How Programmatic is Reshaping Podcast Advertising: Amazon’s Billy Hartman
Podcast advertising once required brands to find individual shows, negotiate deals and arrange host-read spots one at a time. It was intimate, bespoke and about as scalable as running a national delivery service with a bicycle.
Programmatic advertising is changing that equation, Billy Hartman, head of enterprise partnerships and revenue at Amazon, told Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein at the IAB Podcast Upfront 2026.
“I think podcasting is becoming a bigger revenue opportunity for creators,” Hartman said.
From one-to-one to one-to-many
The reason is fairly straightforward. Podcast advertising is moving beyond a market dominated by individual host-read deals toward one in which advertisers can use automated systems to reach listeners across huge numbers of shows.
Amazon has brought podcast inventory into its demand-side platform, or DSP, giving advertisers a way to buy that inventory at scale.
“Programmatic has essentially taken all of that supply and put it into a bucket,” Hartman said. “So now we have not just one to one, we have one to many.”
That matters in a podcast universe containing hundreds of thousands of shows. Historically, an advertiser seeking broad reach might have needed to negotiate with podcasts individually. That was manageable when podcast advertising was relatively small. At modern scale, it starts to resemble trying to personally negotiate with every pigeon in Manhattan.
Amazon’s approach aggregates that inventory so advertisers can access many shows through a single buying platform. Buyers also can layer audience data onto campaigns and determine which inventory they want to reach.
“We’re able to access hundreds of thousands,” Hartman said. “We’re able to layer on data. We’re able to get very creative with how we basically access all that supply at scale.”
Open internet makes the bucket bigger
Hartman and Granatstein returned repeatedly to the metaphor of a bucket, which may not be the advertising industry’s most glamorous contribution to the English language but gets the job done.
The open internet effectively makes that bucket much larger. Advertisers using Amazon DSP can access podcast inventory from beyond Amazon’s owned properties through a single point of entry.
“Your bucket has just grown to basically access all things open internet,” Hartman said. “That’s the simplest way to think about it.”
For advertisers, the appeal is greater reach and the possibility of finding listeners they would not otherwise encounter through individual podcast deals.
“For an advertiser who wants to reach as many people as they possibly can and really grow the reach or the incrementality of their buy, open internet enables them to do that,” Hartman said.
Scale still needs good creative
Of course, making it technologically possible to place an ad across thousands of podcasts does not guarantee that anyone wants to hear the thing.
Hartman said advertisers need to give podcast creative the same attention they devote to video, display and other digital formats.
“I do think it’s really important that a lot of advertisers think first video, maybe they think display and digital,” Hartman said. “Unfortunately, I think they don’t think too often about, like, ‘Well, what should my podcast plan look like?’”
That question becomes more important as programmatic expands. A host-read ad can be written for a particular show and audience. A programmatic spot may appear across thousands or even hundreds of thousands of podcasts, making the message itself critical.
Advertisers therefore face a familiar problem: technology has made it extraordinarily easy to distribute advertising at planetary scale. Somebody still has to make an ad worth listening to.
Measurement catches up
Measurement also has improved, Hartman said. Amazon’s AdTag can be deployed across podcast inventory hosted by Amazon-owned ART19 as well as third-party programmatic supply flowing through its DSP.
For advertisers selling products on Amazon, the system can connect podcast ad exposure with conversions on Amazon.com, providing another way to calculate return on ad spend.
“We can now actually track back to a conversion on amazon.com,” Hartman said. “So for an advertiser, that’s a pretty compelling metric.”
Amazon also works with third-party attribution providers to measure other outcomes, including activity on publishers’ websites.
Hartman said podcast measurement has advanced enough that the medium is approaching the capabilities advertisers expect elsewhere in digital advertising.
“I’d say we’re there,” Hartman said. “We’re at parity with the rest of the space.”
That could prove important for podcasting’s next phase. The medium already demonstrated that people will voluntarily spend hours listening to other people talk. Programmatic advertising is now tackling the advertising industry’s more difficult challenge: figuring out how to monetize all those ears without requiring a human being to negotiate with every podcast on Earth.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of the 2026 IAB CreatorFronts. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
Podcast advertising once required brands to find individual shows, negotiate deals and arrange host-read spots one at a time. It was intimate, bespoke and about as scalable as running a national delivery service with a bicycle.
Programmatic advertising is changing that equation, Billy Hartman, head of enterprise partnerships and revenue at Amazon, told Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein at the IAB Podcast Upfront 2026.
“I think podcasting is becoming a bigger revenue opportunity for creators,” Hartman said.
From one-to-one to one-to-many
The reason is fairly straightforward. Podcast advertising is moving beyond a market dominated by individual host-read deals toward one in which advertisers can use automated systems to reach listeners across huge numbers of shows.
Amazon has brought podcast inventory into its demand-side platform, or DSP, giving advertisers a way to buy that inventory at scale.
“Programmatic has essentially taken all of that supply and put it into a bucket,” Hartman said. “So now we have not just one to one, we have one to many.”
That matters in a podcast universe containing hundreds of thousands of shows. Historically, an advertiser seeking broad reach might have needed to negotiate with podcasts individually. That was manageable when podcast advertising was relatively small. At modern scale, it starts to resemble trying to personally negotiate with every pigeon in Manhattan.
Amazon’s approach aggregates that inventory so advertisers can access many shows through a single buying platform. Buyers also can layer audience data onto campaigns and determine which inventory they want to reach.
“We’re able to access hundreds of thousands,” Hartman said. “We’re able to layer on data. We’re able to get very creative with how we basically access all that supply at scale.”
Open internet makes the bucket bigger
Hartman and Granatstein returned repeatedly to the metaphor of a bucket, which may not be the advertising industry’s most glamorous contribution to the English language but gets the job done.
The open internet effectively makes that bucket much larger. Advertisers using Amazon DSP can access podcast inventory from beyond Amazon’s owned properties through a single point of entry.
“Your bucket has just grown to basically access all things open internet,” Hartman said. “That’s the simplest way to think about it.”
For advertisers, the appeal is greater reach and the possibility of finding listeners they would not otherwise encounter through individual podcast deals.
“For an advertiser who wants to reach as many people as they possibly can and really grow the reach or the incrementality of their buy, open internet enables them to do that,” Hartman said.
Scale still needs good creative
Of course, making it technologically possible to place an ad across thousands of podcasts does not guarantee that anyone wants to hear the thing.
Hartman said advertisers need to give podcast creative the same attention they devote to video, display and other digital formats.
“I do think it’s really important that a lot of advertisers think first video, maybe they think display and digital,” Hartman said. “Unfortunately, I think they don’t think too often about, like, ‘Well, what should my podcast plan look like?’”
That question becomes more important as programmatic expands. A host-read ad can be written for a particular show and audience. A programmatic spot may appear across thousands or even hundreds of thousands of podcasts, making the message itself critical.
Advertisers therefore face a familiar problem: technology has made it extraordinarily easy to distribute advertising at planetary scale. Somebody still has to make an ad worth listening to.
Measurement catches up
Measurement also has improved, Hartman said. Amazon’s AdTag can be deployed across podcast inventory hosted by Amazon-owned ART19 as well as third-party programmatic supply flowing through its DSP.
For advertisers selling products on Amazon, the system can connect podcast ad exposure with conversions on Amazon.com, providing another way to calculate return on ad spend.
“We can now actually track back to a conversion on amazon.com,” Hartman said. “So for an advertiser, that’s a pretty compelling metric.”
Amazon also works with third-party attribution providers to measure other outcomes, including activity on publishers’ websites.
Hartman said podcast measurement has advanced enough that the medium is approaching the capabilities advertisers expect elsewhere in digital advertising.
“I’d say we’re there,” Hartman said. “We’re at parity with the rest of the space.”
That could prove important for podcasting’s next phase. The medium already demonstrated that people will voluntarily spend hours listening to other people talk. Programmatic advertising is now tackling the advertising industry’s more difficult challenge: figuring out how to monetize all those ears without requiring a human being to negotiate with every podcast on Earth.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of the 2026 IAB CreatorFronts. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
