Who’s flying this thing: publishers, or ad-tech?

• “Should a publisher’s commercial decisions be honored by the technology they pay for?” Flightpath is shipping a tool today called Automation Playbooks, a new tool to combat what it calls unreliable ad delivery from podcast ad-tech partners. The tool logs in regularly to check all campaigns against delivery, and to make changes to live orders. The release quotes one frustrated Head of Revenue at a podcast network: “Being asked to re-flight thousands of orders by hand is not a viable solution to a problem we did not create.”

  • Flightpath has also published an open letter from its co-founders. Titled “We are not going to sit this one out”, the piece highlights recent changes by one “major technology platform”, which has “turned a major upgrade of their systems into a five alarm fire for their publishers.” Some, the company says, are at risk of losing as much as 50% of revenue on currently running orders, and the post promises that Flightpath will speak up and lend full support to affected publishers.
  • You can contact Flightpath directly; but to maintain confidentiality, you can also share your story and experiences through us: editor@podnews.net. We would suggest that the industry isn’t well served by sitting on our hands and trying not to rock the boat. If we’re being given a rough sea, then it’s all hands on deck.

• YouTube has added more explanation about the change to “views” and “engaged views”. An “auto-play” on the homepage (when you hover over a video) will now be counted as a view if it starts playing - and an “engaged view” if it keeps playing “for some amount of seconds”. (For us to note - there’s no audio playing when this happens. It it works with your eyes closed…)

  • Additionally, YouTube’s Rene Ritchie adds: “I’ve heard some people say it previously took 30 seconds for a view to be counted. And that’s simply not the case. YouTube doesn’t specify exactly how many seconds, because it can vary across surfaces. YouTube also doesn’t want anyone focusing on gaming the metric: just making the most satisfying experience possible for viewers.” YouTube were a participant in the AMP Accords, which “with no dissenting votes” defined a play as “30 seconds of content played”. So… wtf?

• “The previous definition of a view will now be called an 'engaged view’”, says YouTube in its announcement. But even for long-form videos, these numbers are actually not the same. You can compare both the existing “views” and “engaged views” numbers in YouTube Studio - and when we did that for our tiny YouTube channel, the numbers were different. Michael Paretsky from Podstock analyzed 300,000 YouTube podcast episodes to discover that “engaged views” is 7% lower than the existing “view” count; and for some shows, there was much more of a significant difference. “For some shows, this change will be a rounding error. For others, it could be a major commercial event,” he said.

• Good news from Ireland, where podcast advertising is up 33% year-on-year. Magellan AI released an H1 2026 Ireland Podcast Advertising Benchmark Report. Ad load is 5.71%, much the same as Australia; the US is 8.75%.

• Returning to our top story: and Podnews will call the company out by name: it’s Megaphone. Yesterday, we covered issues that some publishers have had with Megaphone: bugs and breaking changes without documentation that have left publishers scrambling to catch issues. Today, we’ve evidence that competitive separation - which is now unilaterally enforced by Megaphone - means for some niche shows, different ads are fighting with themselves to be heard (or, fighting with network ads sold by Spotify). For example - if you’re a financial podcast, and you have two financial services advertisers, these new rules mean they’ll not be allowed in the same ad break, irrespective of what you want as a publisher. However, a workaround to change one advertiser’s category doesn’t work, because, says Megaphone support, “there is an active bug where existing campaigns continue to carry their previously set advertiser category”. (This isn’t documented).

• Spotify’s “skip ahead” ad-skipping button is following the wrong strategy, says Hal Rood from Strategic Solutions Research. From The Podcast Study, he highlights data showing that listeners follow creators, not platforms. “Podcasters: your listeners aren’t married to Spotify. They’re married to you. That’s leverage — use it.” he tells Podnews.

  • The data also suggests that the majority of listeners wouldn’t even mind unskippable ads. (What, like this?)

• Realm has added six new shows to its slate. The shows will “bring a distinct mix of investigative deep-dives, comedic banter, and atmospheric storytelling” to the network.

Do Podnews a favour: please send good, positive news for us to cover tomorrow. Thanks.

People news

• Gretta Cohn has left Pushkin Industries, according to LinkedIn. She had been CEO from Sep 2023.
• Tom Miceli has joined Goalhanger as Head of IP Development. He previously worked for WME, and will lead Goalhanger’s IP development and licensing strategy, “identifying opportunities across its existing shows and development pipeline and turning them into compelling television and film propositions for UK and international markets.”

Tips and tricks - with Podcast Movement NYC

• Libsyn posted How to Promote a Podcast in 2026: Practical Tactics That Drive Discovery

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