“How much can my podcast make?” It’s one of the first questions we hear from publishers, and it usually comes from the wrong starting point.
Most podcasters start with a download number and work forward, hoping the math adds up to a salary. A better one begins with a set of questions about your audience: who you’re serving, how you’re serving them, and how you plan to activate them once you’ve earned their attention. Your podcast should support your business goals rather than become the business itself, and creators who forget that end up stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. Once you have that clarity, calculating podcast revenue becomes a concrete exercise.
Let’s look at a thorough yet realistic breakdown of calculating podcast revenue. And if you’re looking for a team that runs this analysis regularly for creators, businesses, and organizations, email us about our podcast monetization services, and sign up for our free newsletter while you’re there.
What should you sort out before you run the numbers?
Many of the shows we produce and market aren’t monetized solely through advertising at all. They’ve activated their audiences in ways that generate revenue elsewhere in their business, such as through a paid community, a course, a live event, merch, or a digital product. Also, it helps to be clear about which assets from your podcast you want to monetize. A single podcast episode can generate several assets: long-form audio on an RSS feed, long-form video, short-form social clips, a newsletter, and a dedicated episode page on a website. Podcast monetization spans all of them, and each has its own strategy and economics.
The figures in this article apply specifically to the audio RSS feed because of its wide reach across listening apps and podcast directories instead of a single platform. Video CPMs, fill rates, and ad serving mechanics differ enough to require separate calculations. For a broader survey of the streams available, check out our article on realistic podcast monetization expectations. That feed produces one number everyone quotes, and it isn’t the number sponsors actually pay for.
Why don’t downloads equal billable impressions?
The most common error in podcast revenue math is treating a download as an impression. Sponsors don’t pay for downloads; they pay for delivered impressions, whether the deal is direct or programmatic, and the gap between those numbers is wider than most publishers assume.
Downloads and impressions used to track each other more closely because podcast apps pulled down new episodes automatically whether or not anyone pressed play. That changed in September 2023 when Apple Podcasts began pausing automatic downloads for listeners who had not played a recent episode in 15 days, and stopped pulling in back catalog episodes when downloads resumed. The effect showed up fast; one analysis of shows with heavy Apple Podcasts audiences measured a 9 to 11 percent drop in Apple’s share of downloads. Those were never impressions anyone heard, which is why sponsors now bill on delivery rather than total download numbers.
As a rough industry average, your real impressions run 25 to 30 percent below your monthly download total. Expect 15 to 20 percent drop-off by the end of an episode, and roughly 15 percent at the halfway mark where most mid-roll markers sit. Our article on monitoring your podcast analytics covers where to find them.
How do you calculate podcast ad revenue?
Now that you’ve established impressions, the equation for calculating podcast ad revenue is straightforward. For each ad marker in an episode, multiply your monthly downloads by the consumption rate at that marker, then by your fill rate, then by the CPM. Divide by 1000, since CPM means cost per thousand impressions, and add the totals across every marker.
Ad Revenue = Sum across all ad markers of [(monthly downloads x consumption rate x fill rate x CPM value) / 1000]
Run this separately for each ad zone rather than once for the whole episode. Pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll carry different CPMs, fill rates, and levels of sponsor appetite, so a blended number will mislead you.
Let’s try this with a show pulling 50,000 monthly downloads with two mid-roll ads. If 85 percent of listeners reach your ad markers, each one has 42,500 available impressions. At a 30 percent direct fill rate, you deliver 12,750 of them, and at a $22 host-read CPM each ad marker produces about $280 a month. With two mid-rolls, that puts you at around $560 a month of potential revenue.
Which ad markers command the highest CPM?
The mid-roll ad marker is the most valuable real estate in a podcast episode, carrying both the highest CPM and the highest fill rate because sponsors believe listeners who reach that location are genuinely engaged. Pre-roll ad markers run lower on both CPM and fill rate. Post-roll ad markers sell the least, directly or programmatically, and their fill rates are the lowest as well.
Part of that pre-roll discount is a perception problem you can fix. The IAB defines pre-roll as the first quartile of an episode, and mid-roll as the middle 50 percent, so a pre-roll does not have to sit right at the beginning of an episode. Most shows place them there because hosting platforms automate the placement, and sponsors have learned to read pre-rolls as the easiest ads for listeners to skip over.
Ad type matters as much as marker placement. Host-read ads command roughly $18 to $30 CPM, while programmatic inventory typically runs $3 to $7 and can go lower. Brands pay that premium for the host’s implicit endorsement, and a straightforward positive personal endorsement is a further add-on you can charge advertisers for. Pre-produced ads targeted at a single show make up under 10 percent of deals, since those brands usually go programmatic for cheaper, wider reach. Our article on leveling up your podcast monetization strategy covers what makes an ad read worth renewing. CPM sets what a single impression is worth. Fill rate decides how many of them you actually sell.
What drives your fill rate?
Publishers often assume fill rate scales with audience size. It doesn’t. Fill rate is a function of demand for your specific audience, tracking how well your listeners match the demographics sponsors are currently buying. Consider a show with 100,000 monthly listeners where a brand is targeting coastal mothers with six-figure household incomes. If only 20 percent of your listeners fit that profile, those are the only impressions that buyer values.
Size does set one threshold: below 50,000 monthly downloads, most shows are too small for brands to justify vetting, so expect programmatic to carry your revenue. The exceptions are consistent: business, technology, and entrepreneurship are perpetually in demand, as is any podcast reaching millennial women in health and wellness. For example, at The Podglomerate, we work with tech shows with 15,000 monthly downloads that sell out their inventory for the year by spring.
Brands also rarely buy one show at a time. They arrive with a budget and a target demographic and buy blocks across 10 to 20 shows, which is how a network gets your show into deals you would never land on your own. For a deeper dive on this, check out our article on how to get podcast sponsors, which covers what to prepare first. Whatever those deals are worth on paper, not all of it will reach you.
How much of that revenue do you keep?
All the revenue opportunities mentioned earlier constitute your gross revenue, which is the total amount of money earned before any deductions for expenses. When a broker or an agent sources a deal for a show, they typically take 30 to 40 percent, leaving publishers with the rest (70 percent is the most common outcome). Selling directly means keeping all of it, but you also absorb sourcing, negotiation, contracts, and ad operations yourself. It’s a trade-off.
Where do subscriptions fit into podcast revenue?
So far we’ve focused on ad revenue, but relying solely on that for podcast revenue creates an unstable financial foundation. Earning $50,000 this year doesn’t mean you will earn it next year since sponsors come and go and advertising budgets are often the first line item cut in an economic downturn. Listeners, on the other hand, are much slower to cancel a $5 monthly subscription to a show they love and listen to regularly.
Patreon and Supporting Cast both treat 5 percent of your audience as a healthy conversion benchmark, which makes it a useful diagnostic. Clearing it means your offering is landing. Falling short while engagement looks strong usually means the offering is the problem, since a subscription is a product that has to deliver real premium value rather than function as a donation.
This matters most for mature shows whose listeners don’t convert on direct response advertising. If different sponsors keep purchasing ad slots on your show and declining to renew despite strong engagement, subscriptions should probably be the largest slice of your revenue stack. You keep more of every dollar, the revenue is stable, and you have direct contact with your most committed listeners. Whichever mix you land on, though, the equation still has to produce a number you can live with.
What if your number comes up short?
In the equation listed above, there are five variables. So if the potential revenue seems low, then one of them is off. To put a finer point on it, there are usually three of the five variables worth examining.
The first is fill rate composition. An 80 percent fill rate sounds excellent until you find 90 percent of it is programmatic inventory at a $3 CPM, when two direct deals would outperform the whole thing. The second is the impressions gap. As mentioned earlier, real impressions run 25 to 30 percent below your monthly download total. So a show with 50,000 monthly downloads might deliver only 35,000 impressions. That’s a shortfall most publishers never measure.
The third is consumption rate, and it surprises publishers most. We regularly see shows losing half their audience by minute 35 with a mid-roll ad marker at minute 37. Moving the ad marker earlier in the episode is an immediate fix, but the deeper question is why listeners are dropping off, which is a production problem rather than a sales one. Our article on using analytics to shape your podcast covers retention curves and episode heatmaps, which you can use to draw out this information.
So how much can your podcast make?
Plug your numbers into the equation we provided to find out, but the number may not be the one you hope it is. That’s not bad news, though; every variable in the equation is something you can move: your demographic story, your ad marker placement, your retention, your mix of direct and programmatic, and your subscription offerings. Just don’t let the math become the point. The equation gives you an idea of what your audio asset can earn. The reason to build your audience in the first place is everything else you can do with it.
Have questions? Interested in having The Podglomerate help activate your audience and earn more revenue? Email us to learn more about our podcast services, and make sure to sign up for our free newsletter.
