Podcasting has well and truly grown up, it’s big business. More brands are launching shows than ever before, and your audience’s expectations are higher than ever. The bar’s higher, the noise is louder, and the ‘build it and they will come’ era is well and truly over.
That means podcast strategy trumps everything – think strategically about how you create, distribute, and measure your podcast and the opportunities for brands who get it right are huge. Whether you’re launching your first show or looking to grow an existing one, here are the trends and realities you need to understand in 2026.
1. Stand out in a sea of clips
Video’s not going anywhere. YouTube and Spotify’s influence on podcasting continues to grow and influence the content, everyone’s making clips now (and let’s not forget fake shows where the actual podcast doesn’t even exist). The challenge in 2026 isn’t whether to repurpose your content – it’s how to do it in a way that actually stands out.
When everyone’s churning out podcast clips, ask yourself: what makes yours worth stopping the scroll for?
Think beyond the obvious. Picking out a 60-second highlight you liked best just doesn’t cut it anymore. Think strategically about your clips – one might be a host personality moment, another a ‘thing you didn’t know’ clip, another a controversial take. Each clip needs a job to do.
But it doesn’t stop there. Are you publishing to LinkedIn? Test whether 16:9 clips perform better than verticals – like this one we create for our client The Forge and their podcast The Persuasion Game. Do you have a brand YouTube account? Maybe you’re not even posting your vertical clips to Shorts. What about behind-the-scenes content? Host takeaways direct to camera? Walk-and-talk clips on the way back from the studio?
2. Dont get hooked on the downloads. Keep people hooked on your podcast.
Time spent is finally gaining more traction as a metric that actually matters: how long are people spending with your content?
Those download numbers are enticing, but a download tells you almost nothing about engagement. You have no idea that anyone is actually listening, let alone loving what you’re spending all that time and budget making. What you need to know is: are people really listening? Actively. Intently.
Listen through rates, listen time, completion or consumption rates, however you refer to it, it’s the total amount of time your audience spends with your episodes – it’s the KPI that brands should be tracking in 2026. As Bumper (the podcast measurement company founded by Dan Misener and Jonas Woost) spells it out: “The total amount of aggregate human attention earned by a well-executed podcast can exceed the lifetime of a human being.”
This matters because attention is what you’re actually paying for. When you think about cost-per-minute of attention compared to other marketing channels, podcasts are pretty compelling.
How to position this internally:
- Stop leading with downloads as your headline metric
- Report on minutes (or hours) of attention delivered per episode or series
- Translate attention into business language: cost per minute, attention trends over time, attention per topic or guest
We saw this play out with A Life More Wild, the podcast we make for Canopy & Stars. Over three series, we’ve tracked not just growing download numbers, but increasing completion rates and listen time – proof that the audience isn’t just finding the show, they’re staying with it.
3. Put a stop to the slop
Everyone’s talking about AI fatigue, and they’re right to. As content volume continues to spike, trust and authenticity become even more important. The great thing is, podcasts are the best form of media for both of these qualities (the data backs that up)
Recent research shows that six in ten people trust brand messages from podcasts than those in any other medium.
The best brand podcasts have:
- A real editorial point of view that serves the need of it’s audience – not generic corporate messaging
- Thoughtful and considered viewpoints – sharing multiple voices and ideas
- Consistent host voice – someone who sounds real, human, who people buy into
- Guests with genuine credibility – people with real access or expertise, not just a job title
If your podcast could be made by any brand or business in your sector, it’s not going to stand out, but it’s probably not authentic enough either, it’s not tapping into you, your brand, your values. Ask yourself, what makes your podcast uniquely ‘you’?
4. Distribution strategy was already important; it’s now non-negotiable
Great production quality should be bread and butter…The hard part is getting listened to.
You can make the best podcast in your industry, but if nobody hears it, if you’re not building a community of followers around it, you’re shouting into the ether.
Brands need a real distribution strategy that includes:
Owned channels – Your email lists, communities, existing content platforms that can actively drive listening (not just ‘announcing’ a new podcast ep every time it drops). Do you have a podcast already, are you doing more than just posting about every new episode?
Guest and host networks – Every guest becomes a distribution partner if you plan it properly. Are you making it easy for them to share? Are you giving them assets? Are you coordinating timing?
Paid amplification on the right channels – Budget for discovery, whether that’s social ads, podcast-specific paid promotion, or partnership placements.
Existing communities – Where does your audience already gather? Industry newsletters, Slack groups, conferences, other podcasts? That’s where you need to be.
When investment platform eToro came to us, they’d identified a really underserved market: female investors. Most investment content skews male, and they saw an opportunity. But they didn’t just launch a show and hope. We helped them build the full strategic launch support around it – positioning, audience targeting, distribution infrastructure designed specifically for that community.
That’s the difference in 2026: distribution thinking needs to start before you record episode one, thats why we build into into our podcast strategy work with clients, right from the kickoff
5. Test before you commit: the ‘season zero’ approach
The market’s too crowded for ‘launch and hope.’ We’ve launched lots of shows for brands that start with a limited pilot series to work out what works and, importantly, what doesnt, there’s so much to be learned.
Here’s what a good test looks like:
6-10 episodes – Enough to establish a rhythm and gather meaningful data, but not so many you’ve over-committed. This isnt wasted content, you’ll have a real, maybe even high performing show, but the stakes are lower.
Clear success criteria – Define upfront, set some realistic but meaningful KPIs, and not just downloads. What completion rates would you need to see? What guest quality? What feedback (make sure you’re gathering it)
Audience signal testing – Which topics resonate? Which format works? Which guests bring their own audience and which dont.
Resource reality check – Can you actually sustain this? What’s the real cost per episode when you factor in everyone’s time? What may you need to outsource (like guest booking)
Then you decide: continue as-is, pivot the format or tweak the strategy.
This de-risks the investment and gives you actual data to improve with, rather than guessing what might work.
After launching a focused 10-episode series in 2025 for business tech platform Sherpany, in 2026 we’re shifting to optimisation. The show is evolving into an audio-first format with increased output, while video is used strategically to support distribution and discovery rather than define the podcast itself.
6. Video is still changing things – but strategy comes first
Video was a dominant podcasting theme in 2025, and it still will be in 2026. Big shows are already signalling where this is heading: Goalhanger’s The Rest Is Football doing a deal with Netflix. The biggest of platforms aer starting to treat podcasts as something audiences may increasingly watch, not just listen to.
But this doesn’t mean brands should default to video-first podcasting. And it doesnt mean people are stopping ‘just listening’ – the stats show that people still prefer to listen over watching.
This doesn’t mean that video has to be your strategy – but video needs to be considered as part of it.
Podcasting works because it fits into everyday life – it’s something to do when your eyes are busy, and that behaviour isn’t changing. The danger for brands is creating video shows that just dont cut, or worse just dont work for the true ‘listeners’.
Think about how video can enhance your show, expand your reach, and help grow your following. That may be highly-polished studio recorded episodes, or it could mean more budget and resource friendly hyrbid shows that combine standout shortform video with audio-first production that your audience really love.
What this means for your brand
Whether you’re thinking about launching your first podcast or looking to improve an existing show, the fundamentals haven’t changed: you need to know your audience, have a strong differentiator, and a commitment to consistency.
But the bar’s higher now. Distribution needs proper planning. The production approach needs genuine creative thinking. Measurement needs to go beyond vanity metrics.
The good news? Brands who approach podcasting strategically – who think about the full picture from format to distribution to measurement – can continue to build something genuinely valuable, that kicks other forms of content out of the park. A regular stream of engaged attention, measured in hours not seconds, from exactly the audience you want to reach.
If you’d like to talk about what a podcast could do for your brand in 2026? Get in touch – we’d love to help you figure it out
(title image generated from original by Richard Khuptong on Unsplash)