The Podcast Show London has announced this year’s international advisory board of ten industry experts assembled to ensure the show’s content is relevant to its global audience of attendees. Starting this coming Monday, February 2nd, applications will be live for four weeks to submit full panel sessions, keynotes, and general interest for panelist/moderator spots on curated panels. Sounds Profitable will be in attendance, sponsoring the brand stage and hosting a badge pickup happy hour from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 19th. Tom Webster will also be giving a keynote presentation debuting brand new global data. See you there!
Podcast Ads Deliver Digital Audio’s Strongest Purchase Impact.
Inside Radio covers Podscribe’s live webinar discussing data from their Performance Benchmark for Q4 2025. Incrementality is essential for advertisers trying to divine what a campaign did versus conversions that would have happened passively anyway, according to Head of Partnerships Matt Drengler. By measuring incrementality, Podscribe’s data isolates the impact of a campaign. The PPB finds podcasts have a 41% median incremental lift impact on brands’ first million unique site visitors per month. Drengler attributes this to podcast audiences being aloof elsewhere, unlikely to clock a brand’s message on social media, OOH billboards, or digital campaigns. Niche is podcasting’s strength, such as marijuana and tobacco advertisers delivering the highest podcast incrementality (61%) thanks to the audiences those podcasts are connecting brands to.
About half of consumer spend in the US and UK is now driven by Gen Alpha by Jeena Sharma
Teneo has published their Gen Alpha Consumer Influence Study, a report built from surveying 1,000 children born between 2010 and 2014. The report finds 48% of parental spending in the U.S. and U.K. are now influenced by Gen Alpha kids. While parents have been cajoled into buying things for their kids since the invention of advertising, modern parents have different influences to contend with than Gen Z. Teneo finds that despite being natively digital, Gen Alpha favors “real-world credibility”, leaning more on the opinions of friends and family. And the purchase influence of Gen Alpha is reportedly topping $255 billion on just food, fashion, and leisure products in the U.S. alone. Sure would be handy if podcasting had a burgeoning Kids & Family podcast scene for advertisers to directly reach those under-16-year-old audiences with authentic messaging (as well as their co-listening parents). 😉
CoHost Releases Annual Report on the State of Podcast Agencies in 2026
The third edition of the State of Podcast Agencies is built from a survey of 50 podcast agencies around the world. Agencies remain “small but strategic” with 76% of respondents operating with fewer than 10 employees, but serving clients ranging from startups to Fortune 500 brands. Key findings include full service becoming the norm, as agencies largely handle every step of the podcast ad lifecycle. Audio continues to outperform, with 35% of agencies saying audio-only formats deliver stronger performance than video. ROI and analytics remain a key desire, as agencies express wanting better attribution tools, listener data, and metrics beyond the download.
As for the rest of the news…
- A Forbes blogger takes a look at the history of History podcasting. From early hits like Hardcore History to current hits garnering such followings they’re launching tours, such as Lindsay Graham’s The Days That Made America tour travelling the U.S. this year.
- Friend of the pod Dallas Taylor has a new video showcasing how Radiolab creator Jad Abumrad crafts stories with sound.
- Libsyn has announced an exclusive hosting and advertising partnership with Sean Carroll’s Mindscape.
- Scalable has a new conversation with Hernan Lopez about video’s place in podcasting and its utility as a promotional tool (even if you don’t have a video podcast).
- AdWeek covers new Bluefish AI data suggesting YouTube has passed Reddit as preferred cited source for LLM search results, reaching 16% while Reddit sits at 10%.
