Magellan goes across the pond: top podcast advertisers in the UK

Magellan provides podcast advertising analytics to networks like AudioBoom and brands like SimpliSafe: learn more.

2 min readNov 13, 2019

Magellan has published a list of top podcast advertisers in the US — ranked by number of ad detections — since April 2018.

At the RAIN Summit Europe 2019, we’re excited to announce the same report, but based on the top 200 podcasts in the UK. To make sure we’re capturing ads targeting the UK market, Magellan analyzes audio files downloaded via our servers in the UK.

Comparison

Magellan determines the top 200 podcasts in the UK each week by analyzing the rankings in Apple Podcasts.

Just because a podcast ranks highly in the UK doesn’t mean it’s serving up ads tailored to that market. In fact, the audio files being served up were the same between the US and the UK for 24% of the podcasts we analyzed during September.

There’s also some overlap between advertisers: brands like ZipRecruiter, Rocket Mortgage, and HelloFresh should all be familiar to US podcast listeners.

Magellan does track some advertisers that are truly unique to the UK market, though. Brands like BT Compete WIFI and Paddy Power have only run on podcast episodes captured in the UK.

Spotlight: Norton 360

Norton 360 kicks off our list as the most frequent podcast advertiser on episodes downloaded in the UK. Notably, Magellan first picked up ads for Norton 360 in the UK in September, before ads for the brand made their way across the pond to the US in October.

Magellan recognized ads for Norton 360 on 21 different podcasts, including multiple shows from The Economist, Financial Times, and The Guardian. All podcasts featuring Norton 360 ads were hosted by Acast.

September 2019

Magellan identified 340 brands or products on the top 200 during the month, the top 15 are listed below. Click to play a sample mid-roll or pre-roll ad for each advertiser:

Methodology:

Every week, Magellan samples episodes from the top 200 shows that rank in the Top Podcasts view available through Apple Podcasts in the UK. This sample includes up to seven episodes from shows that published new episodes in September 2019.

The brands listed above were ranked by the number of individual pre- and mid-roll ads that appeared in our sample. Podcasts advertising on other podcasts, foundations, and those advertising on only one show were excluded from the sample.

Magellan AI creates tools that help marketers at brands like SimpliSafe, Wix, and ThredUP 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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