In Graphic Detail: Publishers chase video podcast growth, but audio still leads

And yet, while audio may be the dominant format, audiences increasingly expect video, meaning publishers must invest in both formats without losing sight of where demand actually sits. 

Apple’s decision to add video to its podcasts app this month – positioning it more directly against YouTube and Spotify – raises the stakes for publishers balancing investment across both formats. 

Here are six graphs that capture how podcast listeners are navigating audio and video, and what it means for publishers. 

Podcast consumers who exclusively listen to audio podcasts still make up a larger share than those who exclusively watch podcasts, according to Triton Digital’s fourth annual U.S. Podcast Report, which was published last week. But the majority of podcast consumers both listen and watch.

Triton Digital’s findings are similar to the Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights’ Podcast Download Fall 2025 Report, which found that 17 percent of podcast consumers choose to listen, while 8 percent say they only watch podcasts – and 76 percent do both.

This is why some podcast producers like iHeartMedia are taking a measured approach to video podcast investment.

“In my 20-plus years in digital media, I keep seeing [the move toward video]. I’m just not seeing it in podcasting. I know that’s a provocative statement right now, because you’d be led to believe that that is happening in podcasting too,” said Conal Byrne, CEO of the iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group.

Ultimately, video remains a discovery and marketing tool for iHeartMedia’s podcast shows, said Lainie Fertick, president of iHeartMedia Insights. “Our data says that the actual bulk of the listening… comes from audio,” she said.

That doesn’t mean iHeartMedia isn’t preparing for a sharp, inevitable shift though, as consumption habits catch up. The company will launch the capability for podcast creators to upload their video podcasts to the iHeartMedia app in the next few months, Byrne said.

At the end of last year, iHeartMedia signed a multiyear exclusive video podcast distribution deal with Netflix that will bring a slate of its podcasts to Netflix’s streaming platform beginning in early 2026. It also signed a podcast creator partnership deal with TikTok.

Despite the growth over the years in video podcast production among publishers, creators and audio companies, the percentage of weekly podcast consumers who only watch podcasts hasn’t changed much in the past four years, according to the Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights report.

Podcast consumers have mixed preferences when watching or listening to shows. The report found that 1 in 2 podcast consumers say they prefer actively watching podcasts with videos, up from 28 percent in 2022. But that still means that 50 percent of the time, people are either listening to audio podcasts without video, or playing the video in the background while listening.

The average percent of time spent accessing podcasts on YouTube – the most popular platform for podcasts – is split between 59 percent of consumers watching the video while listening, while 41 percent are listening to the audio without watching the video at all, according to the report.

Podcast consumers interested in particular genres had different medium preferences as well, the Triton Digital report found.

Fertick said this was why some iHeartMedia podcast shows were more ripe for video content production than others.

“The theory of relativity is not having a real moment on social media right now, the way that sports and cultural moments are,” Fertick said. “The [categories that may] skew toward video might skew towards reach and new discovery from some folks on video.”

Byrne said he had yet to see internal data at iHeartMedia that showed an over-indexing for video by category of shows.

“[Discovery on YouTube and social media] is a large reason why we might lean into video on a show, or at least shoot a little bit of video for a show,” Byrne said. “It’s not a default. We don’t launch every show as a video show because we don’t see the data to back up that default decision.”

Audio and video podcast preferences also vary based on when people started consuming podcasts, according to a report presented in a webinar last month by Edison Research. First-year podcast listeners watched more video podcasts than long-time podcast listeners. 

Video discovery seems to help drive audio consumption, too: 72 percent of first-years and 68 percent of long-time podcast listeners say they started listening to the audio-only version of a podcast after discovering its video version.

Podcast creators, on the other hand, lean more heavily towards video production, according to a December report by Sounds Profitable and Signal Hill Insights. The study surveyed over 5,000 U.S. creators, and found that 1 in 6 have created podcasts – meaning the podcast market is far from saturated with creators.

As illustrated above, more podcast creators produce video-only content, compared to those who only produce audio content. But format distribution is varied – with 71 percent of podcast creators incorporating video, compared to 65 percent who incorporate audio, the report also found. This shows that among publishers and creators alike, this diversified approach remains key in the podcast landscape.