Thursday, December 11, 2025
Why Every Business Has a Podcast Now
You've noticed it. Your competitor launched a podcast. That SaaS company you follow has one. Even your accountant has one. Suddenly, every business seems to be starting a podcast.
This isn't a coincidence. Three fundamental shifts have made podcasting one of the highest-leverage marketing moves a business can make heading into 2026.
1. Podcasts Own a Consumption Medium Nobody Else Touches
Here's what most marketers miss: podcasts don't compete with Netflix, TikTok, or Instagram for attention. They exist in an entirely different space—the passive consumption window.
Your customers listen while walking the dog. During their commute. At the gym. Doing dishes.
This is time your brand could never access before. Video content demands eyes on screen. Social media fights for thumb-stopping moments in an endless scroll. But podcasts slip into the cracks of daily life where no other medium can reach.
You're not battling the doom scroll. You're the soundtrack to someone's morning run and that's an intimacy most marketing channels can't buy.
2. Distribution Finally Caught Up
For years, podcast discovery was broken. Fragmented RSS feeds were the primary distribution method. No central algorithm pushed your content to new listeners. Growth meant grinding for reviews and hoping someone stumbled onto your show.
That era has ended.
YouTube now treats podcasts as a first-class content type, investing heavily in video podcast discovery. Spotify has rebuilt its approach around algorithmic recommendations, surfacing clips to users who've never heard of your show.
We're entering a new algorithmic discovery phase for podcasting. The platforms will push your content to new audiences and unlike TikTok or Instagram, you're only competing with audio content. The playing field is smaller, and the platforms are hungry for quality shows to promote.
3. Podcasts Are a Goldmine for AI Training
This is the reason most businesses haven't figured out yet.
Large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini need high-quality data. The internet's text has largely been consumed. The next frontier? Audio and video content transcribed and fed into these models.
When you publish a podcast, you're not just reaching human listeners. You're feeding the AI systems that will answer questions about your industry, your expertise, and your brand.
This is AEO: Answer Engine Optimization.
While competitors optimize blog posts for Google's traditional search, podcasters are positioning themselves as expert source material for the next generation of AI-powered search.
Your podcast episode about solving a specific problem in your industry? That transcript gets ingested. When someone asks an AI assistant about that problem, your expertise has a chance to surface. Traditional SEO doesn't touch this.
The Barrier to Entry Has Collapsed
Here's the final piece: podcasts are no longer hard to create.
Video content demands cameras, lighting, editing suites, and production budgets.
But a podcast? You and a colleague can have a conversation and use traditional recording platforms, or even leverage AI podcast studios like Jellypod to create professional content using AI without expensive equipment or production teams.
Storytelling and brand awareness have been democratized. The companies seizing this moment aren't the ones with the biggest budgets but the ones who just started.
If your business hasn't asked "should we have a podcast?" yet, you should. The question isn't whether podcasting matters - it's whether you'll be early enough to matter in it.
