Acast’s Podcast Pulse highlights podcast benefits

• Acast has released Podcast Pulse 2025, its second set of data into global podcast listeners, for the brands who wish to reach them. The report contains useful data for all of podcasting, and useful phrases to help explain our medium: “Podcasts are sought, not served” is a favourite of ours. Audio remains the main consumption channel for podcasts, the company says, even though more people use video podcasts than audio ones; and more people consume the ads in podcasts than on other media, including streaming music, YouTube and radio.

• We’ve discovered that in MacOS 26 (released in mid September) the Apple Podcasts app got a brand new feature: the same beautiful “read-along” transcript experience that’s existed for a while for iPhone and iPad. The company supports thirteen languages for transcripts: they’re automatically generated, or you can supply your own. We’ve updated our full FAQ.

• Everyone agrees that host-read ads work best on podcasts: but they’re hard to review for tone or accuracy without human beings listening to every ad to compare them to the script or to talking-points. One of the largest podcast ad platforms, RedCircle has launched Mic Check, an AI tool to give an instant quality-check for host-read ads, before the ad ever airs. The company calls it a tool for “scaling authenticity”.

• Bloomberg report that Netflix is in talks with iHeartMedia to license its video podcasts for the platform. Netflix requires the shows to be exclusive, and pulled from YouTube.

• Podcast ad spend has risen by 26% year-on-year, according to Magellan AI’s Quarterly Benchmark Report. The number of brands using podcasting rose by 41% quarter-on-quarter, although average adload also rose as well. They’ll present a webinar on Nov 18 at 12pm ET.

• The Age of Audio movie about podcasting has a new website - and your chance to see the film before anyone else. The first twenty people to sign up for the mailing list will be able to see the movie right now.

• The New York Times carries an article about podcasters using voice clones, which it calls a “double-edged sword”.

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Podcast News

New from ABC Audio and 20/20, The Hand in the Window launches today. The show unravels the case of a kidnapped woman in Ohio that leads investigators down a harrowing path to a serial killer. It’s the latest from the team that brought you Devil in the Desert and Bad Rap.

The Laurel Gary & Mark Classic Conversations Podcast is brand new from the long-term Brisbane 4KQ breakfast hosts. After thirty years, the team did some amazing interviews with some of the biggest stars of music; and now that 4KQ is no more, they’ve found the tapes for podcast use instead.

Marking 250 years since her birth, Jane Austen’s Paper Trail is a series from The Conversation taking you on a journey through Jane Austen’s life and times with the help of the UK’s top Austen experts. Over six episodes, one focused on each novel, you’ll visit a scandal-filled bun shop in Bath, go for a windswept walk along the sea shore at Lyme Regis and eavesdrop at a glittering Regency ball to find out more about the woman behind the novels. This is Austen as you’ve never known her before.

What makes yachting and travel so irresistible? Below Deck’s Chief Stew Daisy Kelliher and former charter guest and world traveling director Marc MacNamara both co-host Yacht Mess - unpacking the wildest, most cringeworthy, yet somehow fascinating people and events that make you shake your head and say, “Did that really just happen?” Whether it’s a charter gone completely wrong, a vacation that turned into a nightmare, or the hot viral story, they have it all — and will laugh through the madness with you. It launched last week.

Have You Frozen Your Eggs Yet? is a podcast about being a woman, the annoying questions they are asked and surviving ALL the expectations that are placed on them. It’s brand new today, and the first two episodes discuss the pressure in your 30s to make a choice about having children, indecision, not meeting the right partner, mentioning your family desires on dating apps, and trying to have babies in your late 30s and 40s. And a tortoise.

Cultural heritage doesn’t keep itself alive, it’s carried on by people who refuse to let it fade. In the new season two of Getty Museum’s ReCurrent, Jaime Roque explores how culture builds community—how a camera passed from mentor to student, a long-lost record, or a familiar icon screen printed onto a jersey can bind people across time. ReCurrent shows how cultural heritage keeps us close, while making room for who we’re becoming.