The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) just announced Sounds Profitable won a 2025 Content Marketing Award for Best Data Storytelling. In addition, Sounds Profitable was one of five finalists for Best B2B Branded Content Campaign. The Content Marketing Awards, presented each year by CMI, is the largest and longest-running international content marketing awards program in the world for content creation, distribution, and innovation.

The Content Marketing Awards recognize the best content marketing projects, agencies, and marketers in the industry each year. This year’s panel of all-star judges reviewed hundreds of entries to determine the best of the best in content marketing excellence.

The 50+ categories recognize all aspects of content marketing, including the best in strategy, automation, research, social media, video, editorial, illustration, design and much more, across many different industries from healthcare to manufacturing, from B2B to B2C.

“On behalf of Sounds Profitable, our research partners at Signal Hill Insights, and our supporting sponsors, I am thrilled to be part of another award-winning research content team,” noted Sounds Profitable Partner Tom Webster. “Data without insight is trivia, and without story, it’s also soon forgotten. To be acknowledges for this is more than just an honor, it’s a career aspiration.”

This is the second major CMI award for Webster, director of the effort, who previously was part of the Edison Research team awarded Best Use of Original Research In Content Marketing in 2019.

“Once again, I’m amazed by the winners of this year’s Content Marketing Awards,” shares Stephanie Stahl, managing director, Content Marketing Institute. “The winning marketers and brands showcase true excellence in content and marketing. We’re honored to award and recognize them for their innovation and successful marketing work and everything they are doing to move this industry forward.”

As a winner, Sounds Profitable is now in consideration for Project of the Year. Finalists and winners for that category — along with Agencies of the Year and Content Marketers of the Year — will be announced in August and winners will be celebrated at Content Marketing World, September 15-17, in San Diego, California. 

Sounds Profitable, the leading voice of significance for the digital audio industry, announced the release of its latest report, “Ad Nauseam: Frequency, Repetition, and Consumer Perceptions of Podcast Advertising.”

The goals of the study were to determine the extent of listener ad-skipping behavior, the drivers behind this behavior, and consumer expectations for both the quantity and quality of advertising in their favorite podcasts.

For many ad-supported media channels, ad-skipping is seen as in inevitability; yet, in podcasting, there is both a surprising tolerance for advertising AND a defined set of actions both podcast creators and advertisers can take to reduce this behavior, including limiting repetition, improving ad creative, and respecting consumer expectations about how many ads and ad breaks they generally perceive in their favorite shows.

Key findings from the study include:

* 46% of listeners say they “always or often” skip ads on podcasts. However, when asked about the last specific episode they consumed, that percentage dropped substantially.

* 3% of listeners say they listen to “all of the ads” on podcasts, the highest percentage among all media channels tested.

* Lack of interest/relevance (37%) and familiarity with the advertised product/service (28%) are the primary motivation for skipping ads.

* Most listeners (56-59%) feel the number of ad breaks in their favorite podcast is just right.

* 73% expect to hear 2-3 ads in a typical episode of their favorite podcast is just right.

* Ad repetition decreases interest in the advertised product/service for 26% of listeners and decreases attention the podcast for 23%

“The encouraging thing about this study is that the consumer tolerance for ads in podcast isn’t zero — they expect to hear ads,” said Tom Webster, partner at Sounds Profitable. “While skipping ads happens in any ad-supported media, podcasting has the ability to mitigate much of that behavior like few other platforms, if we just respect the listeners’ expectations.”

Methodology: Ad Nauseam was sponsored by Wondery, Betterhelp, ESPN Podcasts, Libsyn Ads, SiriusXM Podcast Network, NPR, and paramount in partnership with Sounds Profitable. The study was conducted by Signal Hill Insights and comprised an online study of 1,011 weekly podcast listeners, ages 18+, weighted to US Census Data.

To review the full findings from Ad Nauseam, download a copy here.