Sounds Profitable

Today in the business of podcasting: With the Premier League banning front-of-shirt gambling sponsorships from the 2026/27 season, Sport Social's Ryan Barker argues official team and fan podcasts are the natural landing spot for betting brands, pointing to a Sky Bet partnership across 20 football podcasts that reached more than one million listeners. Bumper co-founder Dan Misener explains why Appl...

Today in the business of podcasting: Sounds Profitable's Ask a Marketer webinar on August 18 brings Right Side Up's Krystina Rubino and Quo's Tori Murray together with Tom Webster to break down The Podcast Atlas , a survey of 5,061 U.S. consumers on how creator-based advertising performs across audio, video, social, and newsletters. The two buyers sort which research findings actually move a media...

This week in the business of podcasting: Spotify is testing "Skip Ahead," a one-tap ad-skipping tool for Premium subscribers, and the industry is pushing back over what it means for host-read sponsorships and advertiser attention reporting. Acast has opened video publishing on Apple Podcasts to all creators on its platform, after beta shows saw an estimated 25% increase in weekly Apple Podcasts se...

Today in the business of podcasting: Industry leaders including Crooked Media's Tommy Vietor, Right Side Up's Krystina Rubino, and ADOPTER Media's Glenn Rubenstein are responding to Spotify's "Skip Ahead" test, which lets Premium listeners clear an entire ad break, sponsor read, or intro in a single tap. A coalition of 18 U.K. commercial audio companies is urging the government to drop proposals a...

Today in the business of podcasting: Acast has opened video publishing on Apple Podcasts to all creators on its platform, ending the beta waitlist after shows using video saw an estimated 25% lift in weekly Apple Podcasts sessions. Media measurement and ad effectiveness have moved from CMO-CFO conversations onto public earnings calls, even as a Gain Theory survey finds 49% of marketers doubt their...

Today in the business of podcasting: Spotify is testing "Skip Ahead," a one-tap ad-skipping feature for Premium subscribers that collapses a nine-tap skip into a single action, raising questions about ad delivery reporting and advertiser attention data. Eight major streaming platforms have launched vertical clip feeds in 20 months, a convergence driven by premium streaming's first single-digit gro...

Today in the business of podcasting: Apple's fiscal Q3 2026 results show Services revenue, the segment housing Apple Podcasts, up 12% year over year to $30.7 billion, while SiriusXM Media CEO Jennifer Witz reported podcast revenue up 30% year over year. Bloomberg's Ashley Carman reports podcasters are building businesses on free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels, opening a video distributi...

This week in the business of podcasting: Tom Webster makes the case that a podcast newsletter is the one channel where creators gather unmediated audience feedback, separating the work of promotion from the work of understanding what listeners actually need. The industry reacts to The AMP Accords, which define a podcast, a play, and an ad impression, with Bryan Barletta, Dan Granger, James Cridlan...

Today in the business of podcasting: Tom Webster closes out The Podcast Atlas series by arguing the email newsletter is the only piece of real estate a podcast creator actually owns, giving shows a direct line to listeners that survives algorithm changes. Mondo Metrics founder Nick Cicero explains what podcasters can learn from the sports social industry about selling social clips as sponsorship i...

Today in the business of podcasting: Signal Hill Insights' new Audio on the Move study finds podcasts account for 9% of ad-supported audio listening time in Canada, while YouTube and YouTube Music together hold 25% and rank as the top podcast discovery platform. AM/FM radio still leads all ad-supported audio at 39%. Richard Fawal argues mission-driven podcasts underestimate their reach, using Soun...

In the final stop on The Podcast Atlas article series, Tom Webster makes the case that a podcast newsletter is the most valuable piece of owned media a creator can build, and the one channel no platform or host can take away. Drawing on Sounds Profitable research, he unpacks why 61% of listeners still haven't subscribed, why existing subscribers convert to listening at 87%, and why the real prize...

Today in the business of podcasting: Five podcast industry leaders from Audioboom, Sounds Profitable, Octave, The Times, and Bauer Media weigh in on the future of AI and audio measurement, with a growing consensus that podcasting already has adequate measurement tools and the real opportunity is smarter use of existing data and attribution. RedCircle extends its AI-powered Mic Check tool to progra...

Today in the business of podcasting: The Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting released its accords, giving the industry shared definitions for what counts as a podcast, a play, and an ad impression, plus a recommended hold-out group standard for proving incremental lift to advertisers. Patreon is cutting 93 jobs, roughly 20% of its workforce, as CEO Jack Conte points to organizational changes an...

This week in the business of podcasting: Tom Webster's fourth Podcast Atlas installment argues social platforms are the denominator of podcast advertising, with YouTube reaching 82% of monthly podcast listeners and Facebook 80%, and makes the case that audio and social should be planned together rather than pitted against each other. New research from Sound Insights and Sounds Profitable finds UK...

Thought process Thought process Today in the business of podcasting: Tom Webster's fourth Podcast Atlas installment frames social platforms as the denominator of podcast advertising, with YouTube reaching 82% of monthly podcast listeners and Facebook 80%, and argues audio builds trust while social delivers the frequency and retargeting every campaign multiplies against. New research from Sound Ins...

Today in the business of podcasting: Creator content was the most boring part of the World Cup, and Scalable pins the blame on FIFA's restrictive partner posting policies while athletes and fans drove the standout moments. The final drew 1.8 billion viewers and @fifaworldcup topped 24 billion views, TikTok's biggest content moment to date. Audio is reaching back-to-school shoppers more consistentl...

Winning on quality is only half the story when the audience you want is already spending its day somewhere else. Written by Tom Webster Edited and narrated by Gavin Gaddis Find the full article here.

Today in the business of podcasting: The IAB Tech Lab has opened a 30-day public comment period on version 2.3 of its Podcast Technical Measurement Guidelines, updating how downloads, audience, and ad delivery are counted across audio and video podcasts. Digiday breaks down five lessons from the World Cup on creator marketing, including how Unilever scaled a creator network to roughly 300,000 and...

Today in the business of podcasting: A new Nielsen Podcast Listen & Watch report finds audio remains the core of podcast consumption, with 90% of monthly listeners tuning in via audio and 62% also watching video, as listeners and viewers use the two formats in distinctly different ways. WARC reports YouTube podcast viewing on TV screens has surged past 700 million hours monthly, up 70% year ov...

Today in the business of podcasting: Tom Webster's latest Podcast Atlas installment examines podcast clips as a discovery engine, finding 89% of listeners watch clips on social platforms and roughly a third go on to become full-episode listeners. DAX U.S. President Brian Conlon argues the "shrinking attention span" is a myth, pointing to Edison Research's Infinite Dial 2026 finding that 45% of Ame...

Today in the business of podcasting: Tom Webster's latest Podcast Atlas installment digs into podcast clips as the industry's discovery engine, finding that 89% of listeners watch clips on social platforms and roughly a third convert into full-episode listeners. Amazon DSP adds Triton Digital as a programmatic partner, giving buyers access to Triton's global audio and podcast inventory paired with...

Today in the business of podcasting: Audioboom posted record H1 2026 results, with revenue up 30% year-on-year to $45.7 million and adjusted EBITDA up 80% to $3.2 million, while also ending its strategic review and unveiling Spotify and Apple partnerships to power video monetization later this year. Creator economy newsletter Scalable finds brand safety concerns among US enterprise marketers have...

Podcast clips aren't just filler content, they're the top of the discovery funnel, with 89% of listeners watching them on social platforms and about a third reliably converting into episode views or new regular listeners. Written by Tom Webster Edited and narrated by Gavin Gaddis Find the full article here.

Today in the business of podcasting: Six Colors gets a first look at the iOS 27, tvOS 27, and macOS 27 public betas, including a rebuilt Siri powered by large language models and Apple Podcasts video expanding to Mac desktops and Apple TV. Podstock CEO Michael Paretzky argues podcast back catalogs are losing strategic value as most downloads happen in a show's first 30 days, urging publishers to i...

Today in the business of podcasting: Buzzsprout has brought its official podcast, Buzzcast , back to Spotify months after pulling it, with co-founder Kevin Finn citing fixes to Spotify's video lock-in issue and a desire for broader multiplatform distribution. Megaphone shifts to the Spotify Ad Server on July 17, raising the maximum ad duration to 90 seconds while dropping VAST tag support, a chang...