Podcasts Offer Another Way In
A new study from Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights points to an increasingly important role for podcasts in the media mix: reaching consumers who are becoming harder to find through traditional television advertising as ad-free streaming takes over more of their viewing time.
Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights commissioned Quantilope to field the 16th edition of the Podcast Download series, surveying 600 weekly podcast consumers in April 2026. It found that 97% had used a video streaming service in the past month. More significantly for advertisers, 88% had used an ad-free streaming service.
That shows up in how podcast listeners spend their time watching TV.
According to Nielsen, 27% of television viewing among the overall U.S. audience is spent with ad-free content. Among weekly podcast consumers, that figure jumps to 39%.
In other words, weekly podcast listeners spend 44% more of their television viewing time with ad-free content than the average American.
That creates a problem for advertisers. These consumers are still watching plenty of television and streaming video. They are simply spending more of that time in places where traditional TV ads cannot reach them.
Heavy Podcast Listeners More Likely to Stream Ad-Free
The pattern becomes even more pronounced among people who spend six or more hours a week listening to podcasts.
According to the study, heavy podcast consumers are 14% more likely than weekly podcast consumers to be heavy users of ad-free streaming services. They spend an average of seven hours with ad-free streaming each week, compared with 6.4 hours among weekly podcast listeners overall.
There is also a broader shift away from traditional pay TV within the podcast audience. One-third of weekly podcast consumers do not subscribe to a pay-TV service at all.
Taken together, the findings show why podcast audiences can be valuable well beyond the audio portion of a media plan. Podcast advertising can reach consumers whose media habits increasingly put them beyond conventional television.
Streaming Services Have the Same Reach Problem
Inside Radio pointed to another application of the research: streaming platforms themselves.
The issue is especially relevant when a streaming service needs to build awareness for a new show or remind viewers that an existing series has returned.
Bloomberg recently reported significant audience declines for several Netflix series between seasons. "Running Point" and "The Four Seasons" each saw audiences fall 50%, while "Beef" dropped 70% when it returned in April. Season two of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" arrived in June and lost more than 60% of its audience in week one, despite the show ranking among Netflix's most-watched titles in 2024.
The reasons behind those declines can vary, but awareness could be part of the challenge. A streaming service can push a returning season hard inside its own app, but those messages only reach people who are already there. That puts a much larger audience outside the platform.
Netflix accounted for 8% of U.S. television viewing in Nielsen's May 2026 Gauge report. That leaves 92% of television viewing happening somewhere else. For streaming services trying to bring viewers back for a new season, that makes external promotion important.
Podcasts Can Reach Audiences Other Channels Miss
The larger finding here is not that podcast listeners have abandoned television. They are watching it differently. More streaming, more of it ad-free, and a third of them are not on pay TV at all.
For brands, that gap means reaching consumers whose viewing habits keep them away from commercials. For streaming platforms, it means getting outside their own walls when there is a new show or returning season to promote.
Ad-free streaming has been reshaping how audiences watch television for years, and podcast listeners are further along in that shift than most. For advertisers, podcasts are one of the few ad-supported environments those consumers still choose on purpose.
Sherry Del Rizzo
Sherry leads editorial at ADOPTER Media, translating the agency's campaign experience and podcast advertising expertise into education for the industry. Her job, in short: take what ADOPTER learns from running real campaigns and turn it into something worth reading.
