The show you were told was too small just became the interesting buy.

Audacy's new report, State of Audio: The New Rules of Podcast Advertising, says podcast listeners are 27% more likely to be influenced by hosts who are topic experts than by well-known celebrities, and 21% more likely to be influenced by hosts with expertise in subjects that interest them than by hosts with large social media followings. Those findings come from Audacy's 2026 Power of Influencers study of 1,000 adults.

Read that again with a coach's eyes. Not reach. Not follower count. Subject-matter credibility, measured against fame, winning.

The trust gap is enormous

The same report found 75% of respondents named podcast hosts the most authentic voice in advertising, compared with 63% for cable TV presenters, 58% for YouTube streamers and 54% for social media influencers.

That's a 21-point gap between the person talking into a microphone about one subject and the person posting about everything.

More telling for anyone trying to build an audience from scratch: 55% of listeners said their strongest connection to a creator starts through a podcast feed, compared with 15% who cited social media.

The platform where relationships actually begin is not the one most coaches are grinding on daily.

Advertisers already moved

This isn't theory. The money shifted first.

Average monthly spend per new podcast advertiser more than doubled in a single year, from $20,000 to $42,000, per eMarketer and Magellan AI data cited in the report, and new podcast advertiser growth hit 129% over the past five years. Total podcast ad spend is projected to reach $3.0 billion in 2026.

What's pulling them in is a performance number. Audacy cites an econometric study from Acast and Annalect putting podcast advertising's average return on investment at 4.2 times spend, ahead of social media at 3.6x, online display at 3.2x, digital video at 3x and search at 2.2x.

Fine print, because it matters: that Acast/Annalect study analyzed the Swedish market, two billion SEK of total ad spend between 2021 and 2023, across six industries and 32 advertisers — with roughly 25 million SEK of it in podcasts. It's a real econometric model, not a US-wide guarantee. Treat 4.2x as directional, not as a forecast for your $3,000 test.

Small shows are cheaper to convert on

Here's the number that should change where you spend.

Advertisers on shows with monthly audiences under 250,000 saw a 22% lower cost per acquisition than those buying the biggest shows, according to Podscribe's Q4 2024 benchmark report cited in the Audacy research.

Lower cost, per acquisition, on the smaller show. The efficiency lives one tier down from the famous name.

Audacy's own framing is that podcast advertising is shifting from buying reach to buying influence — with trust, expertise and community becoming the real currency.

What a coach actually does with this

If you're buying: stop chasing the show with the biggest download number and start looking at hosts whose credibility overlaps your offer. The 22% CPA delta is a real budget line.

If you're pitching yourself as a guest: the criteria just changed in your favor. A 4,000-download show about executive burnout, hosted by someone who genuinely knows executive burnout, carries measurable persuasive weight — and you get to be the expert voice inside it.

If you host your own show: your narrowness was never the problem. Audacy found 64% of Gen Z now consume podcasts monthly, putting the generation on track to become the medium's largest audience, while 57% of Americans both watch and listen to podcasts. The audience is arriving and it merges audio and video.

One more warning shot for the AI-shortcut crowd. Audacy's Q1 2026 Podcast Metrics study found 56% of listeners see AI as a helpful tool in back-end production such as research, transcription and editing — but only 25% approved of a podcast hosted with an AI-generated voice, and 62% view AI as at least somewhat of a threat to podcast credibility.

Automate the edit. Do not automate the person. The person is the asset being priced.