September: Capital One, MyPillow, and other top advertisers 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.
Capital One
Capital One was new to the Top 15 in September. Magellan picked up 19 Capital One ads during the month — all were brand awareness advertisements highlighting things like their “accounts with no fees or minimums,” “instant purchase notifications,” “a great savings rate,” and accounts that “can be opened from anywhere in five minutes.”
Capital One has been advertising consistently (and adding new shows each month) on podcasts since July.
In September, we picked up Capital One’s ads almost exclusively on NPR shows, including Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me, Planet Money, and Hidden Brain.
Magellan has also picked up ads for specific offerings from Capital One — such as the Savor Card, the Quicksilver Card, and their Paribus subsidiary.
MyPillow
MyPillow appeared on the Top 15 for the first time in September. We have picked up ads for MyPillow on Are You Real, a Christianity podcast, since June with a spike in September. We first picked up a host-read MyPillow ad on The Sean Hannity Show in May. We’ve also picked up a lot of MyPillow ads on Rick & Bubba Show.
In a 2-hour episode of Rick & Bubba, we picked up three ads for MyPilllow at roughly 28 minutes in, 42 minutes in, and 54 minutes in. The first and third ad were identical to one another, with the second having slightly different copy. Other episodes have seen up to 5 ads for the brand going into the second hour. In one episode, we’ve seen anywhere from 8 to 43 advertisements total.
Rick & Bubba Show
In September, Rick & Bubba Show made its way into the Top 200 podcasts for the first time since we started measuring. It helped propel advertisers like MyPillow into the top 15 last month.
Rick & Bubba Show is a daily radio program available on over 70 stations. The show first released an episode as a podcast in December 2016. It started out as a weekly show. Publication frequency went up in May, when it started releasing episodes once per weekday.
In September, Rick & Bubba Show started breaking the podcast into 3 episodes: “Kickoff Hour”, “Part 1” and “Part 2”. That change more than doubled the number of episodes that month.
Aside from MyPillow, other top 15 advertisers on the podcast included LifeLock, SimpliSafe, Casper, and Rocket Mortgage.
September 2018 Rankings
Magellan identified 2,007 pre- or mid-roll ads placed on podcasts in September 2018. Out of 431 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. Rocket Mortgage
3. SimpliSafe
4. Casper
5. Squarespace
6. MyPillow
7. Cash App
8. Heineken
9. LifeLock
10. MyBookie
11. Audible
12. Providence St. Jospeh Health
13. Quip
14. Stamps.com
15. Capital One
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 September 2018.
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.
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