How to advertise on The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim: what it costs, who buys, and how to book

Host-read inventory on this show is sold direct and quoted per campaign, not off a published rate card. Spotsnow attributes a fully direct-response posture to the feed, meaning every tracked ad on the show is coded, offer-led, or built to drive a click rather than to park a logo next to a foreign policy segment. The most frequent recent buyer, Grainger, has run roughly 11 to 13 ad appearances in the last three months, per Spotsnow. For a buyer, that combination says this is a feed where performance brands come back, which matters more than any single flight. Spotsnow estimates all of this from tracked advertiser activity, not audience surveys.

The show is The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim, a twice-weekly geopolitics show built on frontline reporting.

Why The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim is built for host-read direct response

Richard Engel is NBC News' chief foreign correspondent, and Yalda Hakim is an international broadcast journalist who has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine. The show sits in news, with its subject matter squarely in international affairs.

Spotsnow data shows the ad mix here is entirely direct-response, which is unusual for a hard news feed and useful if you need attribution. Direct-response reads carry a code, a vanity URL or a phone number, so you can tie revenue back to the feed instead of guessing. Spotsnow estimates reach at roughly 165,000 listeners, an estimate rather than an audited count.

Forget cost for a second and look at format. Episodes are long-form interviews with correspondents and analysts, often about an unresolved conflict, and listeners stay through because the answer comes at the end of the segment. That's sustained, deliberate attention, and it's exactly what a host-read borrows when Engel or Hakim hands off to a sponsor. A news listener who sits through fifteen minutes on Article 5 is not skipping a forty second read.

The engagement signal backs it up. The show carries a 4.6 average rating on Apple Podcasts from roughly 167 to 185 reviews, and about 53,000 YouTube subscribers. Influence here is concentrated in the feed and on YouTube rather than scattered across a dozen social accounts, which means your spend lands where the audience actually listens. The audience itself skews male, older and affluent, with a strong international footprint, heaviest in the US and with a sizable UK following.

Who is advertising on The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim

Spotsnow data shows roughly 10 to 12 brands running on the show in the last three months, a mix of national performance advertisers, one B2B supplier buying heavily, and news-adjacent media. The names a buyer will recognize:

• Wayfair
• Carvana
• Progressive Insurance
• Freestyle Libre
• YouTube TV

The anchor advertisers, broken down

Sky

Sky is the UK's largest pay-TV and broadband operator, and Spotsnow ranks it the top spender on this show, with estimated total spend over $5K against roughly 2 appearances in the window. Spotsnow classifies Sky as a direct-response-led advertiser across its wider podcast activity. The fit is obvious once you look at the listener map: almost a third of this audience sits in the UK, and they're already paying attention to foreign affairs coverage.

Sky News

Sky News is the broadcaster's rolling news arm, and Spotsnow estimates total spend on this show at over $1K from a single host-read placement in a mid-2025 flight. Spotsnow attributes a direct-response classification to nearly all of its tracked reads. A news brand buying a news podcast sounds lazy until you notice the overlap is subject matter, not format: these listeners are already in the market for more conflict reporting.

Wayfair

Wayfair sells home goods and furniture online, and Spotsnow estimates total spend on this show at over $1K across roughly 2 appearances, one of them a true host-read. Spotsnow classifies Wayfair as direct-response-led. It's a household play: this audience is older, affluent and buying for a home they own, and a celebrity-endorsed read gets to borrow the feed's credibility without pretending to care about NATO.

Grainger, the outlier worth noticing

Grainger supplies industrial maintenance and repair products, and it's the most frequent advertiser on the show by a wide margin, per Spotsnow, with roughly 11 to 13 appearances in three months. Its reads run as produced spots, not host endorsements, which proves a second objective works here. If your audience includes operations managers and procurement buyers, a serious news feed reaches them in the car before they reach the dock.

All spend figures are Spotsnow estimates.

Why news brands cluster here

News podcasts have a reputation problem with media buyers: brand safety teams flinch at conflict coverage, and awareness planners assume a serious feed can't drive a code redemption. The roster on this show argues the opposite. Two correspondents who have been shot at explaining why a border matters is the single highest-trust format in audio, and trust is what converts. Spotsnow attributes a fully direct-response ad mix to the feed, which only happens when the reads actually perform.

Look at who's buying and the logic tightens. A UK broadcaster buys because a large slice of the audience is British. An industrial supplier buys repeatedly because the listener is a decision-maker with a budget. A home goods retailer buys because the household is affluent and owns the house. Those are three different briefs landing on the same feed, and the thing they share is a listener who chooses to spend forty minutes on something difficult. Attention earned that way is attention a sponsor can rent.

How your ad could sound

The Wayfair read works because it starts with a person, not a product. "I know holiday magic starts at home, so I tend to go a little overboard" is a confession, and a confession buys you three more seconds of attention. The endorser is named up front, the framing stays first-person throughout ("the thing I love even more than decorating is having everyone over"), and the handoff into the spot is clean after the segment closes. One URL, one idea, no list of product categories.

Two things I'd change. There's no code and no vanity URL: "head to Wayfair.com and get your home holiday ready today" sends traffic to a homepage you can't isolate in reporting, which is a strange choice on a feed that otherwise runs on attribution. And the urgency is decorative. "Don't wait" without a date, a discount or a stock limit gives the listener no reason to act during the episode instead of next week. Add a show-specific URL and a dated offer and the same script becomes measurable.

View what a great sample ad looks like here.

What makes a show like this convert

1. The format holds listeners through the break. Long analytical interviews train the listener to wait for the payoff, so a mid-roll read lands on an audience that hasn't reached for the skip button.
2. Host credibility transfers. Engel's NBC News role and Hakim's frontline reporting make the endorsement feel like a vouch, which is why Spotsnow records a fully direct-response ad mix here.
3. The audience has money and makes decisions. Spotsnow describes an older, affluent, international listener base skewing male, with an estimated 165,000 reach that covers both US and UK buyers.
4. Repeat buying proves the math. Grainger's roughly 11 to 13 appearances in three months, per Spotsnow, is not a test budget. Brands don't renew that often on a feed that doesn't return anything.

The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim in a nutshell

You're reaching an older, high-income, internationally spread news audience that skews male, with Spotsnow estimating roughly 165,000 listeners and a strong UK contingent alongside the US core. The buyers already there range from a British broadcaster to an industrial supplier to a home goods retailer, split between celebrity host-reads and produced national spots. Inventory is sold direct and priced per campaign, so expect a conversation rather than a rate sheet. If your brief needs coded attribution, this feed suits you, and if it needs prestige adjacency, the hosts' bylines do that work too.