Sounds Profitable

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Audacy's Leah Reis-Dennis argues the old podcast advertising playbook is outdated, citing 22% lower cost per acquisition on mid-sized shows, the hybrid audio and video audience, and the trust behind host-read ads.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.

Today in the business of podcasting:
Tom Webster says AI is the average machine, so hand it the routine podcasting work like show notes, transcripts and ad ops, and protect the human work of host-read ads and the show itself.
WARC forecasts global ad spend will grow 11.9% to $1.34 trillion in 2026, with social, search and retail media taking 66.4% of spend and growth slowing to 8.4% in 2027.
A new tool called Pod Is Life combines podcast charts from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Castbox and Pocket Casts into one ranking, though the scores seem to reflect the biggest shows in each country.
A federal appeals court has given the FCC until noon Friday to decide whether to uphold its lowest unit rate policy for political ads, ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
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 reports back from Denver, where Content Marketing World, LIONS, and The Market Research Event shared one expo floor and nearly every booth was selling an AI-augmented something. His argument is that large language models are built to produce the most probable answer, which makes them a machine for the average, and that the real opportunity is to hand over the average work and reinvest the time in what only people can do.
Tom gets into:
Why synthetic survey respondents hand you the consensus back, and why research earns its keep by finding what you didn't expect
Where AI belongs in podcasting (show notes, transcripts, ad operations) and where it doesn't (the host-read ad and the show itself)
Why "good enough" is a thermostat setting, and what it takes to turn it up
What happens when AI becomes just another tool and the expo floor goes back to arguing about the work
Read the full issue here.

Today in the business of podcasting:
A Signal Hill Insights survey of 6,161 Canadians finds AM/FM radio still holds 46% of in-car listening, while 68% of Canadians dislike AI-generated podcasts and only 4% like them.
The Podcast Study 2026 identifies "Prime Prospects," the 18% of podcast consumers who value the host and show growing consumption, as a major opportunity to grow podcast superfans, who make up 17% of the audience.
Apple's iOS 27 update has Safari blocking a first handful of ad tech companies, including The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, ID5, and Permutive, a quiet blocklist that was the talk of Advertising Week New York.
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.