YouTube hit yet another podcasting milestone with more than 1 billion monthly active viewers watching podcasting content on the service. The company shared the news in its latest blog post Wednesday.
It’s no secret that YouTube has quickly become a leader in the podcasting space. In 2024, viewers on average watched over 400 million hours of podcasts from their living rooms a month. Last fall, Edison Podcast Metrics even named YouTube the most popular platform for listening to podcasts in the U.S. Based on the podcast measurement service, 31% of podcast listeners who were aged 13 years or older choose YouTube over Spotify (27%) and Apple Podcasts (15%).
In a blog post published earlier this month, CEO Neal Mohan pledged to further support this growing segment, announcing that YouTube will release more tools to “support podcasters, improve monetization for creators and make it even easier to discover podcasts.” As part of this pledge, YouTube added more podcasters into the YouTube Partner Program, its revenue sharing program.
“We’ve specifically developed our podcast product experience to make it easier for fans to find podcasts they love, discover new ones and watch (or listen!) wherever they want,” Wednesday’s blog post reads.
A big reason why YouTube may be appealing to podcasters is because of the ad capabilities it offers to creators. Whereas a service such as Spotify may only allow for a certain ad load for video podcasts, YouTube can allow for a heaver ad load. That is part of the reason why the video aspect for Alex Cooper’s incredibly popular “Call Her Daddy” moved from Spotify to YouTube.
