Sounds Profitable

Today in the business of podcasting:
The Podcast Study 2026 from Strategic Solutions Research and Point-To-Point Marketing finds new revenue opportunities beyond the traditional podcast ad. Nearly half of the 1,205 U.S. podcast consumers surveyed would join a free VIP club, and 46.7% have bought merchandise or attended an event.
At Podcast Movement 2026, Amplifi Media’s Steven Goldstein ran a focus group with Gen Z NYU students. They described watching whole podcasts through clips and deciding within 30 seconds whether to keep listening.
Audioboom reports record Q3 2026 revenue of $23.8 million, up 17% year over year, with Showcase marketplace revenue up 20%. The company plans three to four acquisitions as podcast industry consolidation continues.
Ad tech and data vendors are preparing for fallout from iOS 27, which made Safari block identity vendors like LiveRamp and The Trade Desk’s ad-serving domain. IAB Tech Lab’s Trusted Server concept is offered as a server-side workaround.

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 looks at how podcast consumers feel about politics in podcasting as the midterms approach, drawing on the politics chapter of The Podcast Landscape 2026 and, for the first time, what moved since last year.
Tom gets into:
How the podcast audience compares to the country by party and ideology
Whether politicians belong on podcasts, and how weekly consumers and never-consumers differ
How likely midterm voters say a podcast appearance would affect their vote
What happened to political talk as a genre heading into the election
Read the full issue here.

Today in the business of podcasting:
Podscribe’s Q3 benchmark report finds geography is the strongest targeting signal for podcast ad results, followed by a recent visit to the advertiser’s website and its Buyer Power Score.
The Podcast Study 2026 finds only 8.6% of listeners would accept more ads to keep a podcast free, while 54.8% say shows already carry too many.
Right Side Up’s Krystina Rubino shares how a podcast host halved her rate for a fertility brand, and why bespoke deals still run on one-to-one relationships.
Media, Built’s Steve Raizes argues Spotify’s Joe Rogan renewal buys the right to sell him rather than an exclusive, and what that means for ad sales across platforms.
ADOPTER Media’s Adam McNeil explains how a brand’s place on the adoption curve should shape how it buys podcast ads.
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 product manager Ted Hosmann explains how video podcasts work over HLS at the IETF’s HLS Interest Day. He says top shows have grown their audience more than 20% on average since adding video, and Apple has also quietly acqui-hired members of the team behind AI audio startup Huxe.
Audible and NielsenIQ surveyed 18,000 spoken-word listeners across 11 countries. 34% say they listened to more audio than the year before, and 50% are open to AI-narrated content.
Digiday reports that top creators like Alix Earle and Kevin Cooney are cutting their brand rosters and asking more of the partners they keep, including equity and product input.
PQ Media says global product placement spending hit $37.16 billion in 2025, with music and audio the fastest-growing category thanks to placements in popular podcasts.
RSS.com launches a free in-browser transcription tool built on OpenAI’s open-source Whisper model, so audio never leaves the user’s device.
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 says AI is the average machine, so podcasters should hand it routine work like show notes and ad operations and protect the host-read ad and the show itself.
Audacy's Leah Reis-Dennis argues the old podcast advertising playbook is outdated, citing 22% lower cost per acquisition on mid-sized shows, the hybrid audio and video audience, and the trust behind host-read ads.
Signal Hill Insights' Audio on the Move study finds AM/FM radio holds 46% of Canadian in-car listening and that 68% of Canadians dislike fully AI-generated podcasts.
WARC forecasts global ad spend will grow 11.9% to $1.34 trillion in 2026, with growth slowing to 8.4% in 2027.
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.