Podcast listening keeps making gains, and the medium is becoming a bigger part of marketers’ audio strategies.

Podcasts attract diverse audiences, but room for improvement is seen: Racial breakdown of podcast listeners nearly mirrors that of the US as a whole.

Podcasting finds favor with brand advertisers: US ad spending on podcasts is growing at double-digit rates and will pass $2 billion in 2023.

Podcasts are expected to reach more than 500 million listeners worldwide by 2024. With this growth and innovations in podcast advertising in mind, many marketers now see the channel as essential to their media buying strategy.

Our inaugural global forecast for podcast listeners shows deepening engagement with the medium across all geographies, although at widely varying rates. This report covers 18 major markets in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

Learn about the new Amazon Style store, podcasts on Twitter and LinkedIn, advertising at the NBA All-Star Game, who America’s truckers are, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Peter Vahle and Blake Droesch and director of forecasting Oscar Orozco.

Spotify overtook Apple Podcasts as the biggest US podcast platform in 2021, when the Swedish company drew 28.3 million monthly US podcast listeners, about 200,000 more than its rival did. Come 2025, Spotify’s lead will widen to 13.2 million, while Apple’s growth in the sector will all but stagnate.

On today's episode, we discuss what the next big augmented reality (AR) experience might be, the Trojan horse of self-service retail, whether podcasting has a "hit" problem, the NFL's 2021 regular season ratings, a possible delivery drone milestone, an unpopular opinion about consumer choice, robot referees, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Oscar Orozco, Peter Vahle, and Blake Droesch.