Sounds Profitable

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.

Today in the business of podcasting:
Triton Digital's Sharon Taylor pushes back on the video-first narrative, pointing to 2025 U.S. Podcast Report data showing 80% of monthly listeners both watch and listen while only 7% watch exclusively. Her advice is to treat video as an expansion of an audio show rather than a replacement for it.
A growing number of creators and the companies representing them want to sell ads through TV-style upfront commitments, but unlimited, always-on creator inventory does not behave like a network's finite schedule. Experts told Digiday the model will likely work only for the top one percent of talent, sold through agencies and creator networks.
The legal fight over the executive order targeting NPR and PBS funding has quietly ended, leaving in place a First Amendment ruling that permanently blocks key provisions of Executive Order 14290. It is a limited victory, since Congress had already rescinded the money and dissolved the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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:
Ad buyers draw a line on YouTube's "Engaged Views": At last week's Sounds Profitable Business Summit, ADOPTER Media, Right Side Up, Oxford Road, and YMH Studios committed to counting only YouTube's "Engaged Views" when buying ads on the platform. The move answers YouTube's August decision to count a view after a single frame plays, a change that roughly doubled raw view counts.
IAB on video plays: At its 2026 Podcast Upfront, the IAB argued podcasting is underbought, noting digital audio takes 16% of media time but only 2% of ad spend even as podcast revenue grew 17.6% to nearly $3 billion in 2025. The IAB also stopped short of backing a single unified standard, pointing instead to existing podcast and digital video definitions.
Bumper's partnership with Oxford Road: Oxford Road is bringing Bumper's new Bumper Score into its planning and buying, rating shows from 0 to 200 on their ability to deliver ads to verified listeners across audio and YouTube. Bumper co-founder Dan Misener says better data means greater trust, and greater trust leads to more investment.
NPR wants to sign more independent creators: NPR is looking beyond in-house production to strike more distribution and ad-sales deals with independent creators while letting them keep their IP. It recently teamed with Casey Newton and Kevin Roose to distribute and sell ads against their new AI-focused video podcast "Machine Gods."
Women athletes are running the creator playbook: A new Digiday report finds pro women athletes using content creation to supplement thin salaries and build brands that outlast their careers, with Snapchat's "Snap the Gap" cohort growing an average of 1,491% and pulling in 16 million story views. The common thread is ownership over how they show up and who they reach.
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.