Podcasts proliferate but ad market is getting crowded

Podcasts seem to be taking over the world – in the UK Gary Lineker’s ‘The Rest Is..’ Goalhanger stable pulls in huge audiences – but its growth as an ad medium has been more sluggish, leading to publishers turning to video according to industry measurement company WARC.

WARC Media forecasts that global podcast ad spend will exceed $5bn in 2025, reaching $5.5bn in 2026; however, year-on-year growth is set to slow from 13.2% in 2024 to 7.9% in 2025, and only 6.5% in 2026.

Video podcast consumption is growing, and YouTube has emerged as the most popular platform: viewers watched over 400 million hours of podcasts per month on YouTube’s TV app in 2024.

Studies have found that episodic buys – that is, ads placed in a single podcast episode on a specific show – tend to outperform ads dynamically inserted throughout shows across a podcast network.

Following the US election result, previously cautious marketers are re-considering their ‘podcast safety’ approach – in particular in advertising against right-wing content to reach younger male audiences.

Alex Brownsell, WARC Media head of content, says: “Podcasts are having a moment. Fresh from seemingly helping Donald Trump to win last year’s ‘podcast election’ in the US, brands are reappraising the medium through fresh eyes. However, ad investment growth remains sluggish, with podcasters trapped in a contest for a slow-growing pool of global audio ad budgets. Publishers and platforms are now eyeing expansion into video, in the hope of further boosting consumption, as well as winning a share of a fast-growing slice of the ad market.”