¶ Intro / Opening
This is the download from Sounds Profitable, your daily source for the essential news in the business of podcasting. I'm Gavin Gaddis.
¶ Netflix Video Podcast Strategy and Rankings
Here's what you need to know for today, Thursday, November 6th. First up, Netflix approaches SiriusXM for video podcast licensing. Looks like it's just a Netflix kind of week for news. According to an insider source speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, in addition to the already signed Spotify deal and possible iHeartMedia video podcast licensing deal,
Netflix is also looking into licensing SiriusXM video podcasts. No deal has been reached. SiriusXM has invested heavily in building their YouTube presence for video podcasting. So taking some of their biggest shows and shunting them onto a separate paid platform exclusively would be an unexpected choice, for sure. Next up, Podcast Industry Rankings, October 2025.
The new Podscribe monthly industry rankings find the top three shows by listenership held strong, with The Daily, Crime Junkie, and The Joe Rogan Experience sticking where they were in September. For audio reads, the top three publishers were Spotify, SiriusXM Media, and iHeartMedia. Midas Touch decreased 20% in monthly downloads and video views month over month, but still took the top spot with 260.4 million.
¶ Amazon DSP, iHeartMedia, and AI's Ad Impact
Next up, Amazon Inc.'s iHeartMedia deal for programmatic ads, expanding push into audio. This one shows the expanded deal for iHeartMedia, who has been working with Amazon for quite some time on advertising. The new Amazon DSP deal. has users access both streaming music and live stream radio channels on the iHeart network, with plans to add iHeart podcasts and broadcast radio station inventory next year.
which is another notch in Amazon DSP's bill, along with the recent Spotify deal. On the video side, Netflix is selling through Amazon DSP, while also making the argument that their new metric monthly active viewers... which are subscribers who have watched at least a minute of ads per month, which is then multiplied by the average size of a household to account for living room co-viewing, makes it a must-have and a healthy marketing mix.
Finally, brands set to cut open web display spend 30% in response to AI search. Forrester analyst predicts that next year advertisers will spend 30% less on open web advertising. shifting that spend to connected TV and paid social, a move motivated by the rise of AI search summaries, which have caused a noticeable uptick in zero-click searches. Jonathan Geller, co-founder of the agency Lower Cross, tells Digiday he sees open web display declining as a category.
After all, in a world where fields like podcasting, social, and video are all measurable without, quote, tons of modeling, end quote, open web display has started to make less and less sense.
¶ Podcast Industry News and Events
As for the rest of the news, AudioStack has a free webinar coming up on Tuesday, November 18th at 3.30 p.m. GMT, focusing on how publishers and broadcasters are using AI audio to drive advertising impact. Co-host has launched a new listener metric, new listener metric itself being the metric. As the name implies, it measures the number of unique listeners that tune into a podcast for the first time, allowing podcasters to track audience growth.
beyond divining the tea leaves of downloads and unique listener numbers. The Los Angeles Tribune Podcast Network produced show The Art of Rebounding, hosted by former Harlem Globetrotter Harold Lefty Williams. with exclusive sales by Mission Media, he is releasing a two-part tell-all special interview with Olympic gold medalist Spencer Haywood. And finally, Podcast RD, a directory of Dominican podcasts.
has announced an annual awards ceremony they're starting this year called the Podcast RD Awards. The 2025 edition will be live-streamed on Tuesday, the 11th, in commemoration of Dominican Podcast Day. That'll do it for today's episode. You can find links to every single article I talk about today and in general in the download by clicking the link in today's show notes to go to today's episode post.
on soundsprofitable.com. Also on the front page of soundsprofitable.com, you can sign up for the newsletter version of the download and get the link sent to you every afternoon. The download is written and produced by myself, Brian Barletta, and Tom Webster. For Sounds Profitable, I'm Gavin Gaddis, and I'll see you tomorrow morning for the download recap.