Podcast Ad Time by Show: 15 Popular Podcasts, Measured
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How many minutes of ads are inside a typical episode of the podcasts people actually listen to? We run an ad-removal pipeline, so we don’t have to guess: every ad segment we cut is logged with timestamps. These pages add up that log, show by show.
Every page states its own sample: how many episodes we measured between July 16 and August 5, 2026. Small samples are labeled and firm up as new episodes arrive. For the whole-catalog picture, 10,881 episodes and the heaviest feeds we’ve seen, read our August 2026 podcast ad study.
The shows, by episodes measured
Section titled “The shows, by episodes measured”| Show | Episodes measured | Median ad time per episode | Median ad share of runtime | Typical episode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NPR News Now | 371 | 0.4 min | 8.7% | 5 min |
| The Dan Le Batard Show | 67 | 6.2 min | 16.0% | 41 min |
| The Power Trip | 42 | 12.2 min | 18.7% | 63 min |
| Global News Podcast | 38 | 3.3 min | 10.1% | 31 min |
| Busted Open | 30 | 5.3 min | 15.0% | 34 min |
| Everything Everywhere Daily | 20 | 2.3 min | 13.5% | 17 min |
| WSJ What’s News | 20 | 1.8 min | 13.6% | 13 min |
| Behind the Bastards | 8 | 12.7 min | 15.2% | 126 min |
| Blank Check | 8 | 7.7 min | 5.3% | 147 min |
| Body Bags | 7 | 5.0 min | 9.2% | 53 min |
| RedHanded | 7 | 1.6 min | 6.3% | 40 min |
| The Ancients | 5 | 4.9 min | 7.1% | 71 min |
| The Rest Is History | 5 | 6.4 min | 8.6% | 75 min |
| Casefile True Crime | 3 | 7.5 min | 8.5% | 86 min |
| The Adventure Zone | 1 | 2.6 min | 4.4% | 59 min |
The spread is wide. NPR News Now runs 8.7% ads; The Power Trip runs 18.7%, nearly one minute in five. Across every show we measured this window, the median episode is 9.8% ads, about 4 minutes.
About the shows
Section titled “About the shows”Ads are how these shows get made, and these pages are measurements, not complaints. We’re building revenue sharing so the shows our subscribers listen to most will get paid from subscription money.
Listen to any of them without the ads
Section titled “Listen to any of them without the ads”ZeroAds serves your shows back to you as clean private feeds. You keep the app you already use: the feeds work in any podcast app that accepts a custom RSS URL, which is most of them. (Spotify and Amazon Music don’t accept custom feeds.)
- Sign up at zeroads.ai. Your first 5 episodes are free, so you can hear a cleaned episode before paying anything.
- Add your shows and play your free episodes in the ZeroAds app.
- Subscribe to get your personal ad-free RSS URL and add it to your podcast app.
The founding rate is $5.99 a month while the first 500 spots last (more than 180 are claimed); after that it’s $7.99.
Try ZeroAds on your own shows →
Figures quoted from each show’s page, all measured from episodes processed July 16 to August 5, 2026. Ads are inserted dynamically, so your copies may differ. Full methodology in the study.