Podcasting has finally become profitable, but question marks remain

Throughout 2023 and into 2024, you might have thought the sky was falling for podcasting. Layoffs and show cancellations had many in the industry wondering if there would be any financial future for the format. Even before MIDiA’s global podcast forecasts put those concerns to rest, we had a hunch that podcast companies were just rightsizing, reining in the digital glut of the pandemic era not in a panic but in a strategic effort to finally achieve profitability.

With full-year 2024 financials from the biggest players in podcasting coming out at the end of February, that rightsizing strategy appears to have paid off. There may still be some fears to allay when it comes to the health of advertising and what consequences that has for podcast creators in the next few years, but for now, podcast companies have reason to celebrate in 2025. The question is whether video and the creator economy can propel podcasting to even greater heights this year. 

According to Spotify’s Q4 2024 financials, for the first time ever, the company achieved a full year of profitability thanks in part to its initially loss leading podcast exclusivity strategy. Swedish podcast hosting and monetisation company Acast also saw its first year of profitability, driven largely by growth in North America as well as late 2024 pushes into video monetisation, according to Acast’s Q4 2024 financials. Even iHeartMedia’s podcast revenue was up 10% year-over-year.

These results hardly suggest a podcast industry in turmoil, especially when YouTube is now boasting 1 billion monthly podcast users, according to the official YouTube blog. “Podcasts with video… meet audiences where they are”, says YouTube’s Tim Katz, while Transistor’s Justin Jackson thinks that the growth of video podcasts has less to do with the video format itself and more to do with the ubiquity of YouTube as a platform. Both are right, but it is also the case that companies like Spotify and Acast seem to have benefitted tremendously from the growth of podcasts on YouTube.

YouTube has helped to fundamentally change where consumers find podcasts and how they experience podcasts, but perhaps more importantly, YouTube has scaled podcasting globally in a way that most other platforms could never do. That, coupled with cost-cutting business decisions, has helped major podcast companies grow in 2024. But where does that leave creators and what does that mean for the power of video to continue accelerating podcasting’s growth in 2025?

Unlike the music industry, where the value gap diminishes the royalties that music creators see from YouTube consumption relative to music streaming consumption, podcast creators may actually benefit from opening up an additional advertising revenue stream through YouTube consumption. Discoverability also increases with the recommendations that drive YouTube’s content ecosystem. Presumably, the more profit that podcast companies are making, the more risk they are willing to take on creators and the more investment they may be willing to make in content development and creator programs.

That, in turn, can help spur more innovation in podcasting. However, given the fact that a video platform is largely responsible for helping to bring podcasting to the masses, much of this innovation will likely be dependent upon the video format. Spotify and Acast have both made it clear that video is a big priority for 2025, and in the short-term, that additional means of monetisation should help to spur even more growth. Right now, that growth belongs to the podcast industry, but whether or not the podcast industry can keep the video podcast to itself remains to be seen.