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.