The risk takers in podcasting

• Ahead of the Jun 26 closing date for this year’s award entries, The Signal Awards has published a new report, Recognizing The Risk Takers: Eleven Podcasters Making Bold Bets; the report features creators from WaitWhat to Psychopedia to Lower Street, each of whom made a bet on experimentation and are sharing what they’ve learned. “The willingness to experiment, it turns out, is its own form of excellence,” the report finds.

• In the UK, Global has launched AdPower - the first self-service ad platform to let you book both mainstream audio and outdoor media. The tool gives access to live and on-demand radio, but not, yet, to Global’s podcasts - they’ll be added later, we’re told.

• In the next version of iOS, Apple Podcasts video will add transcription features that, until now, have been only available in audio podcasts. An Apple spokesperson tells us that from iOS 27 - “Video playback will, for the first time, support read along with transcripts with the ability to search and seek to a specific part of the episode by clicking the transcript text. Chapters are also available for ease of navigation.”

• What is the Podcast Standards Project? How does it differ from AMP, Podcasting 2.0, or any of the other industry groups? Now, there’s an explanation - including a video.

• One of the most successful podcasters in the world, Adam Buxton, is producing a new podcast for Audible, called Successpod. The (very good) video spots have been shared, and you can see them here. The press release excitedly tells us that “the campaign breaks today on paid social and YouTube pre-rolls, DOOH and radio.” (You’d have thought that advertising on podcasts would be a good place for this too, but, what do we know.)

How do people engage with podcast ads?

Paid content

Podcast advertising has long struggled with measurement challenges. Listeners skip, multitask, or tune out, making real impact hard to capture.

In YouGov’s U.S. podcast ads report 2026, we go beyond the skip button to uncover what actually drives effectiveness: how audiences respond to ads, which formats build trust, and what prompts real-world action, from searching to buying.

Based on a survey of 1,300+ U.S. adults, including 800+ podcast listeners, the report reveals how people truly engage with podcast advertising today.

We also explore the rise of video podcasts and how audio versus video consumption shapes engagement, trust, and ad response across key audiences.

Download the full report to learn how podcast ads really perform and what makes them work.

Tips and tricks

• Podsqueeze has launched a free thumbnail maker to produce episode artwork for your show (or, to help you link to an existing episode). We asked it to produce a thumbnail for our most successful branded podcast episode; quite impressively, it gave us something based on our logo.

Podcast News - with Airwave

With Airwave: Curated by Chance is a podcast where creativity meets serendipity. Each episode, filmmaker Neal E. Fischer and art curator Lauren Tagliaferro harness the power of a randomizing algorithm named Chance to generate unique prompts that drive their discussions, inviting listeners to ponder the influence of chance in the creative process.

Tapt Media’s Motive & Method has added a mini-series, Australia’s Killer Secrets, asking are some of Australia’s most notorious unsolved murders and disappearances connected? The show will take listeners and viewers inside a landmark parliamentary inquiry, examining dozens of unsolved cases across New South Wales, Australia.

Remember MTV Spring Break, low-rise jeans, and the glory and cringe of Y2K culture? The Millennial Moodboard is a new podcast from comedians Jasmine Ellis, Valerie Tosi, and Pallavi Gunalan that takes a funny, research-driven look back at the trends, scandals, and pop culture moments that defined the millennial generation.