The Evolution of Podcasts in 2026: Audacy's Leah Reis-Dennis, Acast's Greg Glenday, and Libsyn's Brendan Monaghan on Monetization, AI, and Video

Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.

Jeff: Welcome to Podcast Perspectives. I’m your host, Jeff Umbro. We are at South by Southwest, at the first version of Podcast Movement Evolutions in Austin, Texas. I have the privilege of being joined by Brendan Monaghan, the CEO of Libsyn, Greg Glenday, CEO of Acast, and Leah Reis-Dennis, the head of podcasts at Audacy.

You all represent, I think, the largest contingent of independent podcasters in the entire podcast space. There are maybe a couple other companies you could throw into that bucket. So I want to start by talking about four or five overall buckets of what you all deal with in the industry.

The first one, very broadly, is: how do podcasters make money? I want to ask each of you individually a few questions about that. We’ll start with you, Brendan. How do podcasters on Libsyn make money?

Brendan: There are a lot of options. Via Libsyn, the area we focus on most is, of course, advertising. We work with creators in three primary ways: one, on the host-read side; two, with an audience-targeting solution; and three, providing extra fill through programmatic.

There are also creators we work with who have a variety of other monetization efforts, whether that’s through subscriptions, meetups, events, or merch. But our focus is primarily on the technology platform they come to us for, and the monetization we provide through advertising.

Jeff: Okay. And Leah, is there anything additional that you all do at Audacy to make money for your shows?

Leah: Our approach is pretty much exactly the same. I’d say the one difference is that Audacy is a legacy radio company. When we think about our business, we have podcasts, but we also have broadcast and we have streaming and D2C platforms.

We have 500 sellers across the country who are now all enabled to sell both radio and podcasts. So we try as much as possible to think about where we can take a radio buy and say, “Hey, you know what, this podcaster would be really great to bundle into your hot AC station buy,” and vice versa.

Jeff: Okay. Anything to add, Greg?

Greg: No, I think it’s actually good news that we’re all agreeing that that’s the way we go to market. We’re making it easier for customers by saying it’s not fundamentally different; if you talk to the three of us, you don’t have to completely reformat how you do it.

We’ve got automated channels from self-serve and programmatic to more bespoke omnichannel things with branded content, newsletters, live events, and things like that. We run the gamut like these guys. If we zoom out, what we all try to do is help our creators rent that relationship they have with the audience in lots of different ways.

We try to facilitate the relationship between the audience, the brand, and the creator in a way where we stay out of the way. If we can be as invisible as possible, that’s good for the brands, the creators, and the audiences.

Jeff: And very broadly, you as companies make money by facilitating all of this and taking some form of commission on helping them do that, right?

Greg: Yes.

Jeff: Do you foresee doing this any differently? How are you or the creator going to make money in five years? Let’s start with you, Greg.

Greg: I think the cool thing for us is we don’t have to do a whole lot different. There are tailwinds in the industry. If you look at the Fortune 500 or talk to the big CMOs, most of them haven’t really started engaging with podcasting yet. It’s difficult. We’re making it easier, and I think these three companies in particular are trying to make it easier for them to jump in. The water’s warm.

So I think creators are going to make more money because there’s going to be more demand. We don’t disclose this, but we have 100,000-plus shows at Acast, and there’s a median number where they stop making money. The long tail is too long. We could spend 10 years trying to push demand into that long tail. Smaller creators should be able to make a living doing this.

We’ve got a lot of ways to try to address that, and I think the industry is going to grow anyway; we just have to capture those tailwinds.

Brendan: I think that’s right and consistent with how we’re thinking about it. It’s interesting to see creators evolve into different spaces and how they’re trying to monetize the relationships they have, and what role we can play.

I love how Greg described being invisible to the creators but still bringing opportunities to them—whether that’s through brand activations, or leveraging new technologies like video, which I’m sure we’re going to talk about today. We’re trying to be thoughtful about where the industry is going and position our company in a way that supports where creators are going, so we can help enable what they’re trying to achieve.

Greg: If I could just say a nice thing about Audacy: of the traditional broadcasters, a lot of them show up and just try to turn radio into on-demand and do 20 commercials an hour. You guys have been really prescriptive about understanding that it’s a different audience and a different thing.

It’s really important that when you get in, you don’t just say, “It’s a radio station and we’re just going to make it on demand.” That’s not what a podcast is. You’ve been so thoughtful about that—it’s been great for the industry.

Leah: Well, thank you. We also see our role as bringing more brands into the podcasting ecosystem because we have these sales forces all across the country who get in early with brands that start locally.

For instance, Tecovas was a Texas brand. They started advertising with Audacy because they had that relationship on the radio side. We introduced them to podcasting, and now they’re a podcast advertiser. That kind of thing is something we want to do more and more of, and it can benefit the industry.

Brendan: I think it’s interesting you were saying earlier how many folks have yet to experience the podcasting space—how much of the tip of the spear we’re still sitting at. There are so many brands still dabbling or experimenting. Consumer-wise, people listen, but their willingness to dive in with both feet from a monetization standpoint is still developing.

Leah: Even brands that aren’t big on the national scale—like a local roofer in Memphis—are advertising on the radio. Now all of our companies have addressable, audience-based solutions. That local roofer should be advertising on a geographically targeted basis to podcast listeners in his region, the same way he’s advertising to radio listeners in his region.

Jeff: What do you think the biggest obstacle is for that roofer buying podcast ads?

Leah: There’s a sense of doing what you know, and podcasting is just new for a lot of brands that don’t have a really sophisticated marketing infrastructure. So it’s up to us to do a lot of education, not just at the big national level, but also for brands of every size.

Greg: We get a lot of data from our self-serve platform because the average deal size is under 10,000 dollars. It’s local people putting money in. All the complaints, we turn into our roadmap. The roofer struggles with the interface: you log in, you want to advertise, and then it’s like, “Oh my gosh, there are a lot of shows. How do I know what to do? I’m not an expert. I know how to put a roof on; I don’t know how to run a marketing campaign.”

Our job is to make it easier. We make suggestions: “Here’s a plan. What’s your budget?” We use natural language to make it easy. Then they don’t have creative, so how do we help with the creative? It’s our job to make it easy, so more people can access these audiences.

Leah: Or it’s the roofer who says, “Look, I love David Spade. I want to advertise on Fly on the Wall with David Spade and Dana Carvey.” And we say, “Great, why don’t you advertise to men ages 25 to 45? Fly on the Wall is likely going to be on that plan, but so are these 30 other shows.”

Brendan: The key there is the education level. The local marketing piece is so boots-on-the-ground. What you’ve done technologically is awesome, and it’s akin to what we saw in the AdSense world—making it scalable and available to folks—but there’s still that bridge between the technology and the education and enablement.

We’ve dabbled with local sales forces. It’s been challenging to get out and reach the yoga studio, the roofer—there are just so many small businesses. How do you reach them at scale so it’s an effective buy for them and makes sense for our business?

Jeff: One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that in other industries, there’s a layer between the small businesses and the Libsyns and Acasts and Audacys. Someone comes in—maybe a boutique agency—and helps a small business build a Facebook campaign or something like that.

You don’t see a lot of that in podcasting. There’s some—Gumball does some of that. Where do you see that developing in the next five or ten years? Are you doing anything to support that?

Brendan: I think AI is going to play a role here. This is where we start to get excited about the technology making distribution and production easier. The same thing doesn’t get talked about enough on the monetization side, particularly in advertising.

How can we leverage AI to help engage sponsors or advertisers or brands that haven’t really thought about podcasting, and how do we reach them quicker and more efficiently? That’s one way we’re thinking about AI from an outreach perspective, to make it easier to consume and engage with.

Greg: I think the industry is shedding its skin a little bit for the second time. As we think about that, this stuff will pop up. I survived the move to search, the move to social, and all the little cottage industries that popped up. As we mature, there’s money here. People are going to come and try to drink our milkshakes.

We’re doing some of it ourselves, but I say: great. You’re starting to see some of the holding companies asking, “Is it influencer? Is it audio? Is it a little bit of both? Is it part of the creator economy?” That’s starting to develop, and we welcome it. The more the merrier, because it will raise everybody.

Jeff: And are you seeing any of that, Leah?

Leah: We like working brand-direct as much as possible, honestly. My hope is that we can maintain a reputation as an industry that is very accessible and maybe a little bit more grassroots. I’m not sure it will go the same way other media channels have.

Jeff: The second bucket is AI. You just touched on this a little bit. Obviously AI is the conversation right now. There are tools popping up. People are using AI to create content. They’re using AI to help foster their brand creative when it comes to facilitating ad buys.

How are you all looking at AI in your businesses—good, bad, or otherwise? Greg, let’s start with you. I just heard an interview where you talked about this.

Greg: Great. We have strong opinions on it. I’m bullish and bearish on AI. We’ve done a ton of research with our listeners, audiences, and creators on how they’re thinking about it.

I’m very lucky in that we have a unicorn: our head of technology, Yoanna, is a Transylvanian engineer, a woman leading our engineering team in Sweden, and she has an advanced degree in AI. Before it was cool, she was interested in AI ten years ago.

We’ve already had a lot of natural-language tools from media planning, creative concepting, and creative development. I think that’s as far as we’re going to go. We use AI for a few things—translations, like turning content into Spanish, things like that. We’ll use it around the fringes.

We feel strongly that one of the things that makes us AI-proof as an industry is that listeners want authenticity. Nobody wants a synthetic David Spade. They want a relationship with David Spade. If I’m getting sports scores or weather, I’ll tolerate an AI voice announcing it—maybe an ad, maybe utility content.

But I don’t want a relationship with a synthetic Conan O’Brien or Giggly Squad. I don’t think that’s going to get off the ground. Our philosophy is authenticity at the core—on the creator side—and AI around the outside to make everything a little easier for people.

Jeff: Gotta be careful saying that around the wrong people here.

Greg: I know, but controversy is fun. That’s why we’re here, right? I’ve got more if this is an hour.

Jeff: I tend to agree with you. Leah, what do you think?

Leah: I agree. The cornerstone of our business is authenticity. That’s what brands are interested in, and that’s what audiences are interested in. I’m not opposed to AI-based content, but I think it’s incremental and different from what we generally traffic in.

I think it’s cool to listen to a very personalized podcast episode about news in my area, weather in my area, and so on. But I don’t want to listen to an AI tell me their opinions or chat with me.

A few years ago, a lot of us were really worried about YouTube—would that cannibalize our business? Or about Patreon subscriptions—would those cannibalize ad sales? What we’ve found is they haven’t; they’ve been cool extensions. I see AI-based content as similar. It’s not the business we’re in, but I’m not opposed to it existing over there.

Jeff: I do think Shell Game from Evan Ratliff—if you all have listened—season two of that show is a true masterpiece. I think it’s, in a lot of ways, a satire on exactly what we’re talking about. I won’t spoil it, but you should all check it out.

Brendan, what do you think?

Brendan: We think of AI as an enablement tool for creators first and foremost. We’re not looking to create AI-generated content. We’re looking to have AI be an enabling tool for authentic creators.

You keep hearing that word “authentic” from all three of us because that’s what makes this space so interesting. I don’t turn into a podcast primarily because of the topic; I’m interested in the connection between the creator and what they’re trying to say. It’s not one or the other—it’s both. It’s the intersection of the two.

We also think about how we can use AI to help facilitate that relationship between the creator and their audience. Can they have better insights into what’s appealing from a content perspective? Where should they double down on things that really got interest unexpectedly? There’s a real enablement opportunity, whether it’s monetization, production, transcription, notes—all kinds of tools that support the creator in what they do.

I think where it starts to get really gray is AI-generated content, which is where a lot of controversy arises. I think I can speak for all three of us in saying that’s not the interesting part of this industry. It’s about preserving those voices and leveraging technology—just like we have RSS or programmatic advertising—as tools to support creators. If we do that right, I’m not worried about it.

Greg: There’s already a backlash to AI-generated music, which I think should be okay in theory. But companionship is different. That’s a bridge too far. I grew up in radio and worked at a different large company, and 15 years ago we started voice-tracking—taking a popular DJ in New York and trying to pass them off as being in Cincinnati. That didn’t go over well.

Local communities were like, “You mispronounced the street. We know you don’t live in Cincinnati; you’re in a studio in New York. Cut it out.” We already know listeners have a bad reaction to that.

Jeff: It’s funny, because I was going to say that’s somebody else’s problem to deal with, but it is literally your problem to deal with.

Greg: Believe me, Marc Maron retired last year after 16 years, and we asked, “Is there a way to do a virtual Marc Maron? Can we do an AI Marc Maron?” It’s ridiculous.

Jeff: That is the beauty, though—there are certainly places for this technology to thrive and uses for it. In that interview you were talking about how Podchaser has been so amazing for discoverability and for research, and you all have tools you’re using for instant transcription. We’ll all be able to put contextual ads soon because we’ll be able to transcribe, get the context, and say, “Oh, they’re talking about this brand; let’s put that brand there.” That’s exciting.

We all know today it’s not perfect, but maybe tomorrow it will be. I find the AI conversation fascinating and boring all at once, and I’m sure everybody’s in that boat. So we’ll move on to bucket three: video.

This is one where I kind of know what to make of it, and I kind of don’t. All three of you are now on platforms that can upload video directly to Spotify. All three of you have talked about enabling creators for what’s happening on YouTube. All three of you, I’m sure, have thoughts about what Apple is doing.

I’m just going to pause and let you talk for a minute. What are your plans for video in the next year? How are you thinking about it in terms of talking to your creators, talking to brands, and how you think about it internally? Leah, let’s start with you.

Leah: Audacy is an audio company. We love selling audio. We think there’s something very special about the audio listening experience, and we find that brands are very receptive to that.

That said, we’re not living in the last decade—we’re looking toward the next decade. We are embracing video. To the extent that our creators are interested in creating video, we’re going to be right there alongside them, monetizing it. There’s a lot of white space there. We are leaning in, and we have more leaning in to do.

I expect that in the next one to three years we’re going to get exponentially better at selling video, selling social, and selling the whole 360. Fundamentally, we see it as an extension and as an important gesture toward bringing people in—both on the audience side and the brand side. The core of our business is, and always will be, audio. That’s how we’re thinking about it. I could say a lot more about the platforms—Apple and Spotify and YouTube—but I’ll let these guys speak first.

Greg: I love this topic. I probably have more passion about this than AI. Bucket three is really important.

We did a bunch of research last year called Podcast Pulse. One of the things we did was confirm what we all know: there’s a small number of people who only watch podcasts and a small number who only listen. Most are like me—I’m mostly a listener. I commute; I take Metro-North, so if my phone’s open, I’ll watch. But when I’m walking the dog, working out, folding laundry, doing chores, I’ve got the earphones in and I’m having that companionship.

I do watch sometimes, so I think that’s how it’s going to grow up. What’s crazy is that we all believe in the meritocracy and openness of audio—you have a great podcast, I have a great podcast, it’s available everywhere, and we don’t care how you consume it. Everyone loves to say “wherever you get your podcasts.” But with video, right now you have to pick one platform and be exclusive. That makes no sense.

We’re excited that it’s YouTube now, it’s Spotify, it’s Apple. We already tried exclusives and it didn’t work. If it’s not open, it’s not really a podcast. There’s nothing wrong with having a Netflix talk show, but if they tell you to stop your podcast, kill your RSS feed, and be only on a streaming platform—congratulations, you have a Netflix talk show. That’s awesome. But it’s not a podcast.

We have to be pretty strong about the belief that podcasting needs to be open for everybody, and video should work the same way.

Jeff: Do you consider Apple, YouTube, and Spotify to be “open” with video right now?

Greg: I think they’re destinations for consumption. Apple with HLS, Spotify being open and non-exclusive, YouTube just being YouTube—the accidental champions.

Jeff: Even if you have to completely transform the way you monetize them?

Greg: We do. Our entire engineering team is working on this. It’s a humongous project we’d rather not have to do, but at some point, it’s coming. You can either put your head in the sand and be the whaling industry, or you can look forward.

Jeff: Heard it here. Brendan, what do you think?

Brendan: For us, we start with the creator and understanding their needs and where they want to be. Some creators are never going to want to do video, and that’s okay. From a tooling perspective, we want to give them the best audio distribution, technology, and monetization possible.

For those that want to extend into video, we want to enable that too. So the Apples, the Spotifys—and I expect a lot more players to come into this space. There’s a lot happening. You can imagine the streaming platforms—Amazon, what Warner Bros. does now with the Paramount situation, what Paramount+ becomes. Netflix is dipping their toe in these waters.

For me, it’s about: if I’m a creator, where do I want to be? As Libsyn, I want to provide the capabilities for them to be there. If they don’t want to check a box, fine—but it’s my job to give them those choices and provide solutions that support that. Along the way, if I can provide ways for them to generate revenue and have data and insights around their audiences, that’s huge.

It’s not just “I’m distributing via RSS; how many downloads did I get?” It’s: what’s my reach on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Netflix? Understanding that holistic picture as a creator is really how I see our job: publishing, monetization, measurement, audience development.

Jeff: Are you doing any of that via the platform? I know there are platforms like Podstack. Are you thinking about integrating that into your platform? I know you all don’t have a publishing platform, Greg, but are you thinking about that right now?

Brendan: Yes. The idea is to make those integrations as seamless as possible. If I’m a creator, I want one dashboard. I was talking to a creator a couple weeks ago—he said, “I just launched a show. My CEO came to me and asked how it’s doing. I had to log into my hosting platform, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.” That’s a pain.

The idea of having that perspective in one place is what Libsyn’s charged with doing. We want to build those integrations directly, as much as the technology platforms are willing to partner, so that a creator can just check a box: I go to Spotify, YouTube, Netflix—wherever I’m distributed—and it’s a simple integration.

Technology gets talked about as a big threat. This is where technology is enabling production and distribution, lowering costs and headaches for creators, which is what we want.

Greg: And the same for audience members. You want them to be able to go to one place and move back and forth. I have that split now: sometimes I watch video, sometimes I listen. That will change when you can just go to one place and Apple will let you go back and forth, Spotify will let you go back and forth.

I should be a little more optimistic. A year ago this felt like a big storm cloud—an existential crisis. It feels like it’s in a much better place now. People are leaning into it. We have a lot of creators who come to us asking, “What should I do? Should we do video?” Not everybody should. Some don’t love it. A lot of them think the conversations are better without video.

Leah: This has been a very optimistic conversation, and I’m aligned with you, but from the network seat, there are concerns. The Apple announcement and even Spotify’s partner program are the first indication that platforms are starting to raise their hands to take a cut.

We don’t have clarity yet on what the HLS cost structure will look like, but that’s something we’re watching, because it will change the economics of our industry to an extent, which is important.

Jeff: There’s a whole conversation happening in that room over there about what Megaphone is doing with VAST integrations. I don’t know if you’re having those same conversations.

Leah: We host on Megaphone, so yes.

Jeff: We also host on Megaphone. You’ll be hearing a lot more, and you may be getting some new business, who knows.

I have two follow-up questions on video, and then we’ll move to bucket four. First: you mentioned wanting to integrate TikTok and social. Is there a point where you feel like you have to cut it off? When you’re talking about integrating ads on social and video and audio, are you going to add newsletters? You already do live events. Is there a point where you become a company you’re not today?

Greg: I’m stopping at in-flight entertainment—we won’t do in-flight entertainment. I don’t want to deal with American Airlines. That’s my red line in the sand.

Jeff: It’s a valid question though. Is there a point where you become a different company? Have you thought about that?

Leah: I think it’s important that as networks, we know our strengths. To my previous answer around video, we’re embracing it, and we know audio will always be our core competency. I look at other ancillary revenue streams similarly. We’re going to do merch, newsletters, live events. That doesn’t mean we’re going to become a merch company or a live events company.

Some other, often more niche, networks do a really good job of those things—Dear Media, Backyard Ventures, Crooked. That’s not going to be us, and that’s okay. But we still want to be a network that offers as much as possible to our creators, to make it easy for them to get everything they need in one place.

Jeff: I love that.

Brendan: For us, it gets down to the business question. There’s the industry-level conversation, but there are also individual businesses that need to be thoughtful. There’s always the question of build vs. buy vs. partner.

Does it make sense for us to have production tools? To be in microphone production? I don’t think so, but some companies might. Does it make sense to have partnerships with those companies and bring those things to our creators? Maybe.

Take newsletters, for example. There are a lot of folks doing that really well. We can provide tools to make those integrations easier. There’s a video platform that doesn’t get talked about enough that we’re all on more than we want to admit: LinkedIn. What role does LinkedIn have to play? We talk about TikTok and Instagram a lot, but for someone not in that demographic, maybe LinkedIn is where video promotion and consideration are important. That’s an increasing place where lines blur.

I get excited about platforms like that and how we integrate with them. There’s no single defined answer. It’s about where the ROI is and where our skillset is most effective. I keep a pretty open mind about where this space is going and try to be flexible about what our creators need.

Greg: We do the same. We had an app, and at some point you ask, “What are we doing? Are we going to be a 2 percent player?” So we focused and got rid of that. Subscriptions—that’s not us. We believe in ads and the meritocracy that creates. Let someone else do subscriptions.

Jeff: Wasn’t Libsyn at one point making apps for individual shows?

Brendan: Yes. I’ve been there a year and a half, and there’s been some pruning to be really good at a couple things and then add growth levers over time. The difference between starting Megaphone and coming to Libsyn, which has been around for 20 years, is a different mindset about building versus pruning.

We want to be really good at what we should be good at, and that’s an audio and video platform.

Jeff: To your last press release: you’ve done a great job so far.

Brendan: Thank you.

Leah: That said, if American Airlines wants to do a deal with Audacy…

Greg: You go. We’ll forego that. We actually have a partner for that.

Jeff: I can tell you I’ve had those conversations. It’s a great deal and also a big headache.

Greg: Yes. It’s not worth the squeeze.

Jeff: One more question on video: how are you doing measurement? Presumably you can’t do the same kind of pixel tracking you do with audio. How are you thinking about that?

Brendan: For us, it’s about identifying what the platforms are going to make available. Some of these are endpoints we don’t control. There’s demand from creators, and that’s where we work with them to ask questions of the platforms. We have major relationships, but so do they.

Insights and visibility are critical for business. My hope is that through conversations we have, and those creators force, we’ll see greater visibility. It’s a matter of figuring out how far platforms are willing to share and how much we can give back to creators.

Greg: I think it’s important that we all work together. I think about the IAB, the IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines. We can’t grade our own homework. We’ve got to find trusted partners we agree on, and it can’t be different for everybody. We have to keep making it easier for people to buy.

I’ve been in ad tech a long time. When I got to podcasting, it was like going back to the 1950s—talking about downloads and listens. It’s very unsophisticated. We can only go up. It’s getting better every day: episodic-level measurement, more granularity. We’re solving problems for P&G, Unilever, Pepsi—big brands saying, “We’re not doing this until you figure it out.”

Jeff: I’m not going to ask you to answer this next question right now, but I want you to think about it. If I’m a podcaster and I come to each of you today and say, “Should I publish video on Apple next month?”—because it’s coming out in April—what would you say? You don’t have to answer me now, but it’s the question I’m asking.

So, homework. We’ll move on to the next bucket, which is globalization. Greg, I’m going to come to you last because you are the most global.

How do you feel podcasting compares to other entertainment industries when it comes to globalization? How are we as a global industry compared to others?

Leah: Audacy is mostly focused on U.S.-based advertising, so I probably don’t have the most insight into this. An interesting thing about podcasting is that it’s so easy and relatively cheap to produce. The content is obviously there globally. The monetization is maybe not as mature globally, which is why we haven’t done much expanding beyond the U.S.

We have a partnership with SCA in Australia, so we have some one-off country solutions, but we certainly don’t have anything approaching what Acast has on a global scale.

Jeff: Brendan, you have a very large base of shows.

Brendan: We have a large base of shows and a lot of consumption around the world. We think again in terms of distribution, monetization, and measurement. As Leah said, on monetization we don’t see as much maturity holistically.

Certain markets—we tend to say “U.S. and international,” but let’s not forget “international” is 100-plus countries. We talk market by market, but we like to lump them as one. It’s really not one market. I know Greg will talk about this; in certain markets there’s a lot of adoption and a more mature monetization structure. I would love to fill every slot I can for creators and monetize for them, but the interest or economics just don’t make sense in some places.

Jeff: That was going to be my next question: what are the markets where you’re really focused next—and maybe some that are surprisingly not yet a focus because the appetite’s not there?

Leah: For us, we have a big overall priority list. This is on the list, but lower. We would love to talk to Acast about a U.K. monetization partnership. Maybe this conversation is the beginning of something beautiful. That’s by far the biggest non-U.S. market for us—the U.K. It’s the biggest market we have yet to tackle monetization-wise.

Brendan: For us, the obvious is the U.S., followed by Western Europe, then Australia, New Zealand, and APAC. That’s where our predominant focus is. It’s about getting really good at a couple things and then expanding.

Jeff: You’re probably not going to answer this, but in terms of percentage of your revenue, how much would you say is U.S. versus everything else?

Brendan: I don’t want to quantify, but it’s significant. It’s very small internationally relative to the advertiser base we work with and the consumption patterns we see. It’s growing, but it’s dwarfed by the U.S.

Jeff: We saw companies like Wondery move into Korea and make a lot of bets elsewhere. Acast is a Swedish company that later moved into the U.S., and I just heard the U.S. is now your biggest market.

Greg: Yes. Forget AI and video—this is my favorite bucket to talk about. For podcasting, think about the way I grew up in radio; podcasting is borderless. At Acast we used to downplay “global” because every market is different. Selling in France is very different from selling in the U.K. There’s not a lot of common structure.

But shows themselves travel. Our biggest show in Australia is Tony and Ryan; they have a huge following in the U.K. and the U.S., so we can sell ads against that audience. No one in the U.S. is calling up saying, “I want to buy Tony and Ryan,” but we have that inventory and it’s worth something.

Vice versa, Giggly Squad for some reason has a huge Irish following. We have an office in Ireland, we sell it there. It’s a U.S. show hosted by women who’ve never set foot in Ireland, and they’re popular there. That’s what’s really cool about podcasting.

The challenge is that it’s different in every market. We’ve got boots on the ground in 16 markets. The U.S. is our largest market, but it’s only a third of our revenue. Globally, advertising is roughly half U.S., half rest-of-world. So we have more growing to do in the U.S., and it’s outpacing other markets.

Having a global business where content can travel makes sense, and the advertising should travel too. But the challenges are geopolitical and cultural. Our big three markets are Sweden and the U.K.—we have very high market share in both—but nobody has a dominant market share in the U.S. It’s much more spread out, which is probably good. It’s hard for an advertiser to buy just one company in podcasting and cut everybody else out.

We try to homogenize as much as possible, then let people localize. France does a lot more video; France has a lot of creators and influencers who became podcasters rather than vice versa. We have to let the managing directors run their markets and try to stay out of their way.

Jeff: It’s fun to see. I keep referring to this room—behind this wall is Podcast Movement. There are a lot of companies from all these countries we’re talking about. It’s exciting to see: every year a couple more come, and there are a few more employees at each.

Greg: One other thing that gets underplayed is that this is a two-sided marketplace. You show up and have a chicken-and-egg problem. You have to get the content, and then the creators ask, “Where are the ads?” If you go get the ads and don’t have content, that’s a problem.

I’ve done other things where you just launch a market. Here, it takes time. For us to go into Latin America or India is daunting.

Jeff: You mentioned in an interview—sorry, I listened to all of them—that we can’t really sell into China, but Chinese companies are trying to sell into the rest of the world. You’re able to serve a lot of those, right?

Greg: Yes. There might be an audience in China, but whether you’re set up to take the revenue is another question.

Jeff: Okay, final bucket: consolidation. All of you have bought companies before. Just as a quick summary: Acast has most recently bought Wonder Media Network in the U.S.—great company—as well as Podchaser and Pippa a few years ago, and RadioPublic. Audacy has bought Podcorn, Cadence13, Pineapple Street Studios, and Radio.com’s digital audio assets. Libsyn has bought AdvertiseCast, Glow, and Parcast—no, not Parcast—Pair Networks.

I want to ask about how you think those acquisitions went over the years. I know not all of you were there for all of them. In hindsight, knowing you didn’t make all those decisions, how would you grade them? How did they position you where you are today? Do you foresee future acquisitions? I have some sub-buckets of areas where I could see you all thinking about this. Obviously you don’t have to answer, and you’re public, so you might not be able to.

And then the final question will be: are you aiming to get bought yourselves, and how would you position yourselves for that? I know these are questions you might not want to answer, but I’m going to ask them anyway.

Greg, let’s start with how you think your past acquisitions have stacked up.

Brendan: I’ll jump in first. It’s a mixed bag. People should remember that Libsyn was a hosting platform exclusively for a number of years. About five years ago we bought a couple of assets in AdvertiseCast and Pair that have really supercharged what is now a strong advertising business. You mentioned our announcement this week—that’s driven by some of those acquisitions.

Integrating a top-notch hosting platform with a monetization strategy has been an evolution. I’ve only been here for the past year and a half, seeing how that’s moving together. There are other deals we probably shouldn’t have done, frankly. Sometimes you live and learn, and that’s an opportunity to understand what we’re best at and focus there.

In terms of M&A, it’s a mixed bag across the board, but we’re really proud of the ones that have been successful, and they’re driving an important part of our business. The other part is how well you integrate. Understanding what you’re acquiring is one thing; understanding how it complements what you’re doing today and whether it extends you into new markets, products, or services is another. Some have been super successful for us and others not so much.

Jeff: I’m going to come back to that. Greg?

Greg: A-plus. I’ll start with Podchaser. That deal was just before me, about three and a half years ago. I’ve been overseeing Podchaser since. That was a slow integration: keep the brand, they’re in Oklahoma City, it’s a different business. Their customers include competitors and even hedge funds.

We’ve now started to integrate what they do into our systems. Podchaser is baked into our self-serve platform, and they also have an external brand that’s really valuable.

Wonder Media Network, on day one, became Acast Creative Studios. The 25 people there are incredibly talented. What they were doing independently is really different from what they do inside Acast. Most of their contribution is branded content and omnichannel creative. They paid for themselves in year one just with branded work and the things we can do on the omnichannel side. We took their skillset and integrated it differently than they would have on their own.

In Germany, we bought Wake Word and Podimo’s local ad sales operation. That’s essentially the German versions of Podchaser and Wonder Media Network from Axel Springer. Smaller market, smaller acquisitions. You can’t scale Jenny and Shira into Germany—you have a language and cultural barrier—so localizing that capability made sense.

We focus on our goal, our vision for what Acast is, identify where we’re weak or missing pieces, and then fill those gaps. If you look at old ad-tech companies like DoubleClick and Tara Lycos—you can watch the same patterns. Digital used to be crazy, social used to be crazy, and it all consolidated. You’re seeing those boxes get smaller, as people specialize and get out of subscriptions or newsletters to focus. You’ll see more consolidation as we go.

Jeff: You’ve seen this across half the companies in podcasting. I’ll come back to that as well. Leah?

Leah: As everyone knows, not all the brands we’ve acquired still exist as brands, but I think they all contributed a fundamental piece of our DNA now as a podcast-slash-broadcast company.

Cadence13, for instance, was an acquisition in 2019 that really taught our sales team how to sell podcasts. To Greg’s very generous compliment earlier, we’re not just taking the radio playbook. Cadence13 was making a lot of limited-run narrative series, which we no longer do, but it’s still at the core of how our team thinks.

We acquired AmperWave, which is a hosting platform that helps power an incredible streaming business. We acquired Podcorn, which now exists as the Audacy Creator Exchange and is an amazing sales extender for us.

RIP Pineapple Street. I think that was a tough one for the industry to digest. But there’s no way to predict how an industry will shift over five years. For a Pineapple-type company, the macro environment has done a 180 between 2019 and 2025.

Jeff: I can’t speak to the finances of any of this, so I can’t speak to the scorecard that way. But all of your acquisitions were remarkable in terms of brand alone. You also made some of the most incredible podcasts the industry has seen. I think you’ve all done really incredible acquisitions; they’ve all worked out differently.

I’m curious whether you’ve been thinking about acquisitions on the distribution front. I’m specifically looking at you, Brendan, because you just integrated Podroll directly into Libsyn. Why?

Brendan: A couple reasons. First, the guys that run Podroll are former leaders of Megaphone who worked with me on my senior executive team. I know the product and the team behind it, which matters. This is a relationship business, whether people admit it or not.

For us, it was about bringing more monetization tools to creators and making that seamless. When they’re onboarding with us, they can opt into monetization, opt into Podroll, and leverage those tools. One reason we got excited is that in this business there are two currencies: revenue and audience. Podroll helps with both.

That’s what gets me excited: thinking about ways to help the creator. If they build that audience, the revenue will follow. Tools like Podroll that help build audience as well as monetization are compelling. I don’t think enough people in this industry spend time on audience development. I certainly haven’t in the past to the extent I should have, and that’s where creators are really thirsty for help.

Jeff: We should talk. I do think there are a lot of different models. What we do as a service, what Podroll does, and what other organizations do are different technologies. I have a lot of thoughts about how all that should work. That said, I think that’s going to be the next wave of acquisitions, and you should all be looking at that.

There’s also the idea of international acquisitions or acquiring for scale. You’re all already huge. But admittedly you’re not iHeart, Spotify, or SiriusXM. Are you trying to get to that point?

Leah: The way we think about M&A is: is there a way to expand our scale without diluting the strength of the business we’ve created? There are a lot of networks out there that could add great scale, but they may have inferior economics. That’s a risk.

The other place we’re interested in is: is there something we’re just not very good at that we could get a lot better at by bringing in third-party expertise? We’re always open to it, but we are not in the business of spending stupid money. We are very careful about big-money moves.

Greg: We’re public, so we can’t talk too much about specifics, but we’re always opportunistic. Again, we look at our strategy, what we’re missing, and what might help, and we act when it makes sense.

The industry will consolidate because we’re starting to come out of an identity crisis. Even registering for this conference, the dropdown asks, “What are you? Publisher? Platform?” Nobody knows what to pick because we all do multiple things. Those boxes are going to get more defined.

We talked to a company recently with a few shows that make a lot of money. The hosts may be older, or the show chemistry might be fragile. So what’s this worth in five years when they retire or break up? The question is: what’s durable here? You see a lot of people who tried to get in and get out. Sonys and Wonderys of the world realize this is hard when you’re purely talent-led. The value goes up and down the elevator every day.

We’re happy with where we are and the way we’re growing organically. I feel like all of us are taking market share. I don’t think of iHeart as a rival in a one-to-one way. I worked there 18 years; it’s a great company. Our podcast business is bigger than theirs, and our market cap is higher than theirs. They may make noise in different ways, but I like what we’re doing specifically for podcasting. When we spend an hour with an advertiser, it’s an hour on podcasts. When they do, it’s going to be an hour on a lot of interesting stuff, but not just podcasts.

We’re rooting for everybody, but this is really different.

Jeff: Depending on which tracker you look at—Podtrac vs. Podsights—you’re number two on Podsights.

Greg: That’s the one we didn’t sign up for. The pay-to-play ones, we don’t do as well.

Jeff: I won’t ask if you’re trying to sell, because everybody’s probably always for sale at the right price. But what should I ask you? Is there anything I haven’t asked yet that you think would be really relevant?

Brendan: I think an interesting question is: to what degree are we working together? I think there are interesting opportunities. I don’t mind saying Greg does a fantastic business internationally, and of course in the U.S. Are there opportunities to complement each other there? I think what Leah’s doing—she has a fantastic network and eye for talent. Are there ways for us to help monetize their inventory?

By the way, Podcorn is someone we work with closely already; we were talking about this last night. What I love about this space is that it’s less zero-sum and more complementary. There are opportunities to do things that help the industry grow. You might be better at something than we are and vice versa. I’ve never been opposed to partnering that way.

If you think back to your core mission—thinking about the creator and bringing them the very best in whatever you’re working on—sometimes someone else is going to be better than us, and I don’t mind saying that.

Greg: It’s a fun industry in that it’s competitive, but not cutthroat. I’ve been in industries where you have an enemy—it’s Hatfields and McCoys, Coke and Pepsi, ABC vs. NBC. It’s not like that here. We all have different audiences and shows; there’s not a lot of duplication. There’s room for everybody.

We collaborate a lot. Very rarely does somebody say, “Here’s all the budget—go do what you want.” That would be nice.

Jeff: I’ve bought ads from all three of you in the last month.

Leah: Great. It’s easy to feel competitive because, like you said, we’re in the business both with brands and with content. I’ve lost shows to both of you in the last year. I wanted to poach The Viall Files from you, Greg. I really wanted Watch What Happens Live; they went to Acast. I’m sure the same can be said in reverse.

It’s easy to feel competitive, but my hope for the industry in the next few years is that we start to define ourselves more in terms of lanes: where we’re good, where you’re good, where others are good. Maybe Audacy is the place for women’s health and expertise or for sports. Acast is something different. Libsyn is something different. Maybe that’s overly optimistic, but it would be cool if networks started to specialize a bit more.

Jeff: I’d love that. I don’t know if it’s optimistic or not, but the one ultimate truth is that everything is changing every day. Hopefully all of us will be very successful in whatever we do.

Thank you, Leah. Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Brendan.

Greg: Thank you. Great job.

Leah: Thank you.

Jeff: Really awesome. I truly appreciate you all for joining.