New Apple Podcasts HLS Partners, PME To Return to SXSW in 2027, & More

Author

Gavin Gaddis
March 16th, 2026

by Gavin Gaddis and Emily Ely

During Podcast Movement Evolution at SXSW, Apple Podcasts announced a number of new podcast hosting partners who will support the upcoming HLS video update. The new hosts include Transistor, Audiomeans, PodBean, Captivate, RSS.com, and Podigee. They join the previously announced group of Acast, Omny Studio, ART19, and Simplecast. Apple Podcasts also announced it has surpassed 12 million episodes with automatically-generated chapters since launching the feature in November 2025. Podnews also notes Apple Podcasts’ keynote presentation at Evolutions was the industry giant’s first ever official appearance at a North American podcast conference.

Podcast Movement announced on stage at SXSW that Evolutions will return to the Austin, TX based festival in 2027, following its strong debut as a fully integrated event. The three-day gathering brought together creators, platforms, advertisers, networks, and major talent for programming that reflected podcasting's growing role in the broader entertainment and creator landscapes. The weekend included a live Broken Record recording with Maya Hawke, keynote presentations from Steve McLendon, Product Lead for YouTube’s podcasting division on reaching one billion monthly active podcast viewers and Apple Podcast’s executives Stacey Goers and Jake Shapiro to provide deeper insights into Apple’s recently announced video podcast experience powered by HLS, as well as live music from Andy Grammer and a conversation with Penn Badgley during Companion Presents: In Good Company. The weekend closed with the inaugural Independent Podcaster and Creator Awards (Indie PaC), presented by Oxford Road and hosted by Killer Mike. Winners included creators such as Steven Bartlett (The Diary of a CEO), Tim Ferriss (The Tim Ferriss Show), and Hala Taha (Young and Profiting).

Tubefilter’s Sam Gutelle reports on a new feature from YouTube. The new Top Podcasts Lineup functions as the podcasting equivalent of YouTube Select, which sets aside premium ad space on some of YouTube’s best-performing channels to be bundled together in category-specific packages that serve the needs of YouTube’s wide-ranging ad partners. Top Podcasts is initially focused on five verticals: Sports, News, Comedy, True Crime, and Society & Culture. In each of these categories, advertisers will have the ability to claim space adjacent to a variety of top performing shows.

The new partnership makes full multi-platform attribution free for all advertisers and agencies running campaigns across the YMH Studios network. As of the announcement, attribution coverage for audio (RSS and Megaphone), Spotify streaming, and YouTube video is included in all campaigns without minimum spend, category restrictions, or additional negotiations required. By covering attribution costs, YMH Studios addresses a persistent friction point in podcast advertising. Alan Abdine, YMH Studios Head of Ad Revenue & Partnerships, said attribution costs have become a line-item for too many deals, so YMH decided to get rid of them. Magellan AI GM of Measurement Jim Ballas noted both advertisers and publishers benefit from performance measurement built from directly-observable data, rather than modeling on its own.

Ad Results Media looks at the Q1 2026 Performance Benchmark Report from Podscribe, presenting analysis built from over 97,000 campaigns and 30 billion impressions. Key findings include 79% of episodic campaigns now include a simulcast video component. Within those simulcast impressions, YouTube makes up nearly two-thirds of all video podcast impressions measured by Podscribe. Location factors in as well, with podcasting over-indexing in states like Massachusetts, California, New York, and Oregon. Streaming audio, by comparison, performs well in Texas, Florida, Illinois, and Louisiana. The spacing of the two audiences suggests podcasting and streaming audio have complementary reach. National advertisers should combine streaming audio and podcasts: together they reach 85% of the U.S. adult population with 80% unique reach between the two.

…as for the rest of the news: