Sounds Profitable Business Summit
The inaugural Sounds Profitable Business Summit takes over Terminal 5 in New York City on September 14-15. This exclusive, partner-only event brings together the industry’s top brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms for two days of research-backed insights, strategic conversations, and meaningful networking. Already a Sounds Profitable Partner? Claim your ticket today. Not a partner yet? Become one now to buy your Summit pass and join the conversation shaping what’s next in podcast advertising.
Acast Acquires Backyard Ventures, Accelerating Omnichannel Monetization for Podcasters
Acast has acquired Backyard Ventures for $20 million, with $16 million in cash at closing and $4 million in deferred shares over two years. BV represents more than 200 premium creators across podcasts, YouTube, newsletters, and social. Acast frames the deal as combining its enterprise ad technology and programmatic demand with Backyard’s video expertise and direct advertiser relationships to enable omnichannel creator monetization across audio, video, social, and newsletters.
Spotify Moves to Label and Limit AI in Music
Spotify is asking artists to disclose when their music is AI-generated, part of a broader effort to bring transparency to synthetic content, Bloomberg reports. Artists can self-identify through Spotify for Artists, and the company will begin reviewing profiles that appear to use photorealistic AI identities, starting with acts that meet defined audience thresholds. In a related move, Spotify will label AI-generated artist identities as “AI Personas” and exclude them from editorial and algorithmic recommendations by default beginning in mid-September. AI Personas remain in the catalog and reachable through search, direct links, and followers, but lose the recommendation surfaces that drive scaled streams and royalties.
Has podcasting reached saturation point? Seven specialists weigh in by Charli West
The Media Leader asked seven industry specialists whether podcasting has peaked, and the consensus was that the medium is maturing rather than saturating. With more than 4.7 million podcasts worldwide, contributors including Audioboom’s Stuart Last, Acast’s Greg Glenday, and Reach Studio’s Ed Washington argued that ad spend still lags well behind consumption and that discovery has shifted from podcast apps to social platforms, making clip-first, multi-platform distribution essential to reach. Sounds Profitable Partner Bryan Barletta said the more likely near-term outcome is not heavy-handed regulation of content but standardization around advertising disclosures, measurement transparency, AI labeling, and copyright, which could make the medium easier for major brands to invest in at scale.
How do you describe a podcast? 4,819 Americans tell us what they think by Paul Riismandel
Signal Hill Insights analyzed how 4,819 Americans defined the word “podcast,” drawing on Sounds Profitable’s 2025 edition of The Podcast Landscape. Only about 33 to 38% explicitly mentioned audio or listening, even though 64% said they expect podcasts to be audio only or usually audio, while roughly a third described the medium in terms of personal opinions, storytelling, and dialogue and about half emphasized informative or educational content. Just 7% of listeners and 8% of non-listeners defined podcasts as video only. Riismandel connects the findings to the AMP Accords definition debate, noting that audio remains podcasting’s defining feature even as video grows.
…as for the rest of the news:
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Registration is open for Sounds Profitable’s next Ask a Marketer webinar, where Right Side Up’s Krystina Rubino and Quo’s Tori Murray join Tom Webster on Tuesday, August 18 at 1:00 pm ET to work through The Podcast Atlas from the media buyer’s perspective.
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True Native Media is hosting a free Office Hours webinar on Tuesday, August 19 at 12:00 pm CT, where the team and Right Side Up’s Fred Hadra will unpack how ad buyers actually evaluate podcasts behind the scenes, from professionalism and audience trust to what separates test buys from long-term partnerships.
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Audiencelift, a podcast and YouTube audience-growth platform, ranked No. 616 on the 2026 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies, with more than 1,000 podcasters, creators, and networks having used the service.
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Red Apple Media joined Triton Digital’s Spreaker Prime program, giving its podcast network access to programmatic advertising and premium demand.
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The Podcast Standards Project published a running list of hosting platforms and apps that support HLS video in RSS through the alternateEnclosure tag, with ten hosts including Transistor, RSS.com, and Captivate already live and Buzzsprout, Blubrry, and Spreaker committed to follow.
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Brian Morrissey’s latest essay examines the “dead internet” and the collapse of the open web, arguing that as AI-generated content and walled gardens grow, publishers are leaning into events and direct audience relationships as a scarcity-based business model.
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On the latest episode of PodBiz, Magellan AI’s Jim Ballas discusses how stronger podcast attribution unlocks advertiser budgets, why the medium’s privacy-first architecture is an advantage as regulation tightens, and the most common mistakes advertisers make when entering the channel.
