How our data works.

Every number on SponsorHound comes from public ad reads and sponsor credits in podcast and newsletter feeds. Here is where they come from, what counts, what we leave out, and what the numbers can't tell you.

Sources

• Public RSS feeds only. Podcast feeds (found through public directories such as Podcast Index) and newsletter feeds from platforms such as Substack, beehiiv and Ghost. We only read feeds that are public and allow automated access, and our collector honours robots.txt.
• The text in the feed. For each episode or issue we read what the publisher puts in the feed: show notes, episode descriptions, or the newsletter issue itself. We don't download or transcribe audio.
• Not used: anything behind a login, private or paid content, social media, and YouTube.

What counts as a sponsor

A sponsor read or credit for a brand: "brought to you by", "sponsored by", "thanks to our sponsor", a promo code or a sponsor link, usually in a recognisable sponsor section. Rules, helped by an AI model, find the candidates and match each one to a brand, by the brand's website wherever the read names one. Since Apr 17, 2026 we have set aside 54,094 candidate mentions that were not paid sponsorships, such as:

• affiliate and referral links the host earns a commission on,
• house ads and cross-promotions for the show's own network or other shows,
• producer, music and hosting credits, news citations and calls to action that name no brand.

How brands and shows are grouped

• Brands are identified by their website domain wherever possible, so "Acme" and "Acme Inc." on acme.com are one brand. Public pages only name brands we know by their own domain.
• Product categories come from each brand's own website. Where the category is uncertain we leave it out.
• Show topics come from the categories the publisher declares (for example in Apple Podcasts) and the show's title and description. Each show sits in one niche.

Freshness

Feeds are collected every week, and the catalog is rebuilt as soon as collection finishes. "Active" means at least one ad in the last 90 days. The current data runs through Nov 8, 2026: 14,200 brands advertising on 9,586 shows (8,967 podcasts and 619 newsletters). The public pages rebuild from each new catalog within a day.

What we publish, and what we don't

• Public pages show brand names, product categories, show counts and dates: sponsors by niche, brand pages for the 649 brands on 5 or more shows, and statistics.
• Leaderboards (one per niche) list shows by name, ranked by how many different brands ran a sponsor read in the show's own public feed in the last 90 days, with two or three recent sponsors each and a link to the episode or issue that proves one. Never by audience. A show whose owner claimed it carries a ✓ Claimed mark, lists more of its sponsors and may show a media kit link; it can hide itself or flag a wrong sponsor. Every row has a one-click removal link.
• Claims and badges. A creator proves a show is theirs with a one-time link to the owner email the feed publishes, or a short code placed in the show notes, newsletter footer or website that our daily feed check finds. We record how and when. A claimed show can show a "Verified by SponsorHound · N sponsors" badge, which only states the sponsor count we found in its feed. A media kit link is labelled "verified by beehiiv" only for a beehiiv sponsor storefront (a public page beehiiv fills with the newsletter's own numbers); every other link, including Substack's Creator Kit (not public), is "self-reported". We never store audience numbers from these links.
• Signed-in users also see which shows each brand sponsors, short dated quotes from the ad reads with links, and the partnership email or contact form a brand publishes on its own website (or sets itself on our claim page), and the podcast ad agency that lists the brand as a client on the agency's own website, with the form or inbox that agency publishes for shows.
• Never: personal email addresses, private contact details, or ad rates.

Limits

• Audio-only ads are invisible. Many podcast ads, especially dynamically inserted ones on big networks, never appear in a feed's text. Our counts undercount podcast advertising, most on the largest shows.
• Coverage grows over time. We keep adding feeds, so month-to-month growth partly reflects wider coverage.
• Mostly English. Most feeds we track are in English.
• Ads, not money. A public ad read shows that a brand advertised, not what it paid or whether it will buy again.
• Mistakes happen. Matching names to brands is automatic. If you spot an error, tell support@sponsorhound.com.

Removal

Shows and brands can ask to be removed from the catalog, and brands can ask not to be pitched by anyone using SponsorHound. See opt-out and removal.