Podcast Movement Opens Public Voting for 2026 Sessions
Podcast Movement 2026, taking place September 17–18 at Terminal 5 in New York City, has opened public voting on speaker session submissions through July 21. With nearly 800 submissions from more than 500 speakers, the initiative marks the first time the conference has made its agenda-building process transparent: 50% of the schedule will be determined by community vote at podcastmovement.fider.io, where anyone can vote once per session.
The remaining 50% will be selected by an inaugural committee working from a published evaluation rubric, with a roster drawn from across the industry: James Cridland (Podnews), Lauren Passell (International Women’s Podcast Awards), Fatima Zaidi (Quill Podcast Awards), Demetrius Bagley (The Black Podcast Awards), Ami Thakkar Ravi (The Podcast Academy), Alice Florence Orr (Podcast Review), Anne Baird (Audio Fiction Conference), and Peter Lewis (SXSW).
Podcast Movement President Bryan Barletta sums up the new process: “Our industry thrives when the best ideas, not the biggest budgets, get the spotlight.”
What The Screen Adds to Ads
This Wednesday, writing for Sounds Profitable, Tom Webster published The Podcast Atlas, Part Two: What The Screen Adds, cracking open the video territory of the map with five findings on how video podcasting works as an ad environment. Video shortens the path to purchase: 15% of Video Primes report buying immediately after seeing an ad versus 10% for audio, and 67% took at least one action versus 63%. It does that without giving up any trust, rating level with or slightly above audio on every trust dimension measured, and it commands the most dedicated attention of any format in the study at 81% fully-or-mostly attentive. Video podcast ads also beat YouTube ads on five of six attributes among each format’s most engaged users, winning biggest on feeling non-disruptive. A quote from the article:
“The belief audio earns in the screen-free hours is the same belief video puts to work when the screen is on. The two are worth buying as one system, each doing the job the other can’t.”
The clearest sign the two formats are doors into the same relationship: 73% of listeners say they would follow a host they like from audio into video. Download The Podcast Atlas here.
Apple Podcasts’ Video Push Shows Early Promise
Bloomberg’s Soundbite newsletter checks in on Apple Podcasts’ video rollout four months after launch. Early numbers are encouraging but muddy: Transistor.fm’s opt-in waitlist exceeds 1,500 creators, and Acast’s 180 opted-in shows have seen roughly a 25% jump in Apple consumption since launch, though current analytics cannot separate audio plays from video plays, making the gains hard to attribute.
The feared video takeover of the charts has not happened, with only 10 shows on the US top 200 currently offering video. “The bumps the video-enabled shows have seen look very similar to any other promotion,” says Bumper co-founder Dan Misener, who notes most of Bumper’s clients are taking a wait-and-see approach because video adds workflow and monetization complexity without a clear return.
Where Engagement Went in Q2
Owl & Co’s Streamonomics newsletter previews Q2 earnings season through engagement data across nine platforms (Comcast, Meta, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Spotify, TikTok, Warner Bros. Discovery, and YouTube), and the attention is not where the profits are. Netflix’s Top 10 viewing hours fell roughly 4% year over year in the first half of 2026, with only 11 shows crossing 100 million viewing hours and just 2 passing 200 million, while Instagram grew engagement double digits, TikTok grew high single digits, and YouTube still leads on both mobile and TV globally.
“Netflix has the feel of a fallen angel: Its forward P/E is -2 Standard Deviations below the ’23-current average,” Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall says in the piece. Hernan Lopez expects Netflix and Spotify to raise guidance and projects Meta will outpace YouTube in revenue growth. These engagement trends set the reach and CPM math on YouTube and Spotify, the two biggest homes for video podcasting.
Quick Hits
While they may not be top story material, the articles below from this week are definitely worth your time:
-
The BBC reports a record 502 million weekly global audience across BBC News, World Service, and BBC Studios content, up 11% year over year.
-
Signal Hill Insights’ 2026 Benchmark Report, aggregating brand lift data from 38,704 podcast listeners and viewers.
-
AdsWizz extends its exclusive European sales agreements with SoundCloud (14 markets) and Sonos (all of Europe), renewing audio advertising partnerships that began in 2021 and 2022.
-
The Podglomerate’s Joni Deutsch asked five AI tools to name the best new podcasts of 2026 so far; City of Lights and Money Trauma were the only two every tool agreed on, and shows with mainstream media backing dominated the answers.
-
Febreze’s “Can’t Wash This” campaign takes on soccer stink with the first brand integration outside the studio for What Now? with Trevor Noah, filmed in the New York Red Bulls’ boot room.
