How (and Why) to Budget for Podcast Awards in 2026

Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.

Jeff Umbro: Hey everyone. Welcome to Podcast Perspectives. I am your host, Jeff Umbro. This week on the show we have a special episode all about how and why to budget for podcast awards in 2026. We'll be playing you a webinar that we recorded in December 2025 between Podglomerate SVP of Marketing and Audience Development Joni Deutsch, and Sounds Profitable founder and partner Bryan Barletta.

This webinar is all about how podcast awards can offer numerous benefits beyond just winning. Whether you become a nominee or a winner entering a podcast awards competition enhances visibility, builds credibility and showcases expertise, and being an award nominated or award-winning show can help attract guests and collaborators, increased media exposure and the potential for podcast app feature opportunities and open up avenues for monetization.

So how should you budget for podcast award submissions in 2026? What are key awards and their success rates for recognition? And how can podcast awards move the needle towards your overall show and audience goals? If you're listening to this episode on May 5th, the day that it debuts, you have exactly three days to enter the Signal Awards 2026 before the early entry deadline, which will save you a little bit of money. That said, it's not the end of the world if you're listening to this beyond May 8th. The extended entry deadline is July 31st, 2026. It just may cost you a little bit more cash.

There are also plenty of additional podcast awards that you can enter, many of which we'll talk about during this webinar. And if you're interested in some help submitting for these awards, shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or just Google "Podglomnerate Award Submissions" and you can learn more about our process.

Hope you all enjoy. Check out the episode and thanks so much for listening.

Bryan Barletta: Hey everyone. Bryan Barletta here from Sounds Profitable and Podcast Movement. I'm really excited for this webinar today and thank you so much for joining us for How and Why to Budget for Podcast Awards in 2026. For those of you who don't know me and don't know Sounds Profitable and Podcast Movement, Sounds Profitable is a trade association for the podcast industry focused on research advocacy, education and networking for the whole space. We have about 210 partners as of today and growing every single year. We've been in business about five years, and then recently I became the president of Podcast Movement who acquired Sounds Profitable. So on top of all the fun stuff that we get to do with Sounds Profitable, we now lead Podcast Movement, which is an event series focused on bringing together creators talent in the business of podcasting to share ideas, make new connections, and grow every aspect of podcasting.

The reason for this webinar, and I appreciate all of you joining so late into the year, I know everybody's super busy, it's like Q4, happens every year or something. But a, a big reason for it is that 2026, getting ahead of 2026 is gonna be a real superpower for the podcast industry. I think we've hit our stride on a lot of things, but planning and not doing things last minute might not be one of those strides, so I wanted to make sure that people were aware of the events, the awards, all the interesting things coming up next year so that they can plan and budget for it.

Awards are really a great example of something that's super easy to forget until it's last minute. And oftentimes people skip submitting for them. I think being aware of awards, the timing, the cost, the value, it allows us to build those award submissions into proposed plans for new shows, for ad campaigns, and it lets you provide value for everybody that you're working with or that I guess is working for you, flagging that to them that you'd like to win an award or even be nominated for one. To prove that point and to put our money where our mouth is, Sounds Profitable has purchased 90 total entries that we're freely providing to the partners of Sounds Profitable for the two advertising focused awards that we're sponsoring this year at the Abyss.

And we're also working on similar strategies with other notable awards and podcasting and advertising so that we can support. The industry overall and help aid our partners on getting ahead and finding the value in these things. So that's where this webinar and Podglomerate come into it. Podglomerate is probably one of our oldest partners and I've had the chance to work with them across so many areas. They do astounding work across production, ad sales, growth, and marketing. That last piece, marketing, is the reason why I'm on an earned panel at South by Southwest next year, and I believe they've been on an earned panel at South by Southwest every year that I've been there for podcasting. And it's also why I started digging into this project around awards and you know, earned panel spots, which is something we're gonna dig into at a future webinar.

The team provides a substantial amount of information for free, and we try and highlight that through Sounds Profitable and other resources, but we're gonna be working with them hand in hand to amplify that further, both for our partners and both for the general readers of Sounds Profitable and attendees of Podcast Movement.

The big thing I do wanna highlight is that one of the really impressive things is that they also provide services for those looking to navigate the submission process. As someone who's personally tapped out of handling the South by Southwest submission process, that panel picker process and passes it to other people on the team, I highly, highly recommend evaluating your time, capacity, and frustration limit to navigate that stuff.

So, with all of that said, I'm going to pass this over to Joni from the Podglomerate who's going to walk through the rest of the webinar, and I'm gonna be staying on to help with some Q&A at the end. If you have any questions, you absolutely can post them in the chat and whatnot, but I highly recommend using the QA feature and saving them towards the end because we'd love to hear from you and help support you.

Joni Deutsch: Bryan, thank you so much for being a great partner. And everyone here, thank you so much for joining us on this Thursday, wherever you are in the world. As Bryan mentioned, my name's Joni Deutsch. I am the Senior Vice President for Marketing and Audience Development at the Podglomerate. I've been here for about four years, but truth be told, I've actually been working in audio and radio for 15 years total. Some of that was in public media and NPR and NPR Music. And for the last few years I've proudly been at the Podglomerate.

And as Bryan mentioned, for those who may not be aware of what we do at the Podglomerate, we're an award-winning podcast services firm. In fact, we just won an award speaking awards this past year as the best podcast marketing production agency by PR Daily.

We're proud of the work we do. We represent a wide variety of shows. For production purposes, monetization and ad sales purposes, as well as marketing audience growth, which is the department that I also oversee. And our clients range from public media, including NPR, PBS, and member stations across the nation to for-profit entities institutions universities and independent podcasters.

So from my personal experience being on the production marketing side of shows to now overseeing campaigns. On behalf of those shows, I have a lot of experience to be able to share today. I also have the same sort of experience when it comes to being on both sides of the awards question. What does it take to win an award? And also what do jurors look for?

Over the last 15 years, I've been a juror for a number of major media journalism and audio competitions from the Ambi Awards to the online news associations, OJAs, Online Journalism Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, the Gracies, the Webbys, the list goes on. It's a lot to take in.

So today what we're gonna be doing is diving into this topic, which I know you all probably have different feelings and thoughts about. In fact, I would encourage you to put an introduction for yourself in the Zoom chat today, who you are, where you're zooming in from, what kind of podcast audio media work you do, and also what questions you may have.

And not just questions, maybe concerns. Podcast awards are basically their own entity, and I know we have some friendly faces in the crowd today that actually come directly from some of the podcast competitions that we're chatting about.

So I would just encourage everyone here be open to the conversation. If you have concerns, if you have highlights, if you have success stories, bring them here and at the q and a at the end, we'll also talk about it further. But my goal today in the 30, 40 some minutes we have together before the Q&A hits, is to dive into this topic with you further and explain how we, myself personally, and we at the Podglomerate, have been able to use podcast awards as a, an engine for growth, and growth in a number of ways.

We're also going to talk about the key awards. And there's a long list of awards out there. We're not gonna get through all of 'em today. I'll have a resource guide for you later if you want to explore that further on your own time. But we're gonna walk through some of the key awards and success rates in general terms for the year of 2026, so that way you can kind of plot out your budget for the new year for award submissions on average.

And also what are key considerations that may be more applicable to you if you're in a certain type of audio work compared to someone else in this call. And at the end of the day, I want you to come equipped and walk away from this conversation knowing what is feasible for you, what is reasonable for you and should you want further assistance, we'll provide some resources as well.

And be sure to stay at the very end. We ,in addition to having the audience Q&A, we'll also have a special gift from the Podglomerate to help you on your path to potentially winning an award. So, with that said, let's go ahead and get started. So big question. Why even bother podcast awards? What good will they do for you? How can they help you grow in any number of ways? And at the end of the day, I would just say to everyone here, it really depends on what your goals are. Just like with your podcast, right? Is your goal for your podcast and producing and making it that you want to reach a, a marginalized community or uplift voices or monetize and create a full-time career? The list is endless.

And the same thing applies to what your goal should be when it comes to podcast awards, recognition, nominations, and the like. At the end of the day, it could be a vanity metric. As you can probably see behind me, I have some little items from my years of winning awards on behalf of shows I've represented or even hosted. That's wonderful. They make for wonderful bookshelf fodder. But maybe your goal of getting award is that you want to utilize it to be able to help grow your audience further or monetize and generate revenue further, or produce even more content. I would just bear that in mind as you're thinking through how you're going to budget for this in the new year.

Because maybe the $200 you spend here could actually quadruple in return on investment you get following an award nomination or win. It is not one size fits all. I'm not saying everyone on this call should or can apply for awards, but at the very least, you're gonna go into this process knowing what is feasible and you know, does it really make sense this year or maybe wait until next year, even 2027.

So again, podcast awards can offer a number of benefits. And whether you become a nominee, a finalist, or a winner, entering a podcast awards competition can do a number of things. It can enhance your visibility in the space. Whatever space you're in, nonprofit, journalism, marketing, list goes on. It can build your credibility and it can also just showcase expertise.

So here's some very specific examples of how a podcast award can help basing this also off of what we have personally seen with our representation of clients who have become either award-nominated or award-winning.

So first off, it's being able to attract bigger, more prominent guest bookings for your show. If you are the host or producer of your show or guest booker and you're sending out pitches to celebrities, politicians, the list goes on. You have certain talking points about your show, right? What you do, what you do well, why you wanna talk to them. Being able to incorporate a line of text in there to say that you are a what you recently were nominated for Best News Podcast alongside shows from Bloomberg, NPR and Wall Street Journal. That's pretty impressive and that's likely going to encourage more of an open rate for your email or a response rate as compared to before when maybe you didn't have that moniker of award-winning, award nominated. The crowd attracts a crowd, right, the old motto goes.

Another way that an award nomination or win either way can help you is just simply with revenue growth, monetization and ad sales. If you are bringing a pitch deck to a grant funder an investor ad sales or advertiser. Or even maybe a larger effort, maybe a network for distribution. If you're looking to one of the largest, more prestigious publishers in the space, being able to say that you are recognized with either a regional award, a national world award, an international award, that could make the difference in them hearing your pitch and actually wanting to do something larger with you.

So the small amount of investment you're putting into this now could actually lead to something larger down the line, and that's not even including paid subscribers. We actually have a client that we represented who won of the 13 awards we submitted them for, they won about half of those awards, some in very prestigious categories.

And in the process of all those campaigns for awards and the wins and the nominations and announcements they did see paid subscribers, people who paid for content on their platform increase along with newsletter subscribers, along with people that are coming to their website. Words are just one of many tactics to use to be able to help grow your show along with publicity measures, cross promotions, the things go on, but it is valuable. It can be valuable so long as you know how to utilize it.

At the end of the day, if you win an award but you don't do anything about it, you don't announce it, you don't incorporate it into your materials, your SEO potential is it really doing you good at the end of the day?

So that actually brings up the next note. Awards are a great vehicle for simply more media exposure. There are some podcast apps, in fact that depending on the award they actually have great working relationships with some awards competitions where if you win an award, that podcast app might actually feature your show in their collection on or after the awards announcement is made.

So when you get an award, I would encourage you all, or nomination even, I would encourage you all to immediately put it into whatever you have at your disposal for promotional consideration, your pitches, your ability to put it in your SEO, so your metadata for your website, your social media whatever the case may be because that could lead to more exposure to your show, which leads to more audience, which leads to more monetization. The list goes on and up.

And then bare minimum, if you don't care for any of that, just know that you're in a category if you get nominated or win with likely other shows or other networks and publishers that you should probably stay in touch with. If you're in a category that also includes iHeart, Amazon, Audible, NPR, whatever the network or show or host is, I would encourage you to use that opportunity to find a way to connect with them as simple as you reaching out on LinkedIn or an email to say, Hey, I we're both nominated in the same category.

Or, Hey, congrats, you won. I was nominated. I would love to stay in touch and see if we can collaborate because we're obviously in the same line of work and we do the same, you know, have the same mission or goal. Those conversations can sprout into something much larger, whether that's cross promotional efforts, editorial collaborations, who knows?

So again, if you're not doing any of this and you previously have won a podcast or were nominate for a podcast in the past, this could be the difference of how you can leverage that win or nomination to do more good for yourself in your podcast at the end of the day.

And the larger note here is that at the end of the day, there are millions of podcasts in the world. The majority of them can't say they're nominated or award-winning, so you should absolutely use that as part of your unique selling proposition in your USP for your show and your show's goals and audience. These are a list of ideas of how you can incorporate it. I've mentioned some of them and the previous slide. The sky's the limit though, so just know that you put an effort into this thing. It shouldn't be a one and done. You should immediately put it into the vehicle, the wheel of how you're gonna be able to spur more action and activity towards what you do.

So now we're gonna talk about what some of the key awards are, and also at the end of the day costs, because I know you all are probably thinking it costs a lot of money to enter awards and you're not wrong. There are some awards out there that do cost more than others, and I also wanna acknowledge that some might have a higher success rate of getting you nominated or winning an award in their categories for various reasons. So I'm gonna dive into that a little bit more and that way we can chat through what might be feasible given the various types of shows that are represented on today's call, versus ones where maybe you should avoid that award and focus more of your energy and your budget on another specific one.

And for background, Podglomerate has a database of more than 60 awards competitions, and within those 60 awards there are a thousand categories across them, and they range significantly from prestigious journalism and entertainment media awards to marketing or live events, awards, research, nonprofit all that have something to do with podcasting at the end of the day.

And as you all saw, the Golden Globes and the announcements this week of the nominations for 2025, more awards are getting into the habit of including podcasts in their offerings. So if anything, I'd also hope that you all can take away from this conversation that if there is a line of work that you're in or a type of show or genre that you're doing you should keep tabs on the awards that currently are in that line of work, but may not have a podcast category as of yet. I would wager that they will probably include a podcast category in the near future because of the era of audio and podcasting that we find ourselves in right now. And if you are looking for that comprehensive list of go to awards, I mentioned like the 60, because we're not doing 60 today, we're doing like 12 or 15, make sure to follow the Podglomerate on LinkedIn and we'll be sharing that as soon as it goes live in the new year. Until then, here's the short list of awards that I would like to dive into with you with details, estimated cost, and also potential. I'm not saying they're guaranteed the potential rates of success.

So we're gonna start with different categories. The first category being journalism awards that honor podcasts. So basically awards that maybe are a little bit more news and digital media focused or journalism focused. But they do have categories specific to podcast and on-demand audio. So the DuPont Columbia Journalism Award is perhaps one of the highest standards and highest recognitions of journalism in the space when it comes to recognition. They honor them every year. They actually, I got a note that they've already picked their finalist or their winners for 2026 from the 2025 entry period. So we should be seeing the announcement of that in the coming weeks. Stay tuned. I put the success rate here as low for being able to win just because it is, it is highly competitive. The only shows that they're really considering are those that are directly from the journalism space and truly are ones that have direct impact on communities or the larger ecosystem of society. We have been honored that one of our clients, New Hampshire Public Radio's The 13th Step, has been recognized or honored by the DuPont Columbia Awards. But that isn't the case for every news or investigative series out there. So if you find yourself in that specific space, I would encourage you to look at what the past entrances have been for it and see if you find yourself to be in line with those that have won or been honored in the past. And if you do, then entry wise, it's $150 usually for the entry, so long as you meet the deadline. That could be one that you look into in the new year when it opens up in July.

The Online Journalism Awards is one that I've been attached to for many years, including as a judge. Similar to the DuPont, I would say a little bit less prestigious though. But they do have more opportunities for recognizing on-demand audio. In fact, the reason I put medium as success rate is that they have a few different categories that are based off of the type of organization you're in or how small of an operation you are. So from small, independent to large, so that way you're not competing directly with NPR, if perhaps you aren't a hundred employees or a thousand employees on your podcast. So with that variation that gives you a bit of more of a competitive advantage where you find the category that really fits to what you do and isn't inundated with a thousand celebrity shows or new shows that are, you know, top of the charts. And the entry fee is only $50. So, all said and done, if you work in this line of podcasting, not a bad one to look into further.

All right. We're gonna look into entertainment, digital media awards next. So, these are ones where they are typically focused on some combination of maybe arts and culture, entertainment, Hollywood. But they also have broader implications. So digital media being really anything that touches the web. So podcasts I understand are already gonna be on the web, but think of it more so in the sense of you know, any element relevant to digital media podcasts can be involved in that too. So the Peabody Awards are one of the top ones for recognition. I would say that success rate for getting recognized in it is, I would say low, maybe optimistically, medium only because if you look at the Peabody Awards and who has been recognized over the years, especially in the podcast space, they do tend to be higher publishers, bigger publishers, celebrities. The Peabodys recognize more than just audio or podcasting. They also recognize television children's programming, lots of things that would go in line with pop culture or documentary style filmmaking. So bear that in mind that you may have a chance of it, but look at the list of entrants or honorees in the past and see if you can easily imagine yourself being there or making the case for yourself being there.

And the price point for it is heavier, steeper, if you will. So, so they look into, but the Peabody Awards are actually still open for another week. So if you really wanna put in your best effort in the next week or so, I'd encourage you to look into it further.

The Webby awards, they are probably one of the highest success rates listed in today's presentation. For those who may not know, the Webby awards are considered the internet's highest honor by the New York Times. They've been around for quite some time. They are part of an umbrella of podcast awards or media awards, I should say, that honor podcast. We'll cover a few of the other ones in a bit. The Webby Awards, they span a wide variety of categories. If you do short form video or social media or ad campaigns or apps, list goes on and on and on. So the reason I put success rate being high and mind you, anything I put here is success rate. I am not saying a hundred percent guarantee you are gonna get something. What I'm saying is that from the Podglomerate track record, there is a higher chance or a lower chance of us doing this or getting an award nomination or recognition, simply because we are strategic with how we place our clients. In the case of the Webby Awards, we have a higher success rate because we do look at the very specific categories. In the case of the podcast categories, they range in bulk groupings from limited run series to very specific niche ones of best episode for fantasy, things like that. So knowing that probably less people are going to be submitting to best episode versus people who are submitting for best show or they may be submitting for best host. That's the kind of clarification that you can get simply by looking at past winners or honorees and seeing, given what you know of 2025 and podcasting. What are the likely culprits that are going to go in for the bigger categories and you want to avoid them entirely, for instance? I probably wouldn't want to go up against Amy Poehler at this time because of her hit podcast, Good Hang. And whatever categories I think she would be in are probably the ones I would avoid being in. And I would try to go to ones that are off the beaten path, if you will.

All right, next round. Still in the same category of entertainment digital media awards that Honor podcast, the New York Festival's Radio Awards. A bit of a misnomer because while it says "Radio Awards" in the title, they honor radio and podcasts, so really any kind of audio. So in this case, there are some that are focused on genres of news or journalism, arts and culture nonprofit. So you can find one that fits you. I'm not saying it's high in the sense of you're always going to come out of it with an award or recognition, but I will say compared to some of the others on this list, we've actually had a very good track record of the New York Festival Radio Awards. And in addition to that, they also recognize the National Press Club Award as part of their possible honorees. That one is only given out to one institution or one show every year. In the past few years, it's been given out to like the BBC and the Boston Globe, and we had an independent podcast news operation.

So definitely not to the same degree as those two outlets who won that this year based off the merits of their show. The judges put the time in to review it. It's more intensive as a jury juror, I would say compared to some of the other awards on this list. So this one as one I, I would encourage, especially if you are an independent podcaster to look into because I, I think you, you do get more out of this one in some ways.

The Gracie Awards is very specific. It is one that is honoring programming and podcasts that are created by women for women and about women. So if you find yourselves self-identifying as such, then this is one that I would specifically look to. And also the different categories. If you are local national programming. If you're a student, they also have student categories, which is excellent. And they also have some scholarships available to offset the cost. So that way, if you're wanting to put in, and whether it's 50 to $325, depending on the category or the time of year you submit, I always encourage everyone to submit on deadline. So early bird deadline is always the best. You could still try to go for a scholarship to offset that cost.

Still finishing up this category, the Golden Globes, we've kind of already talked about, but I'll just briefly say that this is the first year the Golden Globes are having podcast categories in the mix. Previously it was simply just television and film, more or less. So, while we do not have personal experience with submitting for the Golden Globes, we'll be curious to see how it transforms or evolves over the years. As it stands for the 2025 entry period, it was $500. And in case you all did not see, the six shows that did move forward with becoming nominees at this point, they haven't announced the winners, are practically all shows that have a celebrity attached to them, excluding Mel Robbins and NPR's Up First. So, this is one where I probably would advise the bulk of you, you, you may not fit into this category to submit. That may change in the coming years. But their process is a little different than a lot of the other awards that I've listed here today.

And the Shorty Awards, also sort of in the same umbrella as the Webbys and a few others. They are ones that honor specifically digital and social media related entities and podcasts are included in the mix. Again, because of the number of categories that awards like the Webbys and like the Shorty Awards provide as options for entry. It does increase the ability for someone to get an honoree or a nomination or a win from it because of just so many opportunities. So that's why we have the success rate being higher here compared to the Golden Globes, where Golden Globes is very selective.

All right. And then for our final category sorts which is the one I think a lot of you are most interested in, it's simply the list or short list of podcast awards that honor podcasts. So at the end of the day, the bread and butter is podcasting. They don't do a ton of categories that differ from audio. It is simply anything on this list is related to the art or the support of podcasting as an industry and audio as a genre. Or as a medium. So the Ambi Awards, the Ambi Awards are the annual event that are presented by The Podcast Academy, the TPA. They're a membership organization, so if you aren't aware of them, I would encourage you to check them out. They have events, they have webinars. Anyways, they also present the Ambies.

The, they have a few different categories, I believe, off the top of my head, it's 30 categories total that range from best genre of shows to even some more talent specific ones. And as Bryan Barletta mentioned at the top of this call, call for those who missed it, they also just added in ad specific categories. So best podcast ad, if you will. So the Ambi Awards. While they do have, you know, 30 or some categories, I would say the success rate for them is medium in order to get a nomination or win, only because they don't really split those categories out into specific parts, like limited, limited run or short form or you know, episode specific content.

It's really just based off of the show at large, or the host at large. So just know that if you're putting in for Best Spirituality Wellness Genre Podcast, you are competing against any number of shows out there, whether they are limited run series weekly series, biweekly celebrity podcasts that are all vying for the same title. But compared to the Webbys where I believe they do receive many, many, many more entrants I don't think the Ambies have gotten to that point yet. So you can try your hand at it and see if you're able to get to the nomination phase at least.

The iHeart Podcast Awards, this is the first year in fact that they are opening it up for the public to submit and enter into. Prior to this year, it was more of a closed process where internally at iHeart, they would determine who would be best fit as nominations and still aren't really sure what the process was like internally, although you can probably guess. A lot of the shows nominated for the iHeart podcast awards in the past were in fact iHeart podcasts. So we'll see what 2026 will be when they do announce the nominees. Likely the beginning of next year. But there was no cost for submitting. Sadly, the entry period just closed last week. Otherwise, I would encourage everyone here to submit immediately. So we'll see who actually goes into it.

I don't know the judging process either if it's simply iHeart individuals or people across the industry outside of iHeart. But when the awards are announced or the nominees, at least we'll get a sense of what the likelihood is. For now, I've just simply put it at medium. And when an entry is free, I don't think there's much risk for you to try to submit for it.

And then the final two I have listed here two of which I believe we have people on the call today that are joining us from these respective organizations. The Signal Awards, which have been around for a few years at this point. Likewise for the Black Podcasting Awards. Different entry fees. One is a little bit steeper than the other. But the Signal Awards do have, and Jemma from the Signal Awards, who's here with us, I think can chime in the Zoom chat as to the exact number of categories that the Signal has and they continue to grow and iterate off of it based off feedback from the audience.

If you are wanting something super specific to what you do and it's something super specific where it makes it even more more opportunity for you to potentially be recognized in that category. The Signal Awards would have you covered. They fully are devoted to supporting and elevating all the different elements of podcasts in that way.

In the Black Podcasting Awards, very similar to the Gracie Awards, they are honoring black podcasts for black podcasters by black podcasters and the network and community involved. So for both of these different in some ways, similar in others with the categories and the entry periods also change.

So now you're probably thinking, you just gave me a lot of numbers, Joni, what does that actually mean for me? So let me talk you through that. Obviously, podcast awards vary in cost from free, which I think to be transparent, the only one that was truly free in this list was the iHeart Podcast Awards one to a single entry potentially costing upwards of $500. That's assuming that you are super late with your entry period, so you're past the regular deadline, And so there's an additional cost involved, but either way, it can be expensive simply for one entry, one submission. And if you're interested in many categories, because maybe you do a history and news podcast and it's long form or limited run series, you could easily apply to any number of genres that are relevant to you, not including Best Host, Best Sound Design, Best Theme Music, list goes on.

So here's what I would say to you. If you're thinking, how do I even budget? Is this worth even money? Like, can I decrease the cost of this if I'm interested? The first thing is I just want you to think through what is the thing that you really want to position your show around given relevance to the category and your overall goals.

So I would not want you to submit for Best True Crime if you don't do a Best True crime show. Right? If you don't do true crime at all in investigative storytelling, don't hit that genre. I know that sounds obvious, but when you look at some of the category tags, if you find yourself thinking it's a stretch to call yourself that, even though maybe on Apple Podcasts, that's how you've tagged yourself, probably shouldn't do it. But if you produce an investigative podcast, then I would encourage you to think through what are the awards that truly cater towards that genre? Maybe in the journalism category, maybe limited run series, if that's what you do and are your goals to position your show as the best in the genre or position your script writing because some of these categories do have best script writing involved, or best ads, or best hosts or best reporting. Once you know exactly what you'd like to be able to go towards, because that can help strengthen your pitch for what you do well and why people should support it. Then you can get a sense of what are these categories that you should budget for? And then also for budgeting, there are scholarships and discounts available.

So if you cannot, you know, think of your budget, you're thinking a hundred dollars, maybe I can do that. But if I want to submit for more, I can't do that right now. There's a few things to consider The Podcast Academy and Sounds Profitable as mentioned. Both provide discounts if you are a member or a partner in either those organizations. So you can look into it that way. Podcasting Seriously, which is a fund that has been created to support BIPOC podcasters, is a great resource if you find yourself self identifying as that. And some awards either provide a nonprofit discount or even a student discount for entry fees. You just need to look at their entry qualifications and their discount section to see if you, you fit in those.

And obviously I would encourage everyone here know what the deadlines are for these submissions and know in advance, because if you go to the early bird deadline, that's going to cost you less money, then you wait until the last minute and it's still open, but it's now $300 more than what the base entry fee was.

So. I guess at the end of the day, the biggest question for you is how much do you wanna win an award? Because if you really want to have something on your mantle or really want to have something saying that you are award nominated or winning, then that should drive your answer and how much you should be able to accommodate for that.

And maybe for 2026, enter into one or two awards. Then if you win, maybe think of that from the perspective of I won one. Maybe the next year you can account for another budget line item for another submission if it works out. Based on the Podglomerate's past experience with submitting awards on behalf of our clients, is that is something that we do, most of our award submission clients, they range from two to six entries per calendar year that we're handling on their behalf.

And the average base entry cost for a single submission is usually $275. That's again, if we go and submit it in the early bird period where it's at its cheapest rate. So those are notes in mind. The average podcast awards budget for a single show, if you are proceeding with two entries or six entries, I would encourage you to budget for $550 upwards to 1650 for one show alone. If you happen to come from a network or if you have multiple shows that you're working on simultaneously as an independent podcaster, you may wanna just double that, triple it, however many shows that you're thinking of, positioning for recognition. So again, if you're an independent or up and coming podcaster, maybe just try for one submission and see how it works out. But if you're a bigger publisher with bigger pockets maybe increase that, totally.

And just as a reference point, there was the Nonprofit News Network I mentioned that is very independent that we represented over the last year or so. We submitted 13 entries for them for their documentary news, politics history podcast. And of those half of the entries received nominations and wins, including in prestigious journalism awards. So, sometimes you just need to put in more entries or more categories in order to win more. But you won't know until you try.

So now we're gonna get into the Q&A. And I see that we have a very active chat. So Bryan, I would love to see what you think is gonna be like the first question we pull out to address. But before we do, just as a reminder, the Podglomerate is here to help, not just with marketing and production and ad sales questions, but also for today's topic of awards. And we have a great track record because of insights from judges like myself who've previously seen these awards to also winning them on behalf of our clients ourselves that we bring to the table to help support our clients. So if you are interested, we actually have a discount that we're offering. So if you want to utilize our services for awards, you can use the QR code on your screen, scan it, it'll take you to our website. Fill in your information, not credit card, just fill in like what do you want to do? What ideas do you have? Which show are you thinking of that would be useful for, for an award? And then we'll get back in touch with you, if not next week, then early January to see what we can do together to support your growth.

Alright. With that said, Bryan, what are the big questions that everyone's asking in the Zoom chat?

Bryan Barletta: You know what's really neat here is like you highlighted, there are people here from some of the awards that you called out and they've answered a lot of the questions in the chat, which is really, really exciting.

I'm very, very thankful for that. One person did ask if the list would be made available afterwards and how they would get access to that.

Joni Deutsch: Yeah, absolutely. So we actually are going to be posting a pretty comprehensive, even more than today's list on our website, which is thepodglomerate.com.

After today's call, everyone here who registered will be receiving an email with resources and a way to stay in touch with us. So when we do publish that list, that's more comprehensive, you will have access to it. It'll likely go up in the new year, though in the first few weeks of January. So stay tuned.

But the very least, if you're asking about today's presentation, which is I think like what, 10, 12 total, everyone who registered will be receiving a link to this recording after today's meeting, likely by Friday this week. So at least you'll have something more immediately in hand that you can use.

Bryan Barletta: And then we got another one from Holly talking about how her podcast is only three months old and she's doing weekly. Would it make business sense to, to submit for an award? And one of the things I'd like to highlight before passing over to you, Joni, is that the Ambies is closed now for submissions this year. Through the advertising ones that we're doing for our partners, we've gotten an extension on those because we bought in bulk on that end. But Jemma highlighted that March is when like the Signal Awards will be opening up.

So, I think that thinking about today at three months, Holly might be a little bit different from when submissions open and then not even that when they're when nominations are named and then when voting happens, all of those things. So I think that you probably have a little bit more time.

Joni Deutsch: Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think, bear in mind, and I'm, I'm saying from my perspective as, as a juror on a number of these, if the deadline for you to submit your show at that point, maybe you only have a three month old show or a week old show even it usually takes a few months after that final deadline for jurors to start reviewing items and they have different rounds of it and different tiers of reviewing. And then for the nominations to go out. And then even at that point there might be like a public voting round for the public to get in to show like the people's choice. So by that point you probably have more.

Episodes in the feed or bigger guest names, or whatever the case may be. So I would just encourage you to look at the entry qualifications. Usually they will tell you exactly if you know, you fall within the range that could be applicable to that year's contest or awards competition. Most of them, the entry period is like the full calendar year.

So, so long as you publish at least one piece of audio. In your feed between usually January 1st to December 31st, you can qualify. But there's some nuances. Not everyone's like the same. So I just look at that and see. But if you really feel strongly about your work, if you feel like it was excellent, it was eye-catching.

If you present this to a judge who has no idea what this is that they're going to find. Some level of criteria that they will, you know, put you up higher for it. Why not? If you have the budget for it, I'd say go for it. If you wanna wait until next year though, where you feel like you're in stronger shape, wait it out.

Bryan Barletta: And, and I, I would say on that, like, most of my voting has been like, I have been a judge on Signal Awards and, and other things, but a lot of mine has been in the advertising side. And what I can say on those, for those sides is people don't tend to follow directions when submitting for these awards.

So as a judge, sometimes I'm just, we have to skip over people simply because they didn't follow it. So the pool's even smaller of people on there. And like when you're buying a house or a job application, sometimes that personal note at the beginning to the judge being like, Hey, this is why I think I fit for this. Like, you know, this is what it, why it matters. I've created this. Like not only is here my submission here, but I've also created a little highlight reel. Give them something else to dig into and be a person on it. I think that that works really well.

But, you know, echoing with some of the questions on here as well, like, do you need a certain number of episodes or downloads or anything like that? And, and I, I think the answer's no. It's just without, like what are you gonna do with the award? Yeah. And if it just means something to you, that's super okay. Like, that's super okay on there. One I really do wanna highlight is from Brendan over at Locked On, they have 210 shows on their network and they're all unique as a network because they do publish all of them there.

How, from a budget perspective do you make the decision on which ones to submit or should they be exploring worlds where they submit all of them?

Joni Deutsch: Oh, great question. And also I wanna give a shout out. Not only is Jemma from the Signal Awards here today, Demitrius from Black Podcasting Awards. And I've just been scrolling through the Zoom chat. Thank you both for all the input you're sharing. For anyone who hasn't looked at the Zoom chat, I would encourage you to do so. There's some really great insights and notes from them and their recommendations are invaluable.

So to your questions, Bryan, first I just wanna address the, the idea about downloads. There, and I've been a judge on a lot of these competitions, they do not mandate that you share your downloads with them in a good bulk of these podcast awards. They are simply just asking you for the basics, the basics of what is the title of your show or the title of your episode, or the name of your host or production team if you have one. The link to your show, the audio potentially if you wanna upload it and like.

Bryan Barletta: Why you're eligible.

Joni Deutsch: Yes. Like, that's it.

Bryan Barletta: That's it. Yeah.

Joni Deutsch: That's it. Like, they're not asking for download. They're not asking you for episode downloads or monthly downloads. They may not even have a space in their submission form for you to put in qualifying contacts of like, I'm a chart topping, award-winning show with 10 million downloads. And I've been at South by Southwest with a live taping. They may not even have that.

So, again, when you go to the websites, these awards, they'll actually tell you what they are looking for or what the criteria is of like, submitting their forms. So you can do some research in advance, do your homework. If they give you the opportunity to provide context, like the Gracie Awards actually do requests that you submit like 200 to upwards of a thousand words about why the show is for, by and with women at the heart of it. So yes, you should absolutely emphasize like why your show matters, what impact it's had metrics that you feel comfortable sharing internally with our jurors to review.

But really at the end of the day, you should focus on the quality of your content and the relevance of the category as the basis of your submission period. Now Bryan, your question though, was about Locked On Podcasts.

Bryan Barletta: 210 shows.

Joni Deutsch: Yes.

Bryan Barletta: Yeah.

Joni Deutsch: I mean, look, I'm not saying you should submit every single one of those for various reasons. Like for instance, there's 210 shows. How many of them are active? How many of them did in fact release episodes in the qualifying period.

Bryan Barletta: From locked on, they, there's are mostly always on about sports. This is an interesting one on there, right? Because now it's regional, right? They're spread out.

They have a specific reason on here.

Joni Deutsch: Yeah. There again, with sports podcasts, you will likely find a genre that is relevant to that specific, like, Best Sports Podcast category title. But you may also wanna look at specific ones like Best Episode or best, like The Signals is a great example of this. Or even the Webbys or they break out best episode in different ways. So like maybe best driveway moment, best cohost conversation, best, what have you. But maybe focus on the quality of content for lockdown or whatever major network you're on. So that way you're looking at what are the top shows or the ones that are gonna be eye-catching?

Bryan Barletta: Yeah.

Joni Deutsch: Frankly, for judges, I do review everything I have unless I need to recuse myself. That includes listening fully to what is provided to me. Some judges, there's not really a mandatory way that a judge has to listen to a hundred percent completion of whatever they're provided.

So in the first five minutes of whatever episode or show you out there are entering in through that submission form, you need to make sure it's quality and you need to make sure it really is representative what the show is and why it deserves to be nominated or recognized. So for Locked On podcasts, if you confidently feel like you can do that for 210 shows, amazing. But maybe just focus on the ones that you want to position for your own benefiting goals. If it's growth ad sales chart topping, you know, audience growth, whatever the case may be.

Bryan Barletta: And I think to this is where a lot of my thoughts come on are related to planning for the year. So Brendan, like my advice for things like this and other networks like this, is make a decision on what awards Locked On wants to win, want to be a part of on that end and plan those out. Make a decision on how many you're willing to submit for. Maybe it's five, maybe it's 10, and then work with all of your shows and say, here are the awards and their due dates that we're planning to submit for. We are looking for all of you to find your best and most interesting things of those shows or work towards building that, can you take that swing on bringing that guest on there or doing that investigative section or miniseries that you've been working on or ideating on, like can we pull in an advertiser and pitch a unique campaign so that locked on knows it's gonna submit five and you have the option to work with those 210 for how they tell you, I guess sadly you know, as like a child fighting for their parents' love and a terrible example there, but basically have them, you're doing your mini awards on that end, which ones are you going to be getting to argue like, to justify which ones get that submission?

Joni Deutsch: Yep. Agreed. And maybe you, you kind of put that on the plate of the producers and host of those shows. So if you're the person that's like in my case, it's me and my marketing team that are the ones bringing me to the table for our clients. Like, Hey, you approved our budget for this. We wanna put in for this, and we would recommend this specific category and this piece of audio to go along with the entry form. We do that. Maybe you don't need to be the one to do that within your organization. Maybe you just bring up the ideas. You offer the opportunity. And you say, Hey, I have budget for five. And for the 210 shows and producers host a network, i'm giving you the opportunity to send to me what you think is the best representative of what you do well, and then I'll make the final determination. Maybe that's not the best way to do it. Mileage may vary.

Bryan, what other big questions are even the ones that you've been thinking about that would be good for the, how much time do we have left? We have about 10 minutes left before the top of the hour.

Bryan Barletta: I think that this was really great. I mean, ultimately, like we're seeing the right questions on here, people are asking about size and, and all of that. And I think that it's really, really important to highlight to people that, like, it really depends on your intent on their, Demitrius shared some like minimums on number of episodes and whatnot for how they're handling it. Jemma shared some information on that, so it's just looking at the criteria.

But I think that like. What's really neat is like you highlighted, like, I don't think I've ever been aware of someone's downloads or how big it is. Yeah. I think that, you know, like if they give you the YouTube and you click over, you can see how many views it is. If you decide to view it in Spotify, you can see how many plays there are if they're over that cap. Mm-hmm. And that's interesting there, but it's never factored in for the, for the award. These awards aren't the most downloaded. I mean, in that scenario, you could buy traffic and win that award and that's just math. You don't need humans to judge it. This is finding people like the judges that these people pick are supposed to be representative of the body of both the industry and of both listeners, and you're trying to appeal to them.

So I think that that's the big thing there is that like almost everybody who's on this webinar is eligible to submit to some or most of these awards. The question becomes is, is that amount of money. Something that is where, like, is that where you should be spending it at this time? And the answer might be no, but how do you build it into your pitches? Right? How do you build into your proposals for what's next? How do you get that guess that you've been looking for on there and say, I would like to, you know, come on the show and we'll submit it for an award.

The same with an advertiser. All of these things. I think that that's really smart and strategic because then you're not looking at, well, I paid to submit. And now like, what do I do with this? You're looking at, I paid. This is marketing, this is helping grow, this is creating another connection.

But I think we, I nailed most of the questions. I'm seeing, like the conversations on here are great. I really recommend people to take a moment, capture everybody's name on here, find each other on LinkedIn. I'm really, really impressed and proud of the conversations in the chat here. Demetrius as well. You know, Jemma listed her information for contact. Demetrius, if you wanna list your, your information in there as well as to great representatives of the awards community. The, you know, we we're working to figure out how to sponsor something with The Signal Awards. We've been a long time sponsor of the Black Podcast Awards and we continue and plan to do that because all of these things are valuable, they matter, and it shows the value by these people showing up by coming to these webinars and supporting the people looking to be more active in it.

Joni Deutsch: Yeah. And credit to Sounds Profitable. We've done a number of things with them over the years this being the most recent example and also to again, everyone joining us today, there's a lot of resources we provided here.

You will be getting a recording of today's webinar in your email inbox in the next few days, along with some other resources and links to relevant marketing, audience growth and awards topics. I put my LinkedIn in the chat. You are welcome to connect with me out there, wherever you are. And if you have any questions as well that maybe we didn't address today or maybe you just wanted to separately send I'll share a link and you can put in an email to me as well there.

But again, thank you for everyone joining us today. Hopefully this was beneficial for you, whether or not you do proceed with awards in the new year. Maybe it'll at least give you some inspiration of things that, you know, you can look towards in other ways.

But, and Bryan, thank you so much for also moderating and and hosting too.

Bryan Barletta: And if you guys submit awards because of this webinar, Joni and I want to hear about it, right? Like we absolutely want to hear about it, and we wanna figure out how we can help you more and highlight that you took a swing because of learning a little bit more.

Joni Deutsch: Absolutely. Well until then, everyone I'll put a link in the chat for contact in case you wanna get in touch with me later.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and stay safe out there and have fun with all your podcasting endeavors.

Bryan Barletta: Bye everyone.

Joni Deutsch: Thanks everyone.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you all so much for listening. Again, if you're interested in some help in submitting for awards in 2026 and beyond, Google "Podglomerate award submissions," or shoot an email to listen@thepodglomerate.com. You can also just listen to the advice that we gave during this episode.

Thank you all so much and we'll see you in a couple weeks.

For more podcast related news info and takes you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jeff Umbro. 

Podcast Perspectives is a production of the Podglomerate. If you're looking for help producing marketing or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all socials @podglomeratepods. 

This episode was produced by myself, Jeff Umbro, Chris Boniello, and José Roman. This episode was edited and mixed by José Roman. Thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Erin Weiss, and Sheeba Joseph, and a special thank you to Dan Christo.