A new study sets out a clearer framework for podcast planning in 2026 by replacing assumptions with audience evidence across key global markets.
Edison Research reports that seventy per cent of Americans have listened to a podcast this year, while Sounds Profitable says weekly listeners spend around six point three hours with the medium, showing substantial commitment across genres and platforms.
A new international report released today by NumberEight, working with Barometer, AdsWizz and Sounds Profitable, brings together listener data from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and France to give advertisers a dedicated podcast-only view of who listens, how patterns shift by age and gender, and how suitability choices affect scale.
“Advertisers are asking for proof, not platitudes,” said Emma Raz, Commercial Director at NumberEight. “This study shows who is actually listening, where spending and consumption diverge, and how to best protect your brand without missing the relevant audience, allowing advertisers to scale with knowledge.”
The findings show that millennials remain the central audience for podcasting, but growth at the edges is accelerating as Gen Z and Gen X increase their presence in multiple markets, particularly Gen Z in Australia and the United Kingdom and older audiences in the United States.
This broadening age mix significantly expands the addressable audience and creates opportunities for new creative approaches and campaign formats across genres.
The report highlights a mismatch between consumption and investment, noting that the United States leads overall spend while Australia, Germany and France present strong opportunities for additional reach where listening already outperforms advertiser investment.
Market-level insights include new listener personas developed by NumberEight, designed to convert cultural patterns into actionable planning tactics.
Personas such as Holiday and Travel Seniors in the United States, Eco-Minded Young Adults in France and Event and Sports Households in Australia show how age, gender balance and content choices can be mapped to targeting levers used in mainstream buying systems.
“In 2026, podcasting will go more global,” said Anne Frisbie, SVP, Global Business Development at AdsWizz. “We’re seeing rapid growth in multi-market audio buys, fuelled by programmatic scale, smarter contextual targeting, and the rise of global host-read opportunities.
“A great podcast now travels across borders – and with the right tech, so can a brand’s message. The biggest unlock next year will be treating audio not as a local channel, but as a global strategy.”
Suitability, the study says, works best when approached with precision. Blunt blocks can quietly remove valuable audiences, especially in multicultural and lifestyle categories.
The research shows that content flagged as sexual frequently over-indexes with Beauty Shoppers and Dating and Social Singles, demonstrating the real trade-off between strict controls and audience relevance.
“Suitability in podcasts is about nuance – matching brand guardrails to tone and context,” said Tamara Zubatiy, CEO of Barometer. “When buyers use tiered sensitivity and adjacency controls, they keep the protection they need and the audience quality they can’t afford to lose.”
Targeting approaches also need to evolve. Contextual targeting still dominates, yet most spending focuses on Tier-Two content categories, leaving podcast-native tools underused.
The opportunity for 2026 is to build multi-signal plans that combine personas, contextual moments and podcast-specific lookalikes with standard category targeting to improve scale and measurable lift.
“Trust and time spent are podcasting’s superpowers,” said Bryan Barletta, founder of Sounds Profitable. “This study gives planners the confidence to go beyond the top charts, activate the long tail, and meet audiences where they actually listen.”
The study offers a practical basis for twenty twenty six planning, outlining where audiences are growing, where investment can stretch further, how market-based personas can speed activation and how suitability controls can preserve reach without compromising brand safety.
The full report expands on these findings with detailed market insights and category trends designed to strengthen planning across the year.
Download the report here (name, company and email required).
