Podcast advertising rates

Podcast ads are sold on CPM: a price per thousand downloads. A rate of twenty five dollars CPM on an episode that gets two thousand downloads pays fifty dollars for that slot.

The download window matters and is often left vague. Most deals count downloads in the first thirty days after publication, so evergreen episodes that keep accumulating listens do not keep accumulating payment. Agree the window explicitly.

A download is also not a listen. It counts a file request, not a human who heard your read. Advertisers know this, which is part of why rates sit where they do.

There are three positions. Pre-roll sits before the content, mid-roll inside it, post-roll at the end. They are not priced equally and the gap is large.

Mid-roll commands the highest rate, typically well above pre-roll, because anyone still listening halfway through has demonstrated genuine attention. Pre-roll is cheaper because plenty of people skip it. Post-roll is worth the least and is often thrown in.

Host-read ads earn more than pre-produced ones across every slot. The advertiser is buying your credibility rather than your airtime, which is the whole economic logic of the format.

Commonly quoted industry figures put pre-roll somewhere in the mid teens per thousand and mid-roll in the mid twenties to low thirties. Treat those as orientation rather than a price list.

Rates move with the ad market, vary by category, and differ substantially between a general interest show and a specialist one. Anyone quoting you a single precise figure for all podcasts is simplifying. Check current benchmarks before you negotiate anything significant.

The number that actually decides your rate is not the benchmark, it is who is listening. A show reaching two thousand dentists is worth far more per thousand than one reaching two thousand people with nothing in common.

Below roughly a thousand downloads an episode, CPM produces numbers too small to be worth either side's paperwork. This is where most shows are, and where most give up on the idea.

The move is to stop selling downloads. Sell a flat-fee package instead: a season sponsorship, a series of host-read mentions, a mention plus a newsletter placement plus social. A local business or a niche tool will pay a sensible flat fee for access to exactly their people and will not think in CPM at all.

Affiliate arrangements work at this size too, because they pay on action rather than reach. Between flat fees and affiliate, a small committed audience is monetisable well before the CPM model would say so.

A media kit does not need design. It needs average downloads per episode over the last ten, who your listeners are, where they are, your rates by slot, and what a sponsor gets. One page.

Use your average, not your best. Quoting a spike from one unusual episode is the fastest way to lose a renewal when the reporting comes in, and advertisers compare what you promised against what arrived.

The paragraph that matters most is the one describing your listener. That is what an advertiser is actually buying, and it is the part that lets a small show charge a rate a large show cannot.

A host-read ad works because someone who has listened to you for months believes you. That is the whole product, and it is why rates for the same audience size vary so widely.

Which sets a limit worth respecting. Read a spot for something you would not use and you spend the asset to earn the fee. Turn those down, keep publishing consistently, and the rate you can charge rises on its own.