Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights have released a study of more than 600 weekly podcast listeners that finds despite the rise of podcast video use, 92% of consumers are listening to podcasts.
Cumulus and Signal Hill commissioned Quantilope to conduct the study between Oct. 8-21, ahead of the Thursday release of their Fall 2025 Podcast Download report highlighting podcast trends like platform preference, content trends, and advertiser usage.
An analysis of the Podcast Download consumer study by Liz Mayer, Senior Insights Manager of the Cumulus Media | Westwood One Audio Active Group, and Paul Riismandel, President and CEO of Signal Hill Insights, found that while podcast consumers have the option to either watch or listen, the vast majority (92%) continue to choose to listen. Just eight per cent say they only watch podcasts.
Supporting that is the additional survey result indicating 52% of YouTube podcast consumers say they listened to the same podcasts on another platform. Seventy per cent of weekly podcast consumers on YouTube say they would switch platforms away from YouTube, if a podcast were to become available only on another platform.
The study found watchable podcasts ar still growing in popularity, driven by Podcast Newcomers, with YouTube the number one destination for podcast discovery. Forty-five per cent of weekly podcast consumers who listened to a new podcast in the past six months, started listening to it on YouTube.
While YouTube came in as the leading podcast platform for a third year, the analysis finds that consumers perceive YouTube as their most used platform when actual time spent reveals Spotify as very closely matched.
Among other findings, study respondents who prefer video components were more likely to listen to “chatcast” podcasts, with those who prefer audio-only podcasts listening more outside the home and on mobile devices.
Podcast hosts are three times more influential than social media creators, according to the study, with advertiser adoption of podcast ads continuing to grow – from 15% to 59% in the past eight years.
