Podcast earnings calculator

Those three decide the whole number, and all three are reported to you by the party selling your ads. The figures that circulate about podcast CPMs come from networks and sales decks, which makes them a quote from the seller rather than a measured statistic, so we take yours instead and our defaults are placeholders you should overwrite. Your host's dashboard has your downloads; your network can tell you your fill rate and your commission if you ask for them by name

Downloads times CPM prices your inventory as though all of it sells, and it does not. A slot nobody bought pays nothing, and the shortfall does not show up as a fee on a statement; it shows up as a number smaller than you expected, which is harder to notice. Because the commission then takes its share of what did sell, the two multipliers compound: at our defaults, 60 percent sold and 70 percent kept is 42 percent of the gross, so the quoted arithmetic comes to more than double the real one

It depends on your downloads and on three rates your network sets, which is why this page asks for them rather than printing a figure that would fit nobody's show. The part worth understanding is the shape: podcast ads are sold per 1,000 downloads per slot, so a pre-roll and two mid-rolls are three impressions against one listener. Then two multipliers cut it down. The seller fills only part of your inventory, and empty slots pay nothing. The seller then takes a commission on what did sell. At our placeholder defaults those two compound to 42 percent, so a show that pencils out to one number on a rate card banks a little over 40 percent of it. Put your own downloads, CPMs, fill rate and commission in the form above and the ledger separates the money you were quoted from the money you keep.

It is the share of your ad slots the seller actually sells. It matters because every estimate that multiplies downloads by a CPM has quietly assumed it is 100 percent, and it rarely is. Unsold inventory is invisible in a way a fee is not: there is no line on your statement saying the slots went empty, just a payout smaller than the arithmetic promised. It is also the figure a network is least likely to volunteer, so ask for it by name before you compare two offers.

It is a real trade and the calculator will price it for you: set the commission to zero and watch the total. Selling direct keeps the whole rate and often earns a higher one, because you can sell a host-read endorsement rather than a slot. What you give up is the network's sales team, which usually means your own fill rate falls, and filling slots is a job. Run it both ways with an honest fill rate for each and compare the totals, not the rates.

Because they measure different things and are not comparable. An RPM is already net: the platform's share and the unsold inventory have both come out before the number reaches your dashboard. A CPM is gross, quoted before the fill rate and before the commission, so it has to be larger to end up in the same place. Podcast downloads are also a smaller count than video views for the same audience. The comparable figure is what you keep per 1,000, which this calculator returns.