by Gavin Gaddis
During Advertising Week Europe, Sounds Profitable’s Business of Podcasting space hosted 16 panels over two days, attracting nearly 450 unique attendees. An important detail Barletta noticed, however, was the recurring trend of attendees showing up because the space was discussing podcasting. Historically, podcasting has stayed siloed. Big announcements occurred at podcast-specific conferences, where companies stayed humble about their achievements. But now, podcasting has entered the mainstream and it's time for the industry to move into events and spaces that draw media decision makers including brand strategists, buyers, agency leads, and more. Barletta says the goal of Sounds Profitable remains consistent: put podcasting in the room where decisions get made, and conversations larger than podcasting happen. It’s time for podcasting to bring presence to the larger advertising space commensurate with a medium that has 55% monthly reach to the U.S. population.
American Public Media and Streamguys have partnered to launch Inform Media Network, a digital audio ad network to support noncommercial public media stations. The newly established network is a private, central marketplace for digital underwriting and sponsorship across podcasting and livestreaming. According to the network’s official site, Inform covers 30+ public media and prestige audio publishers with 55 million+ monthly impressions and over six million unique listeners across its podcast and livestream inventory.
Spotify rolled out video control updates this morning. As of today, Family Plan managers can switch video content off and on for any plan members via subscription settings. Previously limited to users under 13 (or equivalent), it's now available for all plan members. Individual users can now also modify how video is presented in the app, with new toggles allowing users to disable music videos, looping Canvas visuals, and all other video on the platform (e.g., podcasts).
Patreon's 2025 revenue hit $629 million from 47,000+ podcaster accounts and 7.6 million paid podcast memberships. Podcasters also account for some of the platform’s biggest individual earners, such as Joe Budden’s reported $1 million average monthly income in 2025 from the Joe Budden Network’s 70,000+ subscribers.
…as for the rest of the news:
Gretchen Waller joins Bleav as Director of Brand Partnerships.
Hernan Lopez is back with another issue of Streamonomics, this time sharing the top 20 global attention economy companies ranked by enterprise value.
Jackie Lamport, Head of Growth Marketing at Lower Street, has published a framework to help brands read their YouTube data.
A new Audacy Insight post finds women’s lifestyle podcast listeners are a powerful audience, including Nielsen Scarborough research showing they drive higher conversions than average female podcast listeners.
This week’s episode of PodBiz features guest Courtney O’Connor, Director of Podcast Media at Oxford Road.
UK readers, mark your calendars: HARK Live has announced its full speaker lineup for the free event scheduled on April 29 in Manchester.
Research Database Snapshot
What it says: 46% have a high school diploma or less, 48% earn under $50K, and 79% have no children under 18.
What it means: Holdouts are disconnected from the younger, digitally native households that drive organic podcast discovery.
