by Gavin Gaddis

It’s a time of anticipation. On our balcony, hummingbirds are hovering at eye-height, staring into the living room as if to demand we refill their nectar feeders (for the record: I did before writing this issue). In the podcasting world, we brace for the coming whirlwind of the Sounds Profitable Business Summit, IAB Podcast Upfront, and Podcast Movement NYC next week. Until then, let’s look back at the week’s news.

The smart speaker was supposed to be the device that carried audio into every home, but new Sounds Profitable data shows the connected TV has quietly taken its place. Smart TV usage as the single most-used device for podcast listening climbed from 8 percent in 2024 to 12 percent in 2026, while smart speaker adoption flatlined at 1 percent across 2025 and 2026. Counting both primary and secondary devices, a quarter of listeners now reach for a smart TV, up from 22 percent, even as the smartphone slipped only slightly from 80 to 78 percent.

Tom Webster argues the shift is about more than hardware. "The smart speaker was a bet that podcasts are a background medium," he writes, while "the television says a growing share of the audience treats them as foreground, something you sit down in front of." The phone held onto its dominant spot. As Webster says, "the one device that has pulled anything away from the phone is the one you use with your hands free and your eyes on the screen."

For podcasters, the takeaway is that the living room screen is becoming a genuine listening and viewing destination, and the rise of video podcasting gives audio a natural home there.

The IAB has turned more bullish on the U.S. advertising market, raising its 2026 growth forecast to 12.3 percent, up 2.8 points from the 9.5 percent it projected back in January. A stronger than expected first half drove the revision, helped by major live events like the Winter Olympics and the World Cup and by advertisers voicing fewer worries about economic headwinds.

Audio sits firmly inside the growth story. Podcast advertising is expected to rise 8.7 percent in 2026, a touch above the prior 8.6 percent estimate and more than double the 3.6 percent forecast for other digital audio formats. "The first half was strong, major live events delivered, and advertisers have increasingly powerful tools in their arsenal to find and engage customers," said IAB CEO David Cohen.

IAB VP Chris Bruderle noted the buyer side is getting choosier, saying "consumers are becoming more discerning" and that brands need to keep their brand equity strong as a result.

A piece analyzing several instances of executive departures at creator-founded companies over the past year, featuring names like Dude Perfect, Audiochuck, and Good Good Golf. Scalable digs into why these exits keep happening, pointing to founder-centric business models, geographic constraints, and the friction between creators and the professional managers brought in to scale their companies. It also notes that creator economy firms are increasingly adding senior roles like chief content and chief marketing officers to steer growth and manage the crises that come with it.

The through-line is geography and control. Creators often build from smaller cities while the executives they hire want to be in major metros, and the founder-driven content that made these companies does not always scale cleanly under professional management. As the piece notes, chief communications officers can be "especially handy for navigating turmoil.”

True Native Media makes the case that podcasters do not need to publish on every platform to grow. Nelson advises weighing the real workload of maintaining a presence across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, newsletters, and more against what each channel actually returns, arguing for a more focused distribution strategy in an increasingly saturated landscape.

"You don't need to be everywhere. You need to figure out where it actually makes sense for you to be," Nelson writes. Her advice is to judge each platform by whether it brings in new listeners or deepens ties with the ones a show already has, to repurpose existing episodes rather than build something new for every channel, and to give a chosen platform consistent time before walking away. "If you've been posting clips to a platform for six months and nothing is really happening, you're allowed to question whether that effort could be better spent somewhere else.”

Time is limited, better to spend it on platforms that move the needle instead of going wide for the sake of going wide.

YouTube's View Count Just Got Bigger. On August 24, 2026, YouTube changed how it counts a "view". The result: view counts are climbing, but genuine engagement isn't.

In the Q3 2026 Podscribe Performance Benchmark (PPB) report, Podscribe compared YouTube's new "Views" against "Engaged Views" and found that views are running ~1.8x higher than Engaged Views.

That's a meaningful gap for anyone benchmarking YouTube podcast performance. Inflated view counts without a matching engagement signal can make a show look like it's growing when the actual audience watching hasn't changed.

Podscribe prioritizes reporting on Engaged Views wherever possible to keep numbers consistent through changes like this. 

This is one chart from a much bigger picture — the full report includes ad load's impact on conversion, attribution window trends, YouTube comment-to-view engagement, Apple ratings as an audio engagement signal, and more.

While they may not be top story material, the articles below from this week are definitely worth your time: