Since we launched podcasts in April, thousands of shows have made beehiiv home. You can host your show, grow it alongside your newsletter, and earn from your biggest fans with premium episodes. And as always, beehiiv doesn’t take a cent of your subscription revenue.

Today, we’re adding the next piece: Podcast Ads 💰

Sell your own sponsors, turn on programmatic ads, or do both, with no minimum download count to get started. Every listener can help you earn.

And if you don’t have a show yet, your newsletter audience is the best head start you could ask for.

Here’s what’s new:

🎙️ Dynamic ad insertion
🤝 Campaigns manager
⚡ Programmatic ads
📊 Ad reporting
✅ IAB-certified downloads
📦 Import podcast ad breaks
📚 Podcast office hours

Let’s dive in:

Mark your ad breaks and beehiiv fills them with your sponsors, programmatic ads, or both, every time someone hits play.

That includes every episode you’ve ever published.

Dynamic ad insertion

With dynamic ad insertion, your ads aren’t baked into your audio anymore. beehiiv drops them in fresh every time someone downloads or streams an episode.

That means:

And you don’t have to juggle any of the operations. beehiiv automatically plays your sponsor ads first, then programmatic ads when available, followed by any house promos. Learn more about dynamic ad insertion.

Mark your ad breaks

To get started with podcast ads, open any episode in the new ad locator and choose where ads play: before, during, or after your episode.

For mid-roll (during your episode), double-click the waveform, play to the perfect moment, or type in a timestamp. Add as many mid-roll breaks as you want, and put each one exactly where it fits, so an ad never cuts in mid-sentence.

Then pick how many ads play in each break.

You can even set pre-roll and post-roll breaks as defaults, so they’re ready to go when publishing future episodes.

Pro tip: Start with 2 to 4 ads per break, and about one mid-roll for every 10 to 15 minutes of audio. Learn more about ad breaks.

Earn from every episode

Your back catalog is still working. New listeners find your old episodes every day, and binge-listeners work their way through your archive. Now those plays can pay you. 

Add pre-roll and post-roll breaks to every past episode in one click, and they start earning on the very next play.

You can also drop mid-roll ads into back catalog episodes (just not in bulk).

Pro tip: The beehiiv Agent or beehiiv MCP can help flag your most downloaded episodes for this.

Campaigns manager

Landed a sponsor or advertiser? Get their campaign running in minutes.

Upload the ad (up to 90 seconds, MP3 or WAV) to the podcast campaigns manager, set your flight dates and an optional impression goal, and pick which shows and placements it runs on. When the deal ends, the spot opens up for your next sponsor.

On Pro and Enterprise plans, you get even more control:

You can run promos for your other content the same way, like a plug for your newsletter, digital product, or your premium podcast feed.

Programmatic ads

No sponsor yet? No problem.

Turn on programmatic ads and your open breaks become available to marketplace advertisers. When one wants to reach an audience like yours, their ad automatically plays in your ad break, and you earn.

All you have to do is mark your ad breaks and choose which ad categories to block. Everything else runs on autopilot.

There’s no minimum download requirement, so you can turn on ads from episode one. How often your breaks sell depends on your show’s size, its category, and what advertisers are buying at the time.

Earn on the breaks you don’t sell

If you already have direct-sold sponsorships, programmatic works for you too. 

Even the best shows don’t directly sell every ad break. Turn on programmatic ads to give those unsold spots a chance to earn.

Getting paid is just as hands off

Earnings show up in your dashboard as your ads run, with regularly scheduled payouts. Learn how payouts work.

Ad reporting

Podcast ad reporting now has its own dashboard, separate from your downloads. 

Baked-in ads only gave you a download count. Now you see impressions and delivery for every campaign, plus revenue and eCPM for programmatic.

That means you know what every campaign earned you, and you can show sponsors exactly what they got. It makes your next sponsor pitch or renewal a lot easier.

Pro tip: Ask beehiiv in Claude or ChatGPT: “Build me a one-page sponsor pitch with my podcast downloads, unique listeners, growth, and top countries, plus my newsletter subscribers and open rate. Match my brand, and write it in my voice using my episode transcripts.” You’ll have an on-brand media kit in minutes, backed by IAB-certified numbers.

Certified downloads

When a sponsor asks how many people hear your show, your answer should mean the same thing to them as it does to you.

beehiiv’s podcast metrics are IAB v2.2 certified, following the industry standards agencies and advertisers already buy against. 

This means your download count reflects real listeners, not noise. We filter out:

And you get a cleaner, more credible number to put in your media kit, that gives sponsors a reason to say yes.

Import podcast ad breaks

Got a show somewhere else? Bring it to beehiiv with your ad breaks intact.

When you import your podcast, tell us your ad break timestamps and we’ll set them up for you. No need to re-mark by hand. Then upload your sponsor ads or turn on programmatic, and you’re ready to earn.

Moving your podcast to beehiiv has tons of other benefits too:

Creators like Milly Tamati are making the move every day. She brought The Generalist World Pod to beehiiv in April, right next to her 55,000+ subscriber newsletter and community.

Milly’s downloads grew 8x in her first three months here 🤯

Now she’s turning on podcast ads. The game plan:

Learn from a podcast pro

Whether it’s day 1 or day 1,000 for your show, we want your podcast to win. So our Head of Podcasts, Ainsley Rossitto, is hosting live podcast office hours this Thursday, October 29 at 1pm ET.

Ainsley spent six years at Paramount building podcast strategy for major talent and franchises, and worked at NPR. She led the build of beehiiv’s new podcast ad tools, and now she’ll show you how the pros use them.

Join to:

Plus, every attendee will get free access to Ainsley’s exclusive playbooks. 

Can’t make it? Join on Wednesday, November 11 at 2pm ET instead.

Get started with podcasts

Newsletters. Websites. Communities. And now, podcasts that pay.

We’re just getting started 🎥