The State of Podcasting 2026 – Live from the CAO Summit

If you weren’t at this year’s CAO Summit, you missed out on a keynote speech that drew parallels between the headaches caused by banks printing their own money in the 1800s and the state of podcasting today.

Lucky for you, we’re releasing the full recording in this week’s episode of The Media Roundtable.

Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road) and Giles Martin (EVP, Strategy, Oxford Road) talk about how podcasting platforms are printing their own money, the friction that adds to industry tension, and how AMP is poised to help. Let’s dive in.

“Today, we have platforms that each print their own currency. We have downloads, plays, views, streams, video views. Each number may be perfectly valid inside of one individual system that created it, but the problem appears when a brand tries to compare them to each other.” –  Dan Granger (CEO & Founder, Oxford Road)

Download the State Of Podcasting Today

Trust is the Commodity – The one thing everyone in podcasting can agree on: This is a special and unique medium, thanks in no small part to the high levels of trust podcasters earn from their audience (according to one recent study, podcasters are nearly twice as trusted as influencers). But as Dan’s keynote points out, that trust hasn’t trickled down to the metrics and measurements used to gauge a show’s success.

Platforms Print Their Own Currency – That trust is undercut because marketers have to compare three seemingly incomparable metrics: Downloads, views, and plays. That forces marketers to run their own numbers just to guess how many people are actually listening to their ads. While we may agree on how valuable trust is to podcasters, nothing about accessing that trust is standardized, and it’s costing everyone.

Enter the Standards – The AMP Accords are our best chance at creating standards to eliminate the frictions of defining, buying, and measuring podcasts. They’re not perfect, and they don’t have to be. In the 1800s, federal dollar notes weren’t necessarily a perfect choice. But, when everyone agrees on a single trusted option, a dollar in one state becomes worth a dollar everywhere. If marketers ask for the same standards for the industry, trust will increase, and the industry can thrive. (If you agree, feel free to join the AMP Accords here.)

For more insights regarding the State of Podcasting, and how it can be better regulated, check out the full episode below.