Oxford Road has launched a new ranking system for podcasts, measuring ad performance through real sales results rather than downloads or surveys.
The “ORBIT Top 15 Podcasts Measured by Ad Performance” report draws from $1.6 billion in campaign data across hundreds of advertisers to identify which shows deliver the best return on investment.
Covering a full year of verified campaign outcomes, Oxford Road says the findings challenge long-held industry assumptions about what drives success.
Eleven of the top fifteen podcasts are in comedy or politics, categories often avoided by brands over content concerns, yet they delivered the strongest conversion rates.
Notably, mega-shows such as The Joe Rogan Experience are missing from the top fifteen, suggesting that marketers may be overpaying for scale while niche shows outperform.
Critical Role, the Dungeons & Dragons series created by professional voice actors, took the number one spot, highlighting the power of passionate, engaged audiences over casual mass listenership.
“Every other ranking tells you who has the most listeners,” said Dan Granger, CEO of Oxford Road. “We’re telling you which shows deliver ROI. For 15 years, marketers have been making decisions without this data – that changes today.”
Built on the Oxford Road Benchmark Intelligence Tool (ORBIT), the rankings normalise results across advertiser goals, measuring actual customer acquisition costs, return on ad spend, and real sales outcomes.
Granger added: “The era of buying podcast ads based on download numbers is over. ORBIT shows you which shows drive performance, before you spend a dollar.”
Oxford Road will update its ORBIT rankings monthly, adding categories for genre, region, and advertiser vertical as the data set grows.
The full ORBIT Top 15 Podcasts Measured by Ad Performance list and methodology details are available here.
