Is Audio More Effective than Video for Advertisers?
Video podcasts are everywhere, and YouTube now dominates podcast reach (not necessarily listening time but discoverability).
But a recent Wall Street Journal piece adds an important layer to the conversation about advertising performance.
New research cited in the article suggests host read podcast ads can drive purchases more effectively in audio only environments than on YouTube.
That does not make video a mistake; it highlights how attention and listener mindset change depending on the platform.
Audio tends to be more intimate and immersive, while video introduces more visual competition for attention.
For brands, the opportunity is not choosing sides but understanding when audio does the heavy lifting and when video expands the story.
Read This if You Frequently Guest on Podcasts
Part of what I’ve been doing the last 25+ years is media training. Big executives, professional and Olympic athletes, and countless politicians at ALL levels.
That series of interviews Susie Wiles (Trump Chief of Staff) did recently… absolute case study in mistakes. Wrote a blog post capturing and explaining them.
The approach to long-form media interviews is the same with podcast interviews… you gotta:
Have a plan
Understand the media outlet and what THEY think the narrative(s) is/are
Understand the audience you’re targeting and what you want them do (not just think but do)
Know how to do the interview. Being authentic doesn’t mean you don’t have a plan or structure or intent. It means not over scripting. I studied comedy improv a long time ago and my biggest takeaway was that while the lines might be ad lib the overall structure was quite familiar or even rehearsed
If You Use AI to Prep Your Podcast Episode
Generative AI tools are now a standard part of podcast research, used for background, summaries, and even full scripts.
But recent analysis by Vince Nero, writing for BuzzStream, shows that most major news publishers are actively restricting how AI systems access their content.
His review of the robots.txt files of the top 100 U.S. and U.K. news sites found that 79% block at least one AI training bot, and 71% block at least one AI retrieval or live-search bot.
Some publishers block training but allow retrieval, others block indexing, and a minority block everything, creating a fragmented access landscape.
The problem isn’t that AI can’t read the news, it’s that creators can’t see which news it was allowed to read.
When AI produces confident summaries, podcasters have no visibility into whether key outlets were excluded, outdated, or inferred around.
AI remains a powerful starting point, but accuracy still depends on human verification and direct engagement with primary reporting.
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Listening Tips
New year and you might be looking for some new podcast ideas. Greg Wasserman has assembled some of the best he’s found through 2025 in this LinkedIn post
From the Big Fancy Networks
Triton Digital’s November 2025 US Podcast Ranker once again puts the iHeart Audience Network firmly in first place with 66.5 million average weekly downloads, far ahead of Audacy at 13.7 million and Audioboom at 11.8 million, reinforcing iHeart’s dominance at the network level. At the show level in the US, Stuff You Should Know led overall downloads, followed by The Charlie Kirk Show and 48 Hours, highlighting the continued strength of legacy brands and talk-driven formats.
In Canada, CBC / Radio-Canada held the top sales network position with 2.2 million average weekly downloads, more than double Audioboom’s #2 showing, while titles from CBC (which is funded by Canadian taxpayers) also swept the top podcast charts across English-language categories.
It’s 2026
This newsletter is distributed globally so for some readers it IS already 2026. Happiest of New Year’s. I hope it’s off to a grand start for you.
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