A booking agency finds relevant shows, pitches you to them and manages the diary. It works. The question worth asking first is what it costs per booking, because at the published rates that number is usually larger than people expect.
Four things, in this order. It builds a list of shows whose audience matches the people you want to reach. It writes a pitch that gives each host a reason to say yes. It sends those pitches and chases them. Then it handles scheduling, briefing notes and follow-up.
The first of those four is research, and it is the part that decides everything after it. A pitch to the wrong show fails however well it is written.
Retained podcast booking in the UK is commonly quoted from around £800 a month, and done-for-you services in the United States sit higher again. Agencies typically work to a target of a few bookings a month, so a realistic cost per placement is in the low hundreds of pounds.
The number that decides it. Roughly 20 pitches produce one booking at the industry median acceptance rate of about 5%. So the real question is not what an agency charges per month. It is what it charges per booking, and whether you could send those 20 pitches yourself.
It is worth it when your time is genuinely more expensive than the fee, when you need bookings on a deadline, or when you want someone else carrying the rejection. Those are real reasons and none of them is a failure of nerve.
It is poor value when you are paying a retainer mostly for a list. The research half of the work is now something you can do yourself in an afternoon, because the data exists.
We hold 22,259 shows. Of those, 7,825 pass every test that matters for a cold pitch: the show publishes its own contact address rather than a network desk, it sits outside the national chart, it comes from an independent publisher, and it has released an episode in the last year. 451 of them are confirmed British.
That is the list an agency would build for you, except you can read it now.
| Shows in the directory | 22,259 |
|---|---|
| Realistically pitchable | 7,825 |
| Confirmed UK | 451 |
| Pitches per booking | about 20, at a 5% median acceptance rate |
Some do, and almost nobody publishes it. We asked hosts directly. 5 have answered so far: 3 said they never charge and 2 said they charge at least sometimes. That is a small sample and we will not dress it up as more than it is, but it is real answers from real hosts rather than an assumption.
A good agency will tell you when a slot is paid. So will we, on the show's own page, where the host has told us.
Pick the field your buyers listen to rather than the biggest show you can think of.
Tell us who you want to reach and what makes you worth booking. We read every answer ourselves and come back to you within two working days. Four questions, about two minutes.
The directory, the reach data and the published contacts, with pitches drafted for you and outcomes tracked. From £49 a month, cancel from your account page at any time.
We are not a traditional retained agency and do not pretend to be. We are the research half of one, sold as software, with a done-for-you option when you would rather not. We never send a pitch on your behalf without you seeing it, and we never invent a contact address.