How Podcast Advertising Holds Up in Surge Years
Political media spending for the 2026 midterm cycle is forecast to reach $10.4 billion, with a potential ceiling of $11.8 billion, according to Kinetiq Political Insights (KPI). That puts 2026 on track to be the most expensive midterm in U.S. history.
While podcasts are a smaller share of political spend, a recent Sound Profitable report found that podcast listeners trust the hosts of their favorite news podcasts more than they trust almost any other source of news, and news is now the second-most-popular podcast genre after comedy.
For DTC brands, the bigger question is what the political surge does to the podcast inventory you actually want to buy. The 2024 surge had some answers, but they weren't as clean as the headline numbers suggested.
Political Ad Dollars and Podcasting in 2026
Audio is no longer a side bet for campaigns. Megan Burns, Senior Media Planner/Buyer at National Media, told Inside Audio Marketing that digital audio has become "more of a mainstay on the buys," and that display dollars are increasingly shifting into audio and video as campaigns move away from lower-performing formats.
Podcasts are picking up a meaningful share of that shift. Burns said her team is targeting podcast listeners specifically "because of the qualitative aspects of who that audience is," and political buyers are increasingly going through podcast networks that package up genre-specific inventory like news, sports, and politics.
The impact: more pressure on news, politics, and current-events inventory, well before Labor Day.
We've Already Experienced "Podcast Election"
"2024 will be remembered as the Podcast Election," Steve Johnston, former COO of FlexPoint Media, wrote on X. He pointed to Trump on Joe Rogan, Harris on Call Her Daddy, and both campaigns leaning into long-form audio as the moment podcasts became part of the national political story.
Whether it translated into the experience DTC advertisers expected is another matter.
Big Brands and A-List Inventory
ADOPTER's SVP of Client Services Adam McNeil flagged in his 2024 year-end reflection that the landscape actually got tougher for e-commerce-first, performance-oriented brands. Holding Cos and big brand names entered with new vigor, pricing smaller players out of A-list show rates. Networks bundled premium inventory behind RON and programmatic deals. Some episodes got loaded with 16+ ads, hurting both performance and audience retention.
Client spending at ADOPTER surged nearly 80 percent in select months for brands that played the moment well. The wins came from sticking to first principles: light ad loads, host-read endorsements, and targeted episodic buys on small and medium shows that delivered influence over impressions.
For DTC brands, the question in an election year is which shows you can still buy when political dollars start landing.
Ad Spend Expected to Keep Growing in 2026
Back in January, the IAB's 2026 outlook report forecasted that podcast ad spending would jump 9.6 percent this year, putting podcasts on the short list of fastest-growing digital channels of 2026. The Winter Olympics, the World Cup, and the midterm elections were flagged as the cyclical drivers, expected to push $9 billion in incremental ad spending into the U.S. digital market.
Four months in, Inside Radio reports that the top 10 podcast advertisers spent $132.8 million combined in Q1 2026 (Podscribe data). March alone hit $45.6 million, the strongest podcast advertising month of the year so far.
With political dollars and big-brand competition both climbing, brands that plan ahead now will have a real edge over the ones chasing the moment in Q4.
Sherry Del Rizzo
Sherry leads ADOPTER Media’s inbound content marketing, SEO strategy, brand authority, and knowledge base development. Translation: she makes sure the agency’s expertise shows up in the right places from search rankings to industry conversations. For her, marketing isn’t just about promotion, it's about translating ideas into content people actually want to engage with.
