WARC Media forecasts that global ad spend on podcasts will exceed $5 billion in 2025 and reach $5.5 billion in 2026. However, year-over-year growth will decelerate from 13.2% in 2024 to 7.9% in 2025, and 6.5% in 2026.
According to WARC’s latest report, this rate is lower than the growing levels of ad investment in other channels, including retail media (+14.8% in 2025), connected TV (+15,4%), and DOOH (+14,9%). The study highlights that one of the most common complaints among brands is the difficulty in scaling podcast ad buys and the lack of podcast measurement tools.
Seeking to counter those difficulties, WARC found that advertisers and brands are benefiting from episodic buys (ads placed in a single podcast episode on a specific show), as they tend to outperform ads dynamically inserted throughout shows across a podcast network. The report also finds that in the case of host-read ads, as the duration of the ad increases, the rate of visits to the advertisers’ sites also goes up. On average, a two-minute-plus read outperforms 60-second or shorter reads by 20%.
According to WARC, advertisers, publishers and platforms are also focusing more on creators and video content “in the hope of further boosting consumption, as well as winning a share of a fast-growing slice of the ad market.” The study shows that video podcast consumption is increasing, with YouTube being the most popular platform. In 2024, YouTube’s TV app had over 400 million monthly podcast views.
Spotify is also popular among listeners, with over 250 million video podcasts listened to on the platform. Gen Z users are the most frequent listeners on that platform – in the first five months of 2024, the demo watched 2.9 billion minutes of video podcast content, up 58% year-over-year.
Overall, younger cohorts spend more time on podcasts each day than older age groups, said WARC. As of Q2 2024, podcast reach among Gen Z audiences worldwide (68%) exceeds radio by ten percentage points. Total global podcast audience reach has increased from 60.6% in 2020 to 66% in 2025.
The U.S. market
WARC’s report shows that the U.S. is the world’s largest market for podcast advertising.
Retail remains the category with the highest podcast ad spend in the U.S., while the Presidential election led to a slight increase in spending by government and non-profit organizations. Spending in the food category remains low, but is forecast to register the fastest growth in 2026 (+13.2%).
In light of the outcome of the U.S. election, WARC says previously cautious marketers are rethinking their “podcast safety” approach, particularly when it comes to advertising against right-wing content to reach younger male audiences.
