The creator economy is becoming a “must buy” — and a $37 billion industry in the U.S by Sam Gutelle
The IAB has published their 2025 Creator Economy Ad Spend & Strategy Report. As the headline spoils, one of the key takeaways is the projection that by the end of the year the U.S. creator economy will reach $37 billion in ad spend, a 26% increase year-over-year. In the IAB’s survey of 250 U.S.-based ad spend decision-makers, 48% say they consider creators a “must buy” entity, outpaced by paid search and social media as higher-ranked “must buy” options. 53% of respondents now have specific ad budgets allocated for creator-related work.
Closing The Sound Gap: Why Audio Deserves A Bigger Place In The Omnichannel Mix by Larry Linietsky
Principal Global Audio Business Development for Amazon DSP Larry Linietsky has a new sponsored post on AdExchanger talking about the “sound gap.” Something podcasting is intimately familiar with. For all the share-of-ear digital audio gets with audiences every day, there’s a noticeable gap between the attention audio gets and the amount of ad spend leveraged towards that attention. Linietsky directly addressing that gap and verifying it accomplishes two things: 1. it keeps the ongoing industry conversation alive. 2. It shows one of the biggest DSPs in advertising not only gives audio the time of day, they actively support it.
Pivoting to Podcasts? How Print Journalists Can Become Audio Storytellers by Banjo Damilola
A key moment in The Economist’ limited series podcast The Prince, charting the rise of China’s Xi Jinping, stems from a frank mother/daughter conversation about life in China. Reporter Sue-Lin Wong addressed that moment during Making an Investigative Podcast at the 2025 Global Investigative Journalism Conference, highlighting the emotional impact scenes like her conversation with her mom can have in a podcast. Tens of thousands of words have been written on podcasting’s intimacy and ability to leverage parasocial relationships with the audience, but it remains especially true for investigative podcasts that could, otherwise, be dry lectures reciting facts. Investigative podcasts have always been a backbone of the industry (I’ll resist bringing up Serial), and for all the good archival audio and hard-hitting interviews a reporter can get, it’s way easier to be relaxed in front of a microphone than it is a camera.
As for the rest of the news…
- Headliner has a new survey specifically for podcasters who use YouTube about how they use captions. Participation is anonymous and entrants are put in a drawing to potentially win a free year of Headliner Pro.
- Ausha has rolled out a new podcast search optimization benchmark feature in their PSO control panel, comparing a user’s PSO to that of top podcasts.
- NeimanLab covers the restructuring of City Cast, looking back to 2023 expansion efforts and 2025’s lessons learned about what kinds of cities can support a local podcast and newsletter, vs. ones that can’t.
- The Hollywood Reporter covers the whole Brian Cox/Kristen Bell podcast fracas with Fox. Long story short: a Fox-owned podcast studio acquired rights to the audio for a 2010 full-cast New Testament audiobook, which they’ve edited into an audio drama. Several of the celebs involved claim they had no idea the audio was being repurposed until they started receiving press invites to promote the podcast.
