There is no denying that there is a massive podcast presence on YouTube, largely untapped by Google and its platform. Even though the site has no official recognition for podcasts–they are just shown as normal videos in the feed–the company has been making plans to improve the experience for a while now. A few months ago, YouTube appointed decade-long employee Kai Chuk as the “Podcast Lead” for the platform and it seems like his job is in full effect.
A previous report has indicated how YouTube is willing to offer large sums of money to podcast creators to get video versions of their shows on YouTube. Now, a leaked presentation has surfaced that gives us a good glimpse into the future of podcasting for YouTube. The 84-page presentation was sent to Podnews and it was intended for podcast publishers. While it includes a lot of insight overall, there are three pages titled “Looking Ahead” that are specifically of peak interest to us.
YouTube Podcasts
Firstly, YouTube is looking at improving the podcast experience through ingestion. This will be done by implementing traditional RSS feeds into the platform. There will be a new homepage dedicated solely to podcasts at youtube.com/podcasts (this link doesn’t work right now) with podcasts being promoted with similar artwork and thumbnail framework as the normal YouTube. You’d be able to search and discover podcasts on this new homepage and view “official podcast cards” as well.
To monetize podcasts, Google will offer “Audio Ads” that would first be sold by Google itself but later down the line, partners would be able to advertise through these as well. The leaked slides have no mention of a revenue-split but is likely that it would be similar to how normal video content on the website is monetized. Podcast creators and YouTube will share the ad revenue if that’s the case.
Furthermore, there will be more analytics to look at with Google promising to integrate its YouTube podcasts platform with existing industry-standard podcast attributors like Nielsen, PodTrac, and Chartable, which is now owned by Spotify. That raises an interesting question as to when is this presentation really from. As Spotify bought Chartable recently and there are mentions of features coming in “2022” in this presentation, it’s likely from last year when YouTube would have wanted to work with Chartable in the future before it was bought-out.
With major changes to the platform imminent, YouTube is looking to strengthen its hold on the podcast market that it has largely missed out on. Spotify on the other hand has been gobbling up companies left and right, and investing a ton of money and resources into securing more and more podcast creators. With such a massive head start in Spotify’s favor, it will be interesting to see how YouTube tries to catch up.
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