Podtrac Category Rankings

Details for Podcast Publishers


Podtrac Category Rankings are designed to highlight the shows each month with the largest US audiences across 19 top-level podcast categories.  Now every month, 500+ podcasts have a new way to set themselves apart, get noticed and celebrate the audiences they generate.

  • As with other Podtrac rankings, the Category Rankings are based on US Unique Monthly Audience, and will help advertisers better understand the podcast landscape and which top shows may be a good fit for contextual advertising. 

  • The new category rankings will help attract new advertisers to the space and keep existing advertisers up to date with growth trends.

  • And as a paid subscription service, the Category Rankings will help cover the headcount and infrastructure costs for developing and maintaining Podtrac’s free measurement system, which measures over a billion podcast streams and downloads a month.

To provide the best resource for advertisers, Podtrac includes the Top 30 Podtrac Measured Shows and the Top 10 Unmeasured Shows each month.

Podtrac Measured Shows:  The Top 30 Podcasts per Category Every Month

Thousands of top podcast publishers have been using the Podtrac Measurement System whenever they post an episode for more than 14 years.  So we’re ranking the top 30 measured podcasts across 19 categories to give advertisers the info they need to help grow the space.  

  • Methodology - Podtrac determines the Unique US Monthly Audience across all episodes downloaded or streamed each month using the Podtrac Measurement System, ranks them by category, and develops a ranking of the top 30 each month.  

    • For our first ranking, we emailed all of the measured publishers included in the rankings in advance to let them know via the email address registered to their podcast account. Be sure to keep your account information up to date to make sure you don’t miss important communications from Podtrac.

    • Each Category Ranking contains the following data items for each measured show:  US Category Rank, Show Name, Publisher Name, US Unique Monthly Audience (UMA), Monthly Global Downloads, Month-over-Month UMA change, Year-over-Year UMA change.  Podtrac counts are IAB V2 certified.

  • To find out if they are included in the rankings, publishers can contact Podtrac at any time via our support desk.

  • The Category Rankings don’t include ad proposal or ad delivery metrics such as average downloads per episode or impressions.  Publishers and their ad partners continue to provide these metrics to advertisers directly.

Unmeasured Shows:  The Top 10 Podcasts per Category Every Month

With over 700,000 podcasts available across the various podcast apps, not all podcasts measure with Podtrac. So in addition to ranking the top 30 measured podcasts per category, we also include the top 10 shows we don’t measure per category.  All to provide the most comprehensive audience category ranking resource possible. 

  • Methodology - Podtrac determines the top 10 unmeasured shows by category each month by analyzing the rankings produced by top podcast apps and develops internal estimates of US audience for top ranked shows.  We don’t disclose our internal estimates and list the unmeasured shows in alphabetical order (not ranking order).  

  • We encourage unmeasured podcast publishers to use Podtrac’s free measurement system to promote your show and help give advertisers the data they need.

Thanks to all the podcast publishers who use Podtrac.

Questions?  Contact us.