Substack, whose podcasters already bring in more than $200 million a year in subscriptions, is moving into advertising.
The platform is opening early-access signups for dynamic ad insertion, which will let podcasters sell sponsorships directly and swap ads across their whole back catalog without re-editing or republishing episodes. In early 2027, it plans to connect creators to third-party sponsorship marketplaces that can fill open ad breaks, with publishers choosing how many ads to run and which sponsors to accept, Podcast News Daily reports.
Both options are voluntary, so creators can mix direct sales, marketplace ads and paid subscriptions however they like. Substack says its bigger goal is to replace the separate services podcasters now use for hosting, advertising, newsletters, websites and community.
The push follows Substack’s IAB Tech Lab certification for podcast download measurement, which gives publishers standardized numbers to show advertisers, and a $100 million Series C round in July 2025. Substack entered podcasting in 2019 and has since added RSS distribution, a built-in recording studio, discovery features and analytics.
Leave a Reply