The AMP Accords Have Been Published
The Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP) has ratified The AMP Accords, a cross-platform measurement standard for the podcast industry. Back in July, Oxford Road convened a group of industry experts to work on solving the problem of fractured measurement standards across podcast platforms. This formed the AMP, including leaders from various platforms, advertisers, publishers, and creators. The three goals of AMP are to standardize impression metrics, develop cross-platform performance measurement, and define a universal classification for “podcast” that allows industry sizing, buying, selling, and measurement. The AMP Accords are now available for download and open for public comment.
With that publication comes a new piece from ADOPTER Media founder and CEO Glenn Rubenstein: The AMP Accords and the Evolution of Podcast Measurement: Our Take. ADOPTER Media endorses the accords and proposes nine additions it would add to the accords. Rubenstein argues measurability shouldn’t sabotage the embedded host-read ad, noting the framework has a (understandable) lean towards dynamic ad insertion. If embedded content remains harder to measure than DAI, the market is encourage to shift even more into DAI. He also proposes the buy side of podcasting needs tools similar to those the Accords aims to offer the sales side. Phase 2 of the AMP Accords transition framework gives sales teams talking points and pitch tools. Agencies and Chief Audio Officers will need a similar toolkit to explain industry evolution and provide similar buy-side education to what sales will receive. Rubenstein ends with an endorsement of the AMP Accords as an “excellent first step” and says ADOPTER Media is prepared to participate in the next steps wherever it can be useful for this “workable start.” The team at ADOPTER Media were instrumental in the identification of the inflated Apple Podcasts downloads solved in iOS17, so for Rubenstein’s blog to by the first public comment on the AMP Accords shows promise for the potential of the project to continue growing and gain support in the industry.
The Podcast Atlas, Part 4: The Denominator by Tom Webster
Social platforms function as the base from which podcast advertising grows. According to The Podcast Atlas, YouTube reaches 82% of podcast listeners in a month and Facebook reaches 80%, against 36% for audio podcasts, which is why Webster frames social as the foundation of distribution rather than a secondary channel. He separates the roles by strength, with audio building trust and belief while social delivers frequency and retargeting, and notes that ad experience varies widely by platform, YouTube drawing the weakest ad sentiment and TikTok the highest immediate purchase rate. “Rates are numerator arguments, and podcasting wins nearly all of them. Social platforms win almost none, and it doesn’t matter, because social isn’t competing on the numerator. Social is the denominator.”
Why the Argument for Not Investing in UK Podcast Advertising Just Ran Out of Road by Ben Robins
U.K. podcast ads prove to have significant reach and power at a lower price than expected. Research from Sound Insights and Sounds Profitable finds UK podcast advertising priced far below the audience it reaches, at £0.18 per listener-hour versus £0.94 in the US, a 5.2x gap despite comparable reach and attention. Podcasts reached 43% of UK adults in the past month, and 79% of daily UK podcast users recalled hearing a podcast ad in the past week. Among 18 to 34 year olds, podcast ad recall hit 86%, higher than the 83% who recalled broadcast TV advertising. A quote from Ben Robins: “The audience agencies are spending enormous budgets to reach on television is recalling podcast advertising at a higher rate than they are recalling television advertising.”
Q2: 29% Organic Growth and Continued Strengthening of Offering
Acast has published its Q2 2026 report, showing net sales of SEK 775.6m, up 28% year over year and 29% on an organic basis. North America has grown 34% and Europe 25% y-o-y. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded to 7% from 3% a year earlier, and average revenue per listen or view rose 26% to SEK 0.69, signaling improved pricing power alongside the top-line growth. CEO Greg Glenday notes this growth is translating into profitability, indicating the company’s strategy of scaling revenues ahead of costs is “working as intended.”
Comscore Wants To Make Buying Podcast Ads Feel More Like Buying CTV Or Display
Comscore has expanded its Proximic contextual targeting to five major audio platforms: Spotify, SiriusXM, Triton Digital, Acast, and Libsyn. This expansion enables episode-level contextual targeting of podcast inventory. By automating transcription and packaging it into pre-bid audience segments, advertisers can buy podcast ads through the same programmatic tools they use for CTV and display, addressing a longstanding friction point for buyers unfamiliar with audio workflows. “It’s putting audio a little bit more at parity with some of the other channels that [buyers are] used to targeting on,” said Jessica Trainor, head of partnerships at Proximic by Comscore.
Is AI Taking Over Audio: Radio, Podcasting, Audiobooks?
Edison Research at SSRS has published the results of a survey of 1,000 U.S. fiction audiobook listeners. Each respondent were randomly assigned clips of either a human narrator, or an AI generated voice from Spoken. 65% of respondents said they would be likely to listen to an AI-narrated audiobook. 61% couldn’t tell the Spoken model wasn’t a human clip. Over in the world of podcasting, trust remains a significant selling point of the industry. As such, generated voices and automated scripts open the door to eroding that trust automatically. Recent Semafor reporting shows automated personalized podcasts from The Washington Post are having teething troubles, including outright inventing quotes and opinions in articles. Tom Webster notes an increased reluctance to embrace AI-voiced podcasts from college educated respondents to The Podcast Landscape 2025. That reluctance may be less related to ignorance and more an indicator the group has an “informed wariness about the existential threat this technology has and will continue to have for an entire class of workers. To succeed with this kind of content will not only require excellent execution, but also a means to address this wariness. AI may be coming to podcasting, but no one can be made to like it.”
…as for the rest of the news:
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The Roost Podcast Network has rebranded to Podium.
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Africa Podcast Network becomes the first African network to launch Affinity Audiences with NumberEight, letting advertisers target listeners by interest and demographics rather than individual show placements
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Podscribe integrates LiveRamp’s device graph to add deterministic household-level matching plus first- and third-party audience targeting to its podcast attribution
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SpotsNow launches Premium host-read bundles built around audience types, letting advertisers test new segments in minutes across more than 600 shows
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On the Podcast Advertising Playbook, NeXT Audio’s Adel Saadi argues audio listen-through outperforms video click- and view-through for advertisers in emerging markets
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The Podglomerate offers a guide to rebranding a podcast without losing listeners, covering metadata, cover art, and cross-platform propagation
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Podcast host Ausha has recertified for the IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines v2.2
