How to advertise on Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy: what it costs, who buys, and how to book

Invest Like the Best sells its host-read inventory direct, through Patrick O'Shaughnessy's own media company Colossus, and it's quoted per campaign rather than off a published rate card. Spotsnow attributes 100% of tracked ads on the show to direct response, and the show's top-spending sponsor, Ridgeline, has run roughly 32 to 37 ads in the feed. For a buyer, that combination means you're not buying vague brand lift here, you're buying coded reads to an audience that converts and a sponsor list that keeps renewing. Spotsnow estimates all of this from tracked advertiser activity, not audience surveys.

The full advertiser history and spend breakdown sits on the Invest Like the Best profile on Spotsnow.

Why Invest Like the Best is built for host-read direct response

Patrick O'Shaughnessy is a working investor, not a broadcaster. He ran O'Shaughnessy Asset Management as CEO before it was acquired by Franklin Templeton, and he now runs Colossus, the company that produces the show. The feed sits in business, with the advertiser mix landing squarely in information technology and services.

Spotsnow data shows the ad mix is entirely direct response, which in practice means vanity URLs and show-specific landing paths rather than untracked awareness spots. Nearly every sponsor read in the feed ends on a slash-invest URL. That's the whole point: you can pull the attribution report and see whether the buy worked.

The format argument matters more here than on most shows. Episodes are long, single-guest conversations that listeners play start to finish while commuting or working out, which is exactly the listening posture a host-read borrows from. When Patrick drops into a sponsor read, he does it in the same voice he uses to interview a fund manager, so the break doesn't register as an interruption. Spotsnow estimates the audience at roughly 200,000 listeners, and that's an estimate rather than an audited count. Mostly men, mostly younger-to-mid-career professionals, high income, and heavily concentrated in the US with a real UK and Canada tail.

Engagement proof shows up in two places. The show carries a 4.7 average rating on Apple Podcasts from roughly 2,070 to 2,420 ratings, and the YouTube channel sits at roughly 107,000 subscribers. Influence is concentrated in the feed and on video rather than spread thin across social platforms, which is a feature if you're buying attention and not impressions.

Who is advertising on Invest Like the Best

The roster is almost pure B2B software and fintech aimed at investors and operators, and Spotsnow tracked roughly 7 to 8 brands in the feed over the last three months.

• Vanta
• Ramp
• WorkOS
• Ridgeline
• Rogo

The anchor advertisers, broken down

Ridgeline

Ridgeline sells cloud-native investment management software, portfolio accounting and trade order management in one platform. Spotsnow estimates over $100K in total spend on the show, across roughly 32 to 37 ads, and Spotsnow classifies the brand as direct response. It's the cleanest fit on the roster: the people deciding whether to replace a portfolio accounting system are the same people who listen to a fund manager interview on the drive home.

Vanta

Vanta runs an automated trust and compliance platform covering SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR. Spotsnow estimates over $60K in total spend here across roughly 50 to 58 ads, and Spotsnow classifies it as direct response. Compliance is a founder-and-operator purchase, and this feed is full of founders and operators who have just been handed a security questionnaire by an enterprise prospect.

Colossus Review

Colossus Review is Patrick's own print and digital publication. Spotsnow estimates over $30K in total spend across roughly 11 to 13 ads, classified as direct response. The read converts because the pitch is a longer version of the thing the listener already chose to press play on.

The in-house outlier

Colossus Review doubles as the outlier in the roster, because its objective isn't quite the same as the SaaS buys around it. It's audience-building for a media brand rather than pipeline for a sales team, and it still earns its slot. That's useful context if your objective is subscriber growth, event registration or a waitlist rather than a trial signup. A different goal can work in this feed, as long as the read still ends on something a listener can act on.

All spend figures are Spotsnow estimates.

Why business brands cluster here

Most business podcasts sell aspiration. This one sells access to a practitioner's reasoning, and that changes who's listening and in what frame of mind. Someone who presses play on a ninety-minute conversation about capital allocation is already in work mode, already evaluating tools and vendors, and already used to taking a recommendation from a person whose judgment they've been borrowing for an hour. A compliance platform, a portfolio accounting system and a corporate card all solve problems that only exist if you run something. The audience runs something.

Then there's the credential. When Patrick says he runs his business on a finance platform, that's a CEO describing his own back office, not a host reading copy. B2B brands with long sales cycles and high contract values pay for that specificity, because a single closed account can cover the whole flight. The clustering isn't a coincidence or a category convention. It's the only advertiser profile the economics of this audience support, and Spotsnow data shows those same brands coming back at a high rate rather than testing once and leaving.

How your ad could sound

That's a 28-second Ramp host-read from the pre-roll of a recent episode, in Patrick's own voice.

What works in the Ramp read

The endorsement line does the heavy lifting: "I run my business on Ramp and so should you." Eleven words, first person, no hedging. The proof point is concrete rather than adjectival, "saving businesses 5% annually on average", which is the right register for an audience that reads financials for a living. And the UK launch gives the read a news hook, so a long-running sponsor sounds like it has something new to say. The close, ramp.com slash invest, is show-specific, which is how a direct-response buy on this feed gets measured at all.

What's worth improving

There's no offer and no urgency. "Learn more at ramp.com slash invest" asks for curiosity, not action, and a read this well-positioned can afford to ask for something harder. The feature list also front-loads the spot, so "cards, expenses, bills, approvals, and accounting" arrives before the personal line that actually earns the click. Flip the order. Lead with the host's own use, then justify it. View what a great sample ad looks like here.

What makes a show like this convert

1. The format carries the ad. Spotsnow attributes a 100% direct-response mix on this show, so every read is built to be tracked rather than remembered.
2. The host is the credential. Patrick O'Shaughnessy ran an asset management firm before he ran a media company, so a fintech endorsement in his voice is a practitioner vouching, not a host reading.
3. The audience can sign the contract. Spotsnow estimates roughly 200,000 listeners, skewing male, high-income, US-centered and mid-career professional.
4. The repeat buying proves the math. Ridgeline has run roughly 32 to 37 ads here per Spotsnow, and nobody renews that many times on a spot that doesn't pay back.

Invest Like the Best in a nutshell

The listener base is an estimated 200,000 mostly male, high-income professionals who work in or around investing and operating companies, concentrated in the US. The brands already in the feed are B2B software and fintech, Vanta, Ramp, WorkOS, Ridgeline and Rogo among them, and they buy host-read endorsements that close on show-specific URLs. Inventory is sold direct through Colossus, quoted per campaign, with ads running on most episodes. If your objective is measurable signups or pipeline, this feed is built for it; if you only want broad awareness, you'd be paying for attribution machinery you won't use.

Invest Like the Best isn't the only feed reaching this audience. Spotsnow shows which business podcasts have host-read spots open right now, and which brands already buy them.