Podcast Ad Load Index — August 2026
5.3 ad minutes per hour
Across 188 shows and 3052 episodes published in August 2026 — 2719.7 hours of audio — podcasts averaged 5.3 minutes of advertising per hour of runtime. The median show ran 5.
How this is measured
We transcribe every episode, classify advertising segments, and refine their boundaries with acoustic fingerprinting. A show enters a month with at least 4 qualifying episodes published across at least 3 distinct weeks; a genre needs at least 15 such shows. Figures are unweighted means of per-episode values, grouped by the month each episode was published.
Our sample is not a random sample of podcasting. It is shaped by what YAPP's users listen to, and skews English-language. Most podcast advertising is dynamically inserted, so what we report is what our pipeline was served, not what every listener hears. Read the full methodology before citing these figures.
Note on comparability. This month's sample differs substantially in size from the previous month's, so month-over-month movement here reflects a change in which shows we measured as well as any real change in ad load.
Ad load over time
| Month | Ad min/hr | Shows |
|---|---|---|
| February 2026 | 5.8 | 28 |
| March 2026 | 5.7 | 45 |
| April 2026 | 5.8 | 49 |
| May 2026 | 5.7 | 52 |
| June 2026 | 5.5 | 64 |
| July 2026 | 4.8 | 77 |
| August 2026 | 5.3 | 188 |
Ad load by genre, August 2026
| Genre | Ad min/hr | Shows |
|---|---|---|
| News | 6.3 | 42 |
| True Crime | 6.2 | 24 |
| Comedy | 6.1 | 33 |
| Society & Culture | 4.3 | 24 |
| Business | 3.9 | 18 |
Ad load varies by listener. Most podcast advertising is dynamically inserted, so figures reflect ad load as observed by YAPP's processing pipeline at the time each episode was fetched, not what any individual listener hears. Methodology
How ad load is distributed across shows
| Ad min/hr | Shows |
|---|---|
| 0–2 | 28 |
| 2–4 | 40 |
| 4–6 | 50 |
| 6–8 | 39 |
| 8–10 | 19 |
| 10–12 | 9 |
| 12–14 | 3 |
| 14+ | 0 |
Month-over-month change by genre
| Genre | Change | Now |
|---|---|---|
| News | +1.1 | 6.3 |
| Society & Culture | -0.7 | 4.3 |
Ad load varies by listener. Most podcast advertising is dynamically inserted, so figures reflect ad load as observed by YAPP's processing pipeline at the time each episode was fetched, not what any individual listener hears. Methodology
Highest measured ad load
| Show | Ad min/hr | Episodes |
|---|---|---|
| The President's Daily Brief | 13 | 49 |
| The Dan Patrick Show | 12.9 | 83 |
| Morning Wire | 12.1 | 57 |
| Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ? | 11.7 | 5 |
| Betrayal Weekly | 11.5 | 5 |
| Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin | 11.3 | 4 |
| The Breakfast Club | 11.2 | 99 |
| MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories | 10.6 | 15 |
| Giggly Squad | 10.4 | 9 |
| The Bobby Bones Show | 10.3 | 96 |
Ad load varies by listener. Most podcast advertising is dynamically inserted, so figures reflect ad load as observed by YAPP's processing pipeline at the time each episode was fetched, not what any individual listener hears. Methodology
Lowest measured ad load
| Show | Ad min/hr | Episodes |
|---|---|---|
| followHIM | 0.3 | 9 |
| The Home Service Expert Podcast | 0.6 | 5 |
| 3 Takeaways™ | 0.6 | 4 |
| We! | 0.8 | 8 |
| Merge Conflict | 0.8 | 4 |
| Living Your Legacy | 0.9 | 22 |
| The Opinions | 1 | 7 |
| The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk | 1 | 5 |
| All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg | 1.1 | 7 |
| REAL AF with Andy Frisella | 1.2 | 5 |
Ad load varies by listener. Most podcast advertising is dynamically inserted, so figures reflect ad load as observed by YAPP's processing pipeline at the time each episode was fetched, not what any individual listener hears. Methodology
Get the data
The full month, as published: CSV · JSON
Licence
Published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Use it commercially, republish it, build on it — attribution is the only condition.
Cite as
YAPP Podcast Ad Load Index, August 2026. https://yapp.at/ad-load-index/2026-08/
Press
Questions, or want the underlying figures for a specific show? support@yapp.at. Charts on this page may be reproduced with attribution.
Corrections
- 2026-09-18: Methodology v1.2: a show's ad rate is now time-weighted across its runtime rather than an unweighted mean of per-episode rates. Shows publishing a mix of short clips and long episodes read lower than first published; the headline figure changed accordingly.