Estimate what your show earns from pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll ads — including the back-catalogue revenue most calculators ignore.
Maximum sellable ad revenue
$1,290/mo
$15,480 a year, at 30,000 monthly downloads.
Unlocked by your back catalogue
$430/mo
That is $5,160 a year from episodes you have already made — a 50% uplift on your new-episode revenue.
New episodes $860/moBack catalogue 33% of total
Baked-in ads only ever earn on the campaign that was live when you published. To earn this, the ad has to be a marker the host fills at download time — that is what dynamic ad insertion does.
Rounded for display; the totals are computed from the unrounded values, so a line may look a cent off.
Turn the back-catalogue number into real money
TurboCast puts pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll markers on every episode, so you can swap, schedule or pull an ad across the whole feed without re-uploading anything. Included on Hosting Pro, $29/mo billed annually.
Podcast ads are priced per thousand downloads. That unit is called CPM —
cost per mille — and it is the price of one thousand downloads of a single
ad slot, not the price of the episode or the campaign.
The arithmetic for one slot on one episode is:
revenue = (downloads ÷ 1,000) × CPM
The calculator applies that to every slot you switch on, multiplies by how
many episodes you publish in a month, and then does the same sum again for
your back catalogue. Those two figures are reported separately on purpose —
see below.
Why the back catalogue is a separate number
Almost every podcast revenue estimate counts only the episodes you are about
to publish. For an established show that understates the total badly.
An episode you released eighteen months ago is still being downloaded. If
the topic is evergreen it may keep being downloaded for years. Those
downloads are ad inventory in exactly the same sense as this week's episode
— the only question is whether the ad inside them can still be changed.
If your ads are baked into the audio file, they cannot. That old episode is
either running no ad at all or running a promo code that expired two years
ago. With dynamic ad insertion,
one change applies across every episode you have ever published, and the
archive becomes a revenue line that grows each time you publish.
What this calculator does not tell you
It assumes every slot sells. That is the single biggest gap between a
calculator and a bank balance. An unsold slot earns nothing, and for most
independent shows the constraint is demand, not inventory.
Treat the output as a ceiling — what your downloads are worth if you sell
them all at the rates you entered. Then ask the harder question, which is
how much of that you can realistically fill.
Revenue for one ad slot on one episode is downloads divided by 1,000, multiplied by the CPM. A show with 5,000 downloads per episode selling one $25 mid-roll earns 5,000 ÷ 1,000 × $25 = $125 for that slot. Multiply by the number of slots you sell and the number of episodes you publish to get a monthly figure.
What CPM should I enter?
The defaults reflect commonly published ranges — around $18 for pre-roll, $25 for host-read mid-roll and $12 for post-roll. If you already sell ads, use your actual rates. If you are estimating, remember that category matters more than audience size: business and finance shows sit well above these numbers and general-interest shows below.
Why does the calculator ask about my back catalogue?
Because it is usually the most under-counted revenue a show has. Older episodes keep getting downloaded for years, and those downloads are sellable ad inventory — but only if the ads inside them can be changed, which requires dynamic ad insertion rather than ads baked into the audio file.
Are these numbers a guarantee?
No. This is arithmetic, not a forecast. It tells you what a given number of downloads is worth at a given CPM if every slot sells. Whether you can actually sell that inventory depends on your niche, your audience and your sales effort, and unsold slots earn nothing.
Does this send my numbers anywhere?
No. The calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is transmitted, stored or logged.
Host your podcast on TurboCast
Publishing, distribution to every major directory, and dynamic ad
insertion — from one dashboard.
