Cumulus Media’s latest Podcast Download report may show YouTube driving podcast discovery, but radio is the one perfectly positioned to capture meaningful growth with a diverse wave of newcomers and advertisers buying at record levels.
The Fall 2025 study, conducted October 8–21 with Signal Hill Insights, surveyed 603 adults who consumed at least one hour of podcasts in the past week. The findings included much news of note and optimism for radio.
For the third consecutive year, YouTube ranks as the leading podcast platform, ahead of Spotify, but no single service is the clear winner. What makes YouTube critical is its role in discovery: nearly half of weekly podcast consumers who started a new show in the past six months found it on YouTube.
But here’s what radio needs to understand: listening still drives the habit. Despite rising video options, the vast majority of podcast consumers say they listen rather than watch. Exclusive “watchers” remain under 10% of weekly users, a figure that’s held steady since 2022. Device data confirms this. While 12% now consume via smart TV (up from 2% on smart speakers), smartphones and in-car listening still dominate. And critically, seven in ten YouTube podcast users say they’d switch platforms if a show moved elsewhere, while more than half already listen to the same shows on other platforms.
The business case for podcasting has also matured dramatically. The percentage of marketers currently using podcast advertising has climbed from the mid-teens in 2015 to the high-fifties in 2025. Roughly seven in ten advertisers now buy podcast ads, up from 10% a decade ago.
Lastly, podcasting is no longer early adopter territory. Forty percent of Americans now listen weekly, and 30% qualify as “heavy users” consuming six or more hours per week. Among weekly listeners, average consumption hits 11.1 hours across 5.3 episodes and 3.7 different shows.
More critically for radio, the audience entering podcasting now looks different than the platform’s early adopters. Of Podcast Newcomers who began listening in the past 12 months, roughly three in ten podcast listeners identify as Black or African American, while about one in eight identify as Hispanic.
For radio operators, the implications are direct: podcasting is where new audiences are entering the medium, where talent can extend their brands, and where incremental audio revenue is waiting to be claimed.
The full Cumulus Media/Signal Hill Insights Fall 2025 Podcast Download Report is available via the Cumulus Podcast Network.
