Oxford Road has unveiled a new set of podcast rankings based on actual advertising sales performance rather than audience size or industry buzz.
The “ORBIT Top 15 Performing OG Podcasts” rankings draw on more than $1.6 billion in campaign data from hundreds of advertisers, analysing twelve months of real outcomes to assess which podcasts deliver the strongest return on ad spend.
Oxford Road defines “OG” podcasts as shows that launched before March 2020, prior to the recent surge of celebrity-led and venture-backed podcast launches.
The findings challenge the industry’s focus on newness and star power, suggesting long-established shows continue to outperform newer entrants when it comes to conversions and efficiency.
According to the data, seventy five percent of today’s top performing podcasts launched before the pandemic, with consistent production quality and execution cited as the key drivers of success rather than genre trends or launch hype.
Oxford Road’s analysis also points to what it calls a “brand tax”, noting that high-profile shows can cost almost nineteen times more per campaign drop than established titles such as Critical Role, despite delivering weaker conversion results.
The report suggests advertisers are often paying a premium for brand association rather than performance.
Listener loyalty was another major factor, with OG podcasts delivering an average twelve percent efficiency premium. Oxford Road says multi-year relationships between hosts and audiences create trust and reduce discovery costs in a market now spread across millions of podcast feeds.
The Top 15 list spans nine different genres, including leisure, true crime and alternative health, underlining that there is no single winning category. Instead, Oxford Road says high-trust environments built over time are the common factor.
“This data proves what we all know in our hearts: trust deepens over time,” said Oxford Road CEO Dan Granger. “The hosts have years of relational capital built up with their audience, and that translates into higher conversion rates and better lifetime value.”
The rankings are powered by ORBIT, Oxford Road’s Benchmark Intelligence Tool, which measures customer acquisition costs, return on ad spend and sales results across podcasting, streaming audio, terrestrial radio and creator-led video.
Oxford Road plans to release new ORBIT rankings each month, including genre-specific and international performance lists.
The full “ORBIT Top 15 Performing OG Podcasts” list and methodology details are available here.
