The Video Advertising Bureau today circulated a 31-page report to media contacts arguing that podcasts have become an audiovisual medium, and the numbers it assembles point in one direction: audio podcasts are forecast to absorb 48% of US digital audio advertising by 2030, up from 42% this year, while 88% of weekly podcast consumers already reach shows through video platforms. The deck, titled Listen Up & Watch: How podcasts are reshaping audiovisual advertising, compiles third-party data from eMarketer, Edison Research, Triton Digital, Magellan AI, Sounds Profitable and others, and frames premium streaming services as the natural home for the format.

ELI5

Podcasts used to be something people only listened to, and now most regular fans also watch them, sometimes on a TV. A trade group that represents TV and streaming companies gathered data showing more ad money is moving into podcasts and that streaming services are signing deals to carry video versions of shows. The group's conclusion is that brands can buy podcast audiences inside streaming apps, though several of its numbers come from surveys and forecasts rather than measured spending.

What the report is

VAB, the New York trade body whose members are premium multiscreen television providers and distributors, distributed the report through its weekly media-only newsletter on September 15, 2026. The same newsletter bundled a separate VAB report on how much objectionable advertising Google acts against, and session details for Advertising Week New York in October; neither of those documents was supplied with the mailing, and this article covers only the podcast report.

The report page on VAB's website carries no publication date. Its most recent cited source is dated August 2026, and it references deal coverage from August 10, 2026, so the material was assembled within the past five weeks. Each page carries a footer stating that the information is provided exclusively to VAB members and qualified marketers.

The structure follows four questions: what podcasts are, how they are consumed, how marketers buy them and what brands gain. VAB defines podcasts as a "series of digital audio or video episodes that can be streamed or downloaded," a definition that already folds video into the category. That choice matters, because much of the report's argument depends on treating a filmed conversation on a streaming service and an MP3 in a podcast app as the same medium.

The report's authors are Jason Wiese, VAB's executive vice president of strategic insights and measurement, Benjamin Vandegrift, senior vice president of measurement strategy and innovation, and Rohan Gosalia, associate director of measurement intelligence.

The money: podcasts take most of the growth

Two eMarketer forecasts, both dated June 2026, anchor the financial case. US digital audio services ad spending is projected at $8.02 billion in 2026, rising to $8.47 billion in 2027, $8.94 billion in 2028, $9.38 billion in 2029 and $9.79 billion in 2030. VAB describes that as growth of over 20%, and the arithmetic gives 22.1%.

The eMarketer definition of that category is wide. It includes digital revenue for local and national broadcast radio stations, satellite radio services, purely online radio and streaming music services such as Pandora and Spotify, along with podcast advertising and sponsorship, in both audio and non-audio ad formats.

Audio podcast advertising, defined by eMarketer as audio advertising within a podcast, is forecast at $3.40 billion in 2026, then $3.75 billion, $4.13 billion, $4.42 billion and $4.69 billion by 2030. That is growth of 37.9%, which VAB rounds to "nearly 40%." Podcasting's share of the digital audio total moves from 42% in 2026 to 44%, 46%, 47% and finally 48%.

A small inconsistency sits on the same slide. The chart shows 48% for 2030, while the callout box beside it states that audio podcasts will account for roughly 50% of total digital audio ad spending by that year. The difference is two percentage points, and the chart figure is the one that matches eMarketer's dollar values.

The more consequential reading comes from subtracting one forecast from the other. Digital audio grows by $1.77 billion between 2026 and 2030; audio podcasts grow by $1.29 billion. On eMarketer's numbers, podcasts capture roughly 73% of all incremental digital audio spending over the period, while the rest of the category - streaming music, online radio and the digital side of broadcast - grows by about 10.4% over four years. For sellers of non-podcast digital audio, that is a slow-growth forecast.

These projections sit alongside other estimates that PPC Land has tracked. IAB and PwC placed US podcast advertising revenue at $2.9 billion for 2025, a different methodology from eMarketer's, so the two series cannot be joined into a single growth line. Magellan AI's spending trackers have moved faster than either: podcast ad spending rose 26% year over year in the third quarter of 2025 and 32% in the fourth quarter, with 1,482 new brands entering the channel.

Who listens, and for how long

Monthly reach data comes from Edison Research's Infinite Dial 2026, published in March. According to the chart VAB reproduces, monthly podcast consumption among people aged 12 to 34 stood at 55% in 2023, 59% in 2024, 66% in 2025 and 64% in 2026. The 35 to 54 group went from 51% to 55%, 61% and then 68%. The 55-plus group grew fastest in relative terms, from 21% in 2023 to 44% in 2026, more than doubling.

By gender, 62% of males and 54% of females were monthly consumers in 2026, which VAB describes as a slight male skew. The report headline says two-thirds of people aged 12 to 54 now consume podcasts monthly; the two age bands behind that statement read 64% and 68%.

Two caveats travel with these numbers. First, the youngest band fell two points between 2025 and 2026, the only decline on the chart. Second, Edison changed its question between years. According to the chart's footnote, the 2023 and 2024 figures count people who listened to podcasts, while the 2025 and 2026 figures count people who listened to or watched them. Some of the apparent growth between 2024 and 2025 may therefore reflect the broader definition rather than new behaviour. PPC Land reported the Infinite Dial's headline 58% monthly reach among Americans aged 12 and over when the study was presented on March 12, 2026.

Time spent tells a different story from reach. Edison's Share of Ear study, covering the fourth quarter of 2024 through the third quarter of 2025, splits time with ad-supported audio four ways. Among adults 18 and over, radio takes 64%, podcasts 20%, ad-supported streaming 13% and ad-supported satellite radio 3%. Among 18 to 34 year olds, the split is 45% radio, 33% podcasts, 21% streaming and 1% satellite. For 25 to 54 year olds it is 60%, 25%, 13% and 2%. For adults 50 and over, radio holds 75%, with podcasts at 12%.

VAB's headline says younger listeners are "nearing parity" with radio on time spent. Twelve percentage points still separate the two among 18 to 34 year olds. Radio remains the largest single source of ad-supported audio time in every age group shown, including the youngest.

What people choose to hear

Genre reach comes from Triton Digital's US Podcast Report, dated February 2026 and based on a sample of more than 6,000 monthly US podcast listeners aged 18 and over. Comedy reaches 42% of that audience, news 27%, society and culture 23%, sports 18% and true crime 16%. Business and education each reach 10%, health and fitness 9%, religion and spirituality and TV and film 8% each, music and arts 7% each. Leisure, science and history sit at 4%, technology, kids and family and fiction at 3%, and government at 1%.

The distribution is steep. Five genres clear 15%; the remaining fourteen do not.

Supply: a scale question

According to Podcast Index data retrieved in July 2026, more than 4.7 million active podcasts exist online, and about 35,000 new episodes are published on an average day. Podcast Index counts a show only if it has at least three episodes, one of which is often a trailer, and at least one episode lasting three minutes or more.

VAB compares the daily episode count with the roughly 20,000-seat capacity of Madison Square Garden and says 70% more episodes appear each day than there are seats in the venue. The two figures it prints give 75%, not 70%. The report's web page, meanwhile, describes the active base as "nearly 5 million," while the deck says over 4.7 million. Neither discrepancy changes the argument, but they are worth noting for anyone citing the deck.

Scale of supply is precisely where advertiser selection becomes difficult. PPC Land reported last month that 77% of 34,208 active English-language video podcasts carried no measurable advertising, according to MillionPodcasts. VAB's closing takeaways describe the podcast ecosystem as highly fragmented, which is the problem its members propose to solve by curating shows inside their own apps.

The shift to screens

The report's central consumption statistic comes from the Cumulus Podcast Network and Signal Hill Insights' Podcast Download study, spring 2026. Among weekly podcast consumers, 80% both watch and listen, 12% only listen and 8% only watch. VAB adds the first two video-using groups together to arrive at 88% who consume podcast content through video platforms.

Television as a device has grown steadily. Edison Podcast Metrics data dated August 2026, covering US weekly podcast consumers aged 13 and over, shows the share who say they use a TV to consume podcasts rising from 1% in 2021 to 4% in 2022, 6% in 2023, 7% in 2024, 11% in 2025 and 13% in the first quarter of 2026.

That is a thirteen-fold increase from a very small base. It is also a much smaller figure than the 88% video number, which is a useful reminder that most video podcast consumption still happens on phones and computers rather than living-room screens.

The same Cumulus and Signal Hill study found that 97% of weekly podcast consumers used a video streaming service in the past month, 92% used an ad-supported video streaming service and 88% used an ad-free one. This second 88% is unrelated to the video platform figure on the preceding page; the two measure different things.

Sounds Profitable's The Podcast Atlas, cited as June 2026, supplies a further data point: consumers are 28% more likely to prefer podcasts in video formats than audio formats. The deck does not explain how that relative figure was constructed. PPC Land covered The Podcast Atlas on June 26, 2026, when Sounds Profitable released it at VidCon. A later page of the VAB deck dates the same study to July 1, 2026, so the report attributes two different dates to one piece of research.

Terminology: podcasts and vodcasts

VAB separates the format into two terms. Podcasts, in its usage, are audio-only on-demand programmes released as episodes to download and stream; the stated audience strength is listening on the move, and the marketer strength is a direct-to-ear connection between host and listener. Vodcasts are video-based podcasts that combine audio with visual elements such as on-screen hosts or animation. VAB positions them for group viewing on TV and for sponsorships that show products on screen.

The report samples vodcasts carried by eight premium streaming services: Disney+, HBO Max, Tubi, ViX, Paramount+, Peacock, AMC+ and Prime Video. Titles pictured include Hey Jonas! and Desperately Devoted on Disney+, Real Time with Bill Maher and a Game of Thrones podcast on HBO Max, Crime Junkie and Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Tubi, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on Paramount+, The Dan Patrick Show on Peacock, and SmartLess and New Heights on Prime Video.

A page of trade headlines lists six deals from 2026: MS NOW's agreement with Crooked Media to air Pod Save America on February 17; Netflix's daily livestreamed version of The Breakfast Club on May 21; NewsNation's podcast slate and Chicago studio on May 26; SiriusXM bringing Conan O'Brien and Trevor Noah podcasts to Tubi on June 2; A+E Global Media and Pave Studios adapting The First 48 and five other unscripted series on June 3; and Disney's streaming deal with iHeartMedia on August 10.

The Disney arrangement is the most detailed of those. PPC Land reported that six iHeartPodcasts titles began arriving on Disney+ and Hulu from August 14, starting with Hey Jonas!, with financial terms undisclosed. Days later, two Martha Stewart shows moved to Netflix under a separate iHeartMedia deal. Both followed the October 2025 Netflix and Spotify agreement covering 17 podcast properties, the arrangement that first established a subscription streamer as a podcast destination.

How marketers buy it

Oxford Road's What Brands Want 2025 survey, dated the fourth quarter of 2025, asked marketers which audiovisual channels they currently use. A podcast and vodcast simulcast - the same episode released at once in audio and video - was cited by 76.2%. Audio-only podcasts were cited by 71.4%, terrestrial radio by 47.6%, video-only vodcasts by 31.0% and streaming audio such as Spotify and Pandora by 26.2%. The deck does not state the sample size. The decimals, though, are consistent with a base of 42 respondents: 32, 30, 20, 13 and 11 out of 42 reproduce every figure exactly. If that is the base, each respondent moves a result by 2.4 points.

VAB states that podcast placements can be bought through publishers, directly from creators, or programmatically through agency DSPs. It groups ad types into three categories. Traditional ad units are read by the host or professionally pre-recorded and are generally treated as permanent, because they sit inside the podcast file - the format the industry calls baked-in. Dynamic ad insertion slots spots into an episode at the moment of streaming or download and allows segmentation by listener demographics. Presenting sponsorships are branded ads that typically run across a whole season, customised and aired in pre-roll and post-roll positions.

Position data comes from Magellan AI's podcast advertising benchmark report for the second quarter of 2026, covering all ads detected in the US. Mid-roll accounted for 54% of ads, pre-roll for 28% and post-roll for 18%. VAB describes the uses of each: pre-roll for early attention and brand presence, mid-roll for detailed messaging and product demonstration, post-roll for keeping viewers engaged and calls to action.

By length, 30-second ads made up 39%, 60-second ads 14%, 15-second ads 13%, 90-second ads 5% and 120-second ads 1%. Those five buckets total 72%. According to Magellan's footnote, the remaining 28% are ads outside the 15 to 120 second range, such as host reads, whose length varies too much to fit standard units. Lengths are grouped within five seconds for 15 and 30-second ads and within ten seconds for 60-second ads. In other words, more than a quarter of detected podcast advertising does not conform to a conventional spot length at all.

Where the money comes from

Magellan AI's fourth-quarter 2025 benchmark supplies category spending, in millions of dollars, alongside the number of brands in each category. Financial services led with $109.6 million from 608 brands. Business services and software followed at $82.9 million from 694 brands, then consumer services and software at $77.8 million from 419 brands. Food spent $64.2 million across 527 brands, consumer packaged goods $59.6 million across 257, women's clothing $56.9 million across 156, and phone, internet and cable $51.2 million across 81. Gambling spent $47.3 million from 106 brands, insurance $47.2 million from 121 and nutritional supplements $47.1 million from 368.

The ten categories together total $643.8 million across 3,337 brands. The chart does not specify geography; PPC Land's coverage of the same Magellan quarter noted that the dataset spans eight countries.

Dividing spend by brand count exposes very different concentration. Phone, internet and cable averaged about $632,000 per brand for the quarter, the highest of the ten, with gambling at roughly $446,000 and insurance at about $390,000. At the other end, business services and software averaged about $119,000 per brand, food about $122,000 and nutritional supplements about $128,000. Business services had more advertisers than financial services - 694 against 608 - but spent 24% less in total. Several of the heaviest per-brand categories are ones where, as PPC Land's host-read explainer notes, mandatory legal wording limits how freely a host can paraphrase.

The effectiveness claims

The final section argues that podcast advertising turns attention into business results. The evidence here needs closer handling, because much of it is self-reported and some of it is old.

The Harris Poll's QuestDIY survey, from May 2025, found 68% of podcast audiences say they are likely to trust recommendations from podcast hosts, 67% find host-read ads effective and 36% prefer host-read ads to other podcast formats because of their conversational and personal tone. These are stated attitudes, not observed behaviour.

Veritonic's Unlocking the Power of Audio Ads, dated July 2024, is the oldest source in the deck. VAB presents it under a heading about consumer perspectives. Compared with billboard ads, podcast ads were rated 60% more memorable with 51% greater purchase intent. Against social media ads the figures were 33% and 40%; against display ads, 49% and 38%. The VAB headline says these results prove the impact of podcast advertising through the purchase funnel. A two-year-old perception study from an audio measurement company does not establish that, and the deck does not state the method, sample or whether the comparisons were measured in controlled exposure or asked as opinion.

The video-versus-audio comparison is more recent. Sounds Profitable's Podcast Atlas, conducted by Signal Hill Insights among people aged 18 and over who had used at least one ad-supported creator or media platform in the past 30 days, asked which actions respondents had taken after an ad. For video podcasts, 15% made an immediate purchase, against 10% for audio podcasts. Screenshots were taken by 19% versus 14%, promo codes written down by 20% versus 18%, and brand searches made by 35% versus 34%.

VAB's headline says video podcasts outperform audio. On purchases and screenshots the gap is five points. On search, the most common action, it is one point, and on promo codes it is two. Promotional codes and vanity URLs have long been the attribution backbone for audio, which makes the narrow margin on that measure notable.

Other data points in the same direction exist. PPC Land reported that Magellan AI's first quarterly measurement benchmark found a 2.49% response rate for podcasts distributed with video, against 1.39% for RSS-only audio shows.

Why this matters for buyers and sellers

VAB is an advocate for a particular class of seller. Its members run the premium streaming services that now carry vodcasts, and its closing takeaways describe podcasts on those platforms as "a valuable marketing investment," citing trustworthy, brand safe environments and measurable outcomes. The report is best read as a structured argument for moving podcast budgets into premium video inventory, built on third-party data, rather than as neutral market research. That is consistent with VAB's recent output: in February it published, with TVision, research arguing premium video outperforms YouTube on CTV attention metrics, and in August a report finding 52% of creator followers more likely to search for brands in shows featuring those creators.

The report is notable for what it leaves out. It does not mention YouTube, where Edison's Share of Ear data, as PPC Land reported in March, put 32% of podcast listening time in the fourth quarter of 2025. Nor does it address the commercial gap between formats. Audioboom has put audio revenue per thousand downloads at about $71 against video rates below $35, a spread PPC Land has tracked since January.

Measurement is the larger omission. The report's first takeaway calls outcomes measurable. Yet IAB Tech Lab's version 2.3 podcast guidelines, opened for comment on July 21, 2026, extend download counting rules only to video episodes distributed through open RSS feeds and server-side file delivery. Episodes streamed inside a closed app such as Netflix, Disney+ or Tubi sit outside that framework, and IAB Tech Lab's dedicated streaming video podcast guideline, version 3.0, is not planned until 2027. For now, the audience inside a streamer's podcast hub is counted with that streamer's own tools.

Distribution is moving on two tracks in parallel. On the open side, Apple added HLS video with dynamic ad insertion to Apple Podcasts in February, and Acast ran the first video campaigns there on May 13 with State Farm and T-Mobile. Those keep ad control with hosting providers. On the closed side, the streamers VAB represents are licensing shows into environments where inventory is sold through their own stacks. The eMarketer forecasts quoted by VAB count only audio advertising within podcasts, so neither track's video revenue appears in the 48% figure at all.

The question for the next budget cycle is which set of numbers planners will accept. VAB has made its case with forecasts, surveys and a collection of licensing deals. What it has not supplied, and what no party has yet published, is a common count of how many people watched a given podcast episode across a streamer's app and an open feed combined.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The Video Advertising Bureau, the New York trade body representing premium multiscreen television providers, with report authors Jason Wiese, Benjamin Vandegrift and Rohan Gosalia. The data comes from eMarketer, Edison Research, Triton Digital, Podcast Index, Cumulus Podcast Network with Signal Hill Insights, Sounds Profitable, Oxford Road, Magellan AI, The Harris Poll and Veritonic.

What: A 31-page report, Listen Up & Watch: How podcasts are reshaping audiovisual advertising, arguing that podcasts are now an audiovisual medium suited to premium streaming inventory. It cites eMarketer forecasts putting US audio podcast ad spend at $4.69 billion, or 48% of digital audio, by 2030, and survey data showing 88% of weekly podcast consumers use video platforms. Several figures carry discrepancies, and some effectiveness evidence is self-reported or dates to 2024.

When: Circulated to media on September 15, 2026, through VAB's weekly media-only newsletter. The report page carries no date; its newest source is from August 2026.

Where: The data covers the United States, except where sources such as Magellan AI's category chart do not specify geography. The report is hosted on VAB's website for members and qualified marketers.

Why: Streaming services represented by VAB are signing podcast licensing deals, and the report makes the case for advertisers to buy podcast audiences inside those apps, while measurement standards for streamed video podcasts remain unfinished until at least 2027.