The Podscape Winter Deadline is TONIGHT
That’s right folks, it’s almost time! Twice a year Magellan AI and Sounds Profitable team up to continue the living document that is the Podscape. A birds-eye view of the industry, the Podscape infographic sorts companies in the business of podcasting into various districts representing what products and services they provide. These biannual updates serve to both add new companies, as well as updating existing ones (e.g. change of direction, a new logo, new acquisitions). Participation is free and highly encouraged. Fill out the official form here by end-of-day today, Friday November 21st for your submission to be included in the Winter update scheduled to post early in the new year.
At a recent Bloomberg business of podcasting summit, Shots Studios co-founder John Shahidi explains the reasoning behind launching the Happy Dad seltzer brand: Full Send Podcast’s audience is 85% male, hard seltzers are popular, but college-age dudes perceive White Claw as effeminate. Happy Dad serves as an example of podcast monetization that builds equity in one’s own business. When a Full Send listener tries Happy Dad and likes it, they’ve just reinforced their connection to the podcast (which, itself, is driving affinity for the brand). A quote from Webster:
“Of course, most podcasters cannot launch a beverage company. The capital requirements alone would eliminate the vast majority of creators. Happy Dad works because Nelk Boys and Full Send have massive scale—millions of listeners and viewers who will actually buy enough product to justify manufacturing, distribution, and retail relationships. But the principle isn’t limited to beverages or massive audiences. It’s about understanding your audience well enough to create something they actually want and need, then using your podcast as a highly efficient, targeted marketing channel for that thing.”
While this is not without risk (see: influencers who tried to evolve past the content that created their makeup line or fashion brand in the first place), it does leverage a creator’s greatest tool: understanding their audience. Building a brand that fits an audience, and then using the podcast they already love to tell them about that brand has a lot of power.
How loyal is your podcast audience? by Dan Misener
Every podcast has an “average lifetime value score” that can be used to track audience loyalty. A metric measured by tracking the average number of distinct calendar days each audience member spends with the show, effectively condensing an audience’s listening history into a single number tracking a typified “average” listener over time. While there is no one universal “good” number for a lifetime value score, there are shows that tend to generate higher ones than others. Daily podcasts tend to have more listeners returning regularly than weekly-uploads.
Shows with sizable back catalogs that both old fans and new listeners can burn through also tend to score better. A metric that can be used to determine if an audience is actively growing, or possibly undergoing churn even as net-new listeners keep coming in. Inversely, if average lifetime value is increasing but overall audience size is trending downwards, the show could be accidentally super-serving a declining core audience and putting off the rest of the fanbase.
A plus side to the average lifetime value score is one can calculate it with freely-available data: one needs both an all-time deduplicated number of unique audience members (using user accounts or device IDs), and daily-resolution unique audience member counts. Both of which are available from Apple Podcasts Connect and Spotify for Podcasters. To speed along the process, Bumper has built the score into the Loyalty section of the Bumper Dashboard.
Podcast Predictions for 2026 from 22 Industry Experts
As is tradition for Podcast Perspectives this time of year, a special episode brings together 22 former guests to look back at 2025, as well as share their feelings as the year comes to a close and we look forward to 2026. For example, our very own Bryan Barletta:
“There’s more opportunity for small teams than in any other industry I’ve seen. At the same time, inbound work and easy projects have kind of dried up.
While the word [podcast] may be used for more than we originally defined it for, at its core, it still means audio forward, creator owned, and on demand. Podcasting is allowing us to revisit ideas creators and influencers have tried before that have failed and finding greater success this time around. I really believe that podcasting strength lies in the comfort of repeating our value for the 17th time, with the enthusiasm of it being the first time.”
Lower Street’s Harry Morton is hopeful for what 2026 has to bring, citing the IAB announcement of podcast revenue hitting $3 billion as proof brands continue to invest in podcasting. Something that’s a net positive for the industry at large. Jessica Cordova Kramer of Lemonada Media is excited for community-building in the new year. Audiences want to hang out with other people who love the same shows, something Lemonada is aiming to address.
Event organizing platform Eventbrite has partnered with analytics platform Listener.com to bring event data into the same dashboard as podcasting stats. With the integration, podcasters can see event, ticketing, and revenue data from their Eventbrite events in Listener’s dashboard via an app in the Eventbrite App Marketplace. With a combination of audience analytics and IRL event performance metrics, podcasters can make more informed judgement calls on where their fanbase is at its strongest when planning future events.
IAB Australia 2026 Event, Audio Advertising State of the Nation Survey
The latest weekly update from IAB Australia comes with dates and registration for the first events of 2026. IAB Australia Audio Summit 2026 will take place in both Sydney and Melbourne in early March (the 3rd and 4th respectively, Sounds Profitable will be in attendance). Also, the survey for the IAB Australia Audio Advertising State of the Nation is now live, soliciting responses about experience and plans with digital streaming audio and podcast advertising. Respondents are entered into a giveaway for a $250 AUD gift voucher and also are eligible for a free ticket to either Audio Summit in March.
As for the rest of the news…
- RSS.com has introduced Free Local & Niche, a new hosting plan built for creators focusing on community-driven or highly specialized topics. The plan offers unlimited episodes, unlimited audio, a free podcast website, and a slate of features needed to get a locally-focused or niche podcast off the ground.
- Australia’s industry body for commercial radio and audio has rolled out CRA Audio ID. The “unified cross-network identity solution” enables the ability for a single listener to be identified with the same ID number across radio stations and podcasts consumed from multiple different companies across Australian media
- Apple Podcasts has debuted their Top Shows lists for 2025, including lists for individual countries. As usual, Podnews has compiled a master list for easy perusing.
- PAVE has teamed up with Kathryn Nicolai for the first-ever Nothing Much Happens Live Virtual Event. An event designed to fully leverage the bedtime routine podcast’s premise for at-home enjoyment (including, but not limited to, printable coloring pages).
- The Hollywood Reporter and Spotify have published the first Video Podcast Roundtable, bringing together nominees for the 2026 Golden Globe for Best Podcast.
