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

June 18, 2025

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“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.” YouTube CEO Neal 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. “People actually don’t want to just listen to podcasts, they want to watch podcasts, they want to watch this conversation happening… Video was a really big bet, that turned out to be true.” The full interview will be carried in The Ankler today; Mohan is keynote speaker today on the festival’s main stage.

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.

PodcastOne has renewed its sales and distribution agreement with A+E Networks. The five shows represent 160mn 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 #2 UK news podcast by the Reuters Institute.

Two of the UK’s best-known radio broadcasters, Zoe Ball and Jo 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 (9pm today in New York).
- The Australian Podcast Ranker for May was released. Average weekly listenership hit 7mn, which is the same as the record-breaking peak first set in March 2025. Mushroom Case Daily from the ABC hit #5 with more than 3.3mn 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.

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

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.

Tips and tricks – with Memberful

How do you outlast 99% of podcasts? Samuel Sleger has four simple rules to help.

Want to save a little cash? In a brand new section called Podnews Extras, we’ve special codes for Podcast Movement, Radiodays Asia, and the Empowered Podcasting Conference – and a special deal on Hindenburg Pro, all exclusive to Podnews readers.