IAB Spain this week published its Estudio de Audio Digital 2026, a comprehensive survey of how Spanish internet users engage with streaming music, podcasts, radio, audiobooks, and AI-generated audio press - and what advertising professionals intend to do about it.

The report, released on June 9, 2026, was produced by IAB Spain's Digital Audio Subcommission in collaboration with research firm Nethodology. It combines two methodologies: a digital research component tracking online publications, forums, blogs, and social conversations from 2025 through April 2026 using tools including Brandwatch, Google Trends, and Google Ads; and an online survey conducted in May 2026 among 1,000 members of the Spanish general population aged 16 and above, with quota controls applied across gender, age bracket, and Nielsen geographic zones. A parallel sample of 55 advertising sector professionals drawn from IAB Spain's own database also completed the survey. The general population panel was provided by Netquest.

Online audio consumption stabilises at 58%

According to IAB Spain, 58% of surveyed internet users said they had listened to audio online at some point during the year preceding the May 2026 fieldwork. That figure is slightly lower than the 61% recorded in the two editions that preceded the data gap years of 2022, 2023, and 2024, but substantially higher than the 43% reported in 2016. The ten-year trajectory - from 43% in 2016 to 50% in 2017, a dip to 44% in 2018, then a steady climb to 57% in 2019, 60% in 2020, and 61% in 2021 - suggests the Spanish market crossed a structural adoption threshold around the pandemic period and has since held above the majority mark.

Consumption skews toward younger cohorts and men. The 26-39 age bracket shows the highest penetration at 70%, and men reach 61% compared to an unspecified female rate. The study notes these gaps are statistically significant. The sample itself was evenly split by gender at 50/50, with 35% falling in the 40-55 age range, 31% aged over 55, 22% in the 26-39 bracket, and 12% between 16 and 25. More than half - 52% - hold university-level qualifications, 71% are in employment, and 84% use the internet daily. The dominant employment sector is services.

When the study asks respondents what they understand by the concept of "digital audio," the answers cluster around formats (MP3, WAV, podcast) at 16%, technical nature (binary code, digital signal) at 16%, transmission channel (internet) at 16%, hardware device playback at 15%, and comparison to analogue media at 9%. That spread suggests widespread but diffuse awareness - the term triggers format-level associations rather than a single platform or service.

All six formats grow since 2023

According to IAB Spain, 82% of survey respondents said they use at least one digital audio format, even if only occasionally. The study defines six discrete formats: streaming online radio (live), time-shifted online radio (catch-up), podcast, digital music, audiobooks, and audioprensa - AI-generated audio derived from transcribing written press content.

Digital music remains the most consumed format, with 80% of respondents reporting use at some frequency. That represents a 3-percentage-point increase over the IAB Spain 2023 audio study. Streaming online radio follows at 63%, up 2 points. Podcast reaches 61%, up 7 points - the second-largest absolute gain among the six. Catch-up radio sits at 38%, up 3 points. Audiobooks reach 28%, recording the largest percentage-point gain at 9 points over the same comparison period. Audioprensa, the newest category, stands at 16%, up 8 points. The uniform direction of change across all six formats is notable: none regressed.

Daily use tells a slightly different story. Digital music commands the most intense habitual engagement, with 28% of those familiar with the format listening daily and 31% doing so several times per week. Streaming radio is the second-most daily format. For podcasts and catch-up radio, occasional consumption dominates: approximately one in three users of each format describes their engagement as occasional. That positioning has practical implications for advertisers evaluating frequency and reach calculations.

Podcast interest rises 14% in Google searches year-to-date

The digital research component of the study tracks Google Trends data from May 2021 through May 2026 across three terms: podcast, online radio, and audiobook. According to IAB Spain, podcast search interest grew 14% year-to-date in 2026 versus the equivalent 2025 period. Audiobook interest rose 19% over the same comparison. Online radio, by contrast, fell 11%. These directional signals align with the survey consumption data: the formats gaining share in active search are the same ones recording the largest user-base growth.

In the digital visibility analysis - based on 152,227 social and digital media mentions collected via Brandwatch from 2025 through the first months of 2026 - podcast dominates the conversation with 92% of all format mentions. Audiobook, radio online, digital music, and audioprensa each account for 3% or less. The concentration is striking. IAB Spain notes that digital music's smaller share of online conversation reflects a pattern in which that format becomes inseparable from the platforms - Spotify, YouTube - that carry it, rather than being discussed as a standalone category.

IAB Spain also cites the Digital News Report 2024 finding that Spain is a European leader in podcast and audiobook consumption, a structural positioning that precedes the current data and provides context for why the domestic numbers diverge from more modest European averages.

YouTube and Spotify tie at 62% platform share

Among the 542 respondents who access audio through applications, YouTube and Spotify each reach 62% - effectively tied for first place. Apple Music follows at 27%, Amazon Music at 24%, and radio station-specific apps at 21%. Ivoox is used by 10%, Audible by 8%, Apple Music (listed separately in the data) at 7%, Podimo at 5%, and others accounting for 14%.

The age breakdown is sharp. Among 16-25-year-olds, YouTube reaches 72% and Spotify 69%. Among those over 55, radio-specific apps reach 33% - 12 points higher than the average - reflecting loyalty to particular stations rather than generalist streaming platforms. According to IAB Spain, men use radio station apps at a higher rate than women across all age bands, a pattern consistent with the broader gender differences observed in radio consumption.

How and when audio fits into daily routines

According to IAB Spain, 73% of audio listeners consume content while simultaneously doing something else. Women show a slightly higher rate at 78%. Older listeners are more likely to listen in isolation: 38% of those over 55 say they listen exclusively, compared to 24% of 16-25-year-olds. The leading use reason across all formats is the ability to listen at any moment, cited by 52% of respondents. Entertainment follows at 43%, multitasking at 40%, and information acquisition at 30%. Personalisation of content is cited by 17%.

By context, household chores lead at 54%, followed by commuting and travel at 41%, rest at 40%, exercise or walking at 39%, work or study at 28%, and browsing the internet at 24%. Podcast listeners index consistently higher on every usage moment than the average across all formats - 2 to 3 percentage points above mean in each category - suggesting the format attracts a more engaged and deliberate listening posture.

Subscription penetration is broad but predominantly free-tier. According to IAB Spain, 66% of listeners subscribe to at least one audio platform. Within that group, 42% hold only a free subscription, 17% maintain both paid and free accounts, and 7% pay exclusively. That leaves 35% with no subscription at all. Paid subscriptions concentrate among younger users: 37% of 16-25-year-olds and 30% of 26-39-year-olds report paid access. The figures suggest a large addressable audience for advertising-supported audio - and a ceiling on direct subscription revenue for many platforms.

The podcast section: duration preferences and the video layer

Among the 605 podcast listeners in the sample, 48% prefer episode lengths between 20 and 45 minutes. A further 22% prefer episodes under 20 minutes, 10% prefer longer than 45 minutes, and 17% are indifferent. Age strongly moderates this preference. Among 16-25-year-olds, 23% prefer episodes over 45 minutes - the highest of any age cohort. Among those over 55, only 4% want long episodes, while 24% prefer episodes under 20 minutes. The age-duration inversion is consistent enough to function as a planning variable for producers targeting specific demographic segments.

The video podcast dimension of the study warrants particular attention for advertising professionals. According to IAB Spain, 69% of podcast listeners use the video format when it is available. That figure reaches 81% among 16-25-year-olds. The reasons cited for choosing video centre on seeing expressions and reactions (31%), making the content more dynamic (31%), and complementing the conversation (31%). These motivations are associated with engagement intensity rather than passive consumption.

The study defines podcast as "both an audio and video online on-demand format that listeners can download for later listening or consume online" - a definition that formally encompasses the video podcast phenomenon rather than treating it as a separate category. This framing matters for measurement: organisations counting only audio downloads will undercount total podcast consumption as video consumption through YouTube grows.

Advertising recall, brand search, and purchase

According to IAB Spain, 67% of audio users remember having heard advertising while consuming online audio. Among men that figure reaches 71%; among 16-25-year-olds it reaches 72%. Brand-level recall is shallower: of the 601 respondents asked whether they remember specific advertised brands, 47% say they recall some brands, 31% recall none, 17% are uncertain, and only 4% recall many or all. That translates to roughly one in three having any form of brand memory from audio exposure.

The funnel narrows further downstream. Among the 216 respondents who recall at least some brands, 54% report having searched for the brand online (combining "all", "many", and "some" responses). Of those, 47% report having made a purchase - again aggregating across frequency categories. The combined chain from audio exposure to brand recall, to search, to purchase represents a small but non-trivial proportion of the total listener population, and the data point matters for marketers trying to quantify audio's contribution to lower-funnel outcomes.

Professionals: 84% include audio in media plans

The professional sample in the study - 55 respondents drawn from IAB Spain's database, with field work conducted simultaneously with the consumer survey in May 2026 - provides a supply-side view of the market. The professional sample comprises 43% media agencies, 15% advertisers, 13% ad networks, 7% consultancies, and 22% other organisation types. By seniority, 30% are director or manager level, 50% are manager or head level, and 20% are technical staff.

According to IAB Spain, 84% of professionals include digital audio in their media mix. The primary reason cited is fit with real consumption moments (72%), followed by the ability to reach a specific target when audio is the only available channel (54%), the format's attention-generating properties (52%), and integration as one medium among others (37%).

Among the 84% who include audio, two in three assign it a complementary rather than primary role. Only 11% treat it as a principal channel, while 22% characterise it as emerging. Three in four professionals believe audio advertising investment will grow - a forward-looking consensus that sits against a backdrop of globally rising podcast ad budgets tracked by PPC Land.

In terms of formats used, the cuña (audio spot) dominates professional usage at 85%, followed by the pre-roll at 57%. These two traditional insertion formats significantly outpace more integrated options: branded podcast at 30%, mentions and micro-formats at 28%, sponsorship at 26%, mid-roll at 24%, post-roll at 20%, and product placement at 11%. The gap between spot-based and native formats is wide, suggesting the market has not yet made a broad shift toward the host-read, integration-heavy buying patterns that characterise mature podcast advertising markets in the United States.

Why this matters for the marketing community

The IAB Spain study arrives at a moment of structural acceleration in the global podcast advertising market. Global podcast ad spend reached $408 million in December 2025, the highest single month in Magellan AI's dataset, while podcast advertising in Q4 2025 grew 32% year-over-year. Spotify expanded automated podcast buying to Spain and 11 other markets in July 2025, providing programmatic access to podcast inventory for the first time. Nielsen integrated Triton Digital's IAB-certified podcast data into its planning tools in April 2026, a development designed to close the gap between audio's share of consumer attention and its share of advertising budgets.

IAB Spain's 2026 digital roadmap, published in January 2026, had already flagged audio as a growth vector, with the podcast advertising opportunity expanding alongside improvements in production quality and measurement infrastructure. The audio study now provides quantitative grounding for that assessment: a 61% podcast user penetration rate in Spain, all six digital audio formats growing simultaneously, and professionals showing both current adoption and forward-looking confidence.

The persistent dominance of the cuña and pre-roll in professional formats - despite a consumer landscape where 69% of podcast users choose video when available - also points to a planning gap. If nearly two-thirds of podcast listeners are watching rather than just listening, advertising formats designed exclusively for audio may be leaving engagement potential on the table. Triton Digital's expansion of Omny Studio to support video podcasting and Spotify's infrastructure developments have begun addressing this at the platform level. The IAB Spain data suggests Spanish media professionals are still catching up on the consumer side.

The 22-percentage-point structural gap between consumer audio engagement (roughly 30% of media time) and advertiser investment that PPC Land has tracked in the global audio advertising market has a Spanish corollary in this data. Spain's digital advertising market closed 2025 at 6,211.2 million euros, growing 11.2% according to IAB Spain's investment study published in February 2026. Audio's contribution to that total is not separately disclosed, but the study's finding that three in four advertising professionals expect investment to increase implies the category has room to move proportionally.

Timeline

Summary

Who: IAB Spain's Digital Audio Subcommission, in collaboration with research firm Nethodology, conducted the study. The consumer sample comprised 1,000 Spanish internet users aged 16 and over; the professional sample included 55 advertising sector respondents from IAB Spain's database.

What: The Estudio de Audio Digital 2026 measures online audio consumption across six formats - streaming radio, catch-up radio, podcast, digital music, audiobooks, and audioprensa - alongside advertising recall and professional investment intentions. Key findings include 58% general online audio penetration, 80% digital music usage, 61% podcast usage, 67% advertising recall, 84% of professionals including audio in media plans, and a dominant role for cunas and pre-rolls as advertising formats.

When: The study was published on June 9, 2026. Consumer and professional fieldwork was conducted in May 2026. The digital research component covers 2025 through April 2026.

Where: The study covers Spain, with quota controls applied across nine Nielsen geographic zones including Madrid, Barcelona, the South, the Northeast, the Levante coast, and the Canary Islands.

Why: IAB Spain publishes the study periodically to provide the Spanish advertising industry with a current, quantified picture of digital audio reach, consumption habits, platform distribution, advertising recall, and professional investment patterns - enabling media planners, agencies, and advertisers to make budget allocation decisions grounded in measured Spanish audience behaviour.