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Today’s reading time is 5 minutes. - Miko Santos (28 November 2025)

🎙️Today, we’ve got the inside scoop on:

• Australian Digital Ad Market Reaches $4.6 Billion as Audio Growth Lags Behind Video

• AM/FM Radio Demonstrates Strong Retail Advertising Returns During Holiday Season

• Podcast Insight: American Beverage Association Tops October Podcast Ad Spend at $6.2 Million

• PodBusiness : Conservative YouTube Podcasts Drive $66.5M Monthly Ad Market Through Ideologically-Targeted Products

• Job Board : CitizenRacecar - Producer/Coaches, Afterschool Podcasting: San Diego

IAB AUSTRALIA

Australian Digital Ad Market Reaches $4.6 Billion as Audio Growth Lags Behind Video

Podwires Rundown: Australia’s audio advertising sector grew just 3.5% year-on-year to reach $82m in the September 2025 quarter—the slowest growth of any major category in a digital advertising market that expanded 9.7% overall to $4.6bn, according to the IAB Australia Internet Advertising Revenue Report released today.

The Key Points:

• Audio advertising reached $82m in Q3 2025, growing only 3.5% year-on-year—significantly trailing the overall market’s 9.7% growth and representing less than 2% of total digital ad spend

• Video advertising surged 16.7% to $1,347m, with social video experiencing the fastest growth at 29.4% year-on-year, now representing 73% of general display spend

• Search advertising grew 12.0% to $2,005m, while display advertising (excluding video) declined 1.5% to $497m, indicating clear advertiser preference for search and video formats

• Connected TV captured 62% of video investment in the quarter, supported by winter sports coverage, while mobile video edged up to 14% and desktop continued declining to 24%

• Entertainment and media ranked as the fourth-largest advertiser category at 10.8% share, behind retail (16.8%), automotive (13.7%), and home products (5.6%)

Why It Matters: Audio advertising’s sluggish 3.5% growth rate—less than half the overall market expansion—signals that advertisers are directing budgets toward video and search formats that deliver measurable performance metrics. While the Australian digital advertising market reached $4.6bn, audio captured only $82m of that spend, suggesting podcast producers and audio content creators face intensifying competition for advertiser attention from platforms offering visual engagement and robust attribution data.

The Big Picture: For podcasters and podcast producers, these findings reveal an uncomfortable reality about audio’s position in the broader digital advertising landscape. The 16.7% growth in video advertising—nearly five times faster than audio—demonstrates where advertisers believe they’ll find better returns, particularly with social video’s explosive 29.4% surge. Podcast producers need to recognize that arguing for audio-only formats means competing against platforms that can demonstrate concrete engagement metrics and visual brand integration opportunities that advertisers increasingly demand.

The strategic imperative becomes clear: podcast producers must either develop compelling data demonstrating audio advertising’s unique conversion advantages, or acknowledge that multi-format strategies incorporating video may be necessary to capture larger advertising budgets.

The $82m audio category likely includes streaming music services, digital radio, and various audio formats beyond podcasting, meaning the actual podcast advertising slice is even smaller. With entertainment and media representing just 10.8% of advertiser spend—and that category encompassing far more than podcasts—relying solely on traditional audio distribution while video captures 73% of display spend puts podcast monetization strategies at a structural disadvantage.

Podcasters who can demonstrate measurable business outcomes from audio advertising, or who develop efficient hybrid production workflows, will be better positioned to compete for the advertising dollars increasingly flowing toward video formats.

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AM/FM Radio Demonstrates Strong Retail Advertising Returns During Holiday Season

Credit: Cumulus Media/Westwood one

Podwires Rundown : Cumulus Media and Westwood One released research this week showing AM/FM radio advertising generates significant returns for retailers during the holiday shopping period, with the medium reaching 77% of adults 18+ during Thanksgiving week.

According to the Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group, multiple Nielsen return on advertising investment studies show AM/FM radio generates an average of $15 in retail sales for every $1 spent on radio advertising. The research comes as retailers prepare for one of the year’s biggest shopping seasons.

The Key Points:

• AM/FM radio reaches 77% of adults 18+ during Thanksgiving week and 78% during Christmas week, according to Nielsen data, maintaining consistent reach throughout the holiday season

• Nielsen return on advertising investment studies indicate radio generates $15 in incremental retail sales for every dollar of advertising spend across multiple campaigns

• Analysis via Nielsen Media Impact shows retailers can increase campaign reach by 53% on average by shifting 20% of television budgets to a mix of AM/FM radio and podcasts

• A December 2023 Amazon holiday campaign study by MARU/Matchbox found AM/FM radio exposure generated stronger brand familiarity, advertising recall, holiday association, favorability, and purchase intent compared to non-exposed audiences

• Edison Research’s Q2 2025 Share of Ear data shows 85% of ad-supported audio time in cars goes to AM/FM radio, positioning the medium to reach consumers near the point of purchase

Why It Matters: The research highlights audio advertising’s effectiveness during high-stakes retail periods when advertisers need measurable returns. While the data focuses primarily on AM/FM radio, the findings demonstrate how audio formats can capture consumer attention during commutes and holiday travel when purchase decisions are being made. For podcast producers competing for retail advertising budgets, understanding radio’s documented performance metrics provides context for the measurement standards and return expectations that retail advertisers demand from audio investments.

The Big Picture : For podcasters and podcast producers, this research reveals both the opportunity and the challenge in capturing retail advertising dollars. Radio’s ability to demonstrate $15 returns per dollar spent and its 85% share of in-car audio listening establishes a performance benchmark that podcast advertising must address. Retail represents one of the largest advertising categories, and these brands are accustomed to radio’s combination of mass reach, point-of-purchase proximity, and attribution capabilities.

The mention of shifting TV budgets to “a mix of AM/FM radio and podcasts” suggests some advertisers are beginning to view podcast advertising as complementary to traditional radio buys. However, podcast producers need to recognize that retail advertisers expect the same level of measurement rigor and documented returns that radio provides. The 53% incremental reach increase cited in the research indicates retailers value audio’s ability to extend campaign reach beyond television, but capturing this opportunity requires podcast networks to develop comparable attribution models and return-on-investment documentation.

Nearly 80 million adults planning to listen to holiday music on AM/FM radio or streaming represents massive audience availability during the retail season, but podcast producers should note that seasonal content strategies and contextual relevance matter to holiday advertisers.

The research showing 53% of Americans have been in both a store and their car within the same half-hour underscores audio’s strategic advantage in reaching consumers during high-intent shopping moments—an advantage podcasts can leverage through mobile listening, but only if they can demonstrate similar conversion tracking and sales attribution that makes radio advertising accountable to retail performance metrics.

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MAGELLAN AI

American Beverage Association Tops October Podcast Ad Spend at $6.2 Million

CREDIT: MAGELLAN AI

Podwires Rundown: The American Beverage Association led all podcast advertisers in October 2025 with $6.2 million in estimated spend, marking a 599% month-over-month increase, according to data released this week by Magellan AI.

The trade group’s surge to the top position represents the largest percentage gain among major advertisers, jumping from $893,300 in September spending. The campaign focused primarily on sports podcasts, according to Magellan AI’s analysis of the top 3,000 U.S. podcasts.

FanDuel ($6.1 million) and BetterHelp ($6.0 million) rounded out the top three spenders for October, though both showed month-over-month declines from September levels. Toyota claimed the fourth position at $5.8 million, followed by T-Mobile at $5.7 million.

The Key Points:

• American Beverage Association increased podcast advertising spend 599% month-over-month to reach $6.2 million in October, claiming the top spender position with campaigns concentrated in sports podcasts

• The top 15 podcast advertisers collectively invested approximately $66.5 million in October, with sports emerging as the dominant genre for six of the top 10 spenders

• Peloton demonstrated the highest percentage increase among “movers and shakers” at 54,633%, jumping from $2,100 in September to $1.1 million in October

• Four advertisers—Perplexity AI, Rubrik, and Kraft Mayo—entered podcast advertising for the first time in October with zero prior month spending

• Comedy podcasts captured three of the top 15 advertiser categories (BetterHelp, Quince, SimpliSafe, Squarespace), while news programming attracted Washable Sofas as its sole top-15 representative

Why It Matters: The October rankings reveal how quickly advertiser priorities can shift in podcast advertising, with the American Beverage Association’s 599% spending increase demonstrating that major campaigns can dramatically alter the competitive landscape within a single month. For podcast producers and networks, understanding that sports content commanded six of the top 10 advertiser budgets provides clear strategic direction about where premium advertising dollars are flowing. The data also exposes how concentrated podcast advertising remains—15 advertisers accounting for approximately $66.5 million in a single month while the broader market struggles to capture mid-tier advertising commitments.

The Big Picture: For podcasters and podcast producers, these rankings highlight both opportunity and vulnerability in the current advertising ecosystem. Sports podcasts dominating advertiser preference among top spenders indicates that categories with measurable, engaged audiences command premium rates and consistent investment.

The four new entrants—Perplexity AI, Rubrik, and Kraft Mayo—signal that podcast advertising continues attracting fresh categories, but their appearance alongside established spenders like FanDuel and BetterHelp demonstrates the challenge of breaking into top-tier spending levels.

Peloton’s 54,633% increase from essentially zero spending to $1.1 million illustrates how brands test podcast advertising with minimal commitment before scaling dramatically when results warrant expansion. This pattern suggests podcast networks need sophisticated attribution capabilities to convert test campaigns into sustained relationships. The concentration of spend in sports and comedy genres—accounting for 12 of the 15 top spender category placements—leaves producers in other genres competing for significantly smaller advertiser pools.

The volatility in month-over-month rankings, with American Beverage Association vaulting to number one through a single large campaign, underscores podcast advertising’s project-based nature rather than sustained buy patterns.

For podcast producers, this means revenue predictability remains challenging even at high spending levels, and networks must continuously court new campaigns rather than relying on consistent advertiser commitments. The data reinforces that podcast advertising dollars are available at scale—$66.5 million from just 15 advertisers in one month—but capturing those dollars requires genre positioning (sports, comedy), audience scale, and measurement sophistication that most producers lack.

PODGLOMERATE

Podcast Industry Leaders Predict Community Focus and Sustainability Drive for 2026

Twenty-two podcast industry executives interviewed by The Podglomerate shared predictions for 2026 that emphasized community building, business sustainability, and continued transformation of traditional podcast definitions, according to analysis published this week in the company’s Podcast Perspectives retrospective.

The executives—representing companies including Sounds Profitable, Lemonada Media, Pushkin Industries, and Audacy—offered perspectives ranging from cautious optimism to strong bullishness about the medium’s evolution, with several identifying artificial intelligence, video integration, and profitability pressures as defining challenges for the year ahead.

The Key Points:

• Multiple executives identified community building as the dominant theme for 2026, with Lemonada Media CEO Jessica Cordova Kramer stating the year will focus on “sustainability and profitability” while audiences “really want to vibe with other people who love their shows”

• Industry leaders expressed concern about artificial intelligence potentially replacing human hosts, with Podcamp Media President Dusty Weis calling AI-hosted podcasts a threat that creates “fewer well-paying jobs” and results in “a smaller pot of ad revenue for those who take the time to create quality programming”

• Several executives predicted podcasts would increasingly become source material for books and audiobooks rather than focusing solely on television and film adaptation, with Pushkin Industries CEO Gretta Cohn stating “2026 will be the year that we see more podcasts and podcasters stepping into the book space”

• Video podcast integration emerged as both opportunity and challenge, with New Hampshire Public Radio’s Rebecca Lavoie acknowledging she would now build shows “one hundred percent either video first or video” while cautioning that “not every show is suited for video”

• Measurement evolution remains critical, with Adopter Media’s Adam McNeil stating the industry will “move into listens” as a more important metric than downloads, while Sounds Profitable Partner Tom Webster emphasized the need to “be smarter about how we measure the industry”

Why It Matters: The collective predictions from these 22 executives—nearly all CEOs or senior leaders at podcast companies—reveal an industry grappling with fundamental questions about definition, sustainability, and competitive positioning as traditional boundaries between audio and video content blur. Their emphasis on community building and direct audience relationships suggests podcasters are preparing for a future where platform dependence becomes riskier and owned audience assets become essential. The widespread concern about AI-generated content replacing human hosts indicates industry leaders recognize an existential threat to the creator-audience trust relationship that has historically differentiated podcasting from other media formats.

The Big Picture: For podcasters and podcast producers, these predictions paint a picture of an industry entering a maturation phase where profitability takes precedence over growth-at-all-costs strategies. The repeated emphasis on sustainability from executives like Cordova Kramer and Chris Peterson of Red Seat Ventures signals that the era of unprofitable content expansion funded by speculative investment has ended, replaced by demands for viable business models from day one.

The divergence in perspectives on video integration—with some executives viewing it as essential and others cautioning about format appropriateness—reveals strategic uncertainty about whether video represents an enhancement to podcasting or a fundamental transformation requiring different production approaches and skill sets. Rebecca Lavoie’s observation that she would now build shows video-first while maintaining that narrative audio isn’t suited for video demonstrates the nuanced decision-making podcast producers must navigate based on content type and audience expectations.

The prediction from Pushkin Industries about podcasts becoming bestselling books rather than focusing exclusively on Hollywood adaptation represents a potential shift in how creators monetize intellectual property. This approach offers podcasters more control over revenue streams and faster time-to-market compared to television development cycles, though it requires different creative skills and publishing relationships. Supporting Cast’s Eric Barnett warning that community cultivation “takes a little bit more work than I think people are used to” underscores that subscription and community models demand sustained engagement beyond content production.

The measurement concerns raised by multiple executives—particularly the shift from downloads to listens as the meaningful metric—signal that podcast advertising is maturing toward performance accountability similar to other digital channels. For producers, this means investment in attribution capabilities and audience quality measurement becomes mandatory for capturing advertising growth, not optional. The consensus optimism about revenue growth, tempered by concerns about scaling challenges and AI competition, suggests 2026 will separate podcast operations with sustainable business models from those dependent on unsustainable subsidies.

Conservative YouTube Podcasts Drive $66.5M Monthly Ad Market Through Ideologically-Targeted Products

Credit: Bloomberg

Podwires Rundown: Right-leaning YouTube podcasters generated approximately $66.5 million in advertising from their top 15 sponsors during October 2025, with 91% of analyzed episodes containing host-read advertisements employing political messaging, according to a Bloomberg analysis of 876 videos published between January and September 2025.

The investigation examined eight popular conservative podcasters—Joe Rogan, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, the Nelk Boys, Shawn Ryan, and Theo Von—who collectively command more than 3 million YouTube subscribers each and advocated for President Trump around his 2025 inauguration. Bloomberg identified 188 unique advertisers, finding that 27% relied on explicit political ideology in their marketing, while 23% employed anti-establishment rhetoric and 22% promoted alternative health products.

The top 10 advertisers using exclusively conservative appeals invested nearly four times more per month in 2025 than their average 2023 spending, growing from $289,000 monthly to $4.7 million, according to Bloomberg’s analysis of data from Podscribe, a podcast analytics company.

The Key Points:

• Bloomberg’s analysis found that 91% of videos from eight major conservative podcasters contained at least one host-read advertisement with political messaging, with advertisers employing themes including political ideology (27%), anti-establishment rhetoric (23%), alternative health (22%), safety and security (16%), and masculinity (13%)

• The top 10 advertisers working exclusively with conservative podcasts increased monthly spending from $289,000 in early 2023 to $4.7 million in 2025, while companies like Birch Gold Group spent approximately $10.8 million on host-read advertisements over the past year

• Conservative YouTube podcasts command significantly higher advertising rates than left-leaning counterparts, with top shows charging between $10,000 and over $100,000 per ad read compared to several thousand dollars for most liberal podcasts, with exceptions including Call Her Daddy and Pod Save America reaching five-figure rates

• PreBorn, a nonprofit that discourages abortion and advertises on shows hosted by Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, and Tucker Carlson, saw revenue nearly double from $17.8 million in 2021 to $34.7 million in 2023, coinciding with its conservative podcast advertising strategy

• Seven Weeks Coffee, which allocates 10% of purchases to crisis pregnancy centers, now dedicates 50-60% of its marketing budget to podcast host-read ads and anticipated spending over $700,000 on podcast advertising in 2025

Why It Matters: The Bloomberg analysis exposes a fundamental asymmetry in podcast monetization that extends far beyond simple audience size differences. Conservative podcasters have cultivated an advertising ecosystem where ideology itself becomes the product differentiator, allowing brands to charge premium rates by positioning purchases as political participation rather than consumer transactions. For podcast producers and networks across the political spectrum, understanding that advertisers will pay 10-20x more per spot when targeting conservative audiences—not because of larger reach, but because of demonstrated conversion through ideological alignment—reveals how much monetization depends on audience composition rather than audience scale.

The Big Picture: For podcasters and podcast producers, these findings demonstrate that successful podcast monetization increasingly requires either commanding massive mainstream audiences or cultivating intensely engaged niche communities willing to make purchasing decisions based on host recommendations and shared values. The conservative podcast advertising market’s explosive growth—with top advertisers quadrupling spending in two years—shows that authenticity and trust convert more effectively than reach alone, but this model depends on hosts maintaining genuine ideological alignment with their audiences.

The data revealing that PreBorn’s revenue nearly doubled to $34.7 million while dedicating resources to conservative podcast advertising, and Seven Weeks Coffee allocating over half its marketing budget to podcast ads, indicates these advertisers have discovered conversion rates that justify premium spending levels. For podcast producers outside established conservative or mainstream categories, the challenge becomes whether to pursue the mainstream advertising model requiring massive scale, develop similarly devoted niche audiences around different values, or accept that mid-tier positioning offers limited monetization potential.

The asymmetry between conservative and liberal podcast advertising markets—where right-leaning shows command $10,000-$100,000 per ad read while most left-leaning counterparts earn only several thousand dollars—reveals that advertiser ecosystems develop differently based on audience trust dynamics and purchasing behavior patterns. YouTube’s role as infrastructure provider, offering free distribution that Bloomberg notes “effectively subsidizes” professional content creators, means podcast producers can build substantial businesses without platform revenue sharing, but only if they can attract advertisers willing to pay premium rates for host-read endorsements.

The concentration of advertising among ideologically-aligned brands—with PureTalk appearing in 143 episodes and American Financing in 129—demonstrates that recurring sponsor relationships rather than diverse advertiser bases sustain these podcasts financially. For producers, this means monetization stability depends on developing deep partnerships with brands that view podcast advertising as high-converting customer acquisition rather than experimental brand awareness spending. The Oxford Road study showing Trump-interview episodes achieving 2-3x better advertiser results than Harris interviews underscores that podcast advertising effectiveness correlates with audience engagement intensity rather than political neutrality.

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