Upcoming Webinars
- The Creators 2025 is coming up on Wednesday, December 10th at 2:00 p.m. EST. Tom Webster debuts an updated version of Sounds Profitables’ first study under his time as partner, surveying over 5,000 respondents to get a snapshot of what podcast creators are like. Who’s making shows? What’s driving them to leave podcast production? Register now to receive the full report right after Tom’s presentation.
- How (and Why) to Budget for Podcast Awards in 2026, a joint webinar from The Podglomerate and Sounds Profitable on Thursday, December 11th, at 1:00 p.m. EST. Find out which podcast awards should be budgeted into your podcasting expenses and how awards can help move the needle for show growth targets. Join in on the fun next week!
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. A quote from the article:
“The distinction matters enormously. When someone ends Show A and starts Show B, they’re still in the ecosystem. They’re still developing skills, building audiences, experimenting with formats, and contributing to the medium. They understand podcasting from the inside. They’re advocates for the space even when they’re between projects. But when someone walks away from podcast creation entirely, we’ve lost something more fundamental—we’ve lost a voice, and we’ve lost an evangelist.”
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.
Are Podcasters and Listeners Missing the Advantages of Audio? by Paul Riismandel.
As video grows, it has brought with it a shift in consumption habits that are easy to miss when simply looking at whether audiences prefer audio or video podcasting. Riismandel highlights a stat from the Download fall 2025 edition conducted with Cumulus Media: 88% of weekly podcast consumers who consumed their last podcast at home prefer video you actively watch. A group that represents half of weekly podcast consumers overall. Podcasting as a medium was designed for on-the-go consumption. As Tom Webster has said many times before, podcasts in your ear while washing dishes or commuting isn’t “spent” time, it’s “found” time. Pivoting a video podcast towards being more reliant on the audience being focused on a screen stunts podcasting’s potential for growth. A quote from Riismandel:
“At that same time, just under half of YouTube podcast viewers aren’t making that migration off the platform. This means they’re far less likely to take their podcasts on-the-go and use them to enhance their commutes, housework, exercise or other activities.
This is a lost opportunity for every podcast on YouTube.”
The onus then lies on podcasters to actively remind newer audience members, making it clear what “anywhere you get your podcasts” actually means. Audiences love choice, but they have to know the choice exists, otherwise we’re just super-serving homebodies who might just want more good YouTube videos, regardless of if they’re labeled “a podcast” or not.
Acast and Little Dot Studios want a bigger piece of the YouTube podcast biz
Tubefilter has coverage of this week’s announcement that Acast and Little Dot Studios have partnered to launch a UK-based program designed to increase ad opportunities for YouTube podcasters. The partnership, laid out in more detail in their press release, allows Acast UK creators access to scaled ad inventory and growth support on YouTube.
An adaptation to the needs of publishers, agencies, and holding companies by rolling out a comprehensive (and managed) option across the multiple media channels podcasting has evolved into. A quote from Bryan Barletta:
“While managing 360° campaigns for creators isn’t necessarily new for Acast, the expansion to utilizing native advertising tools, such as streaming ad insertion on YouTube, and creating a cohesive dashboard is new and exciting. This is the first opportunity offered at scale by a hosting platform to enable managed streaming ad insertion on YouTube for podcasters. SiriusXM’s direct relationship as of yet doesn’t extend to Simplecast publishers, and while there are several networks that have access to sell YouTube streaming ad insertion for their publishers, none are a hosting platform.”
iHeartMedia Makes ‘Guaranteed Human’ A Core Branding Message Across All Stations.
Chief Programming Officer Tom Poleman has made an announcement of iHeartMedia’s “Guaranteed Human” mentality, a formal declaration the company will not distribute AI-generated personalities, music/songs featuring synthetic vocalists, or podcasts. The company encourages use of “AI-powered” operational tools (e.g. scheduling, analytics, workflow automation), the “Guaranteed Human” initiative simply cuts out generative content mimicking human creativity. A quote from Poleman:
“When listeners interact with us, they know they’re connecting with real voices, real stories, and real emotion. That’s our superpower.”
The initiative is informed by iHeart internal research, finding 90% of surveyed audience members want their media made by “real humans” and 92% believing nothing can replace human connection, a figure that has risen from 76% in 2016, a pre-gen AI media landscape.
As for the rest of the news…
- The Podcast Show is set to return to London for its fifth year. For our fourth year running, Sounds Profitable is back as a sponsor and we’re keeping the good times rolling with our usual pre-show networking event (stay tuned for specific times/date as we get closer to the event).
- Patreon has gotten into the podcast hosting game with the announcement of Public RSS, allowing Patreon users to host their own RSS feed in their Patreon account that then can be submitted out to major podcast distribution platforms.
- Triton Digital has published their 2025 LATAM Audio Insights Report, finding Portuguese-language content dominates with 51% of all ranked podcasts, followed by Spanish (42%) — together representing 93% of the LATAM rankers.
- 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.
