Podcasting is a Core Pillar of SXSW 2027
For the past five years, our team has been proud to build a home for podcasting at SXSW. In 2027, that commitment will finally reach an exciting new milestone as SXSW has announced it’s ready to embrace the medium with the launch of its first-ever Podcast Festival for official ticket holders.
We are also bringing Podcast Movement Evolutions back to the SKYBOX on 6th on March 15-16, for two days of programming and networking immediately before the four-day SXSW Podcast Festival. PME will remain completely free to attend, and no SXSW badge will be required. The two events create an entire week dedicated to podcasting in Austin in 2027.
We’re incredibly proud of the work our team and partners have put into elevating and prioritizing podcasting within one of the world’s most influential media festivals and we’re excited to continue building alongside SXSW as podcasting’s presence continues to grow.
That Stupid Radio by Tom Webster
Podcasting is missing the one advantage that powered every prior audio boom: a default. Radio, the Walkman, and the iPod all won on dedicated hardware that made listening effortless, while podcasting stays locked behind app menus and a five-decision path that filters for enthusiasts and sheds everyone else. The stakes are real: 57% of Americans aged 12 to 34 now live in homes with zero radio devices, and podcasts capture only about 12% of ad-supported smart speaker listening. Jerry Lee gave out radios tuned to only his station, modern app dashboards in cars are doing the same with quick-select apps decided with no industry oversight.
YouTube Redefines the “View” as an “Engaged View”
YouTube is renaming what used to count as a view to an “engaged view,” and the change is not cosmetic. Comparing both figures across 300,000 YouTube podcast episodes, Podnews found engaged views run about 7% lower on average, with some shows dropping much further. In a follow-up, YouTube clarified that an auto-play on the homepage now counts as a view when it starts and an engaged view if it keeps playing for some unspecified number of seconds, a definition loose enough to include silent auto-plays and out of step with the 30-second standard in the AMP Accords. Digiday breaks down the winners and losers of the monetization overhaul, which could reshape CPMs and sponsorship math for anyone putting video episodes on the platform.
Podcast Advertising in Ireland: Magellan AI’s H1 2026 Benchmarks
Magellan AI published its first comprehensive benchmarks for Ireland’s podcast ad market, drawn from its H1 2026 monitoring. Spend grew 33% year over year, with financial services the top category and Shopify, Comcast, and Novibet among the leading advertisers. Average ad load landed at 5.71%. The report, produced with Bauer Media Audio Ireland and AudioOne, aims to give advertisers the market visibility and standardized measurement that build confidence to invest.
We Are Not Sitting This One Out by Michael Divinski and Sean Howard
Flightpath is responding to a major ad-tech platform’s system change that it says has left publishers facing revenue losses of up to 50%, with frequency caps breached and as much as 25% of impressions serving repeated creative within a single download. Its answer is Automation Playbooks, a pair of tools built and deployed within a week: a Flight Cap Manager that restores maximum-frequency controls on platforms lacking native support, and a Flight Retargeting Tool that reroutes thousands of flights around hosting limits while keeping prioritization in the publisher’s hands. Michael Divinski and Sean Howard frame it as a refusal to absorb a problem publishers did not create, arguing that re-flighting thousands of orders by hand is not a viable fix. Beyond the tools, Flightpath pledged to advocate for publishers’ inventory control, amplify their concerns, and offer free consulting to help diversify tech stacks.
…as for the rest of the news:
- Oxford Road’s latest ORBIT ranking finds that in comedy, A-listers aren’t always the closers, with smaller shows often delivering better ROI at lower CPMs than celebrity hosts.
- Oxford Road’s Dan Granger keynoted the CAO Summit with The State of Podcasting 2026, pegging podcasting up 16% to roughly $3.4B and introducing the AMP Accords measurement standards.
- Ad Results Media makes the case for why reach is no longer enough in audio advertising, pushing a shift from impressions to attention-based measurement.
- Realm Network acquired six new podcasts across true crime, comedy, and TV, and will handle their distribution and multi-channel monetization.
- Audacy will become the exclusive audio sales and distribution partner for the MeidasTouch Network starting September 1, taking on hosting and ad support for The MeidasTouch Podcast and the network’s 14-plus shows.
- Social video ad spend is now growing faster than CTV, according to the IAB, as SMBs and social-native brands lean into social across the funnel.
- Nielsen’s latest updates aim to remove bias from its measurement strategy, revising its video methodology ahead of the fall season.
