Methodology & coverage

Who Sponsors Pods detects sponsors from the written show notes that podcasts publish in their public RSS feeds. We do not download or listen to audio.

What we monitor

About 5,194 active shows (episodes published in the last 90 days), discovered via Apple Podcasts charts and the Podcast Index. Feeds are fetched politely (rate-limited per host, robots.txt respected) and refreshed daily.

How a sponsor is detected

A brand is recorded when show notes contain a sponsor statement ("sponsored by…", "Sponsors:" lists, "use code … at brand.com", "Brand: offer… brand.com"). Brands are normalised by website domain; tracking/redirect links are resolved to the brand where possible. Affiliate links are tagged and excluded from public counts. Links to the show's own site, its network and merch are excluded.

Accuracy

On a hand-checked random sample of 100 detections, 94 were correct (October 2026). Errors remain possible: please report them to [email protected].

Coverage limits

• Ads that are read on air but not listed in the show notes are not captured. Many large shows and networks do not list sponsors in notes, so absence from our data does not mean a show has no sponsors.
• Dynamically inserted ads are not visible in show notes.
• The window is the last 90 days of episodes; "first seen" is the first date we observed the brand, not the start of its campaign.
• "New this week" only counts brands that appeared in episodes published after we started monitoring that show.

Not advice

The data is provided for research and sales prospecting. It is not financial, legal or advertising advice, and no brand or podcast listed endorses or is affiliated with this site.