IAB Podcast Advertising Revenue Report

The IAB/PwC annual report is the document every ad-side conversation in podcasting eventually references. The 2025 report put US podcast ad revenue near $2.9 billion, with the 2026 forecast pushing past $3 billion. Best for board decks, sales pitches, and grounding industry conversations; not a tool you log into.

The IAB Podcast Advertising Revenue Report is the closest the industry has to an official scorecard. Published annually by the Interactive Advertising Bureau with PwC as the research partner, it tracks US podcast ad spend by category, format, and pricing model. The 2025 edition reported podcast ad revenue rose 18% to nearly $2.9 billion, with the IAB forecasting roughly 9.6% growth in 2026 to push past $3 billion. The category breakdowns are what most people actually use. Financial services led 2025 at around 15.8% of total podcast ad spend, host-read placements held CPMs of $25–$50 for mid-tier shows, and programmatic dynamic ad insertion CPMs sat in the $15–$25 range. Those numbers anchor pitch decks, board reviews, and sponsorship negotiations across the industry. The report's main limitation is timing. It's an annual snapshot of the prior year, which means by the time you read it the numbers are already a few months out of date. It's also US-focused; global figures get mentioned but the granularity drops sharply outside the States. And there's an ongoing definitional question, flagged by the IAB itself, about how video podcast consumption on YouTube and Spotify should be counted, which the report is still catching up with. For day-to-day campaign optimisation you'll want different tools. For grounding a conversation about whether podcasting is a sector worth investing in, this is what you cite.