Acast Advertising Cost and Podcast Ad Rates

Acast advertising cost is priced by CPM, the cost per thousand listens. Acast's own help center puts pre-recorded ads from $15 CPM and host-read sponsorships from $25 CPM, and its 2026 benchmark runs $15 to $30 for pre-recorded and $25 to $40 for host-read, with business and finance shows above $40. Every targeting layer you add raises the CPM. In plain money, $5,000 buys about 333,000 pre-recorded impressions at the floor, or about 200,000 host-read listens.

Acast is the largest independent podcast company, with more than 140,000 shows in its marketplace and a self-serve ad platform anyone can sign up to. What it does not publish is a rate card per show, and that is the gap this page fills: what the starting CPMs turn into at real budgets, what pushes the price up, and when booking a single show directly costs less than buying across a network.

How much does it cost to advertise on Acast?

Advertising on Acast costs a CPM you agree per campaign, starting at $15 for pre-recorded ads and $25 for host-read sponsorships. Your total is that CPM times the impressions you buy, so the budget is yours to set. Acast's help center does not state a dollar minimum today. When the self-serve platform launched in late 2022, trade coverage reported a $250 floor and said US advertisers with budgets of $10,000 or less were being directed to self-serve. Managed host-read deals bought through Acast's sales team are reported to start near $5,000.

The starting figures are floors, not averages. Acast calls its self-serve model dynamic pricing: a campaign running across the whole network with only country-level targeting costs around $15 CPM, and the price climbs as you add regions or cities, podcast categories or Nielsen audience segments. One detail most buyers miss is that the charge is per targeting category, not per option inside it. Adding one podcast category costs the same as adding five, so once you pay for category targeting, use it fully.

What does $1,000, $5,000 or $10,000 buy on Acast?

Divide the budget by the CPM and multiply by 1,000. The table uses three points on Acast's own range: the $15 pre-recorded floor, the $25 host-read floor and $40 for a premium business audience. Impressions here are downloads with your ad in them, not unique listeners.

Frequency matters as much as reach. Acast's own budgeting guidance puts the sweet spot at three to five impressions per listener for recall. Divide the impression counts above by four and you get a rough count of people who will actually remember the ad: a $5,000 host-read test reaches something like 50,000 people properly, not 200,000.

How much is a host-read ad on an Acast podcast?

A host-read ad on an Acast show costs the show's downloads per episode divided by 1,000, times the CPM. At the $25 floor, a show averaging 20,000 downloads an episode is about $500 a read, and a 100,000-download show is about $2,500. Shows with valuable audiences price above the floor, so a 20,000-download finance show at $45 is closer to $900 a read.

Host reads cost more because they work better. Acast cites Podscribe benchmark data showing host-read ads outperform producer-read ads on purchase rate by about 31%. If you plan to measure that yourself, budget for attribution as well; our breakdown of Podscribe pricing shows it usually adds 6% to 9% on top of the media.

Does ad placement change the price?

Yes. Mid-roll is the most expensive slot because listeners are most engaged and least likely to skip, and it only runs in episodes of 10 minutes or longer. Pre-roll is next and can sit up to 25% of the way into an episode. Post-roll is the cheapest, because many people stop listening when the episode ends, and it can be moved up to 50% from the end. If your goal is a promo code that gets used, the mid-roll premium is usually worth paying.

What costs sit on top of the CPM?

Three things. First, production: a pre-recorded spot needs a script, a voice and a mix, and a professional 30-second read from a voice-over studio is a real line in the budget. If the same campaign is also running on social, you can generate matching ad copy and visuals from your product page and keep the audio script consistent with it. Second, measurement, which is billed separately by the attribution vendor. Third, your own time: host reads need a brief, talking points and an approval round per show.

Is Acast cheaper than Spotify, iHeart or Libsyn Ads?

On published floors, Acast sits in the middle. Spotify's self-serve is the only major platform with a hard published minimum, $250. iHeart publishes no rate card at all, and its $250 self-serve route cannot target iHeart shows alone, as our iHeartRadio ads cost page explains. Libsyn Ads campaigns are commonly booked from around $2,500. The full comparison of floors is in our guide to podcast advertising minimum spend.

Is Acast worth it for a small brand?

Acast is worth it when you want reach across many shows quickly and you are happy to let targeting pick them. A $2,000 to $5,000 pre-recorded test with country and category targeting is a fair way to learn whether podcast listeners convert for you. It is weaker when your thesis is that one specific host will move product, because self-serve trades show-level control for scale, and when you want a long relationship with a few shows at a fixed price.

That second case is where buying direct beats any network. On Sponsorships' podcast advertising marketplace, independent podcasters publish their downloads per episode and a price per read, so you see the exact show, the exact number and the date before you commit. You message the host, agree the read and pay them directly. The Brand plan is $49.50 a month billed yearly or $99 month to month, with 0% commission on what you pay creators. A brand spending $5,000 a quarter on podcast reads keeps the whole $5,000 working on audience.

Who owns Acast, and does it own Podchaser?

Acast is a Swedish company, listed in Stockholm. It owns Podchaser, the podcast database, which it uses to power audience and show research inside its ad platform, and it has announced the acquisition of Wonder Media Network, a creative studio. If you use Podchaser to research shows before you buy, our Podchaser alternative page covers what that data costs and where else to get it.

How do you start advertising on Acast?

Sign up for an advertiser account on Acast's ad platform, choose pre-recorded or host-read, set your targeting and dates, upload audio or a brief, and set a budget. Acast reviews new campaigns before they go live; at launch it quoted one business day. Before you do, decide what you are testing. If the answer is a specific audience on specific shows, compare those shows' direct prices first, because the cheapest impression is the one on a show you already know converts.