Find the Money Hiding in Your Podcast

How much is each of your shows actually earning? Not the network total or the monthly payout, but show by show and episode by episode. If that's hard to answer, that's where the opportunity starts.

And the demand is there. US podcast ad revenue grew 17.6% in 2025 to $2.9 billion. And these steps can help you capture more of it:

• Tracking what each show earns
• Pricing each show on its own
• Letting programmatic fill every slot you haven't sold

None of them takes a single new episode—you can put your existing content to work right now.

Where does your podcast ad revenue come from?

Simplecast Professional sorts your earnings into sales channels. Your direct sponsor deals are one channel, and each regional marketplace (US, Canada, Europe, LATAM, and Asia) is another. Look across your sales channels, and you get the big picture on what's selling and where. From there, you can zoom in on any show and see exactly how it's performing. That's where you stop guessing which shows are paying the bills.

Which podcast revenue metrics should you track?

Five numbers tell you most of what you need to know:

• Fill rate: how much of your ad space actually sold
• Gross revenue: how much your ads brought in overall
• Net revenue: what actually lands with you after the split
• Net eCPM: what you earn for every thousand ads delivered
• Impressions: how many times an ad reached a listener

The trick is reading fill rate and eCPM together. A high fill rate with a low eCPM means you're selling nearly every slot, but too cheaply. If your true-crime flagship sells out every week at a bargain rate, cheaper ads are probably taking spots that premium advertisers would pay more for. That's your cue to raise your minimum price.

A low fill rate with a high eCPM means the ads that do run pay well, but too many slots go empty. Your minimum may be scaring buyers off, and lowering it slightly can sell more slots without giving up much per ad.

Why set a floor price per show?

Think of a floor price as your asking minimum: the lowest price you'll accept per thousand ad plays, also known as your CPM. Set it wrong in either direction and it shows up in your fill rate and eCPM.

Using one price for every show gets it wrong both ways. Your breakout interview show and your small specialist series don't draw the same crowd, so a single number either undersells the hit or prices out the niche advertisers who'd happily pay to reach the specialist audience. Instead, give each show its own floor, weighing how popular the show is, how much ad space it has, and where it's selling. The same show can even carry a different floor in each region.

Not sure where to start? Look at the show's net eCPM and set the floor just under that. You protect its value without shutting out buyers, and you can fine-tune the price from there.

How does the AdsWizz Podcast Marketplace automate podcast monetization?

The AdsWizz Podcast Marketplace automatically sells any ad slots you haven't sold yourself, in new episodes and across your entire back catalog. That means an episode you published two years ago can earn on a Tuesday afternoon without anyone on your team touching it. You keep 70% of what the marketplace earns. Once you're connected, every open slot is up for grabs, and listeners hear ads from their region, so someone in Toronto hears from a Canadian brand.

Does programmatic mean giving up control?

Not at all. Ad Protection Rules let you decide what plays on your show. You can block specific advertisers, turn off entire categories like politics while making exceptions for brands you trust, and filter out ads in languages your listeners don't speak. And they probably won't mind the ads. According to Edison Research, 88% of weekly podcast listeners agree that hearing ads is a fair price to pay for free content.

Direct sales plus marketplace, or marketplace only?

Direct sales plus marketplace puts your negotiated sponsor deals first, since they usually pay more. Open slots go to the marketplace, which follows your floor prices and protection rules and picks the highest-paying advertiser looking for an audience like yours.

Marketplace only skips sponsor deals. Mark where ads should go in each episode, connect, and the marketplace handles the rest. Both options are valid, but pairing direct deals with the marketplace gives you the benefits of both: control and predictable pricing from direct deals, plus flexibility and a wider pool of buyers from the marketplace.

Make every show earn what it’s worth

More revenue doesn’t have to wait for more listeners or more episodes. See what each show earns, set rates that match its worth, and let the marketplace help fill the ad slots you haven’t sold. You could be earning more from the catalog you already have.

Have questions about monetizing your shows? Talk to our team about how Simplecast Professional can help.