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Re-Thinking YouTube: Why Your Video Podcast Ads May Be Converting 25% Worse Than Audio

An industry-first study from Oxford Road and Podscribe. If you’re treating RSS downloads and YouTube views as equal, your performance math is probably wrong.

The podcast industry has largely been operating on an assumption: a YouTube view and an audio download are worth roughly the same to advertisers. Same show, same host, same ad read. Why would performance differ?

Nobody had the data to challenge that. Pixel measurement doesn’t work on YouTube. Promo codes and surveys are noisy. So most advertisers just treated impressions as interchangeable and moved on. We didn’t.

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This report was co-created with Podscribe. By downloading, you acknowledge that your information will be shared with both parties.

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Re-Thinking YouTube Video Podcast Performance

Working with Podscribe, we analyzed over 1,000 campaigns across 100+ brands using two independent methodologies. Both pointed to the same conclusion: YouTube views and audio downloads do not convert at the same rate. And the gap isn’t small.

 

If you’re a brand spending seven figures on podcast advertising, this could mean hundreds of thousands in conversion value you’re not capturing. If you’re a publisher bundling simulcast into your rates, this challenges how you price and package inventory. If you’re planning next year’s audio strategy, you need to see this first.

 

Inside the report, you’ll find:

  • The detailed performance gap breakdown: Why some brands see a massive drop-off while others buck the trend (backed by two independent data sets)
  • Why 78% of brands showed declining response rates as YouTube share increased
  • The behavioral and platform factors driving the difference
  • A 10-step action plan for brands, creators, and publishers to protect their ROI

 

This is the first study in the market to directly compare simulcast vs. pure audio host-read ads using real purchase outcomes. The findings have implications for how the industry plans, prices, and measures video podcasts.

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