June 2026: For Entertainment & Media, Buy the Show, Not the Genre

Genre podcast buying can be a trap. That’s especially true when it comes to the category of Entertainment & Media. To help you decide which Entertainment & Media shows to renew, and which to cancel, we turned to ORBIT.

ORBIT (the Oxford Road Benchmark Intelligence Tool) isolates performance using actual campaign data from 500+ advertisers and $1.8+ billion in annual spend. ORBIT doesn’t care about vanity metrics; it only highlights the inventory that actually converts for advertisers.

June 2026 ORBIT Rankings

June 2026 ORBIT Insights

Entertainment & Media is a lower-performing genre, one that trails more proven categories like True Crime, News, and Society Culture. Yet we’ve identified 15 Entertainment & Media programs that manage to shine, and there are promising subcategories within those 15 winners that have demonstrated pockets of efficiency. Here’s what we found:

• It Pays to be Picky – Entertainment & Media sits in the bottom third of all our genres, but there are breakout titles. Our best advice? Don’t buy the genre indiscriminately. And don’t get hung up on size: The Entertainment & Media shows that tend to convert for advertisers are often built around specific, loyal communities, and don’t necessarily have a big infrastructure behind them. So be selective, and focus on the ORBIT winners. And if you need to go deeper, talk to us, and we’ll help you navigate the pockets of efficiency.

• Depth Wins – Super Carlin Brothers and Blank Check with Griffin & David rank in the top five, even though they often focus on hyper-specific topics. Their advantage? Both programs go deep, approaching pop culture through theory and analysis. That approach has plenty of appeal for audience members leaning in with specific questions about what to watch next, whose taste to trust, and whether a film or show is worth their time. And these shows foster the kind of engaged relationships that can yield greater purchase intent. Our advice to brands: Niche-driven shows are fine, so long as you follow the way fans engage with the material.

• TV & Film Dominates the Conversations – Nearly every top entertainment show focuses on discussions about TV and film. The shows connect with audiences who follow along to stay on top of weekly TV episodes and new-release films (much in the way some of our top sports performers follow recent sporting events). Our sole music entry, Song Exploder, functions more like a TV and film show, going deep on community-driven topics. The point is clear: Successful entertainment podcasts drive engagement by keeping track of their audience’s interests and by keeping an eye on the current events calendar.

• Female Audiences Steal the Show – Though the Entertainment & Media genre still has room to grow in terms of audience reach, there’s a performance cluster that unlocks solid reach for the right brand. Four shows in our top 15 together make a female pop-culture cluster, with programming that focuses on female-skewing reality TV and pop-culture commentary. They’re not quite top-tier in terms of efficiency, but for DTC brands seeking a female audience, the cluster is a smart way to scale.

• Acast’s Winners – Acast nabbed 4 of the top 15 spots, while all other publishers had one each. In a genre where the average lags, Acast’s doing something right, and in multiple show formats. When you’re negotiating an Entertainment & Media buy for Acast, be sure to anchor to their top four shows in order to ensure efficiency before layering on scale.

Unlock past ORBIT rankings and insights

How ORBIT Works (And Why It’s A Metric That Matters)

ORBIT normalizes performance across different advertiser goals, whether that’s target CAC, desired ROAS, or cost per qualified lead. This allows direct comparison across campaign types, something download-based rankings can’t provide.

The difference: Many tracking tools tell you who’s advertising and estimate spend, count ad occurrences, or measure downloads and reach.

ORBIT shows which podcasts made money and which ones didn’t.

We factor in what advertisers paid, what they were trying to achieve, how it was measured– including survey-based attribution data–and whether the investment delivered ROI. That’s the difference between counting impressions and measuring profit.

Our methodology:

• Minimum 3 distinct advertisers per show
• Minimum 3 paid drops per advertiser
• At least 50% of placements must exceed advertiser goals
• 12-month rolling analysis updated monthly
• Attribution-normalized across pixels, codes, URLs, and modeling

For Advertisers

Here’s how ORBIT can help you eliminate guesswork from podcast planning:

• De-risk initial buys by seeing which shows have proven track records with similar advertisers.
• Optimize faster with normalized performance data across attribution models.
• Find hidden gems before they become expensive tier-1 shows.
• Break category assumptions with data that shows where your customers actually listen.
• Scale with confidence, knowing which placements consistently deliver ROI.

The era of buying podcast ads based on download numbers is over. ORBIT shows you which shows drive performance before you spend a dollar.

Subscribe to The Influencer for monthly ORBIT updates