By Sharon Taylor, Chief Revenue Officer, Triton Digital
Every few months, another headline declares that podcasting has gone video-first. YouTube’s reach numbers get cited. A streamer announces a video podcast slate. Someone builds a chart ranking video views alongside downloads as if they measure the same thing. And the conclusion is always the same: audio is being left behind.
But the data doesn’t support that conclusion. Video is undeniably changing how people find podcasts, more than it’s changing how they consume that content once they’ve found it. Only 7% of monthly U.S. podcast consumers watch exclusively, compared with 13% who listen exclusively and 80% who do both, according to a 2025 U.S. Podcast Report. Those are two different problems, and the industry keeps trying to solve for them with the same solution.
If podcasting were becoming a video-first medium, the watch-only segment would grow fastest and eventually dominate the audience base. Still, dominant behavior consists of audio and video, often within the same episode and week for the same show. For instance, a consumer may listen to an episode on their commute, then watch a clip of the same conversation later that night. This is a classic example of format expansion, not format migration.
Getting this distinction wrong can be costly.
Building for the future of audio, with all the hidden benefits of video
Although audio remains the foundation of the podcast medium, that doesn’t mean publishers should or can afford to ignore video. 2026 has continued to show strong progress for video, with new shows and streaming platforms entering the space. It’s best to treat it as an expansion strategy, or what I’ve called a two-lane show: a content and production plan built for an audience that moves fluidly between watching and listening, not one that assumes they’ve picked a side.
This is also where the operational conversation comes into play, as video has historically been treated as a second production pipeline, with separate files, metadata, ad workflows, and teams. Those silos and processes can quickly become expensive, and they’re a big part of why video adoption has lagged in podcasting relative to audience demand.
The assumption that publishers need two workflows to serve one audience is often misinterpreted. A single video file generates both video and audio outputs, with titles, descriptions, and ad markers applied once and carried across both formats. However, that shared metadata is a limitation of how video works today – titles and descriptions are inherited rather than tailored, because current APIs don’t give publishers any way to differentiate them by platform. That’s the difference between video functioning as a strategic extension of an existing show, and video functioning as a separate cost center that competes with the audio product for resources.
Monetization shouldn’t force publishers to choose between two ad businesses either. If a show’s audio ad relationships and workflows already work, then video shouldn’t require rebuilding them from scratch. One approach is a marketplace that lets publishers insert audio ads into video episodes rather than standing up a separate video ad stack. The principle matters more than the mechanism because publishers should be able to capture the higher engagement video environments tend to generate without walking away from the ad relationships that already deliver for their audio product.
One of the biggest examples of this is Apple’s launch of HLS-powered video functionality on Apple Podcasts, and Omny’s role as one of the first hosting partners in that rollout. Publishers adopting HLS video may benefit from new editorial and discovery opportunities as Apple expands its video podcast ecosystem. That window won’t stay open indefinitely, but it’s open now, and it’s reason enough for publishers to test video sooner rather than later, regardless of where the audience is ultimately headed.
In May, Spotify for Creators and Megaphone said it would support Apple’s HLS video technology, letting Spotify-hosted shows distribute and monetize video on Apple Podcasts without changing their existing setups. Two competitors that have spent years building separate video ecosystems are now converging on shared infrastructure, which means publishers’ strategic considerations are changing once again. This shift signals that one video asset needs to work everywhere the audience already is. Apple’s HLS system automatically adjusts video quality based on network speed, so the technical case for convergence is as much about reliability as convenience.
The less obvious benefit is that publishers using the same HLS video feed that powers their Apple Podcasts distribution are also using it to bring video into their own apps. That solves a problem that’s plagued publishers for years: building a decent in-app video experience has typically been costly and clunky. If one feed can serve both the platform and the publisher’s owned property, that same principle runs through this entire piece, enabling video to work as an extension of what exists rather than competing for resources.
When platforms consolidate around shared standards, it points to where the friction in this market was really coming from: it was never the audience’s demand for video. It was a fragmented distribution.
New audiences are discovering differently because they look different
Podcasting’s newest listeners have their own preferences. First-year consumers skew far more female (52%) than long-tenured listeners (39%) and are nearly a decade younger, with a median age of 35 versus 43, according to Edison Research.
Age and gender aren’t shifting in isolation. How people are arriving at podcasting is changing in tandem. Data confirms newer consumers gravitate toward watching, while longer-tenured ones stay loyal to listening, which lines up neatly with YouTube’s success pulling in audiences who wouldn’t otherwise have found the medium at all.
Still, video only tells part of the story. Social platforms are doing equally important work. First-year listeners are nine times more likely than long-timers to name Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram as their primary way of consuming podcasts — 9% versus just 1%, per the same report from Edison.
At a glance, a listener who found a show through a TikTok clip and a decade-long Apple Podcasts subscriber may technically fall into the same audience category, but their behavior, habits, and value to an advertiser don’t match. What seem like minute details are critical to reframing a targeting map and crafting media plans that reach new audiences.
Building for what comes next
Publishers on the fence about video are already behind. The infrastructure cost of testing has dropped, platform incentives for early adopters are strong, and audience data shows the upside is incremental reach. For advertisers, it’s time to match format mixes by genres and audiences instead of whichever format is generating the most headlines this quarter.
Don’t create a video-first strategy based on discovery metrics. Build a two-format strategy based on consumption data, knowing that the exclusive audio audience — alongside the 80% of whom are also watching — isn’t shrinking and isn’t lower value. In many cases, particularly by income, it’s the opposite.
Video is accelerating how people discover podcasts. But it is not replacing how most people consume podcasts once they’ve found something worth sticking with. The industry will make better decisions — creative, operational, and financial — once it stops conflating the two.
