Advertise on Heretics: Inside the Andrew Gold Audience

Heretics has built one of the most engaged audiences in heterodox media. Here is what that means for advertisers.

In under three years, journalist Andrew Gold has built a podcast audience that over 750,000 people now subscribe to on YouTube alone. For brands looking to advertise on Heretics, this is the audience they’re buying into. The show itself has been watched more than 85 million times. None of that growth came from playing safe. Heretics is where icons, contrarians and cultural figures drop the script; offering long-form interviews on the subjects mainstream media shies away from.

The Publisher

Andrew Gold is a British journalist, ex presenter, and the author of The Psychology of Secrets. He launched Heretics on YouTube in November 2023, and the show has since become one of the most distinctive interview podcasts in heterodox media. For advertisers, that distinctiveness is precisely why the show has become a target inventory buy.

The format is long-form, unhurried conversation. Guests range from cultural icons such as Robbie Williams, Liz Truss, Richard Dawkins, David Baddiel and Amanda Knox to cult survivors and contrarian academics. The unifying thread is a willingness to speak honestly about subjects guests rarely discuss elsewhere.

The Audience

The Heretics audience is unusual in two ways. They listen long, and they listen attentively.
Across podcast listeners as a whole, completion rates are extraordinarily high by media standards. RAJAR’s MIDAS of Autumn 2025 highlights how UK weekly podcast listeners average nine hours per week, and 93% of that listening happens alone. Podcasts are something audiences actively choose to give their attention to, not something they have on in the background.

Demographically, podcast listening in the UK skews towards higher-income, professional audiences. Ofcom’s Audio Listening in the UK 2025 shows weekly podcast reach climbs to 30% among AB socio-economic groups, well above the 22-24% adult-population average, with strongest reach in the 35-44 age band. The Heretics cohort sits at the more engaged end of that profile, with an audience concentration above 45 and a 70% female skew. Women in this age bracket regularly control the majority of household purchasing decisions, yet remain consistently underserved by advertisers – making this one of the most commercially valuable audiences in the heterodox media space.

These are listeners who have actively chosen to opt out of mass-market channels. In addition to this, they have opted out of being sold to in ways they find condescending or untrustworthy.

Why brands advertise on Heretics

Heretics works particularly well for advertisers in:

• Long-consideration purchases (financial services, insurance, software, education, supplements).
• Lifestyle brands targeting an educated, sceptical, high-disposable-income demographic.
• Books, publishing, and ideas-led media.
• Direct-to-consumer products with a strong founder story or unconventional pitch.
• Subscription services where trust and retention matter more than impulse.

Host-read advertisements drive a brand recall rate of seventy-one percent on average, against sixty-two percent for non-host-read ads, according to Nielsen’s Podcast Ad Effectiveness research. On a publisher like Heretics, where the host-audience relationship is unusually strong, the trust transfer can sit at the higher end of that range.

Why Now?

Inventory on independent podcasts – Heretics included – is still trading below comparable mainstream rates, despite outperforming on engagement. As more brand advertisers move budget into the channel, that discount is closing. Heretics is a clear example: subscribers have roughly tripled in the past 18 months, and the show’s audience continues to grow at pace. Brands advertising on Heretics now, while CPMs remain attractive, are buying engagement at materially lower cost than they will be 12 months from now.

Get in touch today

To advertise on Heretics, work with us through the Uncommon Ad Space network. We handle the buying, the briefing, and the measurement end-to-end, so sponsors can focus on what matters: reaching a high-intent audience and growing market share.