Podcast and audio advertising cost
Cheap to start on, and the channel where the price gap between formats is widest.
You cannot fund an audiocampaign here today. No buying rail has reached spend-tested or report-verified on the platform’s own evidence ledger, so live spend runs inside a design-partner engagement rather than from a self-serve top-up. Everything on this page is what a plan would carry, and the whole loop runs in a sandbox that needs no credentials. All 25 rails, graded.
What we enforce, and what the market asks
They measure different things and both apply. One stops a pointless line surviving into a plan; the other stops a pointless campaign reaching air.
Enforced when the plan is built. A line that cannot clear this is dropped and its budget redistributed across the lines that can, with a note saying so. Manual plans are validated against the same number.
£250 a campaign on Spotify's UK self-serve ads manager; around $250 on Acast self-serve; approximately $5,000 for a host-read spot.
What other sellers ask for. Not a commitment by anyone, dated because these move, and sourced at the foot of this page.
How this channel is actually priced
Dynamically inserted audio is a CPM, priced on how narrow the targeting is and how premium the inventory. Host-read is priced per episode or per thousand downloads against a specific show, negotiated rather than auctioned, and usually sold in packages.
The smallest buy worth making
£1,000 to £2,500 across a four-week flight on genre and show targeting. Audio is a strong response channel at small budgets — a promo code or vanity URL gives you observed response cheaply — and a weak causal one, because a powered lift test usually needs more spend than an audio line carries on its own.
What else leaves your account
Everyone quotes a headline rate. Almost nobody publishes the data uplift, the production spec and the clearance lead time that sit beside it, which is where a budget actually goes wrong.
Voiceover and production
A script with no read direction is half a brief. A generated UK voiceover here costs £1.25 and a music bed 50p, charged separately; a professional read costs considerably more and is often worth it.
Named-show deals
Buying a specific show happens through a private marketplace deal, which is negotiated before it can be executed. That is a lead time rather than a fee.
The platform fee
10% of media, or 5% plus £749 a month above £25,000 of trailing 30-day spend.
That the daypart matters more than the budget. A business audience is reached on the commute; the same money spent across the day reaches a different, larger and less relevant audience.
Below about £10,000 a month in total media, this is the wrong product. A 10% fee on £2,000 is £200 against the buyer who needs the most support from us, and a multi-channel plan at that budget is too thin to pace on any line and far too thin to power a causal test. Buy search and social directly, and come back when there is a second channel worth funding.
What the rest of the plan costs
- CTV£140 per week
- Addressable TV£1,000 per line
- DOOH£100 per line
- Cinema£500 per week
- Paid search£100 per line
- Paid social£250 per line
Where the market figures come from
Desk research dated 3 August 2026. Rates move.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. Bring a real budget and watch it split across seven channels against these floors — including the lines it cannot carry, which get dropped in front of you.
Talk it throughBring a budget. We will tell you if it is too small.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live.
Book a working session45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live.
Questions about audio cost
Is a host-read ad worth the premium over a programmatic one?
Sometimes, and the honest test is whether the endorsement is the product. A host reading your copy in their own voice carries transferred trust that a dynamically inserted spot does not, which is worth a premium for a considered purchase and close to nothing for a commodity one. It is also permanent: you cannot pause it, retarget around it, or pull it if the creative underperforms.