U.K. Ad Avoidance, Video Podcasts on Amazon Music, & More

This week in the business of podcasting:

• New data from the 2026 U.K. Advertising Landscape Study, conducted by Sound Insights for Sounds Profitable, finds that 79% of U.K. podcast listeners recall a podcast ad from the past week — a striking result in a country shaped by decades of ad-free BBC broadcasting, with recall essentially equal across men and women.
• A Reuters Institute report finds video is reshaping news podcasting at every level, from how shows are produced and discovered to how they make money, with publishers increasingly building around personalities and layering in revenue from events, subscriptions, and merchandise.
• Amazon Music has launched video podcasts for U.S. iOS and Android users using HLS video within an open RSS ecosystem, starting with ART19-hosted content and expanding to more hosting partners later this summer.
• Spotify is expanding its video distribution network through five new hosting platform integrations and announcing forthcoming support for Apple Podcasts' HLS video technology, giving creators a path to distribute and monetize video across both platforms simultaneously.

To find links to these, and every article covered in today's episode, click here. You can also subscribe to The Download's newsletter to receive the full issue straight to your email inbox every day.