🎙 Apple Podcasts Video Doubles Plays for Independent Tech Podcast in 60 Days, Case Study Shows
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🎙️ Today, we have exclusive insights on:
UK Study: Podcasting Overtakes TV Among 18-34s as a media planning model lags
Apple Podcasts Video Doubles Plays for Independent Tech Podcast in 60 Days, Case Study Shows
Podcast Insight: Australian Ad Buyers Rank Podcast Advertising Second for Planned 2026 Spend Growth, IAB Report Finds
PodBusiness: Reuters Institute Report: Podcasting's Shift to Video and Subscriptions Is Reshaping Publisher Strategy Across US and Europe
SOUNDS PROFITABLE
UK Study: Podcasting Overtakes TV Among 18-34s as a media planning model lags
Podwires Rundown: Podcasting has quietly overtaken broadcast TV among UK young adults — and most media planners are still unaware.
The 2026 UK Advertising Landscape Study, commissioned by Sounds Profitable and conducted by Sound Insights, delivers a finding that should reshape how brands allocate budgets in one of the world’s most mature advertising markets. Among 18-34-year-olds, podcasting now reaches 60% of UK adults monthly — surpassing broadcast TV’s 57% in the same demographic. The study surveyed 5,033 UK adults aged 18+ in February 2026, weighted to census, across 20+ ad-supported media platforms.
Here’s the uncomfortable part. Media planners have long treated broadcast TV as the default mass-reach vehicle and podcasting as a niche supplementary buy. The data say that framework is already obsolete — not trending towards obsolescence. Already there.
Source note: This research was a census, commissioned and funded by Sounds Profitable, a podcasting industry trade organisation. The methodology replicates Sounds Profitable’s US Advertising Landscape Study, enabling direct transatlantic comparison — a first for the UK market. Sound Insights independently conducted the fieldwork, noting the commercial interests.
The Key Points
Podcasting reaches 60% of UK adults aged 18-34 monthly, compared to broadcast TV’s 57% in the same cohort — a demographic reversal of the conventional reach hierarchy
Broadcast TV’s overall 71% monthly reach is heavily skewed towards 55+ audiences (81%), where its dominance remains intact
35-54-year-olds are podcasting’s deepest users: 16% identify it among their top four most-used ad-supported platforms, higher than any other age group
Video and audio consumption boundaries are dissolving for younger audiences — among 18-34 listeners of Diary of a CEO, video engagement nearly matches audio engagement
The study covers Reach, Attention, Trust, and Effectiveness across 20+ platforms — with ad recall findings forthcoming in the next installment of the series
Why It Matters
For years, UK advertisers have operated on an assumption: TV reaches everyone, podcasting reaches enthusiasts. That assumption just got empirically invalidated for the under-45 market. If your brand’s customers are predominantly younger adults, the old planning hierarchy — TV first, audio supplementary — is directing budget away from where those audiences actually are. The 35-54 finding compounds this: the cohort with the most purchasing power has embedded podcasting into their media diet more deeply than any other age group. Let that sink in. This isn’t a future trend to prepare for. The migration has already happened.
The Big Picture
For podcasters: Reach data like these numbers is a sales tool. Creators and networks targeting UK advertisers now have hard demographic evidence — not just anecdotal claims — that their audience skews where TV no longer dominates. Use it in pitch decks. Specifically, shows reaching 18-34 audiences should be positioned against broadcast TV buys, not alongside them.
For podcast producers: The Diary of a CEO finding is a strategic signal. If your show is reaching younger UK audiences, consumption is increasingly happening through a screen. Production workflows that optimise for audio-only may be leaving audience engagement — and advertiser value — on the table. The question isn’t whether to go video. It’s whether your current output is built for how your actual audience consumes it.
For the industry: The UK data, combined with Sounds Profitable’s existing US methodology, creates the first genuine transatlantic comparison framework for podcast advertising performance. That’s infrastructure the industry has needed. As media buyers in London, New York, and Sydney face mounting pressure to justify spending against declining linear TV, this study gives podcast ad sales teams something more powerful than a growth story – it gives them a reach argument backed by census-weighted data.
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Apple Podcasts Video Doubles Plays for Independent Tech Podcast in 60 Days, Case Study Shows
Podwires Rundown: A case study published by podcast hosting platform Transistor shows that adding video to Apple Podcasts doubled plays for one independent tech podcast within 60 days of launch — with no cannibalisation of existing YouTube or audio audiences.
Source note: This data comes from Transistor’s company blog, written by co-founder Justin Jackson. Transistor is an Apple-approved HLS video distribution partner and has a commercial interest in promoting Apple Podcasts video adoption. The underlying data is sourced from Stephen Robles’ Apple Podcasts Connect dashboard.
The Key Points
Primary Technology, co-hosted by Stephen Robles and Jason Aten, saw total Apple Podcasts plays climb to 152,900 in the 60 days following its first video episode on April 9, 2026 – a 136% increase
Per-episode plays roughly doubled: Episode 121 (pre-video) drew 8,392 plays; Episode 126 (first video episode) drew 20,157
Engaged listeners — Apple’s metric for users who consume at least 20 minutes or 40% of an episode — rose from 707 to 1,072 per episode
YouTube views held steady at 1,400 to 2,100 per episode, indicating Apple growth represents net-new audience, not platform migration
The show entered Apple Podcasts’ Top 50 in the Tech category following the video launch
Why It Matters
Apple is actively promoting video podcasts — and because relatively few shows are publishing video on the platform yet, the algorithmic tailwind is real and measurable. For independent creators competing against major network shows, that’s a rare structural advantage. But it comes with trade-offs: Apple currently strips chapter support from video-enabled shows, transcripts no longer follow along with spoken word, and paid subscribers can’t access video. These are not minor bugs. They degrade the experience for a show’s most loyal listeners. The net growth is hard to argue with, but creators need to go in clear-eyed.
The Big Picture
For podcasters: The opportunity window is now, while Apple’s video library is still sparse and the algorithm rewards early movers. If your show already has video production infrastructure — even basic — publishing to Apple Podcasts via an HLS-compatible host is a legitimate audience growth lever. Weigh it against the chapter and transcript limitations before flipping the switch.
For podcast producers: The Transistor case study reinforces the “upload once, distribute everywhere” model as the operational standard for video podcast workflows. Producers advising clients on distribution should factor Apple Podcasts video into the platform mix — and flag the current feature gaps to manage expectations, particularly for shows with premium subscriber tiers.
For the industry: Apple Podcasts is no longer a passive audio repository. It’s competing for video podcast attention, and it’s willing to boost new entrants to build out its catalogue. That changes the platform’s strategic weight in distribution conversations. The missing pieces – subscriber video, chapter support, and synced transcripts – are the kinds of gaps that Spotify already has covered. Apple will close them. The question is how long creators wait.
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IAB AUSTRALIA
Australian Ad Buyers Rank Podcast Advertising Second for Planned 2026 Spend Growth, IAB Report Finds
Podwires Rundown: Australian advertising agencies are signalling strong intent to increase podcast ad investment in 2026, ranking it second only to ad-supported streaming platforms in expected spend growth. However, the same report that highlights this optimism also documents the measurement fragmentation that continues to limit what podcasting can actually prove to buyers.
Source note: The IAB Australia Video State of the Nation 2026 report, released May 2026, surveyed 78 senior advertising agency decision-makers responsible for digital video investment. The companion IAB Australia Audio Advertising State of the Nation 2026 (n=128) cross-references podcast-specific data. IAB Australia is an industry body; the report is member-funded research with an interest in promoting digital advertising investment.
The Key Points
59% of Australian ad buyers surveyed expect to increase podcast advertising investment in 2026 — second only to ad-supported subscription streaming platforms at 71%
25% of digital audio ad buyers have placed ads in video podcasts; another 50% have researched or discussed the opportunity but haven’t transacted yet
37% of US ad buyers (IAB US State of Data 2026, cited in the report) say podcasts are underrepresented in Marketing Mix Modelling — third highest of any channel, behind only gaming and commerce media
Inconsistent definitions of reach, frequency, and viewability across platforms are the industry’s primary measurement complaint — a problem podcast advertising knows intimately
AI-driven measurement improvements are projected to unlock $26 billion in total media investment within two years by correctly crediting existing performance; podcasting stands to benefit if attribution gaps close
Why It Matters
Australian ad buyers are willing to spend more on podcasting — but the same structural problem that has always limited podcast advertising’s ceiling is still there. When 50% of audio buyers have researched video podcast advertising but haven’t pulled the trigger, that’s not a demand problem. That’s a measurement confidence problem. Buyers don’t convert intent into spend when they can’t prove the outcome to a client. The industry’s call for standardised metrics across platforms isn’t abstract — it’s the condition that unlocks the budget that’s already sitting on the table.
The Big Picture
For podcasters: The intent is there. Australian agencies want to spend on podcasts. If you’re pitching advertisers and not leading with what you can measure and prove – downloads, attribution partners, and first-party data – you’re leaving that 59% intent figure on the table. Get your measurement story tight.
For podcast producers: Video podcast advertising is at the researched-but-not-bought stage for half of Australian audio ad buyers. That’s not a dead end — it’s a pipeline. Producers advising clients on monetisation should treat video podcast ads as an emerging revenue lane worth building infrastructure for now, not after demand arrives.
For the industry: Podcasting is the third most underrepresented channel in marketing mix modelling among US buyers — ahead of linear TV, CTV, and digital audio. That’s not a badge of honour. It means podcast advertising is being systematically undercredited in the models that determine budget allocation. The IAB’s push for standardised measurement frameworks matters more to podcasting than almost any other format. Every year this problem goes unsolved is another year the medium punches below its actual weight.
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REUTERS
Reuters Institute Report: Podcasting's Shift to Video and Subscriptions Is Reshaping Publisher Strategy Across US and Europe
Podwires Rundown: The Podcast Is Becoming a Show. The Economics Are Changing With It. The medium that built its identity on audio portability and open RSS distribution is being fundamentally restructured — by video, by platforms, by personality, and by the slow, grudging arrival of paywalls. A major new report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford documents the speed and scale of that transformation and the uncomfortable strategic questions it’s forcing on every publisher in the space.
Here’s the uncomfortable part: the report concludes that podcasting is becoming increasingly hard to define as a category — and that the industry’s measurement, advertising, and distribution infrastructure hasn’t caught up.
Source note: “The Changing Shape and New Economics of News Podcasting”, published May 7, 2026, by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, authored by Senior Research Associate Nic Newman. The report draws on qualitative audience research across the US, UK, and Norway (a 50-person online community, February 2025) plus publisher interviews conducted in March 2026 with executives from The New York Times, The Guardian, The Economist, The Financial Times, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Politiken, Bonnier, Schibsted, Goalhanger, and Chora Media. Additional input from YouTube, IAB, and Acast. The report was published with support from the Google News Initiative, which is a commercial relationship worth noting.
The Key Points
The 2026 Edison Infinite Dial finds 45% of Americans listen to or watch podcasts weekly — an all-time high — with 26% consuming both video and audio formats, compared to just 13% audio-only
Conversational “chatcast” formats are crowding out documentary-style narrative series, driven by platform algorithms demanding volume and the lower cost of filming two people talking versus producing a highly crafted audio narrative
Publishers including The Economist, Die Zeit, and Schibsted’s Podme have launched paid podcast subscription tiers; Podme has surpassed 200,000 subscribers in Norway alone and reached profitability for the first time
US podcast advertising revenue reached $2.4 billion in 2024 (IAB); in the UK, podcast advertising crossed £90 million, surpassing other digital audio sources for the first time — but the IAB notes traditional audio-only measurement frameworks may be significantly underestimating the total opportunity
40% of Goalhanger’s YouTube views now come via connected televisions — and Netflix has paid a “significant sum” to commission a video version of The Rest is Football for the 2026 World Cup
Why It Matters
The report’s central argument is structural: podcasting is bifurcating into two distinct models that require entirely different strategies. Traditional publishers — the Guardian, FT, NYT, Die Zeit — are using podcasts as audience acquisition and subscription retention tools, feeding listeners into broader content ecosystems. Newer entrants like Goalhanger and Chora Media are building “show” businesses: talent-led franchises monetised through advertising, live events, merchandise, membership, and licensing deals. One is a funnel. The other is a flywheel. The problem is that the industry’s advertising infrastructure, measurement standards, and distribution norms were built for neither — they were built for audio RSS, and they’re straining under the weight of what podcasting has become.
The Big Picture
For podcasters: The report is unambiguous that video is not replacing audio — it’s expanding consumption. The Edison data makes this clear: most American podcast users now do both. The strategic question isn’t “Should I do video?” It’s “Which of my formats translates to video without destroying what makes it work in audio?” Conversational formats convert easily. Highly produced narrative audio often doesn’t — and forcing it into video can gut the intimacy that made it compelling in the first place. Know which type of show you’re running before you point a camera at it.
For podcast producers: The workflow implications here are significant and underappreciated. The Times and Sunday Times head of podcasts, Dan Box, says the industry is approaching an “inflection point” where Apple’s multimodal vision — seamless audio/video toggling — may require publishers to edit video first and derive audio from it. That inverts every current production workflow. Producers who aren’t building dual-format capability now will be rebuilding under pressure later. The report also documents a pattern worth watching: publishers creating separate studio units (Guardian Studios, launched February 2026) specifically to develop creator talent and build show franchises. That’s a different skill set than traditional audio production.
For the industry: The measurement problem runs through this entire report like a fault line. Acast CEO Greg Glenday states it plainly: “The greatest challenge in the industry is sorting out how to ad-serve, plan, and price a piece of content that may be consumed in two completely different ways.” The IAB’s own acknowledgement that audio-only measurement may be significantly undercounting the total podcast advertising opportunity is a major revelation. The industry has been negotiating rates against a baseline that may be structurally too low. Fixing that is not a minor technical detail — it’s the condition under which podcast advertising can compete meaningfully for video budgets that dwarf the audio market.
CUMULUS MEDIA
Programmatic Audio Buying Has Doubled Since 2022, Reaching 82% Adoption Among Agencies, Study Finds
Podwires Rundown: Eight in ten agencies and advertisers now buy audio programmatically — a figure that has doubled in four years. The acceleration is real. So is the gap between where programmatic audio buying sits today and what podcast advertising specifically can actually deliver through those pipes.
Source note: This analysis is authored by Pierre Bouvard, Chief Insights Officer at Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group, a major audio advertising sales organisationprogrammatically – a with a direct commercial interest in growing programmatic audio investment. The underlying data draws on three separate Advertiser Perceptions studies commissioned by Westwood One — conducted in March 2026 (n=301 agencies and advertisers), October 2025 (n=325 DSP study), and August 2025 (n=252 podcast advertisers spending $1M+ annually). A fourth publisher-side study was conducted in January 2026 (n=151 publisher managers and VPs). Vendor-commissioned research; interpret findings accordingly.
The Key Points
82% of agencies and advertisers are currently buying audio programmatically as of March 2026 — up from 41% in 2022, a doubling in four years; growth accelerated to 17% year-over-year from 2025 to 2026, nearly three times the annual rate of the prior four years
Performance-focused campaigns are heavier programmatic audio users at 87% adoption, versus 74% for brand-building campaigns — signaling that programmatic audio is now a direct-response vehicle as much as a reach play
For podcast-specific programmatic buying, Google DV360, The Trade Desk, and Amazon DSP are the dominant demand-side platforms among advertisers spending at least $1M annually in podcasts
On the supply side, 69% of publishers use Google Ad Manager to sell digital audio ads, with Amazon Publisher Services a distant second at 26%
The Trade Desk reported audio grew year-over-year faster than any other channel in Q4 2025 — despite representing just 6% of their total business
Why It Matters
Programmatic audio buying doubling in four years is a structural shift, not a campaign trend. When 82% of agencies are buying audio programmatically, the manual direct-deal model that dominated podcast advertising for its first two decades is no longer the default — it’s the exception. For podcast publishers still primarily transacting through host-read direct deals and insertion-order buys, that’s a critical signal. The infrastructure buyers are using has changed. Amazon’s announced integrations with iHeart (870+ US broadcast stations plus podcasts), Global Media’s DAX in the UK, and SiriusXM/Pandora/SoundCloud through a single DSP are all pointing in the same direction: audio advertising is being absorbed into the same programmatic stack as display and video. Podcast inventory that can’t be reached through that stack is increasingly invisible to performance buyers.
The Big Picture
For podcasters: If your show’s ad inventory isn’t accessible through at least one of the three dominant DSPs — Google DV360, The Trade Desk, or Amazon — you are structurally excluded from the fastest-growing segment of audio ad buying. The question isn’t whether to engage with programmatic. It’s whether your hosting and monetisation infrastructure supports it. Check with your host or network about DAI and programmatic availability. This capability is table stakes now.
For podcast producers: The convergence of broadcast radio, streaming audio, and podcasting into unified programmatic buying environments — exemplified by Amazon’s DSP integrations — has direct implications for how you package and pitch client campaigns. Cross-channel audio buys that include podcast inventory are increasingly executable from a single platform. Producers advising on monetisation strategies need to understand which DSPs their clients’ shows can actually be accessed through — and flag the gap where it exists.
For the industry: The acceleration here — 17% growth in a single year after four years of 6% annual growth — suggests that programmatic audio hit an inflection point in 2025. Amazon’s move to bring terrestrial AM/FM radio into its DSP alongside streaming and podcasts is the most consequential near-term development. It either forces podcast inventory to compete more transparently on a level programmatic field, or it forces podcast advertising to better articulate what makes it distinctly valuable compared to commoditised audio inventory. REALLY? Yes. Really. The industry needs to decide which argument it’s making — because the DSPs aren’t going to make it for you.
LATEST PODCAST NEWS
Gen Z and Millennials Lead: U.S. Edison Research’s Share of Ear Q1 2026 report finds that audio consumption averages 4.5 hours daily. New data from Edison Research's Share of Ear — the only measurement tool tracking all U.S. audio listening platforms — reveals that Americans aged 13 to 34 lead all age groups in daily audio consumption, clocking in at four hours and thirty minutes per day as of Q1 2026.
Zeno Media Partners With Western Kentucky University's WWHR-FM Revolution 91.7 to Boost College Radio Digital Streaming and Monetization. Global audio streaming platform Zeno Media has announced a strategic partnership with WWHR-FM Revolution 91.7, the student-led radio station at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky, giving the college broadcaster access to advanced digital streaming infrastructure, programmatic advertising tools, and expanded distribution across mobile, web, and connected devices.
Shopify Tops April 2026 Podcast Advertising Rankings With $4.9M Spend as McDonald's and New Brands Surge, Podscribe Data Shows. The Podscribe Industry Ranker for April 2026 shows a podcast advertising market in active transition, with Shopify claiming the top advertiser position at an estimated $4.9 million in podcast ad spend, while McDonald's made one of the month's most dramatic moves — jumping from #10 to #6 with $2.3 million in estimated spend, signalling the fast-food chain's growing commitment to audio marketing.
Spotify Launches Personal Podcasts Beta Feature Enabling AI-Generated Daily Briefings via ChatGPT, Claude, and Other AI Agents. Spotify has launched a beta feature called ‘Personal Podcasts’, allowing users to generate custom AI-created audio content — including daily briefings, study guides, and calendar summaries — using compatible AI agents such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, and save it directly to their Spotify library alongside music, conventional podcasts, and audiobooks.
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