The Google Spear, Top Spenders, & More

The YouTube Tip of the Google Spear

I found this article, from Stratechery’s Ben Thompson, to be absolutely fascinating. Thompson argues that we’ve been spending so much time thinking and talking about text-based AI, that we have overlooked the great sleeping giant of YouTube. Yes, it’s hard to believe YouTube can be overlooked about anything, but as the article makes clear, the platform’s growing AI-enhanced ability to tag everything in video content creates an opportunity to make nearly every “surface” in a video monetizable. For podcasting, this creates another potential lure for creators, but it also represents a novel path to advertising revenue without traditional “spots.” Thompson also notes that YouTube is perhaps best poised to ingest and filter through the coming wave of AI-generated content to improve user experience.

Top Podcast Advertisers – August 2025

Magellan.ai has released the latest update to their monthly tracker of the biggest spenders, movers, and shakers in podcasting. Amazon was the top spender in August, while grocery chain Albertsons was the top “mover”, more than quadrupling their spend from the previous month. Other notable movers include meal delivery service Cook Unity (+336%), GoDaddy (which spent $739k in August, compared to $16k in July), and Yahoo, which nearly quintupled its spend to $697k.

How To Fix Copyright Music Problems In Podcasts

Here’s a fantastic conversation between Jay Nachlis, of Coleman Insights, and Pantheon Media’s Peter Ferioli and Christian Swain about the landmines and opportunities of using copyrighted music in podcasts. The core issue: podcast creators need multiple licences to use protected music in podcasting, which makes it impossible for the independent creator (and pretty darn hard for the larger ones, too.) There is also an interesting discussion of “fair use” (often misunderstood) and a potential solution: you guessed it, our old friend AI. Fixing this would be enormous for the industry.

Lost in Data: Why Marketers Don’t Trust Attribution and Measurement

I will admit to being bewildered by the chart at the top of the graph, but the key point of this article from MediaPost’s Laurie Sullivan is that marketers are not very sure about what works and what doesn’t work for ANY of their marketing. A Branch survey cited in the article says that 82% of marketers, in fact, are “not very confident” about attribution for app installs. It’s key to keep this in mind as not just a podcasting discussion. Attribution remains a central part of the conversation for most channels.

As for the rest of the news…