Sounds Profitable

This week in the business of podcasting:

• Sounds Profitable's Podcast Landscape 2026 shows podcast reach holding steady at 74% of U.S. adults, while Netflix debuts as the third most-used podcast platform and video viewing climbs to 44% weekly.
• Acast's Greg Glenday, Oxford Road's Dan Granger and Triton's Sharon Taylor explain how they reached scale, why measurement remains the industry's biggest problem, and why they believe podcast advertising is still early.
• International Podcast Day brought a wave of announcements, from free Podcast Movement NYC sessions and a Headliner credit giveaway to a redesigned Podigee platform and Flightcast's Collaborative Publishing.

To find links to these, and every article covered in this week's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Sounds Profitable's Podcast Landscape 2026 finds U.S. podcast reach holding steady at 74% of adults, with Netflix arriving as a top-three platform and weekly video podcast viewing rising to 44%.
• ExchangeWire asks whether podcasting is rated highly enough in the media mix, as UK weekly listening grows to 27% and ad execs weigh in on attention, host-read ads, and attribution.
• Oxford Road CEO Dan Granger and Sounds Profitable's Bryan Barletta explain why the host is podcasting's most valuable ad asset, and why they favor a "both-and" monetization strategy.
• Acast's Podcast Pulse 2026 shows 86% of Australian podcast fans consume both audio and video, and that podcasters were the only creator category to gain commercial trust in the past year.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

This week Tom Webster shares Part One of The Podcast Landscape 2026, our annual study of how Americans consume podcasts, drawn from a census-weighted survey of 5,473 US adults. Podcasting's audience is large and stable, but it is increasingly consuming in places not built for podcasts. Tom gets into five findings:

• Reach held steady, with 74% of adults having consumed a podcast and 39% in the past week
• Netflix is the third most-used service for podcasts, ahead of Apple Podcasts
• Podcast-native apps kept shrinking as a most-used platform
• Video kept growing, with 44% watching a video podcast in the past week
• More people are consuming podcasts together with others

Plus, Tom points to his Podcast Movement NYC keynote on the Netflix finding.

Read the full issue here.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Acast, Oxford Road, and Triton Digital leaders explain how they reached scale, why inconsistent measurement remains a core problem, and why one CEO says podcast advertising is still "at the basement."
• International Podcast Day brings a wave of announcements, including 82 free Podcast Movement NYC sessions on YouTube, a redesigned Podigee platform, and Flightcast's new Collaborative Publishing.
• Radiocentre research finds that shifting search and social budgets into audio could add £1 million in profit for the average brand without raising total spend.
• Talent agencies like CAA and UTA are moving into creator representation, blurring the line between agents and managers.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• BetterHelp has tapped creator-led agency Media Bodies to lead its international podcast advertising strategy across 10 markets, using localized approaches rather than one global playbook.
• The IAB Tech Lab has opened its first Programmatic Standard Practices for public comment through October 16, setting shared business rules for how buyers and sellers use existing programmatic standards.
• A new Media, Built issue draws on Hub Entertainment Research's study of 1,600 U.S. broadband users to show how being a viewer's "default" streamer drives retention, with default users two to six times more likely to keep a subscription.
• Myles Younger of U of Digital argues AI is closer to labor, a utility or an appliance than to publishing, which makes paid models a better fit than advertising.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• 1UpMedia founder Guang Jin Yeo shares what Asia's podcast market can learn from the global playbook, from static-frame video podcasts to dubbing and generative AI. His golden rule for AI in podcasting is that audiences shouldn't be able to tell, but they must always be told.
• Programmatic podcast advertising is growing fast, and 82% of agencies now buy audio programmatically. New Podscribe benchmark data shows average podcast ad load fell to 10.3% in Q2 2026, and heavy ad loads can cut conversion rates nearly in half.
• Patreon is ending per-creation memberships and moving creators to monthly-only billing by November 1, 2026. Seasonal podcasts like audio fiction and investigative series will likely feel it most.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

This week in the business of podcasting:

• Sounds Profitable's Tom Webster explains why Netflix passing Apple Podcasts to become the third most-named place Americans consume podcasts is a warning sign, since most shows can never get on the platform.
• Triton Digital's Sharon Taylor argues video is expanding podcasting rather than replacing audio, noting 80% of monthly podcast consumers both watch and listen.
• ADOPTER Media, Right Side Up and Oxford Road, representing about half a billion dollars in ad buying, commit to YouTube Engaged Views after YouTube inflated its public view counts.
• Lower Street's Annalise Nielsen details the roadblocks she hit trying to spend $72,000 on podcast ads, from missing sales contacts to $150,000 minimums.
• Recaps from Podcast Movement NYC and the Sounds Profitable Business Summit cover AI-era podcast SEO, smart TV listening growth, and ad buyers' take on Spotify's skip button.

To find links to these, and every article covered in this week's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Lower Street's Annalise Nielsen explains why it's so hard to buy podcast ads. Trying to spend a $72,000 budget, she ran into missing ad contacts, $150,000 minimums and a host-read quietly downgraded to a post-roll.
• Sounds Profitable's Tom Webster finds Netflix has passed Apple Podcasts to become the third most-named place Americans consume podcasts. He warns that it's a true walled garden where most shows can't get in.
• YouTube CEO Neal Mohan lays out the platform's 2026 playbook, from creator-first TV ambitions to new Made on YouTube features like prompt-built feeds and a weekly AI podcast guide in YouTube Music.
• The Podglomerate recaps Podcast Movement's NYC debut, from AI-era podcast SEO to James Cridland's call to protect RSS and NPR Music's case for personality-driven shows.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Apple Podcasts and Apple Maps launch Hidden Histories, a feature that uses the podcast:location tag to place episodes on real-world locations. Apple also confirms that video is coming to Apple Podcasts Subscriptions in more than 170 countries and regions.
• A new Audacy report argues that mid-sized podcasts are an untapped advertising opportunity, citing a 22% lower cost per acquisition than on celebrity shows. It also finds that listeners are 27% more likely to be swayed by topic experts than by celebrities.
• Karo Chakhlasyan says Podcast Movement left them less convinced that audio is the best way to grow audio. They point to video clips as a growing driver of discovery and to incrementality as the measurement question the industry hasn't answered.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

This week Tom Webster comes back from his Podcast Movement keynote in New York with a number that should stop the industry cold. Across four years of The Podcast Landscape, the study has asked people every place they have consumed a podcast in the past year, and the third most-named platform is no longer Apple Podcasts. It is Netflix. Tom lays out why that ranking troubles him, and why he thinks 2026 is another one of those turning-point moments for the medium.

Tom gets into:

• Why Netflix landed at number three, and what a deliberately low-bar survey question does and does not tell us
• The three reasons Netflix worries him, from the gatekeeper problem to the fates of shows like Mindhunter and The OA
• How the top three places people find podcasts all reward deliberate search over discovery, with 77% of YouTube discovery coming from intentional search
• The quiet slide of podcast-native apps, down from 19% to 15% as most-used, and what it means to lose our "Tower Records"

Plus why Tom worries the rush toward Netflix could turn podcasting, for much of America, into Temu TV, and what the industry should be protecting instead.

Read the full issue here.