Mid-Size Podcasts Are Beating Celebrity Shows

The biggest name in podcasting no longer guarantees the biggest impact. New research from audio company Audacy finds that Mid-Size Podcasts deliver a markedly lower cost per action for advertisers than celebrity-fronted shows, challenging the long-held belief that reach alone decides where ad money should go. The timing matters: Gen Z has cemented its place as podcasting's growth engine, and this generation rewards expertise and trust over fame.

The findings come from Audacy's latest State of Audio report, titled "The New Rules of Podcast Advertising" and announced earlier this month, which argues that advertisers are rethinking how they buy podcast audiences. According to the report, advertisers on mid-sized shows see a cost per action roughly a fifth lower than those backing celebrity-led podcasts, based on performance data from measurement firm Podscribe. Listeners, meanwhile, say they are more than a quarter more likely to be swayed by a host who genuinely knows the topic than by a famous face reading the same script.

What the new data actually shows

The report draws on Audacy's own influencer research, a survey of one thousand American adults, and frames the winners of the current ad market as "midfluencers": hosts without celebrity status who command deeply loyal audiences. The brands performing best right now are not sponsoring the biggest names, the report argues. They are finding mid-sized shows where listeners have stuck around since the early episodes and where a host recommendation lands more like a text from a friend who actually tried the product.

That dynamic is measurable. More than four in five weekly podcast listeners say they enjoy finding niche shows about their specific interests, according to the research, and listeners are about one in five more likely to be influenced by hosts with real topic expertise than by people with large social media followings. For Mid-Size Podcasts, the message is flattering but also demanding: communities this tight notice when a host reads an ad for something they would never use. The pattern holds across genres: the strongest conversions come from trusted expert voices on the topics that matter most to an audience, often at a lower cost to the advertiser. For a deeper look at how podcast ad economics have been shifting, see our earlier coverage of podcast ad loads dropping for a second straight quarter.

Why Gen Z changed the math

The demographic story is the engine underneath the advertising one. The report says Gen Z is on track to overtake Millennials as podcasting's largest generation before the year is out, and that Gen Z and Gen Alpha together will account for two in five podcast listeners by the end of the decade. Sixty-four percent of Gen Z already consumes podcasts monthly, a figure that reframes the medium's future around younger habits.

Those habits are hybrid. Edison Research data cited in the report finds that more than half of Americans both watch and listen to podcasts, while only about a fifth listen without watching and a tiny sliver watches without listening. YouTube alone counts over a billion monthly podcast viewers. Yet the screen has not swallowed the medium: the point of the format, for many listeners, is that it does not demand one. That same split-screen behavior shows up in how young audiences consume everything else, as we reported in our story on Gen Z preferring highlights to full episodes.

What it means for Mid-Size Podcasts

As Radio Online reported, Audacy positions the shift as a move from buying reach to buying influence, with trust, expertise and community as the currency. For anyone running a show without a famous name attached, the report reads like a sales deck waiting to happen. Industry analysts note that expert-led mid-sized shows can now walk into sponsorship conversations with hard numbers: lower acquisition costs, audiences that act on recommendations, and communities built around shared obsessions rather than celebrity. "As a celebrity gets to a larger and larger status, their connection to their audience gets further and further apart, and so your influence over that audience gets a little bit more diluted," said Adam McNeil, a senior client services executive at Adopter Media, in industry coverage of the findings.

The report also maps where audiences draw the line on automation. Listeners are comfortable with artificial intelligence handling behind-the-scenes work such as research, transcription and production, but acceptance collapses when AI replaces the human host or disrupts the personal connection between hosts and listeners. The message for creators is consistent: the asset is trust, and anything that dilutes it costs more than it saves.

The catch worth keeping in mind

Celebrity podcasts are not finished, and the report does not claim they are. Big names still generate excitement, give stars a direct channel to fans, and deliver the kind of scale that matters for mass-awareness campaigns. A famous host and a trusted expert are different tools, and smart media plans will keep using both.

There is also a grain of salt built into the source. Audacy sells podcast advertising, so a report concluding that advertisers should buy more mid-sized podcast inventory is, at least partly, a sales argument dressed as research. The numbers come from real measurement partners and named surveys, which gives them weight, but the framing serves the company publishing it. Treat the findings as directional rather than gospel: influence is beating reach in podcasting right now, Mid-Size Podcasts are where that influence concentrates, and Gen Z is the audience proving it.