Podcast listening on TVs has doubled. What can YouTube do with that growth?

We’ve talked a lot about how impressive YouTube’s TV viewership stats are here in the United States, but they’re not looking too bad across the pond, either.

According to Edison Research‘s new UK Podcast Consumer report, the number of UK-based people who most often listen to podcasts via smart TV has doubled since 2023, going from 4% to 8%.

The vast majority of consumers–66%–still listen to podcasts most often on a smartphone, but that doubling number shows people outside the U.S. are getting more into connected TV too.

As for YouTube specifically, 20% of UK-based weekly podcast consumers told Edison it’s their most frequented platform for listening to podcast content. Spotify beats it, with 33% of people using that as their top platform, but YouTube is above all others, including Apple Podcasts (13%) and BBC Sounds (15%).

If you’re trying some mental math to figure out how many people these percentages might figure up to, it might help to know this: Edison found that 51% of people over age 16 in the UK have listened to at least one podcast episode in the last month. 33% have consumed one in the last week. 71% of people say they’ve listened to a podcast at least once.

That’s around the same as the U.S., where Edison found that 47% of people have listened to a podcast in the last month and 34% have listened to one in the past week.

One last key stat: 59% of UK podcast consumers listen to shows most often at home–which indicates the CTV-to-smartphone ratio could continue to tip toward CTV.

“This year’s UK Podcast Consumer Report shows not only mainstream adoption, but also how podcasts are reaching valuable and diverse audiences,” Gabriel Soto, Edison’s Senior Director of Research, said in a statement. “For advertisers, this is a pivotal moment. We at Edison are bullish on podcasting because the data shows further adoption potential, robust ad ROI and tools already in place to help brands confidently invest in podcasts as a core part of their media strategy.”

While, yes, this is valuable information for advertisers, we’re intrigued by the possibility of long-form podcast content–even video podcast content–being a key player in YouTube’s UK CTV success. The Google-owned platform mainly cites its U.S. Nielsen watch time data, which is understandable, considering said data puts it above every TV network and streaming service.

But we don’t as often hear about its CTV ambitions in the UK. And, since YouTube continues to push podcasts, battling with established competitors like Spotify and Apple, we’re keen to see if and how this rapidly growing CTV consumption will influence its strategy moving forward.