The secret to podcast advertising success may just be in the numbers. Cumulus Media’s 2025 Audioscape report says many brands are simply going too light on their podcast ad campaigns. “No brand is even coming close to saturating weekly podcast audiences. To solve this issue, brands should allocate 5% of digital ad budgets to podcasting,” says Pierre Bouvard, Chief Insights Officer at Cumulus Media and Westwood One.
The report bases its conclusion on an analysis of data from Edison Podcast Metrics. It shows that even if a brand were to place ads in every one of the top ten podcasts, only slightly more than a third (34.7%) of podcast listeners would be reached. And even if a brand purchased ads in all of the top 500 podcasts, one in four weekly podcast audiences would not be reached.
“There is a lot of room to grow in terms of utilizing podcasts,” Bouvard says in a video detailing the findings. He points to data from Magellan AI that says during the third quarter of 2024, the average new podcast advertiser spent $25,900 on their podcast ads — translating to roughly one million ad impressions. Add to that data from the podcast attribution and measurement firm Podscribe, which shows nearly all podcast advertisers are achieving less than a 25% reach of monthly podcast audiences, with advertisers running less than 500 million monthly impressions where 1.25 billion are necessary to achieve strong mass reach.
“This is the classic definition of spray and pray,” Bouvard says. “This is like a pin prick, not really generating any meaningful business outcomes. It’s mostly an itty bitty, tiny test.”
To scale and “get serious” about podcast advertising, Bouvard suggests marketers need to employ famed media buying executive Arnie Semsky’s so-called 5% solution. It theorized that that is the required spending threshold to generate meaningful impact from an advertising campaign.
The Cumulus report also shows that after five years with a median age of 33 to 34, podcast audiences have aged ever so slightly, with the medium’s median age now 36, according to Edison Research data. That remains much younger than most other media, including broadcast radio, where the average age is a decade older, and broadcast television, where the median age is two decades older.
Podcasts also continue to tighten their grip on audio audiences, according to the report. Among podcast listeners, Edison says more than a third (35%) of all minutes spent with audio now goes to podcasts vs. 26% in 2016.
“Podcasts are grabbing audio time spent share, they’re grabbing reach, and obviously deserve a much larger piece of the media budget,” Bouvard says.
The growth of the medium is also giving marketers a way to add significant incremental reach to their CTV ad buyers, according to Bouvard.
Using data from Screen Engine/ASI, he concludes Hulu’s monthly reach of 32% of U.S. adults 18+ can be nearly doubled to 63% with the overlay of monthly podcast listeners. And podcasts more than triple the reach of Netflix’s ad-supported service to 60% of the U.S. The Screen Engine/ASI data also reveals that 62% of the non-ad-supported video streaming audiences can be reached with podcast advertising.
“Podcast advertising can significantly increase incremental reach for the video services that accept ads, and among those services that don’t accept ads, podcasting can be really one of the few ways to impact those audiences with ads,” Bouvard says.
The report finds that podcasts over-index in the top 10 markets, with cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Boston and San Francisco all having higher levels of adult podcast listening than the overall U.S. average. Those listeners are also more likely to be employed full-time, and have higher household income and education levels.
Download Cumulus Media’s 2025 Audioscape report HERE.