As big brands flood the podcast ad space, startups are refining strategies to stand out

While that influx of big advertisers is good news for podcast companies, it also makes it more challenging for small- to mid-sized brands to stand out in the space. After all, host-read ads became popular among startup and DTC brands initially because it was a relatively untapped space, and they gave listeners an authentic, direct call to action through a unique promo code.

Those bullish on the channel still argue that when podcast creators endorse a brand, listeners tend to respond to the promotion due to their trusting dynamic with hosts. However, with major retailers getting in on the audio marketing tactic, smaller brands are now being pushed to test and continuously invest in this channel until they find the right shows that convert customers. And it’s not always the biggest shows that help brands reach the most effective audience.

Testing the waters as a new brand

Asset, a self-described butt-care brand, is one startup that began testing podcast ads this fall. Asset, which launched in 2024 with a serum, has had a difficult time advertising its products on digital paid channels like Instagram and TikTok due to censorship. 

Asset founder Chad O’Connell told Modern Retail he wanted to try podcast ad reads because they revolve around the hosts communicating the product’s efficacy in a matter-of-fact way. That led the brand to buy spots on Trixie Mattel’s “The Bald and the Beautiful,” whose audience largely comprises LGBTQ listeners. The ad ran in late September and offered 15% off listeners’ first Asset purchase. In October, Asset also ran recent ads on “Race Chaser with Alaska & William,” which covers all things “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

The grand total for these ads was about $60,000, with the majority going to “The Bald and the Beautiful.” But the ad did not generate much sales, and Asset pulled the remaining spots that were originally planned. That is major cash for a small business without major capital behind it, O’Connell said, and what Asset learned is that, right now, its money is better spent on performance marketing that actually converts customers. 

Besides the cash needed, O’Connell said, the biggest hurdle his brand faced was the ability to stand out even within an episode. On “The Bald and the Beautiful,” for example, Asset’s ad ran toward the end of the episode, following advertisers like Wayfair, Hungryroot and BetterHelp. “Those are big spenders who mainly care about awareness and have millions to spend on podcast ads per year,” O’Connell said. It also did not help that the show didn’t feature any branding Asset imagery on its video channels, which would better illustrate the product to the audience.

Still, testing different types of shows — while time-consuming — is key to matching with the right audience. O’Connell said some smaller shows ended up having a higher ROI than “The Bald and the Beautiful,” despite the latter having a larger listenership. The company ran spots on two episodes of the drag-oriented comedy show “Very Delta with Delta Work” in September and October. O’Connell said those ads resulted in the highest traffic and conversion for Asset. While it’s hard to quantify the exact reason, O’Connell suspects that having less competition from other brands helped Asset stand out. 

“We also tested the true crime show ‘The Underworld,’” he said, whose middle-aged male audience is not squarely in Asset’s target demo. And while it didn’t move the needle sales-wise, the ad proved O’Connell’s thesis that working with smaller shows — on par with the brand’s size — is the best way to build relationships with hosts and, in turn, reach their listeners. 

One startup that got on the podcast train early is kids’ food brand Little Spoon, aiming to reach health-conscious, millennial parents.

Megan Lohuis, senior performance marketing director at Little Spoon, said, “When selecting shows, we focused on meeting our customers where they naturally spend time.” But as it turned out, that didn’t necessarily mean just parenting podcasts. “[Parents] are multifaceted in nature, and their listening habits extend well beyond parenting content,” she said. They tune into lifestyle shows like “The Toast,” true crime series like “Morbid” and news podcasts, among many others. “Our partnerships reflect that full spectrum [of genres],” Lohuis said.

Little Spoon has also made tweaks to the brand’s messaging based on the program and the host, Lohuis said, which has increased emotional connection among listeners. “For example, we updated our talking points on a reality show [podcast] to show how Little Spoon solves ‘mealtime drama,’” she said.

After years of trying different podcasts and creatives, Lohuis said the channel now sits in all parts of the funnel for Little Spoon. “With attribution becoming increasingly complex and our broader media mix evolving in 2025,” she said, the company is bullish about treating podcasts as a holistic channel and plans to scale them based on incremental learnings. Currently, the company is planning its 2026 marketing mix budget and plans to spend on podcasts ads about on par or more compared to 2025.

A data-driven approach 

Podcasting networks, for their part, are trying to better service both big and small brands that want to incorporate podcast advertising into their marketing mix.  

The podcast industry is now 20 years old, Glenday of Acast said, and for the majority of its lifecycle, it has remained largely unchanged as a format. “Now, people are spending so much more time with podcasts than they do with traditional news outlets,” he said. And now, with more celebrities starting their own shows, bigger advertisers are increasingly considering podcasts as an awareness play. 

“Over the last two years, we have been getting new revenues coming from what would have been influencer budgets,” Glenday said. He said that, for years, startup brands dominated direct-response ad reads, which usually include a unique promo code for listeners to redeem.

More companies are also putting out research on how desirable these podcast listeners can be as an audience. Last month, Triton Digital launched its Q3 2025 U.S. Podcast Ranker, which revealed that podcasts signal both mindset and purchasing motivation ahead of the holiday shopping season.

Daryl Battaglia, senior vp of measurement products and strategy at Triton Digital, said there is also a correlation between podcast listening patterns and consumers’ broader lifestyles and interests. For example, the ranking shows that  87.6% of true crime listeners over-index with big-box retail shoppers. Meanwhile, 51% of tech content listeners over-index with department stores.

“Even modest differences in shopper behaviors can become meaningful at scale,” Battaglia said. He also noted that broad-reach genres like comedy, news and sports tend to capture a wide range of big-box retail shoppers. “For brands, the value lies in understanding where their target audiences are already spending time,” he said, then using that context to deliver their messaging and call to action.

Still, Glenday acknowledged that while “everybody is interested in podcasting [ads], nobody has gone all the way in because it’s hard to buy and measure the ads.” 

He believes deeper data and technology will help brands identify the right shows for the audiences they’re trying to reach. This is especially important since many podcast hosts now cross-publish to channels like their YouTube channel or Instagram. “We help monetize all that,” said Glenday.

The way Acast is trying to match the right brands with the right shows has been by creating a database of creator profiles, which it has done over the past three years and currently stands at about 1,800. In 2022, Acast also acquired Podchaser, a podcast database platform, which feeds the listenership data into Acast’s self-serve media buying portal. “We use technology including AI, along with our 100 engineers, to make it easier for you to reach your listeners,” Glenday said.

The company has also been building out its own self-service ad marketplace, which rolled out in 2022. Through the portal, an advertiser can enter information about its type of business and the zip codes it serves, which helps search for creators and shows that best fit their products’ target demographic.  

Glenday said he hopes that, eventually, ad dollars from larger brands will funnel down to smaller shows, especially as dynamic ad insertion rises. A good example is Dunkin’ Donuts, which is buying live reads on Acast’s “Giggly Squad” and some of its other top-performing shows. “Then we take those clips and make ads out of them that can be served in a passive way on other shows,” Glenday said.

Ultimately, with podcast ads, “As a brand, you are relinquishing some control, which is why it is a successful format,” Glenday said. But that has historically made the medium more limited to the right brands with the budget to support long-term testing. 

And for Asset’s O’Connell, that additional testing will have to wait. “I have no plans to redo pods at the moment,” O’Connell said. “It won’t be until mid-2026, or the next time I get funding.”