The Podcast Landscape 2026: The Core Numbers by Tom Webster
In this week’s Sounds Profitable newsletter, Tom Webster takes a brief look at the first installment of The Podcast Landscape 2026. According to the report’s census-weighted survey of 5,473 U.S. adults conducted in August, 74% of American adults have consumed a podcast, 55% in the past month and 39% in the past week, all within a point of The Podcast Landscape 2025. Webster notes that after two decades of growth, “stable” is itself news, but the audience underneath is still refreshing, with the official press release reporting that 34% of podcast consumers started within the past year, up from 28%.
Where people listen is shifting faster than how many do. YouTube led platform use at 63%, followed by Spotify at 33% and Netflix at 21% in its first year offering podcasts, ahead of Apple Podcasts at 15%, which sat fifth behind YouTube Music at 17%. Netinfluencer’s coverage of the 2026 Podcast Landscape adds the caveat that just 5% name Netflix as their most-used platform, while the share naming a podcast-specific app as most used fell from 19% to 15%, with Apple Podcasts alone dropping from 11% to 8% and YouTube holding at 40%. On smart TVs, 71% of podcast consumers name YouTube as their most-used podcast app, with Netflix at 12%.
Video runs through all of it. Weekly video podcast viewing rose to 44% from 40%, the share who have never watched one fell from 14% to 10%, and only 17% now expect a podcast to be audio-only, down from 21%. Mean weekly listening hours slipped from 6.3 to 5.7 even as the median held flat at 4.0, a decline concentrated in video and driven by fewer very long weeks, with consumers reporting 16 or more hours falling from 9% to 6%. Podcasting is also becoming more of a shared experience, with 40% of consumers at least occasionally consuming with other people, up from 37%. Future installments of the report will focus on super-spenders, AI, clips and politics.
Three Podcast Leaders on How They Got to Scale, and Why It’s Still Early by Fatima Zaidi
In a guest piece for Sounds Profitable, Quill & CoHost Founder Fatima Zaidi sat down at Podcast Movement NYC with Acast CEO Greg Glenday, Oxford Road CEO Dan Granger, and Triton Digital CRO Sharon Taylor to ask how their companies reached scale, and none of them credited a hit show or a shiny campaign. Glenday’s answer was “boring, but alignment,” as his first two years went into focusing a company that had grown in several directions at once, stepping back from apps and subscriptions to settle on “the infrastructure for independent creators.” Granger got there through the October 2024 merger of Oxford Road and Veritone One, and says he is proudest of the integration, in which his team worked with the Table Group to define shared values and built a leadership team from both legacy companies. Taylor points to capital, noting that at Triton and the iHeartMedia ecosystem, after leading and selling Omny Studio, “if you put a business plan together, the money part is easier.”
All three also named measurement as a thorn in the industry’s side. Granger is the most invested in fixing it, having convened the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting in July 2025 after concluding that inconsistent metrics put more than $1 billion in advertiser confidence at risk. As Granger says, “When you have to be a CSI detective on every single ad that runs on four different platforms, it’s not sustainable.” Taylor sees the supply-side version, with budgets arriving faster than inventory can be unlocked, partly because of how guarantees are structured, and Glenday wants fewer oversized minimum guarantees that don’t reflect how the medium actually works.
The bigger story for all three is how early podcasting it still is in its advertising lifecycle. Glenday estimates that roughly 400 of the top 500 global advertisers have room to increase podcast spending or enter the medium for the first time, and points to Acast research finding that 75% of weekly listeners don’t consider podcasters influencers, yet 84% say they have been influenced by one. Taylor is watching Apple’s arrival with video and dynamic video ad insertion in Apple Podcasts, which she credits for keeping creators in control of owning and monetizing their shows, along with large advertisers like Amazon moving budget into the space. Asked whether podcasting is at the mountaintop, Glenday said, “I think we are at the basement.”
International Podcast Day Roundup
This week’s International Podcast Day brought an armful of announcements, so let’s do a lightning round. Podcast Movement has posted 82 sessions from Podcast Movement NYC for free on YouTube and announced that Podcast Week NYC will run Sep 13-17 next year, with Podcast Movement Evolutions at SXSW on Mar 15-16. Headliner is giving one podcaster $250 in Podcast Promo credits in a new giveaway. Podigee has released a short film titled The Voice Carries. Podigee has also unveiled a redesigned platform that combines browser-based recording, audio and video hosting, distribution, analytics, and monetization, and adds an MCP server for connecting external tools. Finally, Flightcast has launched Collaborative Publishing, which lets multiple team members edit the same episode through an auto-saved working copy with a review step and audit logs (available to Legend plan customers and above).
While they may not be top story material, the articles below from this week are definitely worth your time:
- Tom Webster and ADOPTER Media’s Glenn Rubenstein will co-present The Super Spenders: Who Really Buys From Podcast Ads on October 13 at 2:00 PM Eastern, a new analysis of The Podcast Atlas built around podcasting’s heaviest buyers.
- The Scalable newsletter examines major talent agencies moving into creator representation, with CAA partnering with TPG’s Integrated Media Company on a $250 million holding company to acquire creator businesses, and both CAA and UTA building dedicated Creators divisions that include podcasting talent.
- Beehiiv’s first Head of Podcasts, Ainsley Rossitto, tells The Podglomerate’s Jeff Umbro on Podcast Perspectives that the platform is positioning itself as a “creator operating system,” with a near 50/50 split between newsletter users adding a podcast and net-new podcasters, and dynamic ad insertion and a campaign manager on the roadmap.
- Inside Audio Marketing reports that the IAB Tech Lab is seeking industry feedback on its first proposed Programmatic Standard Practices, a common playbook for programmatic buyers and sellers from its Programmatic Governance Council, with public comment open until October 16.
