Sound Insights founder Ben Robins recaps the Power of Podcasting Showcase hosted by AudioUK last week. The core theme running through the event is the open opportunity in plain sight with podcast advertising in the UK. Despite continuing growth in the market, spend noticeably lags behind in comparison to listenership-to-advertising-spend ratio in the U.S. Robins highlights the benefit of getting in now, as brands that establish themselves now stand to benefit from higher engagement rates, premium audience demographics, and lower competition than in more saturated channels.
Spotify’s Subscriber Count Climbs 12%, Beating Forecast by Ashley Carman
The Q1 finance report for Spotify shows a 12% increase in subscribers, reaching 268 million (beating analysts’ projections of around 265 million). Operating income falls short of expectations at €509 million in comparison to Spotify’s previous forecast of €548m. Monthly Active User count continues to increase, reaching 10% year-over-year growth in Q1 with 678 million, falling just short of analysts expecting 679m.
2025 Digital Video Ad Spend & Strategy Report: Part One
The IAB has published a new report on ad spend in digital video, built from both a survey of media decision-makers by Advertiser Perceptions and proprietary data from Guideline. According to StreamingMedia coverage of the report, digital video is expected to secure almost 60% of total TV/video ad spend this year, over double the share it had five years ago. And with podcasting becoming more and more a living room television activity (stay tuned for tomorrow’s Sounds Profitable article, hint hint), a thriving digital video space is a thriving podcast space.
As for the rest of the news…
- SoundCast and Basis Technologies have announced a strategic partnership designed to offer advertisers premium, brand-safe audio inventory at scale around the world.
- Headliner has a new “Most Replayed” tool that highlights sections of YouTube videos most often skipped to and replayed by viewers, allowing podcasters to repurpose their top-performing video segments into sharable clips.
- IAB UK has a new market report showcasing the UK digital ad market grew 13% year over year, with podcasting specifically growing 8%.
