Video Drives Lift, Remembering Young Marketers, & More

Before I get into the news: a quick reminder for Podcast Movement Dallas attendees that there are still hotel rooms available at PodcastMovement.com/PMhotel, but the rates will go up over $100 more per-night starting Friday, so get to bookin’. See y’all there.

Inside the Walled Garden: Breaking New Ground on YouTube Podcast Measurement

Oxford Road has a new report that represents one of the first scalable, performance-data-driven attempts to quantify the impact of posting ads on YouTube. The report is built from 15-20 podcast episodes of varying scale (ranging from millions of views to under 10k) that ran embedded host-read ads for a client between September and December of 2024, running the ad both in audio-only podcasts and on YouTube. The study finds a visitation lift rate of almost 8% during the exposure period vs. baseline website traffic before the campaigns. Oxford Road positions this study as a step towards building more robust, standardized measurement of podcasts simulcast on YouTube. They call on advertisers and partners to join in on developing improved tools, data, and benchmarks for the growing YouTube podcasting space.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Take Their Partnership to the Next Level by Elias Leight

Day 2 of Taylor Swift Podcastmageddon is here and The Wall Street Journal is talking about it. For those who missed yesterday: the pop star is announcing her 12th album on boyfriend Travis Kelce’s sports podcast New Heights today. Two clips from the episode, including one where Swift teases the new album by holding up the artwork behind a censor blur, went viral yesterday driving hype for the episode. As Tom Webster says in both the WSJ piece and Front Office Sports, the combination of New Heights’ inherent size and the Swiftie fandom could make this single episode one of the most-viewed video podcast episodes on YouTube. That said, this pre-episode virality moment stands as a testament to why it’s beneficial to leverage clips. The YouTube Short version is arguably under-performing with just 1.8 million views on each of the two promo clips. Meanwhile the same clips have 7 and 8 million views on TikTok. The album art tease clip in particular is likely gonna break 6 million likes on Instagram this afternoon. Sure, it’s a particularly exaggerated moment thanks to the biggest pop star knowing how to leverage her fanbase, but the fact is shotgun-blasting teasers across all major short-form platforms have primed this to be a hotly-anticipated episode of podcasting. (Inside baseball moment: I am writing this before the actual full episode posts, so if it breaks YouTube or hit #1 trending I won’t know. Linear time is a cruel mistress).

Marketers tune into podcasts amid a noisy ad landscape by Peter Allen Clark

A new report from INCRMENTAL, built from $3 billion in verified ad spend across over 100 brands and their client base, found that podcast ad spend tripled from H2 2024 to H1 2025. An increase from $2 million to $6 million. The report’s analysis finds the trend was driven by “privacy-safe, opt-in environments that offered both reach and intent while attracting the most desirable demographics.” The report echoes a sentiment Sounds Profitable research has repeatedly hit on: the idea podcast advertising is a niche or experimental channel is outdated, and it either currently is or should be a core part of a performance mix.

The Ad Industry Is Dumping Younger Workers by Paul Hierbert

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows employees aged 20-24 now only made up 6.5% of all jobs in advertising, public relations, and similar services last year, the lowest rate since 2020 and a continuation of a decline since 2022. Federal Reserve Bank of New York numbers show the unemployment rate for college grads aged 22-27 has increased faster than the average unemployment figures for all workers. While there’s plenty of boogiemen to look to for reasons – industry consolidation, economic uncertainty, and AI tools designed to displace entry-level jobs – the fact remains a lower employment rate for youngsters getting into the industry will create a knock-on effect down the road when the new crop should be aging up into middle and high-level positions.

As for the rest of the news…