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Department for Transport: Streaming

Asked by Mr Richard HoldenConservativeDepartment for TransportTabled Answered 8 September 2026UIN 21989

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 19 June 2026 to Question 6328 on Department for Transport: Streaming, if she will provide a breakdown of the £598,454.02 spent on podcast advertising in 2025-26 by (a) podcast, (b) publisher or media company, (c) campaign and (d) amount spent.

Answered by Department for Transport

The £598,454.02 figure previously provided is the total spent in 2025-26 on podcasts or digital audio advertising (e.g. across Spotify) on the Electric Vehicles, Speeding and Drink Driving campaigns. We are not able to split out spend solely on podcast advertising due to the way advertising is bought from digital audio streaming platforms.

Of this total, £432,412.88 is budget held and spent by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) on the Electric Vehicle campaign. This campaign was funded by DESNZ with delivery carried out by the Department for Transport.

The remaining £166,041.14 budget spent by the Department for Transport is broken down by campaign as follows:

  • THINK! Speeding campaign: £108,587.50
  • THINK! drink driving campaign: £57,453.64

We do not hold this information split out by each podcast due to the way the advertising is bought through the government's contracted media buying agency. We also cannot provide spend broken out by publisher or media company as this information is commercially sensitive and may impact the ability of our media agency to ensure value for money for government advertising campaigns.

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