How to find sponsors for a podcast
Start with the brands that bought shows in your genre in the last six months. This guide builds that list using free pages on this site, and you can start it today.
1. Find your show
Go to Podcasts and filter by name, or use the search box at the top of any page. If your show isn't listed, pick the show closest to yours in genre and size and follow the same steps. You'll just need to cross off anyone who has already sponsored you.
The show page tells you how many episodes we read and what we found in them.
2. Know what the data covers
Sponsors come from show notes and, for many shows, from ads read on air in episodes we transcribed. Ads read only in the audio may be missing. A week marked “nothing read” on a show's calendar means we don't know, not that it had no ads.
So treat a brand showing up as a fact, and a brand missing as unknown.
3. Open Brands to pitch
The box at the top of a show page has a link to see the first five brands free. This list holds brands that sponsored other podcasts in the same genre in the last six months and haven't sponsored this show. They're ranked by how many shows in the genre each one sponsored.
The list for The AI Daily Brief is open in full, and you can download it as a CSV to see the format. Shopify, Sentry, WorkOS and Notion are on it, with shows such as Lenny's Podcast, Acquired and Last Week in AI beside them.
Each row shows how many shows in the genre the brand sponsored, which ones, and the latest date. Copy your five into a spreadsheet with those details. Put the most recent dates at the top.
4. Widen the list by lane
Open Lanes and pick your genre, such as Technology podcasts or Health and fitness podcasts. Each lane page covers the last 12 months and shows three things:
- Who buys here breaks placements down by company type, so you can see which industries buy in your genre.
- Top companies lists the most active brands in the lane.
- Top outlets lists the shows carrying the most placements. These are the shows to study next.
The monthly reports show the same picture one month at a time, along with companies seen on podcasts for the first time that month.
5. Study a show like yours
Open the page of a show from Top outlets that's a little ahead of yours. Connections shows who sponsors it, the sponsor calendar shows when, and Where these sponsors also buy shows the other podcasts, newsletters and events they use.
The sponsor calendar also shows how many weeks a brand ran. Note that on your spreadsheet too.
6. Add rivals
Some brands have direct rivals on the same shows. Compare lists rival companies by area, and you can filter by category or company.
Mattress brands puts Helix Sleep, Brooklyn Bedding, GhostBed and Casper side by side, with where each ran by lane and quarter. Meat and seafood delivery does the same for Good Ranchers, ButcherBox and others. A head-to-head such as Good Ranchers vs ButcherBox shows the shows both have used and the ones only one has.
If you have a sponsor in one of these sets, open it and add the rivals that run in your lane. A rival with nothing on file may simply be one we haven't seen.
7. Check each brand
Open the company page for each name. It shows the podcasts, newsletters and events where we've found it. Note how many shows it's on and when it last ran.
8. Write to them
We don't sell contact details. Look for a person in growth, performance marketing or partnerships at the brand, or the agency handling its podcast ads if you can find it.
Name two or three shows the brand already sponsored, say how yours is like them, and give your download numbers and your audience in terms you can back up. Offer a small first run rather than a long commitment if you're new to them.
If you want the rest of the list as a CSV, with new brands by email each Monday, that's what Ad Seller is for. The steps above don't need it.