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People “don’t want to just listen”: YouTube’s Mohan

Episode Transcript

James Cridland

From our daily newsletter, the latest from podnews.net with Podscribe.

Wondercraft

Having podcasts hosted on YouTube and having the algorithm find new audiences for you every single day turns out to be really, really powerful no matter how big of a podcaster you are.

James Cridland

YouTube CEO Neil Mohan spoke with the Ankler CEO and Editor-in-Chief Janice Min to an invitation-only crowd at Cannes Lions yesterday where he suggested that video is central to podcasting's growth.

Wondercraft

People actually don't want to just listen to podcasts.

They want to watch podcasts.

They want to watch this conversation happening.

Video is a really big bet that turned out to be true.

James Cridland

The full interview will be carried in the Ankler today.

Mohan is keynote speaker today on the festival's main stage.

Wondercraft

I was made with Wondercraft AI.

James Cridland

Using downloads for measurement is a business liability, argues podcast growth company Bumper in a blog post.

Downloads are decreasing for many podcasts, yet downloads are largely disconnected from actual podcast consumption.

And technical changes like Apple varying their automatic podcast downloads algorithm, which they did in mid-2023, represents a risk for any podcast publisher.

They, as you might expect, recommend the Bumper dashboard.

But irrespective of that, the argument makes sense.

And talking of the Bumper dashboard, we link to what the Podnews Weekly review looks like over the last six months.

We've seen significantly higher plays in YouTube, since tweaking our headliner template to add captions and chapter points.

Podcast One has renewed its sales and distribution agreement with A&E Networks.

The five shows represent 160 million total downloads.

UK entertainment group Global has announced The Crime Agents exploring crime, policing and national security stories in the UK.

It's the fourth Agents podcast from the company after the News Agents, the News Agents USA and the Sports Agents.

Yesterday, the News Agents was cited as the number two UK news podcast by the Reuters Institute.

Two of the UK's best-known radio broadcasters, Zoe Ball and Joe Whiley, are to launch a brand new podcast with Persephonica in mid-July.

The twice-weekly show will be fully visualised on YouTube.

The Infinite Dial 2025 Australia will be released tomorrow in a free webinar at 11am Sydney time, which is 9pm today in New York.

Meanwhile, the Australian Podcast Ranker for May was released.

Average weekly listenership hit 7 million, which is the same as the record-breaking peak first set in March 2025.

Mushroom Case Daily from the ABC hit number five, with more than 3.3 million downloads in the month.

It's covering the continuing case of Erin Patterson, who says she's innocent of killing family members with poisonous death-cap mushrooms.

The podcast app Metacast now supports private and paid RSS feeds, and you'll gain access to transcripts, summaries, generated chapters and more, just as you do with public shows in the app.

The beta currently lets you follow one private feed to manage costs.

And the New Zealand Podcast Awards is back for a fifth year.

The awards are sponsored by Acast.

Gold winners will each receive 500,000 advertising impressions to promote their show across Acast's podcast network in the country.

And in podcast news, Music Person is brand new today from the TalkHouse podcast network.

It's hosted by Dylan Tupper-Rupert, who you might know as either producer Dylan of Bandsplain or the co-creator, writer and host of KCRW's Lost Notes.

The new music interview show is aimed to be a place of discovery and a respite from the algorithm for curious listeners.

And She Comes With Baggage returns for a new season this month from Kirstie Pike.

It's a podcast centering LGBTQ+ voices and the messy, beautiful stories that come with life.

It's funny, it's raw, and it's full of the kind of truth you can't find in a guidebook and a reminder that we are all more alike than we are different.

And this podcast is sponsored by Podscribe.

Just launched is their Quarter 2 2025 Podscribe Performance Benchmark Report.

And for the first time ever in there, you can see international benchmarks as well as the top performing audience segments.

You can download that report to learn how to maximise your campaign performance.

There's a link in the show notes just for that.

And that's the latest from our newsletter.

To read all the stories and subscribe for free, we're at podnews.net.