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The Engine
The strongest signal, working for your show
Behind Hourcast runs the world’s only algorithm built around completed hours — the highest-quality attention a podcast can earn.
14-day free trial · No card
Where ads appear
Your episode, recommended
Your episodes run as YouTube in-feed ads: video recommendations placed among organic results — on the home feed, in search, and next to videos.
Nobody gets interrupted at the start of a video. Your ad sits among the unpaid recommendations — people open it because it looks like something they want, and land on your channel’s watch page. Apart from a small Ad tag, it looks organic.
The metric
One metric runs it all: CpCH
Hourcast runs on a metric the world has never had — cost per completed hour (CpCH). It’s what you pay for one full hour of your podcast watched to 100%, start to finish.
It’s the strictest measure of podcast consumption there is. A view means someone watched a few seconds. A completed hour means someone heard your entire episode.
That’s the most valuable attention you can get: nothing about your show is more likely to win a new audience or new business. There’s nothing harder to optimize for.
Google can count views, but it can’t deliver completed hours — its algorithms were built for 25-second spots, not 60-minute podcasts where the value is in someone listening to the end.
Long-form only
Under 7 minutes? Won’t even start
The engine is built exclusively for episodes of 7+ minutes. Shorts and clips are filtered out by design — try to run one, and the engine refuses to optimize it.
That’s by design, not a shortcoming. A 30-second clip gets finished by accident. A 45-minute episode gets finished by a listener.
A tool with an opinion
Hourcast takes a side
An ads manager hands you dozens of columns — and leaves decisions to you. Hourcast steers in one direction: toward completed hours and new listeners.
Beyond CpCH, the engine runs its own rewards and penalties. Ads that bring extra value — like outsized visibility for the money — get rewarded. Ads with weak visibility signals get penalized.
The setup
Growth that compounds
Connect your account
Runs inside your own Google Ads account — set up in 10 minutes.
Set your budget
You decide the total. A hard limit — never crossed.
The algorithm takes over the grind
It shifts budget where a completed hour costs the least — and hands you Actions to apply.
First weeks
First numbers
Your first data lands: spend, completions, and what a completed hour costs you.
Budget shifts
With enough video completions, budget starts moving toward your winners.
Results compound
Accuracy climbs, weak ads surface as Actions, and every dollar works harder.
Your show deserves the engine
Connect your account in 10 minutes — the algorithm starts learning your show the same day.
No card · Cancel anytime · $20/month after trial
Proprietary technology
The only algorithm built around completed hours
A view is no proof anyone watched — in Google ecosystem, a 3-second skip and a finished 45-minute episode can look almost the same. The metric a podcaster needs simply isn’t in there.
That’s what Hourcast’s custom algorithm was built for:
Spend, completions, devices, screens, CTV — every signal the campaigns produce, for every single ad.
Computed per campaign, per ad, per device etc. — a metric that exists nowhere in Google Ads.
Toward your most successful episodes within their campaign groups — following dozens of decision rules.
Ads that spend without completing, devices that underdeliver — flagged as recommended Actions. You review, you apply.
Views vs. hours
Why completed hours
A view is a moment. A completed hour is a listener. What does one cost you? Organic can’t tell you. Google Ads can’t either. That’s the number the engine measures.
Measured in views
A view means someone pressed play — for maybe three seconds. Whether anyone heard your show, you’ll never know.
Budgets managed on views drift toward whatever gets opened cheaply.
Measured in completed hours
A completed hour means someone heard you out — chose your episode and stayed to the very end.
Two people finish your 30-minute episode = one completed hour. Its cost is what the algorithm minimizes.
And keep doing what already grows you — titles, thumbnails, consistent uploads. Hourcast adds the lever they don’t have: paid distribution.
Your money, your rules
Five rules it can never break
A/B test
Control vs. Optimized
Hourcast has a built-in A/B test for isolated comparison. Set up two identical campaigns — same settings, same targeting, same episodes.
One runs as the Optimized campaign. The other stays untouched, as your Control campaign.
Then compare what a completed hour cost in each — side by side, in your own account. Run the proof yourself.
Paid content distribution
Why pay for distribution?
Visibility on demand
No waiting to be picked by YouTube. When you pay, your episodes get seen.
New audiences
Put your show in front of completely new audiences — picked by you.
Predictable growth
You can estimate what a budget brings — before you spend it.
Scale with no ceiling
The same episode can reach hundreds of people — or a whole country.
Content recycling
Recycle a great episode from a year ago — push it to new listeners today.
Results in days
Within days you see which episodes earn listens — and adjust course early.
Pick what gets pushed
Promote the work that positions you where you want to be.
Transparent costs
Your spend is one visible, calculable number. You know exactly what it costs you.
Straight answers
Could you do this without the tool?
Partly. There are strategies that chase a similar outcome — organic tactics, hand-tuned campaigns, digging through reports. Plenty of them work.
What none of them give you is the whole machine: one tool that manages your entire paid growth — measuring, judging, moving budget, handing you Actions.
For the engine to work on your show, three things need to be true:
