This Week in the Business of Podcasting
by Tom Webster
Gavin is out this week, so The Download has been in my hands. Fitting timing, because this turned into a week about who owns the screen podcasting plays on, and what that does to how shows get found.
Podcast Movement NYC: tickets are live, and the call for speakers is open
General admission for Podcast Movement's September 2026 New York conference is on sale at $199, with access to all programming and networking. The open call for speakers runs through June 30, and half the sessions will be chosen by community vote. (Podcast Movement)
The platforms are moving in on podcasting
The throughline all week was distribution. New Edison Research data puts Netflix at 14% of weekly US podcast consumers aged 13 and up and Tubi at 4%, though YouTube still leads at 64%. Spotify and Netflix struck an exclusive reported around $100 million for Jay Shetty's On Purpose, a measure of how far platforms will go for a marquee show. Apple's OS 27 leans further into video with picture-in-picture on Mac and a redesigned Podcasts app for Apple TV, and Substack is building video distribution into Apple Podcasts over HLS. (Inside Audio Marketing, Rain News)
Standards, AI, and the open feed
On the open side of the house, the Podcast Standards Project published a look at how it gets hosting platforms and apps to adopt new RSS features in step, from the transcript tag to HLS video. Two GitHub proposals surfaced, one for disclosing AI-generated content in RSS feeds and one for identifying podcast clients to unlock new economics. And the UK's Competition and Markets Authority ordered Google to let publishers opt their content out of AI search features, with nine months to comply. (Podcast Standards Project, The Download)
Thought Leadership This Week
This week's Sounds Profitable piece is mine: Nobody's Coming for the Medium. The short version is that podcasting's growth no longer comes from interest in the format itself. People follow hosts and shows they hear about somewhere else, with YouTube now accounting for 40% of where listeners found their current favorite show and word of mouth leading discovery by a wide margin. "The growth of this medium is happening outside the medium," I wrote. For a companion read, Steven Goldstein's The Clip Economy Is Eating Everything arrives at a similar place from the video side, arguing clips have stopped being teasers and become the product. (Sounds Profitable, Amplifi Media)
Quick Hits
Bumper opened its audience verification dashboard to all podcasters with a free tier, alongside Pro ($50/month) and Enterprise ($500/month) options. (The Download)
A new project, Cohort, co-clustered 2,414 shows and 142 listening apps by how their audiences move across apps rather than by genre. (Cohort)
Carat, SiriusXM Media, and Creativ Company published The Power of Sound 2026, with 50% of podcast listeners saying they feel a deeper connection to hosts than to other media personalities. (Inside Audio Marketing)
The Trade Desk's Charlie Betcher made the case for programmatic audio as the missing piece in omnichannel, noting audio takes more than a fifth of daily media time but under 2% of ad spend. (The Current)
ADOPTER Media's Sherry Del Rizzo argued podcast ads drive branded search that last-click analytics miscredit to Google, citing one client where 47% of podcast-driven traffic showed up as search and a survey where 53.7% of podcast-attributed customers never used a promo code. (ADOPTER Media)
Global launched AdPower, a UK self-service platform for booking audio and outdoor campaigns in minutes. (Podnews)
Accenture acquired creator agency Whalar in what its co-founder called the "largest creator economy transaction to date." (Tubefilter)
Headgum's official Jackass podcast launches June 18. (The Download)
Fred Rogers Productions and Little Dot Studios launched an official Mister Rogers' Neighborhood YouTube channel. (Tubefilter)
Back to your regularly scheduled Gavin next week.
