Magellan AI tracks podcast advertising across thousands of popular Australian shows. This analysis uses our proprietary model to estimate ad spend. See our methodology for more details.

Top spenders

The highest-spending brands in Q2 span a broad mix of categories: travel, finance, retail, gambling, food, telecom, and consumer electronics. Eight of the top 10 advertisers in Q2 were top spenders last quarter. To see full flighting, frequency, and historical trends, book a custom demo.

Top industries

Alcohol was the fastest growing industry in Q2 with a 58% Q/Q increase in spend, followed by Auto and Home Goods.

Campaign approach

We classify Direct Response campaigns as those using unique promo codes or vanity URLs. Others fall under Brand Awareness. For Q2, Brand Awareness campaigns made up 82% of all detected ads in Australia.

Ad load

Ad load represents the share of podcast episode time dedicated to advertising. This analysis excludes ads that promote other podcasts. This quarter, we observed an increase both Q/Q and Y/Y.

Top genres by ad load

In Q2, 4 of the 5 genres featured here increased Y/Y ad loads. News Q2 ad loads climbed from 5.85% in 2025 to 6.49% in 2026.

Most common ad lengths and positions

30-second spots and mid-roll placements continue to dominate. All percentages are based on total number of ads detected in Australia.

Methodology

Magellan AI analyzes podcast advertising data from thousands of popular podcasts in Australia. To prepare this report, we analyzed nearly 10,000 episodes of popular podcasts. To account for dynamic insertion, we sampled multiple copies of certain episodes.

For parts of this analysis, we relied on Magellan AI’s proprietary model to estimate advertising spend. Our model incorporates factors including:

• The number of ads and variation in ad load detected for a given episode
• Our estimates for the number of downloads for each episode
• CPM as reported on select media kits and estimated based on popularity
• The type of ads analyzed, including whether they are presented by the host or produced
• Whether ads were delivered programmatically, via a run-of-network (RON) buy, or purchased directly

Campaign objective is determined to be direct response if the ads for that brand include a unique promo code or vanity URL. Other brands are classified as either brand awareness or tune-in.

Podcasts advertising on other podcasts were excluded from our analysis.