Audioboom’s Strong First Half, Maturing Creator Brand Safety, & More

Audioboom’s Strong First Half, Maturing Creator Brand Safety, & More

July 15, 2026

Audioboom Half-Year Report: Record H1

Audioboom has published their financial report for the first half of 2026. H1 26 revenue is reported at $45.7 million, up 30% year-on-year. Its gross profit is $9.9 million, up 33%, and adjusted EBITDA of $3.2 million, up 80%. Podnews notes Q2 average monthly distribution reached 183 million downloads and video views, up 84% from 100 million in Q2 2025. Audioboom also concluded its strategic review, ending talks with three interested parties after the board determined the offers undervalued the company, and announced Spotify and Apple partnerships to support video monetization, expected live in H2 2026.

Bye-Bye Brand Safety

Creator economy newsletter Scalable reports brand safety has faded as a leading concern in creator marketing: 50% of US enterprise marketers called it a challenge in 2023, 32% in 2024, and 10% in 2025. The conversation has moved to brand fit, whether a creator suits a specific brand and its audience, rather than avoiding any potential controversy. “If you look at it from the fan perspective, the consumer perspective, it’s not that deep to them in most cases,” said Visa CMO Frank Cooper. A shift worth noting for the world of podcasting, an industry built on audiences self-selecting content. As research like The Medium Moves the Message shows, podcast audiences are more likely to have positive feelings towards brands for supporting their favorite show regardless of what the episode’s subject content might be.

BBC Annual Report and Accounts 2025/26

The BBC released its annual report and accounts. Podnews reports BBC podcasts outside the UK, those funded by advertising, drew over 515 million downloads and 116 million listeners in the financial year. Total commercial revenue was £2.1 billion (US $2.9 billion), unchanged year-on-year, and BBC commercial activities returned £377 million to the public service, down 3.5%. The report serves as a noteworthy public datapoint on how a global broadcaster monetizes podcasts outside its home market.

Swing And A Miss

AdExchanger’s daily roundup reports that members of Netflix’s ad-free tier keep getting caught off guard by ads the platform shows to all subscribers during live sports broadcasts, typified most recently by the ad load in its pre-Home Run Derby coverage and the ads baked into the Derby replay. “Why does my ad free Netflix that I pay money for have ads? Do you have a different definition of ‘ad free’?” one subscriber asked on Bluesky. Live events on Netflix carry ads for every subscription tier, a distinction subscribers continue to discover in real time as the platform expands its live sports slate. A frustration podcasting has historically avoided by establishing expectations from the beginning. Audiences largely understand why free podcasts run ads, and many shows offer some way to pay for a truly zero-ad experience.

Pivot to Video: The Sequel by Brian Morrissey

In a recent issue of The Rebooting, Brian Morrissey argues publishers’ second run at video is structured differently from the failed 2015-2017 pivot: YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok now serve as top-of-funnel audience acquisition while publishers steer viewers toward owned properties and direct relationships. He cites data showing social media and video networks (54%) now outrank news organizations’ own sites (51%) as news sources, with owned digital properties losing 12 percentage points of reach since 2020. Vox grew affiliate revenue 31% despite traffic declines. “We realized that actually we don’t need all of that Google search traffic,” said Camilla Cho, Vox’s SVP of commerce and affiliate. The funnel-first framing describes the same strategy many podcast publishers now run on YouTube.

…as for the rest of the news: