Inside the 2025 Podcast Ad Playbook from Leading Brands: Whole Foods, Chime, Indeed, and Tecovas

It finally happened- we found insights that brand builders and performance marketers can agree on.

We gathered CAOs from all walks of business: from finance and food to jobs and boots. They share everything they’ve learned as they’ve scaled podcasting to enviable levels. Whether you’re team brand or team performance, you’ll benefit from their wealth of experience.

On The Media Roundtable, we have one of our favorite conversations from our 2025 CAO Summit.  Conor Doyle (President, Oxford Road) moderated the ”No More Maybes: Scaling Podcast Performance with Precision” panel, where he gathered some of the sharpest CAOs around, who agreed to share their secrets on scaling podcasts.

Conor was joined by our VIPs:

• Gladwell Mwangi (Director of Paid Media, Whole Foods)
• Kezia Koo (Former Sr. Director, Global Growth & Performance Marketing, Indeed)
• Megan Smith (Director, Media Strategy, Tecovas)
• Nick Fairbairn (Vice President, Growth Marketing, Chime)

These audio evangelists candidly shared how they grew their podcast buys with confidence and their hard-won lessons from the journey.

“Every single time we ratchet up the quality of our measurement, it’s telling us time and time again that podcast is efficient-it’s driving revenue and bringing customers in.” – Kezia Koo (Former Sr. Director, Global Growth & Performance Marketing, Indeed)

This week, we’re talking: Measurement Quality, Podcasts Play Nice, Thoughtful Success, and more. Let’s dig in:

Measurement Quality: The first step to every success story? Getting measurements you trust. But as spend increases, so should measurement sophistication. Over 6 years, Indeed moved from a single attribution model to different media mix models, and onto clean room measurement. The common result? Podcasts have a fantastic ROI and deserve more spend. The lesson? Scale is constrained by the confidence you have in your performance. Better measurement unlocks increased spend at optimal levels.

Podcasts Play Well with Others:  Podcast absolutely performs on its own. But thanks to video, it’s an incredible team player too, helping other channels efficiently scale. Combine book endorsement spots with a trusted podcast host, negotiate usage rights, and you have an abundance of powerful clips for CTV, paid social, and programmatic. With the rise of video, visual brands like Tecovas especially benefit, but the truth is, host authenticity is the rising tide that lifts all marketing boats, so make sure you’re not ignoring it.

Thoughtful Success: While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, intentionality played a key role in all of our CAOs’ success stories. You need:

1. Clarity: Define how podcasts can support the rest of your marketing. Longer host endorsements humanize brands more effectively than 15-second DR TV spots can.
2. Thoughtfulness with your placements: Look past the top 10 shows, track your CPAs on a show-level, and when you find a winner, make a commitment. You’ll get amazing reads (which you can then use again elsewhere in your marketing ecosystem).

Want more stats and secrets from every step of the scaling journey? Tune in to the full episode by clicking the link below.