Sounds Profitable

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.