Podcasts Became TV. Ad Budgets Didn't Notice. State of the Screens | A Column by Michael Beach

Editor's Note

State of the Screens is a syndicated column by Michael Beach — author of Screen Wars and one of the sharpest thought leaders and founders in streaming and TV advertising. Michael's writing covers the structural shift in how video advertising is bought, priced, and measured. This piece maps the podcast advertising gap: 40 billion hours of attention, $3 billion in ad revenue, and an infrastructure problem that looks exactly like CTV in 2019.

The big picture: Americans spent 40B hours with podcasts in 2025. That equals Netflix's entire 2024 TV viewing. But podcast ads brought in just $3B, about 1% of internet ad spending.

Why it matters: The attention already moved. The money hasn't. That gap is one of the biggest opportunities in advertising right now.

Note: Netflix is making a major push into podcasts. I am not covering that this week, but expect a deep dive soon.

Let's break it down into 7 big questions:
1) How many people listen to podcasts?
2) How much time do we spend listening to podcasts?
3) How do we listen to podcasts?
4) Which podcast apps are the most popular?
5) What share of podcast time do the most popular shows account for?
6) How large is the podcast advertising market?
7) How many ads run during a podcast?

How many people listen to podcasts?

Quick answer: 115M people every week.

Share of the U.S. population that listens to podcasts weekly (Edison Research):
1) 2015 - 10%
2) 2020 - 24%
3) 2025 - 40%

Interesting: Democrats used to be more likely to listen. Now Republicans are 3 points more likely.

How much time do we spend listening to podcasts?

Daily time with podcasts (eMarketer):
1) 2019 - 11m (↑ 38%)
2) 2020 - 15m (↑ 36%)
3) 2021 - 18m (↑ 20%)
4) 2022 - 21m (↑ 17%)
5) 2023 - 22m (↑ 5%)
6) 2024 - 23m (↑ 5%)
7) 2025 - 25m (↑ 9%)
8) 2026P - 26m (↑ 4%)
9) 2027P - 27m (↑ 4%)
10) 2028P - 27m (↑ 0%)

Hours of podcast consumption (Edison Research):
1) 2015 - 8.8B
2) 2025 - 40.2B (↑ 355%)

How do we listen to podcasts?

Consumption of podcasts (Cumulus Podcast Network):
1) Mix of video and audio - 80%
2) Audio-only - 13%
3) Video-only - 8%

Wow: YouTube grew podcast time on TV screens 75% in one year!

YouTube hours of podcast consumption on a TV:
1) 2024 - 4.8B
2) 2025 - 8.4B (↑ 75%)

Why it matters: A podcast on a TV screen is streaming TV inventory. It gets targeted, measured, and sold like TV, not radio.

Which podcast apps are the most popular?

Share of podcast time (Edison Research):
1) YouTube - 37%
2) Spotify - 23%
3) Apple - 19%
4) Other - 21%

The kicker: The #1 podcast app is a video platform. Apple invented the category and now runs third.

What share of podcast time do the most popular shows account for?

Quick answer: The top 0.0003% of shows account for 35% of the viewership.

Quick math on viewing time for the average podcast:
1) 40.2B hours of viewing
2) 3.2M unique shows
3) 13K hours of viewing for the average show

Wow: The average top-10 show gets 1.4B hours of viewing per year.

This seems crazy: The top 10 podcasts are bigger than Hulu.

Hours of consumption time:
1) Top 10 podcasts (2025) - 14.1B
2) Hulu (2024) - 13.8B

Hours of consumption time:
1) Podcasts (2025) - 40.2B
2) Netflix (2024) - 40.0B

Between the lines: Podcasting is a winner-take-most market. Ten shows deliver Hulu-scale reach. The other 3.2M split the rest.

How large is the podcast advertising market?

Podcast advertising (IAB/PwC):
1) 2016 - $169M (↑ 59%)
2) 2017 - $314M (↑ 86%)
3) 2018 - $479M (↑ 53%)
4) 2019 - $708M (↑ 48%)
5) 2020 - $842M (↑ 19%)
6) 2021 - $1.4B (↑ 72%)
7) 2022 - $1.8B (↑ 26%)
8) 2023 - $1.9B (↑ 5%)
9) 2024 - $2.4B (↑ 26%)
10) 2025 - $2.9B (↑ 18%)

By the numbers: Digital video grew 22% to $137B in 2025. Podcasts grew 18%.

Share of agencies that buy podcast advertising (Advertiser Perceptions):
1) 2016 - 21%
2) 2021 - 45%
3) 2026 - 76%

The tension: 76% of agencies buy podcasts, but the total market is under $3B. Everyone's in; nobody's in big.

Why: Weak identity, measurement, and programmatic tools. It's a plumbing problem, not a demand problem.

How many ads run during a podcast?

Quick answer: Ads are roughly 10% of podcast time. Shorter shows carry a higher share of ad time.

Ad load by episode length (Magellan AI):
1) <15m - 24%
2) 15-30m - 13%
3) 30-60m - 10%
4) >60m - 7%

Ad load:
1) Linear TV - 27%
2) Podcasts - 10%

Share of podcast ads by length:
1) 30s - 40%
2) 60s - 19%
3) 15s - 9%
4) 90s - 6%
5) 120s - 2%
6) Other - 25%

The bottom line

Podcasting in 2026 looks like CTV in 2019: massive attention, tiny spend, missing infrastructure.

What's next: As targeting, measurement, and programmatic pipes get built (and YouTube pulls podcasts into video ad systems), the dollars follow the hours. They always do.

Why Subscribe

Because 40 billion hours of podcast attention generated $3 billion in ad revenue — and the gap between those two numbers is where the next wave of media spend gets built.

Every week, State of the Screens tracks the structural shift in how video advertising is bought, priced, and measured — before the agencies figure out the plumbing. If you buy media, this is where the infrastructure gap gets mapped before the dollars follow the hours. If you sell it, this is where you see the programmatic argument your buyers are about to make. If you allocate marketing capital, this is where CTV 2019 becomes podcasting 2026 before your next upfront.

Subscribe to State of the Screens weekly here on State of Streaming because Michael Beach joins the podcast in August and you do not want to miss it.