How to advertise on HOTD - A House of the Dragon Podcast: what it costs, who buys, and how to book

HOTD sells its host-read inventory direct through Bald Move, the host's own network, and it's quoted per campaign rather than off a public rate card. Across the last three months Spotsnow data shows the show carried roughly 99 to 116 advertising brands, and every ad Spotsnow classifies here is direct response. The anchor sponsor has run roughly 38 to 44 reads over that window. For a buyer weighing this feed, that mix reads like a performance channel wearing a fandom show's clothes. Spotsnow estimates all of this from tracked advertiser activity, not audience surveys. This is HOTD - A House of the Dragon Podcast.

Why HOTD is built for host-read direct response

The show is hosted by the Bald Move team, A.Ron Bergman and Jim Jones, who run a long-standing independent TV-recap operation built on episode-by-episode analysis of prestige HBO drama. It sits in information technology & services territory on the buyer side, but the feed itself lives in TV and film fandom.

Spotsnow classifies 100% of the show's ads as direct response. That is the whole story here. Codes, vanity URLs, and clean attribution are what these buyers want, and this feed delivers listeners who sit through an ad break because they came for a full episode of analysis, not a two-minute clip. Spotsnow estimates reach at roughly 107,000 listeners, an estimate, not an audited count. A recap show holds attention differently than a headline-news feed: the audience is settled in for a long listen, and a host-read borrows exactly that patience.

Influence shows up as engagement. The show carries a 4.5 average Apple Podcasts rating from roughly 4,800 to 5,600 ratings, per Spotsnow. That pull is concentrated in the feed itself rather than spread across a stack of social channels, which is where a direct-response advertiser wants it anyway: attention at the point of the read.

Who is advertising on HOTD

The roster leans on streamers, telecom, and travel, with a professional-services buyer running the longest. Names you'll recognize in the last three months include Disney+, HBO Max, Toyota, Priceline, and Mint Mobile.

The anchor advertisers, broken down

Bald Move

Bald Move is the network's own promotion, running its membership and sister shows in-feed rather than as a bookable third-party sponsor. Spotsnow attributes roughly 38 to 44 reads and an estimated total spend of over $40K, classified direct response. Read it as a signal, not a sale: the network trusts its own inventory enough to run itself hard on it.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn, the professional networking platform, has run roughly 15 to 18 ads with an estimated total spend of over $20K, mostly direct response per Spotsnow. A recap audience skewing toward working-age, US-heavy adults is a clean match for a recruiting and B2B pitch, and the repeat buying tells you the attribution held up.

All spend figures are Spotsnow estimates.

Why TV & Film brands cluster here

A recap feed like this one is a captive audience for anything that lives on a screen or a device. Streamers advertise where the next-title decision gets made, and a House of the Dragon audience is already primed to try another prestige drama. Telecom and travel show up because the listener base skews toward working adults with money to spend, concentrated in the US with real UK and Canada tails. The through-line is trust: A.Ron and Jim have spent years building a voice their listeners take seriously, and a direct-response read borrows that authority the moment it drops. That is why a professional-services buyer like LinkedIn keeps coming back to a fantasy podcast. The mindset in the feed, patient, engaged, decision-ready, is worth more to a coded offer than raw scale would be.

How your ad could sound

Here's a produced spot that ran on the show, dropped mid-episode after the hosts hand off with a clean in-fiction line.

What works: the handoff. The hosts break with "We're needed at Dragonstone. We'll be right back," which keeps the fiction intact and eases the listener into the break instead of jolting them. The copy is punchy and confident, stacking the offer around one line, "No one deals more deals than Priceline."

What's worth improving: it's a produced spot, not a host endorsement, so it borrows none of A.Ron and Jim's credibility. There's no code, no URL, and no urgency, which is a strange gap on a feed where every tracked ad is direct response. A host-read version would add a personal frame and an attributable offer, and that is the difference between running here and converting here.

View what a great sample ad looks like here.

What makes a show like this convert

1. The format holds attention. A long-form recap keeps listeners in the seat through the break, so a host-read lands on an audience that's actually listening.
2. Host credibility carries the pitch. A 4.5 Apple rating from thousands of listeners is trust an endorsement can borrow.
3. The audience is decision-ready. Working-age, US-heavy fans who already spend on streaming and travel match the brands buying here.
4. Repeat buying proves the math. The anchor sponsor's roughly 38 to 44 reads is the tell: brands don't rerun a feed unless the coded response justifies it.

HOTD in a nutshell

An estimated 107,000 listeners, skewing male with a solid female share, concentrated among working-age adults and heavily in the US with UK and Canada tails. The buyers already here run from streamers and telecom to a repeat professional-services advertiser, mostly on produced spots today with room for a host endorsement. It's sold direct through the small Bald Move network, quoted per campaign, and Spotsnow classifies every tracked ad as direct response. If you want coded attribution from an engaged niche, this fits; if you're chasing raw awareness scale, look elsewhere.