Video didn’t kill the podcast star. Instead, video has helped make podcasters into bigger stars — and that is why it is nearly impossible to find a successful show in 2025 that does not include a visual component.

Not only have these podcasts graduated from the audio originals as entertainment, but also as a lucrative and growing business.

The rise of video podcasts has led to YouTube, not its audio competitors Spotify or Apple, becoming the top destination for American podcast listeners. YouTube pulls in 31% of weekly podcast listeners in the states, compared to 27% for Spotify and 15% for Apple, according to data from Edison Podcast Metrics.

To compete with the social video giant, Spotify recently unveiled a new program to foster the creation of more video podcasts on its platform. The raw figures are illuminating: Spotify is home to 330,000 video podcasts — more than triple the amount it had just two years ago.

“I don’t think you can make a podcast today without video,” Claudia Oshry, co-host of “The Toast” podcast, told TheWrap. “The only podcast that cracks the top five [on the podcast charts] without the video component is ‘Smartless.’ They’re an anomaly.”

She is not wrong. A quick scan of the top podcasts via Spotify and Apple’s rankings shows every leading podcast — beyond the aforementioned “Smartless” pod, hosted by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes — includes video: Joe Rogan, Alex Cooper, Mel Robbins, Bill Simmons, Megyn Kelly, Conan O’Brien, “Giggly Squad’”s Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo, among a laundry list of other creators, all let viewers watch them as they talk. And it’s luring more veterans by the day — Dax Shepard and his popular “Armchair Expert” podcast added a video component in October, seven years into the show’s run.

This latest “pivot to video” allows the podcast medium to more closely reflect the intimate subject-to-camera relationship of creator-driven video content that’s booming on social media and YouTube. But another big reason for the rise in video podcasts is that more face time means more ad clicks.

Arthur Leopold, CEO of Agentio, a New York company that specializes in helping creators make ad deals on YouTube, said his company’s data shows a “direct relationship” between creators showing their faces on camera and fans engaging with ads. Video podcasts on YouTube have an 87% read-through rate, compared to just 28% for audio-only podcasts, Leopold told TheWrap. In layman’s terms, that means 87% of the time, fans do not skip over the ads. The result is a win-win for everyone: brands get more fans looking at their products and creators increase the odds they will score more ad deals down the line.

That high engagement is also why YouTube is looking to follow in Spotify and Apple’s footsteps and allow creators to swap in their own ad reads to their shows, rather than lean on typical commercials, as Semafor reported in March. That is a big deal for creators, because host-driven ads have been shown to drive more ad revenue. The average cost per 1,000 listens for a podcast ad is typically between $15 to $30, according to Acast, a company that helps shows monetize; that figure jumps to $25 to $40 per 1,000 listeners when the hosts read ads.

While parsing how much of the podcasting ad market is strictly attributable to video content is hard to do, the overall industry is undoubtedly growing. Ad revenue for podcasts is expected to hit $2.51 billion in the U.S. this year — up 27% from 2023, according to data provided by eMarketer. There are no breakouts yet for just video podcasts, but experts say it is the fastest growing part of the advertising pie.

Oshry, who co-hosts “The Toast” – a pop culture, comedy podcast that dubs itself “the millennial morning show” – alongside her sister Jackie, said video has been a key reason their podcast has gained a loyal following. The daily show started as a web show in 2018 and began to upload their episodes as podcasts after fans encouraged the move. “The Toast” is routinely ranked among the top comedy podcasts on Spotify and Apple, where it was ranked fifth overall this week, and has more than 150,000 subscribers on YouTube.

While “The Toast” has always prioritized video, unlike some of their competitors, the Oshry sisters said they began to use their on-camera counterpart as a “marketing tool” just three years ago.

“A one minute clip is a great elevator pitch,” Jackie told TheWrap, noting that social media has allowed the podcasters to reach new audiences organically.
“Previously, we grew our audience by word of mouth. You would have to ask someone to watch a whole hour-long episode.”

“Our growth would not have been the same without our video clips,” Claudia said of the show’s TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts content. The millennial morning show has reached new cross-generational audiences with social media.

Podcasts have now become synonymous with video, industry insiders and creators told TheWrap. The days where radio hosts and TV stars are two different beasts represents a bygone era. Now, podcasters are expected – and incentivized – to show us their mugs. The personal and business reasons are interconnected: video helps creators develop a “deeper relationship” with their audience, Agentio CEO Leopold told TheWrap. That connection leads to fans spending more time watching content, buying merchandise and clicking on advertisements.

Many other podcasters could say the same exact thing.

“Video podcasting is not a shift, but a deepening of our existing strategy, and crucial for cutting through social media noise,” head of the Unwell Network Rory (Armstrong) Larochelle said in a statement to TheWrap. “We’re intensifying our focus on platform-optimized social video to not only include short-form clips of podcast episodes, but broadening our organic content to include TikTok trends, memes, and BTS to boost discoverability and support our longform shows, building on the visual foundation Alex [Cooper] established from the start.”

As video podcasts become increasingly popular with viewers and creators, YouTube has become the top platform for consuming the once audio-only medium; the Google-owned company in February reported 1 billion people watch podcasts on YouTube each month.

“We’ve doubled down on the utilization of YouTube as a platform by introducing new YouTube-forward formats as well as leaning into native platform tools like the premiere feature and engaging with our audience real-time,” Larochelle said.

Spotify is hot on YouTube’s heels, though, and has recently upped its bet on video podcasts.

The Swedish streaming giant’s internal data found nearly two-thirds of subscribers prefer podcasts with video, which helped spur the company to launch its “Spotify Partners Program” earlier this year, giving creators more tools to create and monetize video podcasts. For podcasters, the big draw is that Spotify will now pay them an undisclosed slice of extra money, based on how many Premium subscribers watch their show.

“Essentially, the more people that watch your content, the more money that you make,” Jordan Newman, Spotify’s head of content partnerships, told TheWrap. “On the creator side, I think what’s really awesome is being able to have another revenue stream and not fully being reliant on advertising – a revenue stream that is not reliant on seasonality or shifting demand or marketplace dynamics, but really is just based on how much people are watching your content.”

And without saying it publicly, Spotify’s aim is clear: Anything it can do to help keep fans on its platform longer, and off of YouTube and Apple, is a win.

Spotify launched video podcasts to select users in mid-2020, before a full rollout in 2021. Sources within YouTube and Spotify told TheWrap the COVID pandemic was when both companies started seeing a surge in demand for video podcasts, as quarantined fans searched for more human connections, even digital ones. That momentum has accelerated in recent years, with Spotify growing its video podcast count from 100,000 in 2023 to more than 330,000 currently.

“We are seeing a pretty extreme acceleration in the popularity of video podcasts on Spotify,” Newman added.

Naturally, the supply of video podcasts has also increased alongside demand. And a big reason why is that they are far easier to produce in 2025 than they were just a few years ago, Noah Weissman, DAZN’s EVP of social and content, told TheWrap.

“The barriers to entry have all but disappeared — anyone with a phone and a perspective can launch a show, and that’s a beautiful thing,” Weissman said. “Of course, production quality still matters, and there’s a wide range. But with the AI-powered tools and tech available today, you no longer need a full crew of videographers, editors and set designers to create premium IP. The playing field has leveled.”

But that accessibility has also made the space more competitive than ever. To truly stand out, Weissman said, creators need to bring two non-negotiables to the table: “A credible voice that audiences can connect with — and real authority on the subject matter. Audiences are sharp. They can smell inauthenticity from a mile away.”

That formula has helped DAZN’s “Ariel X Ade Boxing Show” find traction. Hosted by UFC and boxing insider Ariel Helwani and Ade Oladipo, the series has racked up more than 4.62 million subscribers on YouTube. DAZN is applying a similar strategy to boost its new soccer show, “Through Ball,” hosted by former pros Darian Jenkins and Kaylyn Kyle, alongside superfan Elischa Edouard — part of the platform’s broader mission to be the global home of boxing and soccer.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about storytelling,” Weissman said. “The best video podcasts feel like you’ve dropped into a group chat with your most passionate, informed friends. That intimacy, that energy — you can’t fake that. And it travels whether you’re watching on YouTube, DAZN or any social platform. Video podcasts are here to stay and I’m excited to see the continued evolution of the format.”

Similarly, Claudia Oshry said being genuine has been critical to honing her podcast’s secret sauce.

“We might say something that makes the grandmas mad or that makes the younger generation mad, but we always try to be authentically ourselves,” she said. “Our show evolves as we evolve. We never try to force anything.”

Leopold echoed Weissman’s view, saying there has been a “consistent move away from audio-only” podcasts and towards simulcasts because of the added personal touch they offer.

“People like to build para-social relationships with the people they admire, who they listen to, whose content they consume regularly,” Leopold said. “And video is such a powerful way for them to do so. It lets fans understand the nuances in the conversation, by being able to to see their body language and seeing the excitement when podcasters are discussing a topic.”

And from a business standpoint, video is becoming a no-brainer for podcast hosts.

“It leads to higher retention in the podcast, more consistent viewership and also additional ad and revenue channels,” Leopold said.

Video gives top podcasters a chance to show off their new merchandise — something seen with football star bros Travis and Jason Kelce on their podcast, as they frequently wear their “New Heights” T-shirts. Alex Cooper, “Call Her Daddy” host and founder of Unwell, displays her hydration drinks and even offers the refreshments to her interview guests. And the Oshry sisters show off boxes of their canned wine cocktail Spritz Society as well as their published books in the background of their studio.

Looking ahead, the video podcast revolution does not appear to be slowing down anytime soon. A survey from Amplifi Media last month found only 10% of Gen Z respondents said they “never” consume video podcasts, and video pods are increasingly becoming a go-to option for TV viewers. Nearly 50% of viewers who turn to YouTube for podcasts watch their favorite podcasts on Smart TVs, according to a new report from Coleman Insights, a radio and podcast research firm. “The View” and other conversation shows could soon be usurped by top video podcasts, it appears, although that hasn’t stopped them from trying to keep up — “The View” recently launched a YouTube-only Saturday segment called “The View Weekend.”

“I don’t think video podcasts have completely replaced appointment TV — but I think it’s heading that way,” Jackie Oshry said.

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