Podcast Advertising in 2026: What It Costs and Who to Buy From

Spotify Ads Manager is Spotify's self-service platform: you set the budget, a bid cap, pacing and frequency, and the campaign minimum is 250 in your local currency. Ads run on Spotify's own audience across music and podcasts, targeted by demographics, interests, genres and podcast categories. Custom podcast sponsorships such as host-read ads go through a Spotify sales rep.

AudioGO is SiriusXM Media's self-serve ad manager for small and medium-size businesses and agencies. It runs audio ads across music streaming, digital radio and podcast apps, targets down to a local ZIP code, and has dynamic pricing with budgets from $250 a campaign. It will also produce an ad read by a voice actor for $10.

Acast sells ads across the shows it hosts and represents, either on its self-serve platform from $500 a campaign or as a managed campaign with its team. Its 2026 cost guide puts pre-recorded ads at $15 to $30 CPM and host-read sponsorships at $25 to $40, with business and finance shows at $40 and up. Targeting covers age, gender, language, location down to city, interests and podcast category.

Gumball, run by Headgum, is a marketplace for host-read ads on podcasts and YouTube. You choose shows by category, keywords, air dates and audience, see each show's price, and check out with a card, or bring in its sales team. It offers per-episode category exclusivity, so a competitor cannot appear in the same episode.

SpotsNow is a free self-serve marketplace for host-read podcast and YouTube ads: enter your website and budget, add shows to a cart, and pay only after the host approves. It sells last-minute spots at up to 67% off. SpotsNow Pro runs the campaign for you from a $5,000 spend, for a 12% fee (15% under $30,000 a month).

Libsyn Ads (the old AdvertiseCast address now leads here) lets you research inventory in an online marketplace, then place the order with its sales team. It prices by downloads in an episode's first 30 days and publishes a full rate table: host-read ads at $24 to $26 CPM for 60 seconds and $18 to $22 for 30, dynamic back-catalog ads at $14 to $16 and programmatic at $12 to $15. Shows need 20,000 downloads an episode to join.

True Native Media is a rep firm that sells host-read ads only on the independent podcasts it represents. It typically charges a $30 CPM for pre-roll and mid-roll reads, which usually run about 60 seconds, and recommends spending at least $5,000, starting with a test campaign. Its campaigns range from $5,000 to $100,000 and up.

RedCircle, also a podcast host, runs a managed service that gets podcast hosts to read your ads and handles the campaign, with weekly reporting and real-time attribution. It sells creator-read, video and programmatic ads, and lets you filter shows by category, country, weekly downloads and audience. Prices are given through its sales team.

Audioboom, a public UK company, sells live reads and host endorsements from its top 250 creators through a managed Premium Network, and dynamically inserted ads through Showcase, a self-serve portal targeting genre, location, keywords and demographics. It says its shows are downloaded more than 180 million times a month by 58 million listeners.

iHeartMedia sells ads on its podcasts through the same sales team as its radio stations, by phone or form. Formats include host-read endorsements, announcer-read and dynamically inserted spots, branded content and local, regional and national sponsorships. It cites more than 162 million podcast downloads a month (Podtrac, September 2026).

SiriusXM Media sells ads on SiriusXM's podcasts and on partner networks, three ways: a direct managed buy, programmatic through most ad-buying platforms, or self-serve through AudioGO. Podcast options include announcer-read and host-read ads and custom bonus episodes, with targeting by category, transcript content, show and episode.

AdLarge Media sells radio, podcast and streaming audio together, with a hands-on sales and ad operations team for every campaign. Its podcast network has more than 150 shows across true crime, finance, lifestyle and history, and it bought Inlet Media in January 2026.

Oxford Road calls itself the world's largest podcast advertising agency and says it places over 200,000 brand integrations a year. It handles host vetting, creative, media buying and attribution, using its own audio performance data, across podcasts, radio, streaming and creator media.

Ad Results Media is a podcast advertising agency for brands focused on customer acquisition, with case studies from direct-to-consumer and retail brands. It buys host-read endorsements, dynamically inserted ads, branded segments and programmatic, writes the scripts, and tracks results with promo codes, vanity links and reporting. It says small test campaigns can start on modest monthly budgets.

Audiohook buys podcast, streaming and radio inventory with its own money and charges you only per conversion, either a fixed amount or a share of each sale. You apply first; it suits brands with roughly 3,000 to 5,000 conversions and 100,000 page views a month, and needs a 30-day commitment with a $10,000 monthly spend cap. Targeting is automatic: you do not pick the shows.

Podscribe is independent measurement for podcast and audio ads: pixel-based attribution, conversion-lift tests and automated air checks that catch errors in the ads that ran. It publishes its prices: $1.50 per 1,000 measured impressions for the first 2 million, falling to $1.05 at volume, plus a $250 monthly platform fee and no minimum commitment.

Magellan AI combines podcast ad intelligence (who is advertising where), media planning, air checks, brand safety and pixel attribution. It publishes a free monthly ranking of the top podcast advertisers and quarterly benchmarks; its Q2 2026 report puts the median response rate of the campaigns it measured at 2.23% and podcast ad spending up 23% year on year.

Barometer checks podcast episodes for brand safety and suitability using what is actually said, not keyword lists, and powers contextual targeting. Most buyers use it through the ad platforms it is built into, including The Trade Desk, rather than buying it on its own.