How Podcasting Grew Up: Trust, Community, And Strategy In 2025

Trust just outperformed reach, and the ripple effects across podcasting were impossible to ignore. We step back from the noise and share a clear-eyed look at how 2025 reshaped the medium: ad dollars didn’t vanish, they got picky; sloppy, reactive launches faded; and intentional, voice-led shows built momentum by earning credibility one conversation at a time.

We walk through the economic realities that forced sharper strategy, showing why advertisers concentrated spend on proven hosts and why niche podcasts won more meaningful outcomes with fewer downloads. As traditional media continued to erode and AI flooded feeds, listeners doubled down on long-form audio for context, nuance, and human tone. That shift elevated experts who serve a specific audience with clarity, rather than chasing mass appeal or empty virality.

Community took centre stage as algorithms stalled. Smaller, community-driven shows converted better because they focused on the right listener. We dig into how to use podcasting as a relationship engine, where know-like-trust beats top-line numbers, and share a real-world example of a modestly sized show landing high-value clients through consistent, relevant content. We also outline our pivot into strategic podcast guesting—moving away from random appearances toward aligned stages that deepen credibility and open new opportunities for both host and audience.

Rounding things out, we introduce a new executive-level, concierge podcast model built for leaders who want on-location capture, higher production value, and a clear strategy without the duct tape. We wrap with an invitation to the upcoming Podcast Alliance event—featuring sessions on live, on-location podcasting and best practices for hosting—and a look ahead to 2026 priorities: tighter focus, stronger communities, smarter use of AI, and a relentless commitment to trust.

Podcast Alliance Quarterly MeetUp & Mastermind
 Where Podcasters, Podcast Guests and content creators meet, collaborate and network! 
 Wednesday January 21st, 2026
 11am - 1pm EST 
 3 amazing speakers! Networking! Collaborations!
 $47 CAD
 Click the link to grab your ticket:

https://e.sparxo.com/Podcast-Alliance-January2026

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Year-End Setup
• 0:36 2025 Themes: Correction And Intention
• 2:18 Economic Pressures And Ad Spend Shifts
• 4:39 Trust Over Reach And Media Erosion
• 7:13 Long-Form Audio And AI’s Influence
• 10:45 Community-Led Growth Beats Algorithms
• 13:10 Strategic Podcast Guesting Emerges
• 15:03 Executive Podcast Package And Pivot
• 17:23 Gratitude, Outcomes, And What’s Next
• 18:19 Podcast Alliance Event Details
• 19:36 Tease For 2026 And Team Credits

Transcript

Carl: 0:03

Welcome to Communication Connection Community, the Podcasters Podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern-day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news, updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. So strap in, it's going to be one amazing ride. Let's dive into today's episode. Well, here it is. We've made it to the end of another year, the end of 2025. I try to do this every year, and I know a couple of years I've missed out on this, but certainly 2025 has been a very interesting year in many, many ways. So I wanted to talk about it and do just a solo episode. And next week's episode will be solo as well, as we talk about and look ahead to 2026, because you know what? There are some really cool things happening in the podcasting space. And I want to reflect back on what happened in 2025, not just in podcasting, but how podcasting was affected by some of the things that would that that have happened and why it really matters. So as an observer in the industry, somebody who works with clients on a regular basis, not only be seen and heard, but also elevate their business, their brand, their credibility, all of that. I want to give you a bird's eye view of what happened and what we can expect moving forward, like I said. So 2025, here we go. 2025 wasn't about explosive growth. No, not at all. Uh it definitely was not. I think it was about reflection. I think there was a lot of fear in 2025, but it was also about correction, clarity, and intention. Correction, clarity, and intention. And if I can even throw in one more word, I think as we got to the end of 2025, it was about connection. It was about connection. It was about, you know, smarter spending, you know, real strategy, things like that. We certainly experienced that at Podcast Solutions Made Simple. And I think there were some things that attributed to that. Number one was the economic pressures. You know, we had tighter marketing decisions being made by individuals. And I know having worked in the media, one of the budgets that gets cut first when times are tough, when money is tight, even though it doesn't make any sense to do this, the budget that gets cut first is the marketing budget or the promotions budget. And that's where podcasting tends to the budget, if it's in a budget, it's it's going to come from there, right? So here's the good thing, though. Podcasting didn't collapse, not at all. What I think we saw, though, was a definite um dissemination, I guess you could say, between the professional podcasters out there, the people who are doing it seriously, and the podcasters who are doing it haphazardly. So podcasting didn't collapse. I think what happened was we saw the collapse of what some people are referring to as reckless podcasting, just people who just go out there and podcast for the sake of podcasting. Or maybe you've experienced this for that matter. Maybe you had a coach at some point in your business say, hey, you should start a podcast. Well, we saw less of this knee-jerk reaction to podcasting, this reckless approach to it, and more intentional podcasting come out of it. Now, we saw that also, you know, because of the erosion of conventional media. You know, news in radio and television continuously being chipped away. So we have people who are, you know, call them influencers, call them coaches, call them thought leaders, whatever you want to call them, taking on roles as podcasters to get their messaging out there where conventional media is failing them. So, what does that mean, dollars and cents wise? Well, we've seen a continued ad spend. Now, this shows a lot of belief in the medium. You know, I can I can remember not too many years ago, a lot of people saying podcasting, uh, somewhere around 2017, 2018. Isn't that dead? Didn't that go the way of the dodo? Uh no, not not even close. Now, we expected podcasting would hit about five billion dollars. That's a billion with a B, five billion dollars this year globally. And you know what? It was pretty close. 4.5 billion global ad spend. All right. Uh, it could have done a little better, but that's that's the way it was. It it definitely did well, despite the fact that there were there were some tough times, you know, in the financial worlds and markets and all of that stuff. Podcasting seemed to slide in reasonably unscathed. As a matter of fact, I think we probably saw some growth because where there were a lot of podcasts that didn't have funding to begin with, or they just weren't, you know, people weren't spending ads on those particular shows. What we saw was the ad spend go to the shows that definitely proved themselves worthy of that ad spend. So the money didn't disappear from the podcasting space. Uh, it just got more selective. It really, really did. The other thing that we saw in 2025, and I think we've seen this year after year, but we really saw uh an uptick in this for sure, and that's trust. Trust in a show, trust in a host, trust, as a matter of fact, beating out reach. And a lot of people think about reach. Reach is important in conventional media because you need numbers. You need big numbers, you need to, you know, to have a very effective, for example, radio show or television station. You'll think of something like the Oscars or think of think of the Super Bowl. They rely on reach, they rely on big dollars and they will reach a big audience. Podcasting is not like that. We saw listener growth stabilized. We saw listener growth become very stable as the medium itself matured. All right. Declining trust in traditional media, again, it's very easy to see that decline, not only with I hate to use this word, but not only with fake news coming from, and then again, it's it's everywhere, right? It's not just in conventional media. We're seeing it all over social media platforms as well. But we've seen that erosion of traditional media with just, you know, number of stations, radio and television closing their doors, newspapers too. So we saw a lot of growth because of that uh decline. So the news or the information had to go somewhere, and it's gone to the podcasting platforms, be it audio and video, that's where it's gone. We also saw a rise in long form voice-driven credibility, right? Uh still short form content is relevant is relevant and very relative, depending on the medium that you're in, or depending on the the area that you're in, your expertise. But that long form content, and I think it's because of the uptick in AI, huge surge in people using artificial, or as I like to refer to it, augmented intelligence to really help them get their messaging out there, drive business, drive industry. So, because of that, I think we saw that rise in long form content. I think we saw voice-driven content also succeed or or go far beyond what video can do. Video is still relevant, don't get me wrong. But we're noticing in the podcasting space, even if you are consuming content through a video platform such as YouTube, a lot of people are not watching. Think about it logically, you can't watch a video on YouTube if, for example, you're cutting vegetables, making dinner. It's a good way to lose a finger, right? So we've seen that voice-driven credibility move forward. We've seen the grounding of experts in the space as well. As a matter of fact, Alex Sanf uh, Alex San Filippo, a good friend of mine, also runs Podmatch. He says that podcasts aren't big, and really they don't they don't have to be big, and he says, and that's okay. Um there's there's been this grounding in expertise and a lot of niching because of that. So it's becoming this reality or this indie reality instead of hype, right? We're we're seeing less hype and more down-to-earth grassroots, personalized, community-driven content that is that's towing the line. It really, really is. So podcasting didn't win because it scaled. I think how we can sum this up is it won because it started to feel human in a world where things are not feel as human, you don't know what you can and can't trust. A lot of people turning to podcasting as hosts, as guests, as consumers, because of that. Let's look at community because one of the things that has been a challenge in the podcasting space is algorithms, the traditional social media algorithms, which podcasters have relied on for years now. We've seen community-driven shows or shows where community is a huge part of the growth of the show. Uh, we've seen those take over. Now, having said that, and again, I'll quote my friend Alexand Filippo again. There is a podcast algorithm that is in formation. Yeah. There there really is. I don't know a lot about it yet, but as I become more aware of it and have more information, I'll share that with you. But I think what we're seeing is your traditional algorithms through social medias, uh, through social media rather, uh, disappear, right? Smaller shows converting better because you don't, you're not vying for big numbers. You're just vying for the right listener. You're vying for the right individual who is your ideal client. Podcasts that are being used as relationship engines, people who are realizing that, you know what, if I have a podcast, I really need to develop that know, like, and trust factor. That's huge. And you don't need big numbers to do that. And we've known this for quite some time at Podcast Solutions Made Simple, and we've structured our business and structured our uh our our education, our information that we share with clients. We've structured it that way for that reason. Because you don't need a thousand or ten thousand or twenty thousand listeners or downloads to every episode for it to be successful. One of our most successful shows that we've produced to date was Diana Lidstone's show that she stopped producing in 2023 because she partly retired. Uh, and that show would garner probably about 30 to 40 uh views or downloads in its first 10 days. Well, and Diana would get one or two clients a year from that. So, and a client to Diana is worth several thousand dollars. So we've seen that relationship-type programming continue to evolve in the podcasting space, all right. Um, community didn't trend in 2025. We just recognized that it worked and worked well, and we've seen that expand, and we're going to see it continue to expand. So, looking back, this is exactly why 2025 changed how we even show up in the space. So, we didn't just help launch podcasts anymore here at Podcast Solutions Made Simple. We began offering strategic podcast guesting. Strategic because it's not random appearances, it's not vanity exposure, but guesting that was designed and is designed rather to build credibility, to establish deeper relationships, and to provide opportunity not just to the guest, but also to the listener or the viewer as well. So a lot of these conversations started in community. They actually started in the podcast alliance, which uh there's a link in the show notes. You can grab a ticket to our next event. I'll tell you more about that in just a moment. But these are things that are working right now. Uh podcasters, guests, and content-driven professionals are actually comparing notes. They are collaborating and they are learning what's working now. Okay, so community is continuing to expand. We're expanding our community. The other thing that happened in 2025, it marked the launch of something very new for us. So, podcast guesting, we had done that a little bit, but now it's a completely uh separate or another leg of the services that we can provide for people. The other thing that came out of 2025, we unfortunately lost a few great hosts. Uh they didn't die, they they just took their shows elsewhere or they stopped podcasting altogether. So when that happens, uh it hurts, right? So that's one of the reasons we pivoted and started to do the podcast guesting, but we also extended, or shall I say, expanded our podcast services reach for hosts. When we started, we started during the pandemic, and a lot of people at that time, if you remember, were struggling and they were scampering to really get in front of their ideal client, whatever it took. You couldn't leave the house to do it, to network, so you had to do it online. So a lot of people were starting podcasts or doing online driven content. Well, some of those people have now gone back to doing in-person events, and that's great. That's fine. Where does that leave us, though? And people are abandoning their shows after two or three years of being in a global pandemic. Well, it kind of left us in the lurch a little bit, but it gave us the opportunity to retool our services, and we created our very first executive podcast package. This is a concierge podcast system that's for executives, it's for advisors, individuals, and companies who want to elevate trust, elevate authority, and as well as expand opportunity without guessing, without duct, without duct taping things together and at a higher level, a higher production level, a higher strategic level, and concierge, because we're literally showing up on location. This is how we've structured this, and we'll be beta and we'll be beta testing it in the coming year. We've structured this so literally, if you are an executive, if you run a company with 10 employees or more, and you're elevating your brand, your business, and your credibility, we literally just show up wherever you are, help you create that content, get it out there. We take it back, we finesse it, we do everything we need to do to it, and you do nothing else. That that's it. That's that's all you do. So all of these things combined has led to a phenomenal end to 2025. It didn't start out phenomenal. I think you're probably feeling that way as well. It was a rough start to 2025, but I know that we have not only have we expanded, but we've done it with a lot of gratitude. We've done it with a lot of thanks and support from not only our clients, but also you, our audience who who keeps listening, who keeps engaging, who keeps letting us know what you like and what you don't like. So thank you for that. I did mention the podcast alliance, it's our community, and I'd like you to, I'd like to invite you to our next event. It is coming up on January the 21st from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. It's where podcasters, podcast guests, uh hosts, uh, those who want to learn more about podcasting, gather, connect, and meet. Right? Uh fantastic lineup that we have. I will be speaking, of course, as I always do. I always speak in my own meeting. But we also have Max Max Frombach, who is from the Netherlands, and he'll be talking about live podcasting. I don't mean live as in live streaming, I mean live on location from events, from trade shows, conferences, those types of things. That's one of the spaces that he is excelling in. So we're excited to have him joining us as well, sharing with him tip, uh sharing with us rather tips and tricks about what he does in the space. We also have George Torek. George is a speech coach for executives. He is also a stellar podcaster. I've been on his show, and I believe he's been on my show as well. He's going to share with us best practices for podcast hosting. And as we go into this new realm, this realm of community, this realm of niche podcasting into 2026 and beyond, what George will have to share will be extremely valuable. And then I'm going to be talking about some of what I've been talking about today, and that's what we can expect for podcasting as we move forward into 2026 and beyond. And part of that will be through strategies, partnerships, joint ventures. So that will be covered as well. The link is in the show notes for you to grab a ticket, only$47 Canadian, by the way, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, January 21st. Looking forward to seeing you there. And by the way, all those links, as I said, will be in the show notes. And if the executive level podcasting is part of your 2026 vision, uh, drop us a note. We'll give you more information about it. I'd like to find out what your goals are, what you want to achieve this year. And then the other thing that I want to share with you as we close out 2025 is what can you expect for 2026? Where can you structure your time, structure your content? What do you need to do to stay relevant and on top of things? That's the next episode, the very first episode of 2026. It's been a phenomenal year, and let's look forward to an even more phenomenal 2026. And hey, thank you for being a part of the show today. So glad you can join us. Believe it or not, I can't work this magic by myself. So thanks to my amazing team, our audio engineer Don Corillio, our Sonic Branding genius Kenton Dolborowski, and the person who works the arms, all of our arms actually, our project manager and my trusty assistant Jillibel Tiungo, known to us here simply as July. If you like what you heard today, let us know. You can leave us a comment or review or even send us a voice note. And if you really liked it, we hope you'll share it with your friends and your colleagues. If you don't like what you heard today, well, please feel free to share with your enemies. And if you know of someone who would make a great guest on the show, let us know about it. You can get in touch with us by going to our show notes where all of our connection points are there, including the links to our website, LinkedIn, and Facebook as well. And if you're ready to be a guest on podcasts, or even start your own show, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space and rock it. Because after all, we're podcast solutions made simple. Catch again next time.