Podcast Sponsor Tracker

Tracks which brands sponsor which podcasts — and when those relationships start or end — by analyzing podcast RSS shownotes. Structured data instead of manually reading episode descriptions:

• "Eight Sleep just started sponsoring this show." (new_sponsor)
• "BetterHelp hasn't appeared in the last 6 episodes — churned." (sponsor_churned)
• "AG1 is back after a break." (sponsor_returned)
• Current sponsor roster per show, with promo codes and sponsor links as evidence.

Works with any public podcast: give it a show name (resolved via Apple Podcasts), an Apple Podcasts id, or a direct RSS feed URL.

Who uses this

• Podcast ad agencies & networks — see which brands are actively buying, where they moved, and pitch churned slots.
• Brand & DTC marketing teams — track competitors' podcast ad footprint ("which shows does our rival sponsor?").
• Sponsorship sales teams — a sponsor_churned record is a warm lead: that budget just freed up.
• Researchers & journalists — podcast advertising trends as a dataset.

How it works

Each run pulls the latest episodes from every feed and extracts sponsor brands from the shownotes using three signals:

1. Tracking-slug links — drinkag1.com/huberman, wealthfront.com/tim (the strongest signal; that slug exists only to attribute the show)
2. Promo codes — "use code TIM" near a brand link
3. Recurring external domains across multiple episodes

Social networks, podcast platforms and the show's own websites are filtered by a built-in blocklist (extendable per input). The sponsor state per show is snapshotted in a named key-value store; the next run diffs against it and reports only relationship changes. Schedule it weekly for a continuous feed.

Input

{
    "podcasts": [
        "Huberman Lab",
        "1545953110",
        "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/hubermanlab",
        { "name": "My Niche Show", "feedUrl": "https://example.com/feed.xml" }
    ],
    "episodeWindow": 25,
    "churnWindow": 6
}

Field	Type	Description
podcasts *	array	Show names, Apple Podcasts ids, RSS URLs, or {name, feedUrl} objects.
episodeWindow	integer	Recent episodes to analyze per show (5–200). Default 25.
churnWindow	integer	Episodes without an appearance before a sponsor counts as churned. Default 6.
extraBlockedDomains	string[]	Domains to never treat as sponsors (e.g. the host's book site).
emitBaselineRecords	boolean	Push the current sponsor roster on the first run per show. Default true.
snapshotStoreName	string	Named key-value store for sponsor state between runs.

Output

One dataset record per sponsor-relationship change:

{
    "podcast": "Huberman Lab",
    "feedUrl": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/hubermanlab",
    "appleId": 1545953110,
    "brand": "Eightsleep",
    "domain": "eightsleep.com",
    "changeType": "new_sponsor",
    "episodesAnalyzed": 25,
    "episodesWithBrand": 10,
    "lastSeenAt": "2026-07-07",
    "promoCodes": ["HUBERMAN"],
    "sampleUrl": "https://eightsleep.com/huberman",
    "evidence": [
        { "title": "Essentials: The Science & Treatment of OCD", "date": "2026-07-07" }
    ],
    "detectedAt": "2026-07-10T16:48:20.781Z",
    "source": "podcast RSS shownotes"
}

changeType	Meaning
baseline	First run for a show — its current active sponsor roster.
new_sponsor	Brand appeared that wasn't sponsoring before.
sponsor_churned	Previously active brand stopped appearing for churnWindow episodes.
sponsor_returned	Previously churned brand is back.

A run summary is stored under the OUTPUT key of the default key-value store.

Honesty notes

• Shownotes-based: sponsors that are only read out in the audio and never linked in the episode description are invisible to this Actor. In sponsor-heavy shows the shownotes coverage is high; in shows with minimal descriptions (some news/politics shows) it can be near zero — the Actor reports what it can prove with a link.
• Brand detection is heuristic. A host's own products can look like sponsors (recurring links); add such domains to extraBlockedDomains once and they stay filtered.
• Promo codes are matched at episode level, so a code may occasionally attach to a neighboring brand from the same episode.