Remember Who You Are by Tom Webster
Instead of chasing growth at all costs, Webster suggests a goal for 2026: less chasing someone else’s idea of what podcasting should become. The Creators 2025 found those who started creating podcasts and then left the industry look demographically like video creators, matching them in 9 of 12 measured segments. It’s fair to infer these lapsed creators were likely producing video podcasts, yet their consumption habits show only 0.8% of them consumed podcasts video-only on YouTube. Thus the problem emerges: video is causing people who prefer audio podcasting to burn out under the idea they have to optimize for a hypothetical video audience that might exist. And that optimization can overwrite what made audio podcasting appealing in the first place. Amplifi Media’s Steven Goldstein, speaking with The Economist, also points to how the over-investment in video has siphoned money and attention from scripted and narrative podcasts. Beloved series like The Bright Sessions or Dr. Death can’t easily make the jump to video like influencer/celebrity-hosted chat podcasts can. Which circles back to that 0.8% of former podcast creators. As Tom Webster says, experimentation is not inherently a bad thing, but the data shows audiences want good podcasts, not expensive and taxing reinvention of podcasts they already enjoy. To thrive in 2026 is to remember what about the medium is worth protecting.
AI Podcast Search: Inside the Black Box
Search engine optimization platform PodSEO, which has a specific focus in AI visibility, has published findings from a four-week study systematically querying ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. One key takeaway is chatbot LLMs prefer their podcasting data spoon-fed, as they pulled 79% of podcast recommendations/data from editorial and listicle pages, versus 21% pulled from listening platforms. Player.FM and Goodpods account for 10.6% of AI citations throughout PodSEO’s experiment. By comparison, Spotify and Apple Podcasts combined accounted for 8.3%. To get ones’ podcast recommended in a chatbot is a bit of a Wild West scenario as early adopters of GPT-friendly SEO float to the top. Leading to quirks like the 35th most popular Business podcast on Apple Apple Podcasts becoming the #1 overall podcast rec in general from all four AI assistants.
Netflix Video Podcast are Almost Here
Video podcasts officially arrive on Netflix late this week and they’re making a splash in the news cycle. The Wrap has a comprehensive breakdown of all 34 shows coming exclusively to the platform in January (with any licensed show ceasing uploads of video to YouTube for at least a year). Meanwhile op-ends from people like The Puck’s Julia Alexander and Vulture’s Nicholas Quah interrogate the transition from TV and movies into video podcasting. Both writers question if the more simplistic podcasts licensed by Netflix will fare well on a platform full of attention-grabbing visual media. I will gently push back on that, as the phrase “second screen content” became a widely-known phrase last year in large part because of a Guardian piece about Netflix scripting edicts. Them having video podcasts with unimportant video is not a bug, it’s a feature.
As for the rest of the news…
- Magellan AI is back with another case study examining how their platform impacted a client, this time looking at new revenue opportunities and hidden demand uncovered for True Native Media.
- Former Acast Global SVP Advertising Joe Copeman has just announced he is now Director, Commercial at Global.
- Inside Audio Marketing has a new piece interviewing Katz Digital President Scott Porretti, including his belief multiplatform ads are positioned to lead in 2026.
- Edison Research has a new graph for at-home podcast consumption. Here’s what Tom Webster had to say: “The lockdowns may be over, but this data is a trailing variable of the fact that much of the workforce in podcasting’s key demographics are still working remotely. In fact, the most recent estimates show that roughly 22% of the American workforce are remote, compared to just 4% just before the pandemic.”
