Resetting Podcasting's Thermostat, Ad Spend Increase, & More

Today in the business of podcasting:

• Tom Webster says AI is the average machine, so hand it the routine podcasting work like show notes, transcripts and ad ops, and protect the human work of host-read ads and the show itself.
• WARC forecasts global ad spend will grow 11.9% to $1.34 trillion in 2026, with social, search and retail media taking 66.4% of spend and growth slowing to 8.4% in 2027.
• A new tool called Pod Is Life combines podcast charts from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Castbox and Pocket Casts into one ranking, though the scores seem to reflect the biggest shows in each country.
• A federal appeals court has given the FCC until noon Friday to decide whether to uphold its lowest unit rate policy for political ads, ahead of the Nov. 3 election.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.