Global Ad Trends: Podcast Publishers Expand into Video

Podcasts are becoming culturally and politically influential, but growth in podcast advertising spend remains slow; publishers and platforms are looking to expand beyond audio with a greater focus on creators and video content, as evident in WARC Media’s latest Global Ad Trends report.

Why podcasts matter

Podcasts have a large and diverse audience: they’re popular with Gen Z, and listeners are receptive to advertising. While these factors make them an attractive option for advertisers, there are problems to be overcome, such as scaling ad buys and measuring returns.

Global Ad Trends: Podcast media sets sights on video boom —WARC Media subscribers can read the report in full. 

Key points

• Podcast advertising spend is growing slowly. WARC Media forecasts that global podcast ad spend will exceed $5bn in 2025. But year-on-year growth is slowing: from 13.2% in 2024, to a predicted 7.9% in 2025, and only 6.5% in 2026.

• Global podcast listenership is growing and remains diverse. The total global audience reach of podcasts has increased from 60.6% in 2020 to 66% in 2025. On average, younger cohorts spend more time on podcasts each day than older groups. As of Q2 2024, reach among Gen Z audiences worldwide (68%) exceeded radio by 10 percentage points.

• Podcast publishers are aiming to drive growth through video. Viewers watched over 400 million hours of podcasts per month on YouTube’s TV app in 2024; more than 250 million users have streamed a video podcast on Spotify. Consumption is most prevalent among Gen Z users; Spotify also found a +55% lift in intent for campaigns with an audio and video takeover versus audio-only campaigns.

• The US is the world’s largest podcast advertising market. The US accounts for nearly half (45.9%) of all global podcast ad spend. Recent research by WARC and Audacy found that, while podcast listening accounts for 4.5% of all ad-supported US media consumption, the channel only receives 1.0% of total US ad investment ($2.4bn in 2025).

• Podcasts are becoming more important to political discourse. Donald Trump triumphed in the ‘podcast election’, appearing on podcasts with a total average reach of 23.5 million compared to 6.4 million for those Kamala Harris appeared on. And the shows selected by Trump drove 2-3x better results for brands in areas such as site visits, sign-ups and purchases.

• Podcast audiences tend to be more receptive to ads. Studies have found that two in five (42%) regular listeners skip podcast ads, as they find them intrusive. But others  have found that episodic buys tend to outperform ads dynamically inserted throughout shows across a podcast network. In the case of host-read ads, research has found that a two-minute-plus read, on average, outperforms 60-second or shorter reads by about 20%.

Global Ad Trends: Podcast media sets sights on video boom  – non-subscribers can read a sample report.