Sounds Profitable

Today in the business of podcasting:
Red Seat Ventures has integrated Barometer's AI-powered brand suitability and contextual targeting engine into its Speakeasy platform, bringing episode-level ad targeting to a portfolio of more than 40 creators and cutting the over-blocking that leaves safe inventory unsold.
Scalable examines a wave of executive departures at creator-founded companies like Dude Perfect, Audiochuck, and Good Good Golf, tracing them to founder-centric business models and the friction of bringing in professional managers to scale.
True Native Media's Sabrina Nelson argues podcasters do not need to publish on every platform to grow, making the case for a focused distribution strategy that spends limited time where it actually moves the needle.
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 goes to the bottom of the device table in the brand-new The Podcast Landscape 2026 data and finds a story that has been quietly eroding for years. The smart speaker, once pitched as podcasting's cleanest shot at owning a default, has flatlined at one percent. The device actually climbing is the biggest screen in the house. Smart TV as the most-used way to listen jumped from 8 percent in 2024 to 12 percent in 2026, and folded together with second-most-used it now reaches 25 percent of podcast consumers, while the phone slipped.
Ahead of his keynote at Podcast Movement in New York, Tom gets into what that shift really means:
why podcast listening in the home is consolidating onto the television rather than spreading across every device in it
what a screen changes for advertisers when a show can be seen by a whole room instead of heard through one pair of earbuds
why the car makes the same point from the other direction, and the one context the industry has spent the least time thinking about
what the move from background to foreground says about what the audience has decided a podcast actually is

A preview of the questions Tom will take to the stage on the 17th.

Read the full issue here.

Today in the business of podcasting:
Bloomberg reports that BetterHelp is podcasting's biggest advertiser of all time, with an estimated $242 million spent since 2023 and ads running on more than 1,000 shows at once, per Magellan AI.
MS NOW is expanding its Crooked Media partnership, adding Jon Lovett's Lovett or Leave It to its Saturday night lineup starting September 12 through the 2026 midterms.
Digiday reports the creator economy still has no standard way to price talent, with roughly half of marketers mispricing fees and many admitting they overpay.
NPR launches a Senior Podcast Challenge inviting Americans 65 and older to submit original audio stories, with entries due November 30.
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 runs through the stars and keynotes of Podcast Movement 2026 in New York, including his Podcast Landscape 2026 study of more than 5,400 consumers and a surprising finding that Apple has slipped out of the top three podcast platforms.
YouTube's redefinition of a view roughly doubled reported view counts overnight, and Oxford Road's Dan Granger and Bumper's Dan Misener argue the resulting confusion makes the case for trustworthy cross-platform measurement standards.
Australia's internet advertising hit a record $19.8 billion in FY26 with podcasting up 10.1%, even as IAB Australia's Future of Measurement review warns the industry still needs shared data standards to measure cross-channel impact.
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 week.

Today in the business of podcasting:
Podcast Movement 2026 heads to New York City September 17 and 18 at Terminal 5, where anyone registered by September 4 gets their podcast or company artwork on a Times Square display, and Tom Webster previews the keynote lineup and his Podcast Landscape 2026 research.
Hernan Lopez breaks down a new inflection point in streaming distribution, weighing direct-to-consumer, wholesale deals through Amazon Channels, Roku, and YouTube, and ad-tier monetization, projecting Amazon Channels could reach roughly $10 billion a year.
A federal judge ruled Google will not be forced to break up its ad tech business despite earlier monopoly findings, a decision set to reshape pricing, inventory access, and competition across programmatic 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.