August: Football Season and top brands advertising on podcasts
More than 4,000 brands have advertised on podcasts. Get a heads-up when new brands test podcasts as a marketing channel for the first time: learn more.
Football season
The 2018 regular NFL season started on September 6th and preseason games were played throughout August. We observed an uptick in advertising from brands coinciding with the football season, with over 100 ads mentioning football during the month.
SeatGeek is consistently a top advertiser on podcasts, but we detected about double the number of ads in August as in July. Many of SeatGeek’s ads mention a variety of tickets available through the site — football, baseball, basketball, hockey, concerts, theater — but the first ones to mention football were in July and many more did in August.
We picked up FanDuel ads on the top 200 podcasts again in August — FanDuel last advertised on podcasts in September 2017. Ads for FanDuel only appeared on shows where SeatGeek also advertised: Pardon My Take, Fantasy Football Today Podcast, Fantasy Footballers, The Bill Simmons Podcast, The Ringer NFL Show.
The NFL advertised its NFL Game Pass service, which unlocks digital content including replays of every game, on Fantasy Football Today Podcast, Fantasy Footballers, and FantasyPros.
DirecTV advertised its NFL Sunday Ticket service, which unlocks streaming of Sunday NFL games not available on national TV, on Pardon My Take, The Pat McAfee Show, and The Ringer NFL Show.
Other football season advertisements we saw included DraftKings on the Monday Morning Podcast, Yahoo! Fantasy Football and BetDSI on Pardon My Take, Skybook Sportsbook on The Underdog.
Football season ads are a competitive space with many advertisers on the same shows and direct competitors even advertising on the same episodes. For example, an August 15 episode of The Ringer NFL Show included ads for NFL Sunday Ticket, Yahoo! Fantasy Football, and FanDuel.
August 2018 Rankings
Magellan identified 1,976 pre- or mid-roll ads placed on podcasts in August 2018. Out of 437 brands or products advertised during the month, the top 15 are listed below. Click to play a sample mid-roll or pre-roll ad for each advertiser:
1. ZipRecruiter
2. Squarespace
3. Rocket Mortgage
4. SimpliSafe
5. SeatGeek
6. Cash App
7. Quip
8. Casper
9. Blue Apron
10. Stamps.com
11. MGM: Operation Finale
12. FreshBooks
13. FanDuel
14. Madison Reed
15. Honey
Methodology
Every week, Magellan samples episodes from 2000 shows that rank in the Top Podcasts view available through Apple Podcasts in the US. This sample includes up to two episodes from shows that published new episodes in August 2018.
The brands listed above were ranked by the number of individual pre- and mid-roll ads that appeared in our sample. Brands advertising on more shows or with more mid-roll ads were weighted more heavily multiple brands ran the same number of ads. Podcasts advertising on other podcasts, foundations, and those advertising on only one show were excluded from the sample.
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