Sounds Profitable

Today in the business of podcasting:iHeartMedia and Sirius XM are in preliminary talks about a potential merger that would combine the largest radio station owner and the largest satellite radio service in the United States, creating a company with more than $12 billion in combined annual sales.S&P Global Market Intelligence data shows U.S. podcast listening grew 10 percentage points from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, with nearly 60% of online adults now reporting they listen, a figure that aligns with Sounds Profitable's Podcast Landscape 2025 research when video-only listeners are factored in.Spotify has launched new fitness features for free and Premium subscribers, including curated workout playlists and access to more than 1,400 on-demand Peloton classes, alongside a new Claude AI integration that delivers personalized recommendations based on users' listening data.Spanish-language podcast platform iVoox has debuted what may be the first formal television ad campaign for a dedicated podcast app, developed by agency Drop&Vase and airing on Mediaset España channels in Spain.European audio platform Audion has raised $15 million to fund its expansion into the United States, with investment going toward go-to-market operations, partnerships, and product development. To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

This week in the business of podcasting:SiriusXM Media has become the exclusive audio advertising representative for YouTube in the United States, giving advertisers the ability to buy guaranteed audio ad impressions against YouTube audiences at scale for the first time through SiriusXM's combined ad technology stack.Sounds Profitable's new Audio Primes report, drawn from The Podcast Landscape 2025, identifies the 22% of podcast consumers who listen to 75% or more of their shows as audio, and examines the measurement gap that arises when platforms track video while listeners are consuming audio.Bumper co-founder Jonas Woost launched Bumper Score, a new third-party audience verification metric that rates podcast ad delivery on a scale of 0 to 200, aiming to give media buyers a standardized, comparable measure of whether ads are reaching real, verified listeners.Content platform beehiiv has surpassed its Q2 goal for podcast signups by more than 10x and is expanding its feature set with a new AI-powered podcast data tool and a webinar hosting feature supporting up to 10,000 attendees. To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting: Sounds Profitable's new Audio Primes report finds that 22% of podcast consumers listen to 75% or more of their episodes as audio-only — and 90% of them use YouTube, making them heavier consumers of video platforms than the average podcast listener while still choosing audio for podcasts.Beehiiv is expanding its creator platform with MCP-powered AI podcast analytics and a new webinar product that supports up to 10,000 attendees, positioning the platform as a full-stack destination for content creators beyond newsletters.Bumper has launched Bumper Score, an independent audience verification tool designed to bring transparency and consistency to podcast advertising, with clients already directing over $500,000 toward ad buys enabled by the new metric.A Barrett Media column uses Sounds Profitable's Podcast Landscape 2025 data to argue that podcasting's most engaged listeners tolerate high ad volume but will leave over irrelevant ads, making hyper-targeted and programmatic advertising essential to avoiding broadcast radio's mistakes.Streamonomics author Hernan Lopez examines Netflix's $670 billion total addressable market estimate and compares it to the creator economy's projected TAM, which may exceed Netflix's figure when all creator platforms and direct creator revenue are included. To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

Today in the business of podcasting: SiriusXM Media has become the exclusive audio advertising representative for YouTube in the United States, giving advertisers access to guaranteed impressions against YouTube's audio audiences at scale for the first time. The deal connects YouTube to SiriusXM's broad ad sales infrastructure, which already spans Pandora and a wide network of podcast and streaming inventory.A new Radiocentre report, High Gain Audio, analyzed by WPP Media, finds that multiplatform audio advertising outperforms the all-media ROI average in both short-term and long-term campaigns. The report recommends that brands allocate up to 25% of total media spend to audio to maximize overall campaign ROI.The IAB Tech Lab has launched the Programmatic Governance Council, a new industry body designed to align business expectations and technical standards across programmatic advertising. Founding participants include major buy- and sell-side organizations such as Dentsu, Omnicom Media Group, WPP, Disney, The Trade Desk, and Mediavine.A growing number of content creators are launching their own in-house ad agencies, positioning them as faster and more platform-native alternatives to traditional intermediaries. Recent launches include Natalie Marshall's Expand Co-Lab and Max Reisinger's Camp Agency, part of a trend that Scalable traces back to Dhar Mann's Fifth Quarter in 2022.David's Bridal has invested in a creator ambassador program called Style Squad, which enlists both external influencers and internal employees to produce shoppable content across social platforms. The program, launched in January 2026, allows participants to earn commission on sales they drive rather than receiving flat fees. To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.

What platforms record and what podcast consumers are actually doing can be two different things. New research from Edison Research introduces "Audio Primes" — the 22% of podcast consumers who listen to 75% or more of their podcasts as audio — finding that this segment skews younger, more educated, and higher-earning than the average podcast listener, upending common assumptions about who chooses audio-first consumption. Ninety percent of Audio Primes use YouTube for podcast listening, but predominantly as audio infrastructure with screens off or minimized, revealing a significant gap between video platform metrics and actual podcast listening behavior. Written by Tom WebsterEdited and narrated by Gavin GaddisText and audio edited by Gavin Gaddis Find the full article here on Sounds Profitable.