Marcus Johnson (00:05):

Hey gang, it's Friday, January 16th. Ethan, Oscar, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER video podcast. I'm Marcus and joining me for today's conversation we have two folks, both live in New York, both on the forecasting team.

(00:17):

We have our principal forecasting writer, Ethan Cramer-Flood.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (00:21):

Can I still say Happy New Year?

Marcus Johnson (00:23):

I don't know. Yeah, maybe. I haven't seen you.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (00:25):

Yeah. Okay. Happy New Year, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (00:30):

I'll allow it. It feels weird. The Senior Director of Forecasting, Oscar Orozco.

Oscar Orozco (00:34):

Hey, Marcus. Happy to be here. Happy New Year, why not?

Marcus Johnson (00:37):

Okay. I was going to say, I should hope so. You can't just not say it now.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (00:42):

I've seen you. You don't get happy New Year. I just haven't seen Marcus, so he gets one.

Marcus Johnson (00:46):

[inaudible 00:00:47] out.

(00:48):

Today's fact: Mars has the largest canyon in the solar system. It's called... I can't pronounce this. The Valles... Nope. Marineris. That's better.

(01:03):

Valles Marineris is so big it would stretch across America, just the canyon. So compared to the Grand Canyon, the Valles Marineris is roughly 10 times longer, 20 times wider, and about six times deeper. Have you guys been to the Grand Canyon?

Oscar Orozco (01:28):

I have not.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (01:28):

I've been to the one on Mars, but I have not been to the Grand Canyon.

Marcus Johnson (01:31):

Okay. So you know.

Oscar Orozco (01:33):

Wait, isn't Mars smaller than Earth? That would make it... It's just a canyon, essentially, the planet.

Marcus Johnson (01:39):

Oh, that's a good question. I don't know.

Oscar Orozco (01:40):

Yeah. That's what I thought. I might be wrong.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (01:42):

That is a big gap for a small planet, the size of North America.

Marcus Johnson (01:45):

Is Mars smaller than Earth?

Oscar Orozco (01:46):

Might be making that up.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (01:47):

It's about the same size, but that's a big canyon. What caused it?

Marcus Johnson (01:52):

Mars is significantly smaller, roughly half its diameter, about 10% its mass making it the second smallest and it makes it... Wow! What caused it? I don't know. Enough with the questions. Just be impressed and let me move on with my life.

(02:08):

But it's not, I say Grand Canyon, it's stunning. It's absolutely beautiful. Not the largest canyon on earth, though, by depth and length. It is Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in Tibet. It's three times deeper than the Grand Canyon and about 13% longer.

Oscar Orozco (02:26):

So we have the biggest canyons, the highest mountains in Tibet. Beautiful. Incredible.

Marcus Johnson (02:31):

I can't even imagine. The Grand Canyon's stunning.

Oscar Orozco (02:34):

I'll have to make it out one day.

Marcus Johnson (02:35):

Definitely. I think I'd just black out if I saw this one on Mars. Remarkable. Anyway, today's real topic.

(02:41):

The great Behind the Numbers, Bake Off, Take Off. Forecasting trends to watch in 2026.

(02:52):

All right. In today's episode, our takers, bakers, will be cooking up some... What would we be cooking up? Forecasting trends to watch in 2026. Three rounds. Signature take, round one. The "How it Will Technically Play Out" challenge round two, and the show-stopping argument, round three. Let's meet the contestant's predictions.

(03:11):

Ethan, what will you be cooking up for us in today's episode?

Ethan Cramer-Flood (03:17):

I will be cooking up some podcast-related storylines. But just real quick, so just to introduce, this is a annual report on forecast trends to watch, where we collect some under-the-radar forecasts that we think our clients should be paying more attention to, that maybe they haven't heard or maybe haven't been getting enough attention. So there's actually a whole bunch in this report, we're only going to give you two today.

(03:43):

So mine is the following: podcasts will be more important to digital audio marketers than music in 2026 and beyond. And I got a whole bunch of good data points and stats to reveal, which I'm going to save, but the crux of it is basically that of course if you've listened to this podcast and you pay attention to EMARKETER, you know that podcasts are hot. You've heard it over and over again, but what you might not realize is that they are still pretty significant minority in terms of the attention that they get from marketers and advertisers. And my point is that that is wrong, and it's going to change.

Marcus Johnson (04:20):

I asked Ethan to give me just one sentence, before we hit record.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (04:24):

That was one sentence.

Marcus Johnson (04:25):

And then this happened.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (04:26):

That was one. There were semicolons.

Marcus Johnson (04:28):

He's not wrong. My job is podcast and I'm still astounded at how big they are once I zoom out from this little show and realize just how significant they've become in the grander, broader scheme of digital.

(04:44):

So that's Ethan's. Oscar, what will you be baking?

Oscar Orozco (04:47):

Before giving my signature take, I also want to say that this is...

Marcus Johnson (04:50):

Oh, for crying out loud.

Oscar Orozco (04:52):

I just want to make clear, this is my favorite report of the year. Listeners, check it out. Check it out when it drops.

(04:59):

But anyway, mine is just as interesting, maybe even more. But it's that AVOD viewership will cross 200 million for the first time. So 200 million people will be actively watching AVOD services. And really the main driver of this is fast channels, fast platforms. So that's going to be the growth driver behind this milestone. We'll get more into it in just a bit, but that's mine.

Marcus Johnson (05:30):

Okay. I don't think we need to even do round one. You've both given a summary. Do you still want to do the... Do you still have more to say [inaudible 00:05:37].

Ethan Cramer-Flood (05:36):

I got other juicy stuff that's on the reserve.

Oscar Orozco (05:36):

I've got plenty to talk about.

Marcus Johnson (05:40):

Before we move on to round one, let me take a quick sip of my coffee out of my new mug.

Oscar Orozco (05:46):

Oh, gosh. Please don't include this.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (05:50):

What are they, the Dodgers?

Marcus Johnson (05:52):

Two time, back-to-back champion of the world, Dodgers. None of my colleagues have congratulated me on a back-to-back victory.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (06:00):

Yeah, you're going to wait longer.

Oscar Orozco (06:02):

It's probably going to be three in a row, too, maybe. This is why. We're just let down.

Marcus Johnson (06:09):

All right. Now we've got... I wasn't going to do it, but you upset me very early on in the show by not listening to the instructions. Round one.

(06:16):

Now that we've half an hour to the show is, what is it? Signature take. In this round, our chefs will have one minute to explain the premise of their trend, which they've already done.

(06:29):

Ethan, what else do you have? He's talking about podcasts will be more important to digital audio marketers than music.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (06:37):

That was round one. We just did round one. Come on.

Marcus Johnson (06:40):

Did you want round two?

Ethan Cramer-Flood (06:41):

That was the one-minute intro. Yeah.

Marcus Johnson (06:45):

Round two. One second. Round two.

Oscar Orozco (06:46):

Who's in charge here?

Ethan Cramer-Flood (06:47):

What do you want? Four rounds? A 30-second round, then a one-minute round, then a five-minute round. Okay, come on. We're doing round two.

Marcus Johnson (07:00):

It's gone off the rails. Here we are, round two.

(07:00):

This is How it Will Technically Play Out challenge. Our chefs will explain in more detail, if that's possible, how they expect the trend to manifest itself. Ethan, go!

Ethan Cramer-Flood (07:09):

So podcasts will be more important to digital audio marketers than music. So we got like 240 million people in this country listen to digital audio, but if you're listening to this podcast, you're not necessarily interested... That's a massive number, right? That's basically everyone, but we're not interested in that huge, gigantic number. We're interested in the amount of people that listen to digital audio that are actually accessible to advertisers and marketers.

(07:31):

That's a smaller number because as we know, lots of people pay to avoid ads. They pay for that ad-free tier on Spotify or whatever services available. So there's about 180 million people that are actually going to be available for advertisement. Tens of millions of people are not available. Why are podcasts more important?

(07:48):

Because, once you narrow it down to that cohort of people that are actually accessible and actually going to hear ads on digital audio, way more of them are hearing ads via podcasts than are hearing ads via music. So it's a little counterintuitive. Of course, music overall is more popular. More people... Not everyone listens to podcasts. It's true. About 150 million people listen to podcasts. This is a much smaller chunk of people, but they are all ad accessible. 80% of the total number of people that are going to hear ads at all on digital audio are going to hear ads via podcasts, whereas only about 50% of people who hear ads are hearing ads via music.

(08:33):

The numbers speak for themselves, they only increase over time, and yet, despite what I've said, that's a huge gap. The advertising dollar investments do not reflect what I just said. Music still gets about 60% of all ad investment that's going to digital audio, podcasts are only getting about 40%, even though the audience of people that will actually hear ads is much, much bigger on podcasts.

(09:01):

So I'm just giving some... These are forecast figures for 2026, and I guess the prediction is that we're going to see a much more profound transition in advertising investment once the reality of numbers, like I just said, start to sink in.

Marcus Johnson (09:17):

So just to reiterate that, because it's quite astonishing. In 2026, this year, nearly 150 million Americans will listen to podcasts.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (09:25):

Yes.

Marcus Johnson (09:27):

And Ethan points out in the piece that not even a hundred million will listen to ad-supported digital music. At 150 million, you're talking about close to half of Americans listening to podcasts. And we also have forecasts for weekly listenership, that's monthly. Weekly listenership is 120 million, which about a third of the population listening to podcasts weekly, podcast listeners consuming close to an hour of content per day as well.

(09:50):

So, Ethan, how come, you just alluded to this, how come podcasts are reaching one third of Americans weekly, but US advertisers are only spending about 1% of their budgets in digital ads spend pie on podcast ads?

Ethan Cramer-Flood (10:02):

The fact that they're only spending 1% of their overall budget, that's complicated, then you get into all the other alternatives like social media, and commerce media, and stuff like that. But I'd rather focus it on the decision within audio. So you've already made this decision.

Marcus Johnson (10:16):

So tell us just what's going on.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (10:18):

So how come there is still this legacy drift towards music and digital radio when that's not actually where people are hearing ads? And I would argue that there's two main reasons.

(10:29):

One is just that's just how it's been, so you've got inertia. It takes a while for people to transition. The explosive growth and popularity of podcasts has come so fast that people haven't really adjusted. Four or five years ago, the story would be totally different. We've been listening to digital audio for music for a really, really long time. And so that is, by some arguments, a more robust, more mature ecosystem for ads, and that's just what everyone is more used to doing.

(10:58):

Podcasts, you can't look on anything without seeing a headline about how popular they are, but it's still relatively new. No matter how much we talk about it is still relatively new. And then the other major part is probably just that lack of maturation on the platforms themselves, within the podcasting community. How easily are you making yourself available for advertisers to spend money with you? The programmatic element is not there yet. There's only a very, very small percentage of...

Marcus Johnson (11:26):

10%, I think.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (11:27):

Okay, 10% something like that. So it's just much easier to advertise it against music than it is to advertise against podcasts. The most effective podcast ad, the host-read ads by high-profile podcasts can be expensive compared to programmatic music advertising. So there are barriers, but I think the biggest one is just not enough time has passed.

(11:47):

And the numbers, like what I just said, probably haven't really seeped into the subconsciousness of the people that are making these decisions, because you see the raw figure of how many more people listen to digital audio music. And you think, okay, well, most people listen to music and not everyone listens to podcasts. That's true. But the thing is like 60 million of those people listening to music aren't available. They pay to not hear ads. Whereas in podcasts, everyone's available.

Oscar Orozco (12:12):

I'd throw in another stat, just to talk about the growth of podcasts. But we predict also this year that 30% of all time with digital audio, so that consumers spend on average daily with digital audio, will be spent with podcasts. So that continues to grow. It continues takes a bigger chunk of all digital audio time. So something else to consider.

Marcus Johnson (12:37):

And the dollars eventually following, we've got podcasts out spending in the US reaching or crossing the $3 billion mark this year. That's up 14% and that's a 40% share slice of all digital audio ad spend, and climbing. So it is going up. We're starting to take away dollars from music or take more dollars, account from more dollars, not take them away necessarily.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (13:00):

Yeah. Both are growing, it's not a zero-sum game.

Marcus Johnson (13:05):

All right. Let's move over to Oscar. You are talking about one of the trends from Ethan's piece. There are five, we're covering two. The first one is podcasts, the second one is about AVOD viewership crossing this 200 million viewer milestone for the first time.

Oscar Orozco (13:25):

Precisely. So it's a huge milestone, and it really just speaks to the growth of AVOD services, however they might look. And part of the pieces speaks to how much of a driver behind this is the growth of fast services. So we're going to get into that.

(13:41):

I would mention, another interesting bit of information that came out right at the end of 2025, was Roku released a report talking about five key predictions. And they predicted that ad-free viewers will go extinct in 2026. So everyone will watch some ad when they're watching any streaming service. So I think that's a bit of hyperbole, I don't think that's quite the case, but they're not far off.

(14:09):

Our own forecasts are saying that about 75% of OTT video viewers, anyone who's streaming video, is watching some ad-supported platform. So of course, YouTube, a major driver of that, Amazon Prime when they essentially forced you to pay to get rid of ads, but we want to talk about fast services.

Marcus Johnson (14:31):

Really quickly, is that growing, that 75% number or that's where it will live?

Oscar Orozco (14:35):

It is growing a little bit every year because...

Marcus Johnson (14:37):

Not 100%? Exactly.

Oscar Orozco (14:41):

I think Roku might have gotten ahead of themselves a little bit there, but there is something to that. It's inspired this trend. So we're getting there, and I just think it's such an interesting number, the over 200 million viewer number.

(14:56):

To put that in context, that's about two in three online users. It's 10 million more Americans than watch regular linear TV, cable and satellite, any given months. That's at about 190 million, 192 million to be more precise. So more of that ad-supported viewing is happening online. We've talked about subscription OTT services, SVOD services in the past, but it's really AVOD that's growing. And again, fast, right? We're talking about Tubi, and Pluto, and Roku channel, and it's just a medium that should be paid attention to more.

(15:35):

We talk about CTV advertising growing. I think any marketers should think about allocating or more of their media mix into the fast channel pie. So that's what this is about.

Marcus Johnson (15:49):

So, for folks not paying as close attention to this space as you guys, who are some of the biggest AVOD players and fast players? And then second question is, which fast services are driving the growth?

Oscar Orozco (16:04):

We can get into that.

(16:06):

So Tubi, it's fast-growing. It's Fox's. It's owned by Fox. So, we predict that there'll be almost 92 million people using Tubi. So there's a lot of partnerships.

Marcus Johnson (16:18):

Wow.

Oscar Orozco (16:18):

Yeah, these are massive numbers. They have a huge partnership...

Marcus Johnson (16:22):

So that's...

Oscar Orozco (16:22):

Oh, go ahead.

Marcus Johnson (16:23):

Nearly as many people as listening to ad-supported digital music, back to what you think were saying.

Oscar Orozco (16:28):

Yeah.

Marcus Johnson (16:28):

Okay. That's 96 million. Okay, astonishingly high.

Oscar Orozco (16:31):

Very high. There's the Fox Sports integration. They've recent partnership with Mr. Beast, who's like a huge creator, so there's that intersection with online and social as well. You could stream the Super Bowl on there, and then they had the Thanksgiving game.

(16:49):

So the other one is Pluto TV, which is with Paramount. There seems to be less of a tie-in at the moment, but we figure that you'll be able to watch Pluto on Paramount soon enough you would expect. So that's another one. There's almost 69 million people we estimate that use that service at least once a month.

(17:09):

And then Roku is the biggest, almost 96 million people watch Roku channel specifically. They themselves reported that 96% of viewers see ads on the Roku homepage. And so there's a very close tie-in with the device itself, which so many Americans use. So Roku channels rounds out the big three.

Marcus Johnson (17:33):

Nearly 30% of people in the country watching the Roku channel. That's shocking, shockingly high. Ethan, this was in your report. What jumps out to you about this trend?

Ethan Cramer-Flood (17:44):

Yeah, just that the free, ad-supported streaming TV platforms are where the growth is. So ad-supported video on demand is gigantic, 200 million people. The biggest player is actually Amazon Prime Video, because they forced everyone to see ads, and then Hulu is gigantic as well, Peacock. Some of the paid services do have bigger AVOD audiences than the fast platforms, but the fast platforms are where the growth is.

(18:10):

You've got subscription fatigue, payment fatigue is hitting everyone equally hard and people are getting tired of... Even the lower-cost ad tiers on sub OTT platforms are annoyingly expensive, and you can just go to these fast platforms and it doesn't cost a dime. And yes, and you're going to see a bunch of ads, but people are down with it. It's okay. And so Roku's saying that ad-free viewing is going to go extinct is over the top, of course, but they do have a point in that, much like with where podcasts make everyone available for advertising, it is true that basically everyone watching CTV streaming is available for advertising in one way or the other.

(18:55):

Maybe they're watching free ad-supported streaming TV sometimes. Maybe they're watching an ad tier. Maybe they're just watching sports now, because those of us that pay to avoid ads on Netflix, and pay to avoid ads on Amazon, and pay to avoid ads on HBO Max, we're still seeing ads because live sports are the podcasts of streaming TV. You cannot avoid ads. So basically everyone is going to qualify as an ad viewer in one way, shape, or form at some point. So maybe that's what Roku had in mind. It's massive and it's just going to get bigger. The days of the notion that streaming is for people to pay to avoid ads is ending.

Oscar Orozco (19:33):

I would just add on the fast services. They mix on demand viewing with TV-style channels. There's like a personalization element, because channels revolve around very popular shows, and things like Bob Ross, or Saved by the Bell, like Retro TV or... Exactly. You'll find your favorite shows there and you can just binge it all day, 24 hours. So there's a lot to like there and I think they deserve a bit more attention.

Marcus Johnson (20:04):

Out of 10, how much of this is down to inflationary pressures? Is it the fact that like we wouldn't have seen this type of surge so fast if... It wouldn't have been driving as much of the growth here if tariffs and inflation hadn't have been as big as it is, or is this just a trend that was inevitably going to happen, or was happening already, and this has exacerbated it?

Oscar Orozco (20:26):

I'd put it at six. I think at the crux of everything we talk about is the economic pressures and just budgeting.

(20:35):

And it's like Ethan mentioned, there's fatigue with the SVOD services. So it's part of it, but it's also part of just the cord cutting that trend away from TV, and these fast channels replace that type of viewing behavior bit as well.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (20:51):

I think it's fifty-fifty. We do miss lean back viewing. Everybody got rid of their cable and then all of a sudden they're paralyzed within decision when they turn on Netflix. Marcus, you've talked about this. 20 minutes, you spent 20 minutes deciding what to watch and you don't watch anything. Whereas when you go on a Roku channel, or one of the fast services, you can just flip around and just leave it on, and not worry about it.

Marcus Johnson (21:15):

It's the other part of it. It's a big part of it. Similar to Spotify. People thought, "Okay, on demand, pick any song you want." A lot of people were like, "Maybe I'll just listen to the song radio or put on a playlist because I don't want to have to choose every song."

Oscar Orozco (21:27):

Exactly.

Marcus Johnson (21:28):

"I'll curate it all myself." So that's another big piece, they're free, but you can also just press play and it replicates that cable style viewing experience that people were very used to. All right, gents, let's move to round three.

(21:42):

This is the showstopping argument. Our chefs will pull out their best closing arguments as to why their trend is most likely to happen, more likely than the other persons perhaps.

(21:50):

Ethan, we go back to you, talking about podcasts, 20 seconds, go.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (21:54):

The argument that podcasts are more important than music? Marcus, Oscar, what are we doing right now? I don't know if you know it.

Marcus Johnson (22:01):

There we are.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (22:03):

This is a podcast. You're telling me that I got to argue in favor that people would rather advertise here with us than with Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars? I think that goes without saying. It's going to be a home run.

Marcus Johnson (22:14):

Hey, Oscar, this is going to be a tough one for you.

Oscar Orozco (22:15):

It's a hard one.

Marcus Johnson (22:16):

Okay. Because as a host of a podcast, this is going to be real tricky, all right? But do your best.

Oscar Orozco (22:22):

Look, my argument is more about the fact that video viewing is growing so much, and more of it, as we mentioned earlier, is coming on ad-supported streaming services, right? Where we didn't think that was a trend three, four, five years ago. It was all subscription services.

(22:40):

So I point out that back in 2010, about four hours a day were spent streaming any video, and we are getting close to the seven-hour-a-day mark. And so my argument is that the more time... It's what's really driving time with digital media, it's video and more of it is ad supported and I think marketers need to pay attention to that.

Marcus Johnson (23:05):

All right. Time to crown a champion, other than the Dodgers, of course. Mug again? Too soon?

(23:13):

And today's winner is... Okay, the impartial.

Oscar Orozco (23:18):

This is taking too long.

Marcus Johnson (23:19):

Marcus person wants to say he's torn, Oscar, but as the podcast host, Ethan!

(23:27):

There it is.

Oscar Orozco (23:27):

I knew it.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (23:29):

I knew I had an ace in the hole with that argument.

Marcus Johnson (23:32):

Anyone who thinks this podcast is biased is right, because it is. Podcast wins!

(23:40):

For the full report with even more forecast trends [inaudible 00:23:44], three more. In fact, PRO+ subscribers, head to emarketer.com and search for forecast trends to watch in 2026, five under the radar metrics making waves. The link to the report is of course in the show notes.That's all we have time for today.

(23:56):

Thank you so, so much to my guests. Thank you to Ethan.

Ethan Cramer-Flood (23:59):

Great to be here.

Marcus Johnson (24:01):

Today's champion, and of course to Oscar.

Oscar Orozco (24:03):

Thanks for having me, Marcus.

Marcus Johnson (24:05):

He had no chance at all, but very close runner up.

(24:07):

Thanks to the whole production crew. We've got John and Danny working on this one, so thank you to them, and to everyone, for listening to Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER video podcast.

(24:13):

Subscribe and follow. If you haven't left a rating or review and you have five minutes, maybe you can make a quick coffee and write us one. It truly means the world, so thank you for that.

(24:22):

If you have time, we'll be back on Tuesday, January 20th. Happy long MLK day weekends. I said that weird.