Sounds Profitable

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Five podcast industry leaders from Audioboom, Sounds Profitable, Octave, The Times, and Bauer Media weigh in on the future of AI and audio measurement, with a growing consensus that podcasting already has adequate measurement tools and the real opportunity is smarter use of existing data and attribution.
• RedCircle extends its AI-powered Mic Check tool to programmatic advertising, transcribing and verifying each ad's metadata, advertiser identity, and category to keep mislabeled political, gambling, tobacco, and sexual ads out of podcast inventory.
• Steve Raizes breaks down Netflix's decision to cut its What We Watched report to once a year starting in 2027, the 7% stock drop that followed, and what it signals about transparent measurement as podcasting pushes standardized metrics through the AMP Accords.
• AdExchanger reports on the fight over programmatic transparency as ad tech watchdog Check My Ads is denied DSP access by multiple platforms, exposing the tension between the industry's public embrace of transparency and its resistance to giving watchdogs real access.

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:

• The Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting released its accords, giving the industry shared definitions for what counts as a podcast, a play, and an ad impression, plus a recommended hold-out group standard for proving incremental lift to advertisers.
• Patreon is cutting 93 jobs, roughly 20% of its workforce, as CEO Jack Conte points to organizational changes and market conditions rather than AI, saying the creator platform remains financially strong with more than 300,000 creators.
• YouTube posted $11.055 billion in Q2 advertising revenue, up 13% year over year and ahead of expectations, a figure that covers ad sales only and excludes YouTube Premium and YouTube Music subscriptions.
• Castro developer Dustin Bluck argues independent podcast apps have flatlined as a category while platforms like YouTube absorb podcasting's growth, and revives the case for indie apps receiving a share of industry revenue.
• Digiday weighs mass reach against hard-won audience trust, a debate that shapes how podcast and influencer advertising budgets get allocated between big-brand campaigns and niche creator targeting.

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:

• Tom Webster's fourth Podcast Atlas installment argues social platforms are the denominator of podcast advertising, with YouTube reaching 82% of monthly podcast listeners and Facebook 80%, and makes the case that audio and social should be planned together rather than pitted against each other.
• New research from Sound Insights and Sounds Profitable finds UK podcast advertising priced at roughly £0.18 per listener-hour versus £0.94 in the US, a 5.2x gap, even as podcast ad recall among 18 to 34 year olds hits 86% and outpaces broadcast TV.
• Comscore expanded its Proximic contextual targeting to Spotify, SiriusXM, Triton Digital, Acast, and Libsyn, enabling episode-level targeting so buyers can purchase podcast ads through the same programmatic tools they use for CTV and display.
• Steve Raizes warns that brands copying employee creator programs like Starbucks' Green Apron Creators are taking on unpriced obligations, from unsettled copyright ownership and overtime exposure to likeness rights that outlast employment.
• Podcast advertisers are increasingly valuing a creator's cross-platform reach across YouTube, social, video, and live events over raw download counts, with Acast's Ricardo Neto noting mid-tier creators at 50,000 weekly downloads now drawing buyer attention.

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.

Thought process

Thought process

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Tom Webster's fourth Podcast Atlas installment frames social platforms as the denominator of podcast advertising, with YouTube reaching 82% of monthly podcast listeners and Facebook 80%, and argues audio builds trust while social delivers the frequency and retargeting every campaign multiplies against.
• New research from Sound Insights and Sounds Profitable finds UK podcast advertising priced at £0.18 per listener-hour versus £0.94 in the US, a 5.2x gap despite comparable reach, with podcast ad recall among 18 to 34 year olds hitting 86% and outpacing broadcast TV.
• Acast reported Q2 2026 net sales of SEK 775.6m, up 28% year over year and 29% organically, with adjusted EBITDA margin expanding to 7% from 3% as CEO Greg Glenday says the strategy of scaling revenue ahead of costs is working as intended.
• Comscore expanded its Proximic contextual targeting to Spotify, SiriusXM, Triton Digital, Acast, and Libsyn, enabling episode-level targeting so buyers can purchase podcast ads through the same programmatic tools they use for CTV and display.
• New Edison Research data finds 65% of US fiction audiobook listeners would be likely to try an AI-narrated title and 61% could not distinguish the AI voice from a human, even as trust concerns and informed wariness about AI-voiced podcasts persist among college educated listeners.

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:

• Creator content was the most boring part of the World Cup, and Scalable pins the blame on FIFA's restrictive partner posting policies while athletes and fans drove the standout moments. The final drew 1.8 billion viewers and @fifaworldcup topped 24 billion views, TikTok's biggest content moment to date.
• Audio is reaching back-to-school shoppers more consistently than video, according to a new Audacy Insights post, with 40% of parents planning to shop sooner and 80% listening to AM/FM radio weekly against 52% who watch broadcast TV.
• Podcast advertising is moving past download counts to weigh a creator's cross-platform influence across YouTube, social, video, and live events, with Acast's Ricardo Neto noting mid-tier creators around 50,000 weekly downloads are drawing new buyer attention.
• ROI Media 360 argues low view counts on Netflix podcasts hide stronger ad performance, citing about 60% completion versus roughly 35% on YouTube and a SKIMS campaign that delivered a verified 20% conversion lift.
• Steve Goldstein profiles the fast-growing higher-education podcasting sector that measures success by influence over chart rank, pointing to Higher Ed PodCon and a community of roughly 214 organizations producing more than 1,600 podcasts combined.

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.

Winning on quality is only half the story when the audience you want is already spending its day somewhere else.

• Written by Tom Webster
• Edited and narrated by Gavin Gaddis

Find the full article here.

Today in the business of podcasting:

• The IAB Tech Lab has opened a 30-day public comment period on version 2.3 of its Podcast Technical Measurement Guidelines, updating how downloads, audience, and ad delivery are counted across audio and video podcasts.
• Digiday breaks down five lessons from the World Cup on creator marketing, including how Unilever scaled a creator network to roughly 300,000 and how Michelob Ultra generated $11.5 million in earned media value with fewer than 350 creators.
• A Media, Built newsletter piece argues that employee-creator programs modeled on Starbucks' Green Apron Creators carry unpriced legal risk around copyright, overtime pay, and labor protections.
• AdExchanger talks to OpenX's chief privacy officer about the end of "actual knowledge" standards in children's privacy law, as new state rules push platforms toward a "should have known" test for underage users.

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:

• A new Nielsen Podcast Listen & Watch report finds audio remains the core of podcast consumption, with 90% of monthly listeners tuning in via audio and 62% also watching video, as listeners and viewers use the two formats in distinctly different ways.
• WARC reports YouTube podcast viewing on TV screens has surged past 700 million hours monthly, up 70% year over year, even as the platform's ad revenue growth is projected to slow amid rising competition from TikTok and Netflix.
• A new YouGov survey of U.S. podcast consumers finds genre preferences split sharply by gender, with men far more likely to listen to sports podcasts and women over-indexing in true crime, self-improvement, and wellness content.
• Spotify's podcast strategy has shifted from paying for exclusive content to operating the infrastructure creators depend on for discovery and monetization, a repositioning that hands the company more market control with less financial risk.

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:

• Tom Webster's latest Podcast Atlas installment examines podcast clips as a discovery engine, finding 89% of listeners watch clips on social platforms and roughly a third go on to become full-episode listeners.
• DAX U.S. President Brian Conlon argues the "shrinking attention span" is a myth, pointing to Edison Research's Infinite Dial 2026 finding that 45% of Americans age 12 and older listened to a podcast in the past week, the highest level ever recorded.
• Six Colors previews the iOS 27 public beta, including Apple Podcasts video expanding to macOS and Apple TV and a rebuilt Siri that can retrieve old podcast episodes by description.
• Creator economy newsletter Scalable reports brand safety concerns among enterprise marketers have dropped from 50% in 2023 to just 10% in 2025, with the industry shifting focus to brand fit instead.

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:

• Tom Webster's latest Podcast Atlas installment digs into podcast clips as the industry's discovery engine, finding that 89% of listeners watch clips on social platforms and roughly a third convert into full-episode listeners.
• Amazon DSP adds Triton Digital as a programmatic partner, giving buyers access to Triton's global audio and podcast inventory paired with Amazon's first-party shopping and streaming data.
• A new WARC Media report pegs YouTube's 2025 ad revenue at $40.4 billion, but growth is decelerating even as podcast viewership on the platform surges 70% year-over-year.
• Digiday explores creators breaking into Hollywood with box-office hits and private equity backing, while flagging IP ownership as the ceiling on how far that crossover can go.

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.