Sponsor Dwarkesh Podcast

Dwarkesh Patel
Jun 13, 2024
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To get in touch, please fill out this short form here.

If you have any questions, ping me at dwarkesh@dwarkeshpatel.com.

About the podcast

I’m grateful to have what is probably the smartest and most valuable audience in the world for a show as big as mine.

My show has over 544,749 viewers + listeners on average over the last 5 episodes (see breakdown here).

I host deeply researched and widely acclaimed interviews with some of the world’s top CEOs, world leaders, researchers, and intellectuals. Guests include Mark Zuckerberg, Tony Blair (upcoming), Patrick Collison, Demis Hassabis, and Ilya Sutskever.

This audience contains an unmatched density of the most important decision makers in business and technology. To give you a sampling:

I have a dedicated and astonishingly fast growing audience which is so valuable that Zuckerberg reached out to launch Meta’s major AI initiative (Llama 3) on my podcast. I have a trusted relationship with the top CEOs, founders, C-suite, researchers, and engineers in technology (and especially in AI).

Here is a recent profile which says more about the podcast.

Sponsor testimonials

Stripe is a long term partner who is sponsoring episodes for the next 6 months and beyond.

Other advertisers include CommandBar, V7 Labs, and Nucleus Genomics. Here is what they have said about the experience of working with me:

  • James Evans, CEO of CommandBar:

Very proud that CommandBar is now sponsoring the Dwarkesh podcast (together with Stripe and v7 labs) @dwarkesh_sp delivers probably the highest signal to noise in AI and tech generally. AND is exactly the same person privately as you see in the pod -- thoughtful, kind, diligent, ambitious. [source]

  • Kian Sadeghi, CEO of Nucleus Genomics:

For a 60-second ad,

@dwarkesh_sp:

  • Did a deep dive into our science and models

  • Developed a storyline

  • Worked with the team on several rounds of revision

  • Stayed true to the audience

How you do one thing is how you do everything — don’t miss this opportunity to work with a true professional who’s all about craft!!!!!!! [source]

  • Alberto Rizzoli, CEO of V7 Labs

Our very first sponsorship experiment with @dwarkesh_sp to tie into the Llama3 launch. He's very responsive and picky on endorsements and a pleasure to work with. [source]

Previous sponsorship examples

  • Stripe ad on Zuckerberg.

    • I emphasize how even Meta chooses to use Stripe for payments, illustrating how amazing their technology must be, and I talked about my own personal experience using Stripe.

    • Great template if you mainly want to pitch the enterprise version of your product, but also have a consumer version which I can personally endorse.

  • V7 Labs ad on Zuckerberg.

    • I talk about how their product is the answer to the question I asked Mark about what an “industrial scale use case for AI” would look like. An example of natural per-episode bespoke integration.

    • Check out the cool overlays here and on the ones below!

  • Nucleus Genomics ad.

  • CommandBar ad.

Audience information

We collected an audience survey in June 2024 filled out by a sample of over 660 listeners and viewers. To flag potential sampling bias, participants found out about the survey via my Twitter. Here is what we learned:

  • 14.5% are CEOs, 7.8% are C level or VP level executives, 40.8% are engineers, 24.3% are researchers, and 14.6% are product managers or in operations and strategy.

  • 23.7% have made their companies acquire products/services worth more than $100,000. 9.1% have made their companies acquire products costing between $1,000,000-$10,000,000. 1.9% have made their company acquire products larger than $10,000,000.

  • 16.7% control a yearly budget at their companies between $100,000 and $1,000,000, 12.1% control a yearly budget between $1,000,000 and $10,000,000, and 6.1% control a yearly budget greater than $10,000,000.

    .

  • 18.9% are currently the founders of their own company, 23.6% are currently working at a startup, and 20.6% are interested in starting a startup at some point.

  • 45.1% are currently working in AI, and 18.8% are planning on working in AI.

Demographics

Pulled from Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Sponsorship format

I’m looking for long term partners I believe will add value for the audience and thus have success partnering with me.

These ads will be read by me and integrated with the topics from the episode in a way that feels native to the episode. I place tremendous value on my audience’s time and the trust they have in me and my endorsements, so I’m very selective about the companies I choose to work with.

What’s included

  • 60 second mid roll sponsorship on all the platforms (including YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Twitter).

    • New bespoke scripts for each episode tailored to fit the specific guest and topics. These scripts will sound authentic in my voice, convey your talking points, and highlight what excites me about your company.

  • A featured blurb about your company atop the transcripts on the episode website, in the newsletter, and in the episode descriptions for all the platforms.

  • Category exclusivity for the duration of the partnership.

I have amazing editors who will make compelling and helpful overlays which illustrate your product, as you can see in the examples below. And we will re-record the ad to change the script/delivery/overlays as many times as needed to make sure you and your team are super happy with the end result by which hundreds of thousands (and potentially millions of people) will learn more about your brand.

FAQs

How frequent are your episodes? And how many sponsors will each have?

I publish 2-3 episodes a month on average. Depending on length, each one will have 2-3 midroll sponsorships.

I’m looking for long term partners whom I can introduce to my audience over the course of many episodes. 

Are people just gonna fast forward through the ads? And what determines what order the mid-roll sponsors are placed?

Since we’ll be doing many episodes together, I’ll randomly rotate which sponsor gets which order on a particular episode. Over time, every advertiser will get the same average spot.

Here is the retention curve on a recent episode with ads, which is illustrative of the pattern we see across all the episodes. Two important takeaways (based on data from Apple Podcasts):

  • 89.8% of listeners who listen to the surrounding minutes did not fast forward through the ad.

  • Because of the dedication of the audience, a large majority of people (62.5%) who listen to at least the first 45 seconds of the episode will listen to the whole episode.

How long will the advertisement remain on the episode?

At least 1 year. I don’t necessarily have plans to edit it out after, but it’s important to me to have control over how my podcast is preserved (for archival reasons for example). 

How many people should we expect to see the ad in the future many months from now?

If the podcast keeps growing at even a fraction of the rate that it has been growing, your sponsorship will be seen by countless more people over the course of the next year.

To give you an example, here is an interview I released last October with the historian Sarah Paine. Due to the growth of the podcast, the amount of views it has on YouTube has skyrocketed to over a million. I wasn't doing sponsors at the time, but if I had been, somebody who had “invested” in the podcast by purchasing ads back then would have gotten many times over the bang for their buck. 

I am on track to continue growing the podcast at this pace. Which means that if you started sponsoring today, you would see the same results many months from now.

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