New Research: Veritonic confirms NPR Podcasts drive awareness and conversions

NPR works with research firm Veritonic to provide sponsors with brand lift research, revealing key insights on brand metrics and campaign optimization. In 2025, Veritonic executed 37 panel-based studies, revealing aggregated year-long campaign results and valuable insights for  NPR sponsors:

• Higher campaign spend drives more impressions and greater lifts.
• Consistency leads to greater long-term impact.
• NPR Podcasts deliver results across brand categories.
• NPR listeners represent diverse and valuable target audiences.

Increased Spend Drive Better Lifts

As overall spend from brands using Veritonic increased, research showed higher impression counts and larger lifts in brand awareness, opinion and intent to act upon hearing a sponsorship message. Across all brand lift studies conducted in 2025, NPM found that larger campaign spend and more impressions lead to a stronger performance.

A returning travel brand increased investment by just $200k from their previous campaign and achieved double the impressions and strong year-over-year lifts in favorability.

Consistency Leads to Long-Term Impact

The success of that travel brand’s campaign also illustrated that consistency leads to greater impact. The sponsor’s goal was to drive website visits and improve its conversion rate by maintaining a sustained presence on NPR Podcasts. Their approach of using consistent seasonal campaigns proved effective, with significant lifts in favorability and intent, year-over-year growth and a high return on ad spend. Returning sponsorship delivers greater benefits for brands aiming to drive intent. 

Success Across Brand Categories

NPR Podcasts are valuable for brands across industries, with measured campaigns averaging +11pt lift in awareness, +13pt lift in favorability and +14pt lift in intent. Non-profit brands secured the highest lift in awareness and favorability, while Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands excelled in intent. Other standout categories include financial services, travel, B2B, automotive and healthcare sponsors. Two healthcare brands ran particularly successful campaigns, showcasing the potential for the category.

An eldercare provider saw significant gains across metrics with its first campaign, focusing placements on NPR’s Run of Science & Wellness programs. Another notable study from a regional healthcare system utilized geo-targeting within a designated market area to achieve impressive year-over-year growth, confirming that precision targeting effectively reaches target audiences.

Optimized Campaigns Reach Target Audiences

Utilizing audience targeting maximized impact for brands in 2025. Veritonic studies showed an increased lift in both intent and consideration across all target audiences, with especially strong results among business-to-business (B2B) decision-makers, high-income listeners, and frequent category users. In particular, frequent category users proved to be a crucial audience for brands aiming to capture greater market share among NPR Podcast listeners. 

This was evident for B2B brands as effective targeting resulted in 71% of exposed NPR Podcast listeners holding decision-making roles. Exposed listeners were also more likely to be frequent purchasers, likely to consider purchasing relevant tools and services for their organizations. By using audience targeting and securing placements on relevant shows, both new and established B2B companies saw substantial gains and reached key decision-makers in top industries like information technology.

A cloud security brand achieved an awareness lift more than double the control, and an established B2B software company recorded the largest intent-to-purchase lift across all 2025 Veritonic studies.

The 2025 Veritonic brand lift research confirms that strategic investment and sustained, targeted placements on NPR Podcasts are proven methods for driving campaign performance. By leveraging these insights, brands can fully maximize the value of their NPR sponsorship. 

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