The second report from Signal Hill Insights’ Audio on the Move study draws on a nationally representative survey of 6,161 Canadians aged 12 and older. AM/FM radio accounts for 46% of in-car listening time, followed by music streaming services at 27% and music on YouTube at 11%. The car is where 24% of Canadians’ audio time happens, compared with 59% at home and 12% at work or school. Signal Hill’s Matt Hird says streaming is claiming a growing share and that combining YouTube and music streaming closes the gap with AM/FM quickly. 68% of Canadians dislike AI-generated podcasts and 65% dislike AI-generated music, while only 4% and 5% like them, a gap of at least 13 to 1. Canadians aged 12 to 17 are less negative, with half disliking either format and 42% neutral on AI-generated podcasts, but sentiment still does not tip positive.
The Podcast Study 2026 Identifies “Prime Prospects” as Major Opportunity to Grow Podcast Superfans
Point-To-Point Marketing and Strategic Solutions Research presented the second webinar from The Podcast Study 2026, which surveyed 1,205 U.S. podcast consumers in an endeavor sponsored by Crooked Media, NPR, and PRX. The researchers define a Superfan by behavior as well as attitude: someone who listens to full episodes daily, consumes at least five hours of podcasts per week, says the host is an important reason they listen, and has taken an extra step (such as joining Patreon or buying merchandise). Superfans make up 17% of podcast consumers, and another 18% are “Prime Prospects” who value the host, report growing consumption, and have shown a willingness to pay or participate. The biggest gap is usage, as 67% of Prime Prospects are not yet daily full-episode listeners and 66% consume fewer than five hours per week. The study also found that 90% of Prime Prospects have given up on a podcast over a content execution issue, led by too much meaningless talk at the start of an episode, and that 38% prefer video over audio compared with 27% of the total podcast audience.
Digiday reports that Apple’s iOS 27 update, released in mid-September, has Safari cutting off companies that track people around the web, so the affected firms can no longer collect data on those users or serve them ads. The first names blocked include The Trade Desk, LiveRamp, ID5, Permutive, and Experian’s Audigent. Also, because Apple requires every browser on iPhone and iPad to run on its WebKit engine, Chrome and Firefox are caught up too. Digiday’s test of more than 70 ad tech domains found only that first handful blocked, while rival ID providers including Zeta’s LiveIntent, Lotame, and Yahoo’s ConnectID got through. The Trade Desk’s ad server has since been removed from the list in a test version of iOS, but current users will not see that fix until the end of the month at the earliest. Digiday notes that publishers use these IDs to show advertisers who is reading, so losing them on iPhone Safari weakens what those readers are worth.
…as for the rest of the news:
- Podscribe’s September 2026 ranker update adopts Spotify’s 30-second plays standard in place of streams, ranks shows on YouTube engaged views (estimated at 39% of public views for shows without connected analytics), adds measurability signals that separate direct-from-source numbers from estimates, and makes its Rising Advertisers ranker public for the first time.
- Libsyn now adds ad placement details directly into its RSS feeds using a namespace extension that marks pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll positions and how many ads each can carry, according to Podnews reporting.
- Scalable fact-checks Elon Musk’s claim that Instagram is “for girls,” noting that Emarketer estimates 46% of Instagram’s U.S. monthly users are male and that 71 million U.S. men use Instagram compared with 28 million on X.
- The Podglomerate shares trends and key takeaways from Bloomberg Screentime 2026, including Conan O’Brien on why his host-read ads work because he reads them as himself, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos calling podcasts a very small part of the company’s investment, and Steven Bartlett on the roughly 150 full-time employees behind The Diary of a CEO.
- Mother Jones and PRX launch Stress Test, a pop-up podcast covering the 2026 midterm elections through Election Day.
- The Golden Globes expanded eligibility for Best Podcast to 30 shows for the 84th ceremony, up from 25. Submissions are due October 30.
- The Outloud Group’s analysis of 2,656 YouTube sponsorships finds only a 0.19 correlation between CPM efficiency and CPA efficiency, with 42 of the 266 top-decile CPM placements landing in the bottom quartile for conversion efficiency, and recommends pairing CPM screens with a CPA floor.
