What does a marketing publication with more than a million readers a month want from you, when it already receives more opinion pitches in a week than it could run in a year? That is the question to answer before you write a word to The Drum, and most pitches never ask it.
The Drum, founded in Glasgow and now covering marketing, advertising and media globally, runs news, features, opinion, awards, events and a paid agency network. Each of those has its own entry point, its own gatekeeper and its own idea of a good pitch. Mix them up and your email goes to the wrong person with the wrong ask. Match them and you have a real chance.
Here are the five routes, in rough order of how much they depend on what you say versus what you pay.
Who reads The Drum, and why it matters to your pitch
The Drum’s own pitching guide describes its audience as a global marketing crowd of more than a million readers a month who are “smart, passionate, engaged” and who “want inspiration, answers, entertainment and a debate.” That last word is the one to circle.
The readers are agency strategists, creatives, brand marketers, media buyers and ad tech people, with a strong UK base and a growing US and Asia-Pacific presence. They read The Drum to find out what peers think, to argue about it, and to see work. They are not looking for vendor explainers. A piece that teaches a basic concept will lose to one that takes a clear side on something the industry is fighting about this month.
This audience profile also explains a lot about how to get featured in The Drum versus a general business title. A national newspaper might run a profile of your company because it is growing. The Drum is more interested in what your work says about the industry: the strategy behind a campaign, the lesson in a failed pitch, the argument about measurement that half its readers will disagree with.
So before you pick a route, write one sentence that states your position on a live industry question. “Reach-based planning is built on ads nobody sees” is a position. “Five ways to improve your media plan” is not. If you cannot write the sentence, you are not ready to pitch The Drum’s editorial side, and you should consider the paid routes below.
Route one: the opinion section
The opinion desk is the most accessible editorial door at The Drum, and it is run by a named editor. John McCarthy, who has covered the industry at The Drum for years, has been its opinion editor since 2023. His public profile is direct about the editorial stance: “We love the people making ads, more than the ads. Let’s get real honest and get some home truths out there.”
The Drum’s own guide to pitching opinion, a short deck the publication has shared, spells out the process. Pitch “with a synopsis via email or DM.” Do not send a finished article cold. The guide is candid about competition: “We have a very high bar at The Drum. We are in the privileged position of being pitched a whole book’s worth of pieces a week.” It is equally clear that expertise does not require seniority, and it actively asks for more pitches from women and people of color, noting that a majority of pitches arrive from what it calls “older white dudes.”
A synopsis that works fits in five sentences. The first states your argument as a claim someone could disagree with. The second says why now, tied to news, a campaign, a platform change or a data release. The third says why you, meaning what you have seen or done that gives you standing. The fourth gives one piece of evidence. The fifth offers a headline. That is it.
What gets turned down: pieces that read like a product pitch, pieces with no position, pieces already published elsewhere, and pieces written by a PR team in the voice of an executive who clearly never saw them.
Route two: news and features, via data and work
The news desk covers what happens: campaigns launching, accounts moving, people changing jobs, research landing. Getting covered here is less about argument and more about relevance and timing.
Two kinds of pitches tend to land. The first is work worth showing: a campaign with a strong idea and visuals, sent with credits, a short explanation of the brief and the result, and assets a journalist can use immediately. The second is data the industry has not seen, such as original research on media spend, creative effectiveness or consumer behavior, offered early and with the methodology attached.
The Drum also runs themed coverage across the year. Watching the site for a few weeks shows you which topics recur and when, and gives you a reason to pitch at the right moment instead of whenever your announcement happens to be ready.
Route three: The Drum Network, the paid route
The Drum Network is a membership program for agencies. It is paid, and it is honest about what it offers: members can “publish your opinion pieces and thought leadership to thedrum.com under The Drum Network banner with support from our team of journalists,” submit pitches for monthly focus weeks to a Network Editor, contribute to roundtables and vox pops, and send research and data releases.
That can be a sensible investment for an agency that wants consistent visibility with prospective clients. Two things are worth knowing before you sign up. First, Network content is labeled as such, and readers who know the site understand the difference between a Network post and an opinion piece commissioned by the editorial desk. Second, membership is for agencies. A brand, a SaaS vendor or a solo consultant will usually find the editorial routes a better fit.
When you report results to a client or a board, call a Network post what it is. Describing paid placement as earned coverage is the fastest way to lose credibility with the people who know the difference.
Route four: awards and festivals
The Drum runs a large awards program across advertising, marketing, B2B, social purpose, content and more. For 2026, entries for The Drum Awards Festival opened with an early-bird deadline of June 11, a main deadline of July 30 and an extended deadline of September 3, with nominations announced October 15 and the awards shows running November 30 through December 3 in London.
Awards are paid to enter and judged by industry panels. A shortlist or a win gets your work and your name onto thedrum.com and into its newsletters, and gives you something credible to cite in new business. They also put you in the room with The Drum’s editorial staff at festival events, which is often where the next opinion commission starts.
The practical advice is to enter work with a clear idea and a measurable result, and to write the entry for a tired judge reading their fortieth submission. One page, one idea, one number that proves it worked.
Route five: be the source a reporter calls back
The fifth route gets less attention than it deserves because it does not produce a byline. It produces quotes, and over time it produces relationships.
The Drum’s reporters write fast news and analysis on agency moves, platform changes, regulation, AI and effectiveness. Every one of those stories needs voices from practitioners. Reporters keep lists of people who answer quickly, say something specific and do not need a comms review to do it. Getting on those lists is a matter of being useful a few times in a row.
Start by identifying the reporters whose beats match your expertise. The site’s author pages show what each one covers. Read their recent pieces and note who they quote: agency heads, brand-side marketers, analysts, academics. If you fit the pattern, send a short note introducing yourself as a source on one or two specific topics, with a line about what you have seen recently that relates to their coverage. Keep it under a hundred words. Do not attach a press kit.
When a reporter does reach out, reply the same day. Give one clear view in plain language, with an example or a number if you have one. Offer to be named. Anonymous quotes have their place, but a named, quotable source is far more valuable to a reporter than a hedged one.
This route also feeds the others. The Drum’s opinion editor reads the publication’s own news coverage. A practitioner who gives a sharp quote in a news story has a much easier time when they later pitch a synopsis on the same subject, because the editor has already seen them say something interesting in public.
There is one trap to avoid. Do not use a request for comment as a chance to pitch your product. A reporter asking about retail media measurement wants your view on retail media measurement, not a paragraph about your platform. Answer the question. If your company is relevant, the reporter will ask.
A pitch ladder for The Drum
When we help clients plan for The Drum, we use a simple sequence we call the Pitch Ladder. Each rung earns the next.
The bottom rung is presence: comment on The Drum’s posts on LinkedIn and X with substance, share its opinion pieces with your own view attached, and follow the opinion and news editors. This costs nothing and makes your name familiar.
The second rung is a single, sharp contribution: answer a vox pop or a call for comment fast and well. Short, quotable, on deadline.
The third rung is the opinion synopsis, built on the position sentence above and sent to the opinion desk with five tight sentences.
The fourth rung is data or work worth covering, sent to the news desk with assets ready.
The top rung is being commissioned: the editor contacts you because your last piece performed and your next take is predictable in quality, not in opinion.
The ladder also keeps you honest about timing. Most people want to start at the fourth or fifth rung. The ones who succeed usually spend a few months on the first three, and by the time they pitch, the editor already recognizes the name.
Whichever rung you are on, keep a record of what you sent, to whom, and what happened. Over a year it shows you which editors respond to which kinds of ideas, and it stops you from pitching the same angle twice.
Anyone asking how to get featured in The Drum quickly should hear the honest answer: the fastest route is still the ladder, climbed with better ideas.
Skipping rungs is possible, especially with a genuinely strong argument. But most people who appear in The Drum repeatedly climbed something like this ladder, whether they named it or not.
The short version
If you want to know how to get featured in The Drum, start with your argument, not your announcement. Write the one-sentence position. Turn it into a five-sentence synopsis. Send it to the opinion desk by email or DM, and expect to be told no a few times before you are told yes. If you run an agency and want guaranteed visibility, consider the Network and label it honestly. And if your work is good, enter it in the awards and let the judges make the case for you.