused on optimizing performance.
Q: Will AI affect podcast advertising?
A: It already has! Like other industries, AI can help with repetitive tasks, freeing up time for more strategic work. A specific use case in the podcasting industry is using AI to categorize shows based on audience size, which can then be analyzed for performance correlations.?
AI-powered tools like Wondercraft are streamlining content creation and ad production, making it easier for advertisers to quickly customize audio assets—even for those without existing content or with limited resources. Brands can quickly and more efficiently test audio advertising so they have more room to play with creative execution.
Q: What’s the right strategy balancing host/show selection and programmatic scale for non-profits specifically??
A: Non-profit companies notoriously don’t have large marketing budgets—and that’s okay! Budget alignment is key when finding the right fit for podcast advertising initiatives.?
Shift focus to finding categories of shows, particular shows, or hosts with direct or personal connections to the cause your non-profit supports. Authenticity is more powerful than even the largest marketing budget, and you’ll want your message to reach an audience with whom it will resonate.
Non-profits (and other verticals) work with Right Side Up because we take the manual work of podcast advertising off their hands. While scaling podcast ads can be time-consuming, we act as an extension of in-house teams, bringing cross-client buying power, deep performance data, and best practices to the table. This gives brands the flexibility of fractional in-house consulting with the added benefit of our expertise.
Q: Where should a new brand begin? Agency, guerilla/DIY outreach, initial spend?
A: The best podcast ad inventory is still often sold directly through publisher or network partnerships. You need a knowledgeable partner managing your campaign to save both time and money.?
Traditional agencies typically require a minimum commitment of $250K per quarter due to their fees (about 15% of gross spend), but that’s a significant ask for brands who want to test podcast advertising without such a large investment.
In that regard, a more effective approach would be to start with an initial 9-12 week test with a media spend of $75-80K as a minimum, with $95-110K being optimal, and $125K+ for scaled efforts. A balanced mix of show sizes and verticals, with enough integrations, ensures clear insights for iterative testing.
Q: Podcasts: Audio vs. video?
A: As much as you may not want to hear it—it’s both. Simulcast shows have seen stellar performance over the last few years and, as a medium, video’s growth shows no signs of slowing down. Audio-led shows need to expand to video in order to broaden their audiences, and vice-versa.
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“The one caveat from an advertiser's perspective is that we have noticed that some shows are getting a little too aggressive in predicting overall volume & falling short on deliveries because (for example) video consumption on YouTube swings kind of wildly from episode to episode. So it's important to be accurate, if not conservative, or you'll wind up seeing renewal rates decrease,” says Krystina.
Q: Should my company pursue podcast advertising or not?
A: Based on her experience, Krystina has seen shared traits from brands and organizations who succeed in podcast advertising, as well as shared traits from those who can absolutely make the channel work, but have a more challenging path to strong ROAS.
Great candidates for podcast advertising:
- Direct to consumer e-commerce, especially subscription-based
- Nascent brands with broad potential customer bases
- Products that require consumer education
- Advertisers who have successfully scaled other paid acquisition channels
- Advertisers in a competitive category/space who are first to market in podcast advertising
Companies more likely to struggle:
- Advertisers late to the medium in overly saturated categories
- Products or services with regional vs. national presence or product availability
- CPG without a D2C component
- Products with older (55+) demographics, though this is changing as podcast listeners age but there is still a very limited scale (you're better off in other forms of audio like radio and even streaming)
- Brick and mortar retail (more of a measurement challenge vs. an inherent lack of fit)?
Q: Is a hyper-local direct response marketing strategy possible with podcast advertising?
A: Five years ago? No way. Now? Absolutely.
There’s more inventory than ever, as over half of the US population actively listens to podcasts monthly. With that, targeting has become much, much more powerful in recent years. You can now use advanced targeting to digitally serve well-crafted, host-read ads, track performance with a pixel, and ensure your ads are shown only in areas that match your coverage through precise DMA targeting.
Q: What's the best podcast ad campaign you've seen booked that your team has not managed and why?
A: Krystina’s a huge fan of AG1 . “They've done a few things VERY right, starting with hiring some of the best in-house talent in the biz and keeping a relentless focus on performance even as they've scaled into one of the top advertisers in the medium,” she shares.
Q: How can you set up podcast tracking and reporting to give clients the best visibility into KPIs and performance?
A: There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach because—transparently—every method in-market has its drawbacks. For example, not every network partner in the podcast space accepts pixel-based measurement across their portfolio. Privacy challenges also continue to create obstacles for IP-based attribution tactics.
Krystina recommends the following workflow to ensure the best reporting and visibility into that performance:
Make Offline a Priority in Your Multichannel Marketing Mix with Right Side Up
Digital may have dominated the last decade (and then some) of marketing, but some of the world’s top brands have seen measurable if not exorbitant growth from podcast advertising.
If you want to scale your offline marketing efforts with highly targeted radio and podcast campaigns, Right Side Up ’s offline practice can help. Click here to learn more about our podcast advertising capabilities and, when you’re ready, book time with Krystina & our team to learn how we can help you grow.