YouTube Isn’t Dominating Podcasting by Paul Riismandel
Working in the world of podcast research, Riismandel reads a lot of news and is going to a lot of events, both of which are heavily pushing an exaggerated view of YouTube’s place in the world of podcasting. It is an important platform for discovery and passively a huge platform independent of podcasting, but data like Signal Hill Insights and Cumulus Media’s upcoming Spring Download find 61% of podcast consumers use a platform other than YouTube most often. The Podcast Landscape 2024 found only 26% of monthly podcast listeners say they use just one app or service for podcasts, so even those that use a platform like YouTube are not likely to be monogamous to it. I briefly talked to Tom Webster this morning about this piece and I think it wraps this all up in a bow: “This is a great reminder that YouTube might be the top of the funnel way people discover podcasts, but audio remains the dominant medium.”
Australia’s Ad Market [Multiple Sources]
IAB Australia has a new Video Advertising State of the Nation Report, now in its fifth year of publication. According to this year’s edition, 27.5% of online ad spend in Australia is going to video. A new market forecast from WPP Media has updated expectations to a sunnier outlook for the overall AU market. Back in December the forecast was 3.7% overall growth for 2025, now WPP anticipates 4.1% growth.
This Year Next Year Global Media Forecast
Speaking of WPP Media: they’ve published a new report anticipating the global ad market will grow 6% this year. Down from their December forecast of 7.7%, but still “resilient.” The overall audio advertising space is expected to remain flat this year, reaching $26.5 billion USD worth of global ad spend. The forecast also anticipates user-generated content to continue performing well, with ad revenue from platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram Reels reaching $184.9 billion.
Google AI tools are eating up organic search traffic for media sites by Matty Merritt
According to Wall Street Journal reporting, organic search traffic to Huffington Post and the Washington Post has fallen by nearly half over the past three years. Publishers point to Google’s AI overviews, which scrape pages to summarize them without a user clicking through, and the new AI mode that offers more complex answers prompt-style. The Atlantic’s CEO has primed the company to expect Google traffic to drop to near-zero, while Business Insider laid off 21% of its workforce last month with the motivation of huge traffic drops. Even made-for-SEO vacation guides and product reviews aren’t safe, as summary search results negate the entire genre of article with a single generated sentence answering search query of “best air fryer 2025”.
As for the rest of the news…
- Mondo Metrics has announced a strategic partnership with Precise.ai. An announcement that includes the introduction of MondoAQ, a solution that combines first-part data collaboration with contextual and behavioral intelligence.
- ADOPTER Media has a new episode of their AdStops podcast, this time bringing on Sydney Dennis of Libsyn Ads to discuss the day-to-day work of podcast ad ops.
- The latest episode of Oxford Road’s What’s a Podcast? limited series features an extended interview of Bryan Barletta about the state of podcasting.
- Audion has published a study in partnership with xpln.ai to demonstrate digital audio’s effectiveness, including 73% brand recall with respondents.
- AudioStack Product Expert Sam Blurton has a new blog on the economics of media production, and how AI audio is influencing content creation.
- Alitu founder Colin Gray talks about the experience of seeing Alitu featured on stage at Apple’s WWDC keynote.
- In response to the unexpected announcement of SmartLess Mobile, several comedy podcasts took to social media with joke announcements of unexpected business ventures, such as How Did This Get Made “announcing” their transition to online banking and Blank Check with Griffin and David “announcing” a health insurance company called Blank Check Care.
