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- Dec 25: In Germany, Hypecast - which makes software for corporate podcasts - looked back at its year, noting in an email that the company started 2025 saying "we will have to be laser-focused to not get distracted from all the things happening around us" - advice perhaps we could all gain from for next year. The company opened a podcast studio in Berlin in 2025, will expand to video next year, and gave us the present nobody else did: a decent picture for the top of today's newsletter! Fröhliche Weihnachten!
- Dec 24: Deloitte suggests that global ad revenue for "podcasts and vodcasts" will reach $5bn in 2026, up 20% year-on-year. The report suggests that consumers will also gravitate towards video - suggesting that users who watch vodcasts consume 1.5x more content than those who just listen to podcasts. The benefit of "something for your ears when your eyes are busy" is perhaps a disadvantage for advertisers - 44% of vodcast watchers say they don't multitask when watching, compared with 29% of podcast listeners. The report came out last month, but was reported again yesterday.
- Dec 23: The iHeartRadio app in the US is to support video podcasts in early 2026, the company has announced. "Creators will be able to upload their podcast episodes, including full-length video versions, through their standard RSS feeds for seamless distribution in iHeartRadio," the company says. This is properly open podcasting: video won't need to be hosted on iHeart itself. We've asked for technical details.
- Dec 22: Bloomberg's Ashley Carman reports a new number from YouTube's Steve McLendon, in a paid article: People watched 700 million hours of YouTube Podcasts on TV in October. It's claimed that this is "nearly double the amount of time a year ago", and it's "the new late-night TV". (In YouTube, a podcast is called a podcast if it's marked as such by the creator).
- Dec 19: Senior executives from the biggest companies in podcasting give their highlights of 2025, and their predictions for the year to come, in a special episode of the Podnews Weekly Review, published today.
Data credits: Podnews newsletter