Forget Podfade – Let’s Talk About Creator Fade by Tom Webster
Next week Sounds Profitable publishes The Creators 2025, an update to the 2023 study looking at the people behind the mics of podcasting, with over 5,000 respondents. Webster teases the report with an early slide showing a breakdown of how many respondents just consume podcasts (83%), how many are active creators (12%) and how many are lapsed creators (6%). That six percent doesn’t just represent someone who stopped making a particular show, they stopped creating podcasts period. Webster intends on investigating why creators are falling off podcasting with a future piece about The Creators 2025, but for now he’s planting a flag: “podfade” is not a problem of podcasts ending, it’s a problem of creators leaving podcasting. If the industry wants to grow, it needs to understand why one third of its creators burn out so hard they exit the medium entirely.
Global Podcast Advertising Compass
NumberEight, in partnership with Barometer, AdsWizz, and Sounds Profitable, has published a new study examining podcast advertising and consumption trends across six markets: the U.S., Germany, Canada, the U.K., France, and Australia using data sourced from AdsWizz’ database of approximately 600,000 unique RSS feeds. Key findings include the classic “audio gap” widening in Australia, Germany, and France in the form of consumption outpacing ad spend. Which signals opportunity for the brands who step in to fill that gap. Cross-market trends show seniors are active worldwide, with the 55-65+ cohorts showing up with strong seasonal shopping as well as travel, recipe, and grocery-related signals.
Advertising Looks to 2026
It’s the end of the year, time for a bumper crop of articles looking forward to the next. First up: WARC’s Voice of the Marketer report surveyed over 1,000 marketers around the globe between September and October of this year. After a bumpy 2025, 54% of marketers think conditions (e.g. budgets) will improve next year, an 11 percentage point decrease from 65% last year. Dentsu is similarly thinking of 2026, with a new forecast expecting U.S. ad spend to increase 5.1% in 2026. The increase is expected to be buoyed by the FIFA World Cup, the Winter Olympics, as well as midterm elections in the U.S.
As for the rest of the news…
- Ready to rock this holiday season? The Bright Sessions creator Lauren Shippen is in the final hours of crowdfunding Phantom Pulse, an audio fiction series about a ghost-hunting rock band (which will also produce a full album for the in-universe band).
- Podscribe has published their Podcast Industry Rankings for November, charting the industry’s growth over a busy month.
- James McDonough has announced he is departing The Roost to become Director of Sales at Big Little Media.
- Casey Adams has a quick writeup about Club 520’s big announcement: they’ve become the first podcast to sign a sneaker deal with adidas.
- Tubefilter has coverage of how Steven Bartlett’s FlightStory helped We Need to Talk reach their first anniversary with an average of one million views and listens per episode.
- Podnews has Spotify Wrapped’s top podcasts for 2025, including global top podcasts, UK, and Spain.
- UK podcast festival Crossed Wires has announced their 2026 edition in Sheffield has expanded to four days of live shows and events. General ticket sales start Thursday, December 11th.
