Beyond the Podcast

I’m starting a newsletter, and honestly it’s a bit selfish.

I keep hearing that the creator economy is exploding, that podcasting is booming, but that’s a broad claim and nobody quite defines what it means. Everyone’s got a number to back it up, and every number seems to be measuring something slightly different. I got curious enough to start digging into the actual reports myself: who published this, when, and what were they really counting. Partly because I wanted to know what’s genuinely going on in an industry we’ve bet a big part of our future on, and partly because I couldn’t find anywhere that laid it out clearly.

So here’s the idea behind Beyond the Podcast: once a month, I’ll pull together what the UK data actually says about this industry, tell you exactly where each number comes from, and give you my honest read on what it means, for you if you’re a brand, a creator, or a studio like ours, and for us, because we’re figuring out what it means for West Digital and for the clients who trust us with their shows at the same time as you.

One rule I’m setting for myself from issue one: every number here gets a single named source. I won’t blend two different surveys together to make a bigger claim, and if I can’t verify something properly, I’ll say so rather than quietly leave it out. You’ll see that below.

So, the baseline.

27% of UK adults now listen to a podcast every week. That’s according to Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, whose annual survey is the most authoritative broad measure we have. A year ago that figure was 23%. A further 35% listen at least monthly. This is not a niche medium anymore. It’s mainstream audio.

Three things stand out about how this market is actually operating right now.

Video is no longer optional. 27% of UK podcast listeners actively prefer watching a video version. Another 26% leave the video playing in the background while they listen. That’s over half the audience choosing or accepting video when it’s there. If you’re producing a podcast and still treating video as an afterthought, the data says you’re already behind, not ahead.

The shows at the top aren’t podcasts anymore. They’re media businesses. The current UK top three, in order, are The Joe Rogan Experience, The Diary of a CEO, and The Rest Is Politics. What they have in common is that none of them make their money from podcast downloads alone. YouTube channels with millions of subscribers, live tours, brand partnerships, merchandise, premium tiers. The podcast is the front door. The business is everything behind it.

The advertising money is following the audience, and paying a premium to do it. UK spend on digital audio advertising (that’s ads across streaming audio and podcasts combined) hit £317 million in 2025, up 10% on the year before, in a market where overall ad spend barely moved. If you’ve heard people talk about podcast “CPM” it’s cost per thousand, so it’s simply what an advertiser pays for every thousand people who hear their ad. Podcast CPMs run high compared to most digital formats, because this audience is hard to reach anywhere else and stays for 20 to 60 minutes at a time. That’s a rare thing to be able to sell.

Here’s what this means for anyone building something in this space right now, us included. We made the call two years ago to grow West Digital from a post-production house to offer podcasts a broadcast studio and a podcast theatre. We didn’t do it because we had a crystal ball. We did it because the direction was already visible.

This newsletter will track these numbers every month and ad more details to the different sectors. Same discipline on sourcing every time. Full data and the deeper breakdown of everything above sits on the , link in my bio, and I’ll drop the source list for this issue in the comments below.

Next month: the live event economy. What the numbers say about podcasts going on tour, and what that means for studios like ours that are building toward live production.

If you’ve got a question about any of this, a number that doesn’t match what you’ve seen elsewhere, or something you want me to dig into for a future issue, put it in the comments. I’d rather build this newsletter answering people who push back than just publish into the void.

#BeyondThePodcast #Podcasting #CreatorEconomy #UKMedia #WestDigitalStudios