In the year 2025, podcasts feel inescapable. Everyone’s a podcaster, and everything is a podcast.

It wasn’t always like this.

The birth of the podcast is largely tied to the creation of the RSS audio feed in 2001, though the term “podcast” wasn’t coined until 2004. The following year, Steve Jobs declared that “Apple is taking podcasting mainstream” when the company made podcasts accessible in iTunes (it’s now celebrating the 20-year milestone with a curated list of 20 of the most impactful shows from the past two decades). But the true mainstreaming of the medium didn’t really happen until nearly a decade later, when Apple released a standalone podcast app in 2012, followed by the debut of megahit Serial in 2014.

After that, podcasting was officially supercharged. Podcasts became all but essential advertising channels for major tech and media companies, with podcast ad revenue climbing past the $1 billion mark in 2021, and seemingly everyone with a platform—from actors to ad execs—getting behind a microphone.

It hasn’t been all rainbows and sunshine in the podcast industry, though. In recent years, layoffs and advertising slowdowns have plagued the space, indicating a potential thirst for change.

Enter video podcasts, which have given consumers a different way to engage with the format—and have unlocked a plethora of video advertising opportunities for creators and hosting platforms.

“What the consumer wants is that foreground-background flexibility,” Emma Vaughn, global head of advertising and content business development at Spotify, told Marketing Brew. “If you’re listening, and all of a sudden you want to see the expression on the face of the interviewee, you can just turn your phone around, then put it back in your pocket. Even if you did that for two minutes, the fact that the video is available there increases overall consumption. [Video] really is like a tide that lifts all boats.”

If video killed the radio star, could it do the opposite for the podcast host?

Continue reading here.—AM, JN

Any athlete’s stat line can tell you that data is abundant in sports. But when it comes to fans, that’s not always the case.

In early 2024, the consensus seemed to be that most sports properties weren’t yet taking full advantage of the fan data at their disposal. In the year and a half since, there have been signals that it’s starting to shift, at least when it comes to the big leagues. Younger and more niche sports, though, aren’t as well off as the Big Four when it comes to data and measurement, according to several sports execs who spoke at Cannes Lions.

While newer and emerging leagues are starting to build out their fan data sets, they’re also embracing other methods of setting up campaigns and measuring performance for sponsors in the meantime.

“At the beginning of the league, we don’t really have all the first-party data, so I think one of the tricks for us is to really lean into the storytelling,” Omer Atesmen, CEO of The Snow League, a pro winter sports organization founded by Shaun White, said while speaking during a panel at Cannes Lions. “I don’t know if grown men and women are crying if Maddie [Mastro] doesn’t win our final against Sena [Tomita] in the women’s championship. It’s not like the NFL. The results do matter, but ultimately…they care more about the person than they do the box score.”

Read more here.—AM

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Scott Morris is the chief marketing officer of Sprout Social. He has also served in senior marketing positions at Zendesk, where he was SVP of global marketing and acting CMO, and at Adobe, where he led product marketing for Creative Cloud and campaign marketing for Creative Cloud and Document Cloud.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I’m a huge fan of Liquid Death. The tagline, “Murder Your Thirst,” is provocative and incredibly memorable, which sets the brand apart. I also like its strong focus on sustainability and how consistently innovative the brand is with collaborations and stunts. From its casket-cooler partnership with Yeti to the hot-fudge-sundae product and marketing collaboration with my favorite ice cream brand, Van Leeuwen, Liquid Death consistently pushes boundaries that align with the brand’s rebellious and authentic spirit. And the fact that they’ve achieved this level of visibility and virality without traditional paid advertising? That’s truly next-level marketing.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: While I like to describe my first job out of college as “developing account-specific sales and marketing plans,” the reality is that I drove a gray minivan around South Florida trying to sell end-cap displays of faucets to plumbing department managers at Home Depot stores. Glamorous, it was not. But we all have to start somewhere, right?

Read more here.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Kraft Heinz is reportedly set to split, with a big piece of its grocery business potentially going solo, per WSJ.
• Olipop is now the “official functional soda” of the Indiana Fever.
• The General is targeting Gen Z drivers through a Fortnite partnership.
• Warner Bros. Discovery teamed up with Roku to promote Superman on the platform ahead of the film’s release this past weekend.