Audion Launches in Japan, Meta’s Muse Gets Into Podcasting, & More

Audio and video streaming advertising company Audion announced its entry into Japan today, with local operations handled by its official partner in the market, Sekaiichi Inc. Audion says Japanese brands and agencies can plan, buy, and measure campaigns across inventory including YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music from a single platform, with more than one billion monthly ad impressions available at launch and ad effectiveness measured with partners such as Nielsen and YouGov. As part of the launch, Sekaiichi has partnered with influencer marketing company BitStar, connecting BitStar’s creators and audio productions to the Audion network and its international and Japan-exclusive ad demand.

Podnews editor James Cridland reports that Muse, the AI assistant Meta announced in September, has podcast production and hosting built in, serving both audio files and RSS feeds from muse.ai/podcasts. The investigation began with a pitch from a “Charles Mayfield” of Professional Development Inc. about a network called Education Across the States. Its feed held 1,503 episodes published between October 19 and November 7, totaling more than 441 hours, or about 23 hours of audio per day. In written replies, Mayfield said the network has no deal with Meta, gets very little analytics from Muse, and has no monetization features through it. Cridland found no evidence that Mayfield or his company exist, noted that the supplied press photo carries a watermark identifying it as AI-generated, and reports that Dublin City University will not offer students a placement role with the network that it had provisionally accepted. Podnews counts 22 podcasts hosted on Muse so far, several presented by AI hosts named “Alex” and “Jordan.”

Analyst Adam Bowie examines RAJAR’s Autumn 2026 MIDAS survey, a recontact study fielded over two weeks in September 2026 with a final sample of 1,717 former RAJAR participants aged 15 and older who completed a seven-day online diary. It finds 96% of UK adults listen to some form of audio each week, averaging 27.8 hours. Weekly podcast reach sits at 26%, where it has been for about a year, and just 11% of podcast listening happens in the car. Bowie also covers separate RAJAR research drawn from its monthly Podcast Tracker, presented by Director of Research and Audiences John Carroll at the ASI audio conference in Venice. It found 34% of podcast consumers move between audio and video in the same week. Among video podcast consumers, 20% say they mostly watch, 35% mainly listen and only occasionally look at the screen, and 43% split their attention fairly evenly. RAJAR also reports that 62% of podcast users would still consume the same content if it were available only as audio. “Podcasting remains an audio-first medium, but one that is learning to use video in useful and sometimes powerful ways,” RAJAR writes.

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