Podcast Advertising Math: Downloads, CPM, Promo Codes & ROAS

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Build the cumulative download curve of one episode, find the share reached by day 7, chart the curve and project a new episode's 30-day downloads from its first week.
• Turn a booking list into impressions, look up the CPM for each ad position, price every line and calculate the flight's blended CPM.
• Compare a flat fee per episode with a CPM offer across download scenarios: the cost of each deal, the effective CPM of the flat fee, the cheaper deal and the break-even downloads.
• Compare a host-read campaign with programmatic ads: ad cost, orders, cost per order, first-order ROAS and the response rate programmatic would need to break even.
• Count each show's tracked orders without double counting, normalise them to orders per 1,000 downloads, find the best show and the flight's overall response rate.
• Scale survey answers up to all new customers, compare them with the code-tracked orders and calculate a lift multiplier per show and for the whole flight.
• Estimate the new customers each show brought, calculate CAC and first-order ROAS, and highlight the shows whose CAC is above what a customer is worth in 12 months.
• Score five shows on weighted criteria, drop the ones below the minimum, split the next flight's budget in proportion to the scores and chart the allocation.