By Rob Greenlee, Podcast Tips Show, and NewMediaShow.com

The Evolving Meaning of “Podcast(s)” in 2025 and Beyond

“The word “podcast(s)” once evoked images of niche audio and video shows downloaded via open RSS feeds and played on dedicated podcast consumption apps. For many years, platforms like Spotify, YouTube, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, and Rumble have been reshaping and expanding the meaning and complexity of being an online media podcaster creator.”

Video and perceived video podcasts dominate YouTube and other video enabled platforms. Spotify’s deals with creators like Joe Rogan signal a shift toward a hosting and redistribution model for the large proprietary consumption platforms, while Spotify was willing to allow Rogan to distribute externally via RSS and be in YouTube. Meanwhile, creators often migrate to platforms prioritizing audience growth and early monetization, and increasing creator desire for paid content and community building reshape expectations. More direct creator and audience relationships expand and enable direct monetization support not controlled by enormous consumption platforms like Spotify and YouTube.

“In this landscape, the word “podcast(s)” risks becoming synonymous with “online content and content creators,” regardless of format. This shift poses an existential question: Does podcasting’s identity remain rooted in open distribution and audio storytelling, or does it evolve into a broader descriptor encompassing video, proprietary content, and even AI-driven creations? The truth is that video has always been part of podcasting and is not new, but it is reshaping the medium in new ways.“

The Rise of the “Creator”

As podcasting grapples with its identity, the term “creator” is rising in prominence and relevance. It’s an inclusive label that captures the multifaceted roles of today’s media producers. Whether crafting audio narratives, filming engaging videos, or leveraging AI tools for content generation, creators are no longer bound by traditional formats, creation processes, and tools.

This shift reflects broader industry trends. Once a secondary consideration, monetization is now the primary “first mover” motivator for many aspiring creators. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have normalized the expectation of early financial rewards, and proprietary podcast platforms are following suit. The entry of well-known personalities from mainstream media further accelerates this trend, bringing polished production, established audiences, and high expectations for monetization.

The Threat to Open Podcasting

Proprietary platforms are reshaping podcasting, but at what cost? Open RSS-based podcasting, which democratized content distribution, is under threat. Platforms like Spotify offer creators tools for growth and monetization, but often at the expense of independence and open distribution with increasing rehosting of content in a move away from podcasters centrally hosting media and having a pass-through process. Drawn to convenience and exclusive content, listeners may unknowingly contribute to the decline of open ecosystems.

This trend mirrors the consolidation seen in other media industries. As large platforms gain control, they shape the rules of engagement, from content discoverability to monetization structures. While these platforms promise greater reach, they also impose greater control, including the potential for algorithmic moderation and censorship.

The Role of AI in Content Creation

AI is both a disruptor and an enabler. On one hand, AI tools make it easier than ever to create, package, and distribute content. They can generate ads, show notes, transcribe episodes, and create derivative content like highlights or social media clips. This represents a significant opportunity for creators to streamline production and expand their reach.

On the other hand, the rise of AI-generated content blurs the line between human creativity and machine efficiency. As platforms embrace AI for content moderation, the risk of censorship increases. Creators may find their work suppressed or altered by AI to meet platform guidelines, raising questions about artistic integrity and freedom of expression.

Monetization and Moderation: The New Battleground

The lure of monetization attracts creators to platforms that promise financial rewards, but it also comes with strings attached depending on the chosen distribution consumption platform. Content moderation is becoming increasingly sophisticated and driven by AI and platform policies. While moderation can protect against harmful content, it can stifle creativity and dissent.

For creators, this dynamic presents a dilemma: accept the trade-offs of platform dependency or navigate the challenges of remaining independent. As monetization becomes the central focus, creators may prioritize content that aligns with platform algorithms, potentially at the expense of originality and authenticity.

Looking Ahead: A Fragmented Future

By 2025 and beyond, the podcasting landscape may be unrecognizable. The term “podcast(s)” could encompass everything from traditional audio shows to video series, AI-generated cloned voice and visual narratives, and beyond. The rise of proprietary platforms, combined with the increasing prominence of AI, suggests a future where content creation is more accessible but also more controlled and global in every language.

The challenge for the podcasting community is to preserve the values that made the medium unique: open distribution, creative freedom, and audience-first storytelling. Whether podcasting retains its identity or evolves into a broader category of online content will depend on the choices made by creators, platforms, and listeners.

The Identity Crisis

Podcasting’s identity crisis reflects broader changes in the media landscape. As platforms consolidate power, creators must decide whether to prioritize reach and monetization or independence and authenticity. The evolution of the term “podcaster” or “podcasting”—and the rise of the “creator” as a defining label—signals a shift in how we think about content creation and consumption.

In navigating this future, the podcasting community must confront hard questions about its values, goals, and identity. The choices made today will shape the medium for years to come, determining whether podcasting thrives as an independent art form or becomes another cog in the machine of digital media.

By Rob Greenlee, Founder of Spoken Life Media and 2017 Podcast Hall of Fame Inductee

Engagement and Personal Connection: Video podcasts foster a more intimate and engaging viewer experience. By incorporating visual elements, audiences can see the hosts’ and guests’ emotions, gestures, and nuances, creating a deeper connection and understanding. This visual layer enriches the storytelling, making the content more relatable and memorable.

Expanding Audience Reach: The dual optional nature of video and audio podcasts caters to audiences that are flexible in their media consumption as they prefer to have an option to consume the video version is different consumption methods like on a big screen TV for video and while at the gym or bus consume the audio version. Some people prefer the convenience of audio podcasts during commutes or while multitasking. In contrast, others significantly engage more with visual content when relaxed or needing a more immersive video experience. This flexibility in consumption ensures that content creators can reach a wider audience, accommodating various lifestyles and preferences.

Content Versatility and Repurposing: One of video podcasts’ most significant benefits is their adaptability. A single episode can be transformed into multiple content forms, such as full-length records plus Live and short videos for platforms like YouTube, Twitter X, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, audio-only versions for most of the podcast consumption app platforms, and some of those same apps make a full video version available if they support video files linked from an RSS feed, like an MP3 file on the audio version. This distribution versatility maximizes getting your content in front of the most potential audience if you make evergreen content appealing to an audience beyond a short period of time, offering creators more opportunities to connect with different audience segments.

Enhanced Monetization Potential: The incorporation of video significantly broadens the reach and monetization scope for creators. It allows for more dynamic advertising models, including video ads, sponsored content, and visual product placements, which might be less impactful in audio-only formats. Audiences’ increasingly diverse consumption patterns present audio and visual monetization opportunities. This diversification of revenue streams can be crucial for the sustainability and growth of content creators.

Personalization and Complexity in Storytelling: Video podcasts and audio offer a rich platform for storytelling. Creators can utilize visual aids, on-screen graphics, and other visual elements to convey complex information in an accessible and engaging manner. This enhanced storytelling capability is precious in educational, technical, or narrative-driven content, where visual elements can clarify and enrich the subject matter.

Synergy with Social Media Trends: The rise of social media platforms prioritizing short- and long-form video content has further propelled the popularity of live videos and video podcasts. These platforms offer an ideal stage for video podcasts to flourish, providing content creators access to large, engaged, interactive communities and the opportunity to tap into viral trends.

Technological Evolution Supporting Quality and Accessibility: Video streaming and the widespread availability of ubiquitous high-speed wireless internet have democratized the production and consumption of high-resolution video content. The technological strides have made it easier for creators to produce and distribute video podcasts, ensuring a professional and accessible viewing experience for audiences worldwide. We are also seeing innovations in RSS around the Podcasting 2.0 project namespace to expand the abilities of that open download distribution method vs proprietary HLS streaming. We must be open to utilizing this HLS streaming technology outsidemassive big tech platforms like YouTube.

Meeting New Audiences Expectations: Publishing content in audio and video versions that fit with younger and even older audiences. The younger demographics strongly prefer video-based content and can increasingly consume it on mobile in vertical and landscape formats. Video podcasts align perfectly with these evolving expectations, offering a format that resonates with the visual-centric consumption habits of modern viewers. These short mobile videos increasingly display synchronized text transcriptions on screen for mute consumption in many languages via AI transcription and translation technology.

Interactivity and Community Building: Video show podcasts can enable compelling interactive experiences. Formats like live streaming with real-time audience interaction, Q&As, and polls directly engage viewers and foster loyalty and community around and outside the videos. This interactivity enhances the viewer experience and builds a more substantial relationship with the show host and other audience members.

Brand Identity and Visual Impact: Independently produced video and audio shows are a powerful brand-building tool for individual creators and companies of all sizes. The visual element of these podcast shows helps forge a distinct and memorable brand, product, services, customer education, connection, and support relationships, setting this media opportunity in the vast media landscape.

The fusion of audio and video in the form of audio/video podcasts is not just a trend but a significant re-emerging shift in content consumption. This back to the future evolution is a response to technological advancements and changing audience preferences, positioning video podcasts as an integral and future-forward component in content strategies worldwide. The article will delve into these aspects, providing insights, examples, and expert opinions to offer a comprehensive understanding of the impact and potential of video podcasts in the current media ecosystem.

By Rob Greenlee, Spoken Life Media – rob.greenlee at gmail com

In the dynamic world of podcasting and other user-generated content (UGC), aligning an advertiser brand with specific content topics and themes that reflect its brand values has become a rapidly growing consideration. Advertisers are often concerned about their brand’s reputation in the era of social media and the battle over free speech. Brands increasingly want to ensure their ads run in brand-safe and suitably compatible politically aligned podcast shows and topics to create more accurate matching between a brand being advertised and content in the program being broadcast.

This concern brings to the fore the growing use of brand safety and suitability tools built from AI-derived transcripts and AI analyses of the context of the content to create a GARM (2) World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) moderation rating and rankings of podcast content from a historical or past episode perspective to project a show series safety and suitability for an ad buy in the future. These tools assure advertisers that their advertisements appear in content that the rating it is given aligns with their desired brand values and ethics.

Another entity with significant impact in this area starts up in full swing this coming next month. This announcement from NewsGuard’s global team of misinformation experts will have rated the top 200 news podcasts on the largest streaming platforms by January 2024. These podcasts comprise the bulk of overall news and information podcast listenership and present valuable audiences for brands to reach.

NewsGuard has partnered with three of the largest podcast streaming platforms, which will (hopefully) inform their business partners of the availability or use of this technology from NewsGuard ratings. These three large partner platform names have not been disclosed to date. Concerns around podcaster host self-censorship on the part of these news and political podcasts is a big issue.

Using the NewsGuard Podcast ratings criteria for agencies and brands can decide to:

Target only trustworthy podcasts by filtering based on overall score or risk level—for example, only buying ads on podcasts that score a 7 and above or receive a “lowest risk” rating.

Then also:
– Avoid advertising on podcasts that regularly convey false information.
– Avoid advertising on heavily biased or politically slanted news shows.

Reduced Number of Shows and Reach is a Danger to Content Creators

Brand safety can become a hindrance rather than a help to content creators and advertisers. Advertisers have reduced the number of content channels they are willing to support with advertising. This can create a monetary penalty to discuss topics that a brand may not agree with on a political spectrum that audiences may want to hear about, as the content topic could be considered misinformation or a conspiracy theory today. Still, in a future timeframe, it could be discovered to be verified truth. This has the consequence of limiting the potential reach to listeners/viewers and the campaigns’ budgets.

In a 2023 survey by Alter Agents, only 8% of podcast listeners care to avoid controversial topics. However, 73% of listeners say that controversial topics would not affect their purchase of brands that advertise on those podcasts. About half of listeners would think more positively of a brand after pairing with controversial content. 

There is research showing 2/3 of listeners do object to some types of speech like racist, cruel and derogitory content does turnoff listeners from a podcast. Here is an outline on this research from InsideRadio article post. Further the listeners don’t transfer the content objection to the advertiser.

Podcast brand safety versus brand suitability

While often used interchangeably, they have distinct differences. Brand safety in podcasts refers to ensuring that a brand’s advertising does not appear alongside content universally deemed inappropriate or harmful, such as the expanding scope of hate speech or explicit material. This is about avoiding negative associations that could harm the brand’s reputation and perception if the wrong association results in lower ROI or harms the brand reputation related to an advertising campaign.

On the other hand, brand suitability is more nuanced and subjective. It involves aligning a brand’s advertising with podcast content that avoids harmful content topics and resonates with the brand’s values and the interests of the brands percieved target audience wether true or accurate or not given the research showing less audience concerns or impact on advertiser brands.

The term Suitability is increasingly being used over Safety yet is still about finding the right fit for the brand in terms of podcast content rating based on GARM content ratings scales to discover the subtle context differences in discussion topics in a given historical look at past episodes of a podcast to project its content suitability for future advertising campaigns in that podcast series, and alignment of audience, ensuring that the advertising feels relevant and appropriate within the context of the specific podcast content. While brand safety sets a baseline standard for content, brand suitability goes a step further to align advertising with content that positively complements and enhances the brand’s image.

Clarification for Content Creators

For content creators, understanding brand safety and Suitability is crucial. Recognizing that brand safety doesn’t mean you need to self-censor your content to align with a specific advertiser is essential. However, the risk remains that the creator will adjust the topics to appeal to more advertisers. Losing an advertising campaign due to a misalignment or past content can be a genuine concern. However, knowing what constitutes brand-safe values and the types of content that a brand may not want to associate with is key. Advertisers increasingly influence content editorially, directing their funds toward approved content topics.

The Evolution of Content Alignment

Traditionally, brand alignment with shows focused primarily on listener demographics and genre topics. However, the podcast advertising industry has always struggled to obtain complete demographic information about audiences because of the open nature and distributed aspect of the listening side via RSS and non-demographic sharing platforms. This aspect of podcasting drives a stronger focus on content topics to target better ads based on the contextual relevance of topics to advertisers.

Debunking Myths: The True Crime and Comedy Case Study

Many advertisers hesitate to associate with specific genres like true crime or comedy due to misconceptions about their content. However, our research, including interviews with brand marketers and a survey of 6,000 podcast listeners, reveals that what marketers consider “risky” can offer significant opportunities. For instance, while true crime might be controversial, listeners often find it thought-provoking and stress-reducing. This genre, primarily attracting female listeners, offers advertisers a demographic with strong purchasing power.

Controversial Topics: Less Risky Than Thought

Consider a scenario where a listener is engaged with a comedy podcast that includes mature language. About half would think more positively of a brand after its association with controversial content. This data suggests that audiences are more receptive to ads in these contexts than previously believed.

Importance of Ad Content Quality Over Topic Fit

Interestingly, about 80% of podcast listeners listen through ads, with a significant portion recalling brands unaided. This indicates that the quality of the ad content is more critical than its thematic fit with the podcast genre. High-quality promotions that match the podcast’s style are more effective than those that strictly align with the podcast’s subject matter.

Trusting the Host

Podcast hosts play a pivotal role in influencing listeners. A study by Acast shows podcast listeners trust hosts more than any other medium. Around 80% of listeners feel it’s important for hosts to do their research, and over half trust hosts to only advertise brands worth sponsoring. Advertising on a podcast, irrespective of whether the ad is host-produced or not, generally casts the brand in a positive light.

Expanding Audio Horizons

Brands should consider broadening their horizons and experimenting with new genres, titles, and styles in their podcast promotion strategy. This approach can open up avenues to reach more engaged audiences without being restricted by overly cautious brand safety measures and increase ad spending in the podcasting industry.

Brand safety and suitability in podcast advertising is a nuanced field. Advertisers should focus on understanding their audience’s perception of different genres and leverage brand safety tools effectively and make sure they are not used to drive a politically biased and speech censoring agenda. Meanwhile, content creators must be aware of these dynamics and should not feel pressured into self-censorship and accept that certain advertisers may not be available to them if they want to discuss controversial topics.

By embracing a broader range of content and trusting in the quality of their advertisements and the influence of podcast hosts, brands can engage with their audience more effectively and authentically.

For most of the 20 years of the podcasting medium, podcasts have been primarily free speech and open distribution. Brand Safety and Suitability tools enable moderation of podcast content beyond what was previously possible.