June 18, 2025

People “don’t want to just listen”: YouTube’s Mohan

4 minutes

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“Having podcasts hosted on YouTube and having the algorithm find new audiences for you every single day turns out to be really, really powerful, no matter how big of a podcaster you are.” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan spoke with The Ankler CEO and Editor in Chief Janice Min to an invitation-only crowd at Cannes Lions yesterday - where he suggested that video is central to podcasting’s growth. “People actually don’t want to just listen to podcasts, they want to watch podcasts, they want to watch this conversation happening... Video was a really big bet, that turned out to be true.” The full interview will be carried in The Ankler today; Mohan is keynote speaker today on the festival’s main stage.

Using downloads for measurement is a business liability, argues podcast growth company Bumper in a blog post. Downloads are decreasing for many podcasts - yet, downloads are largely disconnected from actual podcast consumption: and technical changes, like Apple varying their automatic podcast downloads algorithm (which they did in mid-2023), represents a risk for any podcast publisher. They, as you might expect, recommend the Bumper Dashboard; but irrespective of that, the argument makes sense.

Talking of the Bumper Dashboard, here’s what the Podnews Weekly Review looks like over the last six months. We’ve seen significantly higher plays in YouTube since tweaking our Headliner template to add captions and chapter points.

PodcastOne has renewed its sales and distribution agreement with A+E Networks. The five shows represent 160mn total downloads.

> > > Read more of today’s podcast industry news stories on the Podnews website: and get our free daily newsletter.

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